Understanding shoppers’ cross-channel analysis of influencing factors of online and offline channels: Evidence from clothing product

Abstract

As the online to offline (O2O) retail market develops rapidly, most consumers become O2O shoppers who shop online and offline. However, researchers seldom focus on O2O retailers collaborating online and offline channels to better satisfy consumers' needs. To fill the gap, this study explores the neglected problem from the shoppers’ cross-channel analysis perspective. In this paper, we used text data mining to capture shoppers' online comments on Suning.com, where we selected T-shirts, skirts and trousers as products to be analyzed. After determining the influencing factors, we used social network analysis to construct the two relation networks based on the semantic set of shoppers' comments. This study reveals the relations between the influencing factors of online and offline channels and finds shoppers' cross-channel analysis behavior characteristics by analyzing the density and centrality indicators of the rebuilt relation network. The research results demonstrate that the impacts of the influencing factors on shoppers' purchase intentions are different. Offline product experience, online product comments, online product price, and offline product price significantly influence and control their purchase intention more than the other factors when shoppers cross-channel analyze the influencing factors. Moreover, this study uses the Shapley model to quantitatively analyze the impact of influencing factors on shoppers' purchase intention by building collaborative alliances. The Shapley values confirm that shoppers attach the highest importance to offline product experience, followed by online product comments, online product price and so on. The findings can improve O2O retailers' collaborative marketing strategies.