An Empirical Study on the Relationship between Cross-Channel Integration and Offline Store Patronage Behavior: An Abstract

This study aims to empirically reveal the relationship between retailers’ integration of multiple channels (e.g., e-commerce and bricks and mortar) and consumers’ offline store patronage behavior. Online retailers can obtain detailed customer information such as purchase history and click-stream. Since such data enables retailers to conduct personalized communication with each customer, many traditional retailers add online channel and conduct cross-channel integration to obtain competitive advantages (Cao and Li 2015; Verhoef et al. 2015).

In traditional retail context, consumers usually use several stores for their daily consumption (Uncles et al. 1995), and purchase products, especially for convenience goods, portfolio basis, and create loyalty toward a primary store and secondary stores (Baltas et al. 2010). This type of store patronage behavior has been conceptualized as multiple store patronage (Baltas et al. 2010). Even though retailers invest on EC-based online information systems, it is difficult to obtain data of such offline shopping behavior. Moreover, it is difficult to track the customers’ channel switch behavior from online to offline channel. In other words, the impacts of retailers’ cross-channel retail services on consumers’ offline patronage behavior is unknown.

Therefore, this study aims to clarify the relationship between cross-channel integration and multiple store patronage. We conducted questionnaire survey and the results show that cross-channel integration is positively associated with the store patronage. This study contributes to the research streams on cross-channel integration and multiple store patronage. This study also shows that consumers who feel higher enjoyment for shopping tend to use greater number of stores and to be less loyal to the primary store.