Factors of customers’ channel choice in an omnichannel environment: a systematic literature review

Abstract

The proliferation of mobile devices and the continuous development of online technologies has led to an increasing variety of channels, leaving customers with a choice of channel alongside the choice of product, service, or retailer. Any attempt to optimize customer experience and engage in successful omnichannel management will require a complete, multifaceted understanding of the processes around channel choice of customers. To date, the many existing studies around multi- and omnichannel research have failed to yield an integrated, comprehensive synthesis of factors involved in customers´ channel choice. Our study conducted a systematic literature review to the end of identifying the factors involved in channel choice which appear in the scientific literature on this topic over the last two decades. We retrieved 128 papers from three bibliographic databases (EBSCO Host, Scopus, and Web of Science) and carried out descriptive analysis on them. Qualitative thematic analysis inductively extracted 66 different factors of channel choice, each assignable to five broader categories, from the studies included in the review. The findings indicate that perceived channel characteristics, customer needs and situational or contextual factors influence customers´ channel choice directly, and customer characteristics and characteristics of products or services influence it indirectly. Alongside its presentation of an integrated conceptual framework comprising these relationships, our study details a comprehensive research agenda with regards to theories, contexts, and methods and, in particular, with regards to factors influencing customers´ channel choice. Our findings advance the academic understanding of channel choice behavior and provide researchers and practitioners in this area with information on important implications for omnichannel management.