옴니채널환경에서 제품구색통합 및 가격통합이 쇼핑혜택에 미치는 영향: 웹루밍 vs 쇼루밍

Abstract

With the advent of digital era and mobile channel, a number of retailers have expanded omni-channel for product distribution. The shopping trends of consumers have been more complicated as well. The consumers have participated in decision making processes to purchase shopping items across on and offline channel under the omni-channel environment. Recently this kind of consumer behavior has been called as showrooming or webrooming. Retailers have evolved into omni-channel that has various forms of product assortment and price integration to provide consumers with seamless shopping experience and consistent brand association. Since both webroomers and showroomers have different shopping motivations and decision making processes in omni-channel environment, it is necessary to study what type of omni-channel form is preferred by webroomers and showroomers and how consumers feel their shopping benefits. This study simultaneously examined the impact of product assortment integration(such as full integration and asymmetrical integration) and price integration(such as full integration and asymmetrical integration) on consumer’s shopping benefits moderated by shopping behaviors like webrooming and showrooming. Specifically, it examined the differences of omni-channel shopping behaviors such as webrooming and showrooming to generate shopping benefits and retailer loyalty with the combination of assortment and price integration. This study also investigated the differences how to perceive shopping benefits and retailer loyalty by consumer segments such as extreme webroomers and extreme showroomers who show heavy cherry picking shopping tendency. The eight shopping scenarios were made to illustrate how to purchase a printer through webrooming or showrooming at electronics store that is operating in both online and offline. In addition, each shopping scenarios was made as a video clip to help respondents understand. Respondents were randomly assigned to eight shopping scenarios. In webrooming(or showrooming) videos, they had shopping experiences from online search(or offline search) to offline purchase(or online purchase). After watching the video for about a minute, they were asked to respond to the shopping benefits they experienced. To obtain the data needed for this study, eight branches of leading electronics retailer in Korea were selected. A total of 812 questionnaires were collected by conducting self-report surveys from consumers who visited the store. Figure 1 The Research Model We first analyzed the characteristics of samples through descriptive statistics. Then, factor analysis and reliability analysis were performed to validate the scales. We conducted three-way ANOVA to verify proposed hypotheses and t-test to compare the means between groups. In addition, cluster analysis was employed to identify unique omni-channel groups based on shopper’s cherry-picking tendencies. That was turned out to be extreme cherry-pickers, called as extreme webroomers and extreme showroomers. The results of this study were summarized as follows. First, under the omni-channel environment, the impacts of channel integration such as product assortment integration and price integration on shopping benefits were shown to vary according to shopping behaviors. In both webrooming and showrooming situations, omni-channel condition like product assortment full integration, which means the same product assortment on the on/offline channel significantly influenced perceived shopping benefits. Therefore, offering more product assortment to one-side on the omni-channel rather reduces the possibility of consumer choices. In terms of price integration, however, webrooming and showrooming indicated conflicting empirical results. In webrooming, the omni-channel which has the same price on the on/offline channel(that is, full price integration), highly percieved shopping benefits.On the other hand, in showrooming, the omni-channel which has a lower price on the online channel(that is, asymmetric price integration), highly perceived shopping benefits. Table 1 Results of the impact of channel integration on shopping benefits by shopping behavior Shopping Benefits Hypothesis Channel Integration Verification of Levene