Abstract
Although webrooming has become common practice in omnichannel consumer behavior, only a few empirical studies have managed to shed light on the phenomenon. With this research work, we aim to investigate important antecedents of webrooming. We base our conceptual framework on anticipated utility theory and expect that customers’ anticipated utility from using the physical store versus the online store for purchase can be predicted by four groups of antecedents: psychographic variables, shopping motivations, channel-related variables, and product-related variables. With the help of a data set from a large cross-national online survey in which 1497 customers reconstruct their last purchase journey, we differentiate webroomers from pure online shoppers. In addition, we disentangle customers who used retailer-owned, competitor-owned, and independent touchpoints along the search and purchase phase of the customer journey in order to characterize webroomers in an omnichannel context and assess their prevalence in different countries and industries. Our insights on the characteristics and antecedents of webrooming help retailers to detect and better understand the psychology behind the webrooming phenomenon from a consumer perspective in an omnichannel retailing environment. In addition, results from our exploratory analysis on the positive association between webrooming and customer spending contribute to research and practice by providing first evidence on the economic value of webrooming.
Highlights
The rise of the internet and advances in information technology provide customers with a myriad of new touchpoints to interact with retailers, their competitors, manufacturers, other customers, and independent providers along their purchasing process (Lemon and Verhoef, 2016)
Concerning the monetary consequences of webrooming behavior, we find that webroomers are more valuable to retailers than pure online shoppers
Our findings reveal that retailers may use psychographic variables, shopping motivations, channel-related variables, and product-related variables to drive webrooming behavior among customers who research online
Summary
The rise of the internet and advances in information technology provide customers with a myriad of new touchpoints to interact with retailers, their competitors, manufacturers, other customers, and independent providers along their purchasing process (Lemon and Verhoef, 2016) In this vein, consumer behavior along the purchasing process has been changing from a linear, single-channel shopping behavior to a complex, network-structured omnichannel behavior that spans over a multitude of different online and offline channels (Srinivasan et al, 2016). In line with anticipated utility theory, we consider customers’ decision making along the journey as a forward-looking process in which customers choose to use specific channels depending on their perceived marginal utility Customers use those channels that best satisfy their individual needs by minimizing costs and maximizing benefits at different stages of the customer journey (Flavián et al, 2016; Gensler et al, 2017). Product-related variables refer to different characteristics of products and to customers’ experience in purchasing and/or using these products
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