Determinants of multichannel migration for multichannel retailers

Pei-Chen Liu, Purdue University

Abstract

The primary goal of this study was to understand what factors influence consumer multichannel migration. More specifically, this study aimed to examine: (1) if offline store satisfaction and switching costs affect customer perceptions of usefulness, social influence, behavioral control, and risk in using web stores; and (2) if such perceptions affect consumer attitudes toward and intention to use web stores. Three popular multichannel retailers, Wal-Mart, Meijer, and Target, were chosen as the research context. Data was gathered at a large Midwestern university from 150 students who did offline shopping at these three multichannel retailers' physical stores. Results demonstrated that switching costs has significant relationships with customer perceptions of social influence, behavioral control, and risk in using multichannel retailers' web stores, which in turn are related to consumer attitudes toward using multichannel retailers' web stores and intention to use multichannel retailers' web stores. However, in contrast to findings from previous studies as well as the hypotheses in the present study, offline store satisfaction was found to have a positive relationship on customer perceptions of using a new channel for shopping. Overall, the results supported the notion of status quo bias effect in that customers tended to avoid a new channel for shopping as they viewed this option to be less popular, less controllable, and more risky. Additionally, the findings also indicated a good explanation for the theory of planned behavior (TPB) since perceived social influence, perceived usefulness, and perceived risk in online shopping predicted consumer attitudes toward using web stores, which in turn predicted their intention to use web stores for shopping. The present study makes the following specific contributions: (1) Theoretically, the present study is an empirical research that details factors which influence channel migration, that is, the shifts from one channel with its satisfaction/dissatisfaction and switching costs to other channels. In addition, the present empirical study used the TPB model, which is good and important in predicting behavior. (2) Managerially, the findings revealed by the present study can help multichannel retailers improve multichannel customer management by positively enhancing customer perceptions of shopping in different channel(s).

Degree

M.S.

Advisors

Ha, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Behavioral psychology

COinS