•Recommendations are effective online marketing tactics to promote private labels.•Consumers tend to switch more to private labels (vs national brands) recommendations.•Recommendations serve as ...quality signals to the recommended brand.•The effect holds (vs attenuates) for consumers’ low (vs high) brand loyalty.
As consumers increasingly shift toward online grocery shopping, reconsiderations of traditional marketing tactics become necessary, both to test whether they remain applicable online and to find new options that are specific to online channels. One such novel tactic might entail recommending private-label alternatives for products that consumers have added to their shopping carts. Three experiments indicate that when consumers receive recommendations to switch out a chosen brand for an alternative, they are more likely to switch if the recommended product is a private-label rather than national brand. The recommendations seemingly serve as quality signals, and private-label offerings have more to gain from such quality signals than national brands. This effect is prominent for consumers with low brand loyalty levels; it becomes attenuated for very brand loyal consumers though.
Introducing new technological solutions, especially in the field of website design, can bring many benefits, including improving the usability of online stores and increasing the profits of the ...enterprise. With the development of technology and increasing competition, it is important for online stores to effectively present their offers and effectively convey product information. An online store should grow with the brand, respond to customer needs, and adapt to the audience. One of the tools that can help design more usable online stores is eye tracking - a method of studying users' eye movements while using the website. This article presents the results of empirical research aimed at comparing the format of product specifications on online store designs and choosing the best format in terms of usability.
•We investigate online store choice decisions of multi-channel grocery shoppers.•We take traditional store choice drivers and multi-channel factors into account.•We allow their effect to change with ...growing online shopping experience.•At start, consumers tend to select the store of the preferred offline chain.•Online store comparison and the impact of online assortment increase over time.
More and more grocery retailers are becoming multi-channel retailers, as they are opening an online alternative next to their traditional offline supermarkets. While the number of multi-channel grocery shoppers is also expanding at a fast growth rate, there are still large differences in online shopping frequency, and as a result, in the levels of experience with buying in the online grocery channel. This study wants to (i) identify the underlying drivers of online store choice and (ii) explore if and how these drivers change when multi-channel shoppers gain online grocery shopping experience. We investigate this question with an online store choice model using purchase data of an extensive UK household panel over a two-year period, covering all multi-channel retailers in the grocery market. Our results show that multi-channel shoppers, at the start of online grocery shopping, tend to select the online store belonging to the same chain as their preferred offline store, especially when the online store is strongly integrated with the offline store in terms of assortment. When online grocery shopping experience increases, multi-channel shoppers’ focus shifts from a comparison within a chain across channels to a comparison across chains within the online channel, resulting in an increasing importance of online assortment attractiveness and online loyalty when choosing an online store.
Despite the robust evidence that congruent background music in the physical store environment positively affects consumer reactions, less is known about its effects in an online context. The present ...study aims (1) to examine whether congruency via multiple elicited crossmodal correspondences between background music and the online store environment (e.g., perceived lightness, loudness, and coldness of the cue/environment) leads to more positive affective, evaluative, and behavioral consumer reactions and (2) to investigate the moderating role of shopping goals on this crossmodal congruency effect. Previous research showed that low task-relevant atmospheric cues like music can have a negative effect on consumers when they visit a website with a purchase goal in mind. An online experiment was conducted with 239 respondents randomly assigned to a shopping goal (experiential browsing vs. goal-directed searching) and a music condition (no music, crossmodally congruent music, or crossmodally incongruent music). Our results show that crossmodally incongruent background music (vs. no music) leads to more positive consumer reactions for experiential browsers and more negative consumer reactions for goal-directed searchers. Conversely, crossmodally congruent background music (vs. no music) has a positive effect on experiential browsers and no adverse effect on goal-directed searchers. Additionally, the presence of crossmodally congruent background music leads to more positive consumer reactions than the presence of crossmodally incongruent background music, independent of the shopping goal. We extend previous research on multisensory congruency effects by showing the added value of establishing congruency between music and the store environment via multiple elicited crossmodal correspondences in the online environment, countering previously found negative effects of low-task relevant atmospheric cues for goal-directed searchers.
This study investigates the links among color, price, and patronage intention on the Internet. With regard to the effects of a store website's background colors and product prices, the interactions ...of background colors and price levels may influence online patronage intention via perceptions of quality, sacrifice, and value. The results reveal that online consumers' reactions to online merchandise prices vary according to website background colors. Participants who view blue or low-brightness backgrounds have high patronage intentions regardless of whether prices are high or low. Participants who view red or high-brightness backgrounds are sensitive to merchandise prices and react significantly negatively to high prices. Further mediation analyses indicate that website background colors can influence how consumers interpret price levels: Blue backgrounds make consumers use high price as a sign of high quality rather than monetary sacrifice, but red or high-brightness backgrounds make consumers use high price as a sign of high monetary sacrifice rather than product quality.
•E-retailers may use appropriate website background colors to alleviate the negative price-patronage relationship.•Perceived quality, sacrifice and value mediate the influence of color and price on patronage intention.•Consumers who view blue or low-brightness backgrounds have higher patronage intentions.•Consumers who view red or high-brightness backgrounds react more negatively to high prices.•Hues and brightness are more influential when the price of the available products is high than when the price is low.•A retailer may position itself at an upscale or discount market, rather than a high quality, but low price positioning.
The emergence of online-to-offline (O2O) has been changing the business environment of the retail industry and making businesses more competitive. Since the relationship between O2O and productivity ...is of interest, this study examines whether adoption of the O2O platform is effective in improving the efficiency of small-sized online stores. A two-stage approach consisting of stochastic frontier analysis and meta-frontier analysis is applied to estimate and compare the efficiencies between firms using the O2O platform and firms using other methods. Based on stochastic frontier analysis and meta-frontier analysis, our findings show that adopting the O2O platform is an innovative and competitive strategy for small-sized online stores.
This study examines how gamification mechanics could be used in online retailers' loyalty programs. In other words, this article attempts to create a conceptual model for the relationship between ...gamification mechanics and customer loyalty elements. We used a field study to conduct our research. In order to validate the survey, 450 customers from one of the greatest online stores in Iran were questioned. The results of this survey were used to validate our 11 phrases on the relationship between gamification mechanics and customer loyalty. The results were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis, path analysis, and model fitness tests in structural equations modeled in the Lisrel software. According to the research findings, the relationship between variables and the proposed conceptual model was confirmed. Based on the performed analysis, all 11 phrases were verified.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine how informativeness and entertainment, two important online store characteristics, influence consumers’ approach behaviors. The current research also ...investigates the mechanism and boundary condition behind these relationships.
Design/methodology/approach
The study proposed a conceptual framework that included five variables to understand consumers’ approach behaviors toward online stores. By surveying 307 Chinese online shoppers using a comprehensive questionnaire, the authors collected data that were then used to test the hypotheses. Data were examined using regression analysis.
Findings
The results showed that online store informativeness and entertainment significantly affected consumers’ approach behaviors. In the relationship between these two online store characteristics and consumers’ approach behaviors, pleasure played a mediating role. Hedonic value moderated the effect of informativeness on consumers’ approach behaviors. However, the moderating role of hedonic value was not significant in the relationship between entertainment and consumers’ approach behaviors.
Originality/value
The present study supplements the research on online store characteristics based on the perception of overall online store environmental cues. This paper also examines the online shopping experience of consumers in emerging markets like China.
Purchase intentions for apparel products often require physical examination prior to purchase. Hence, greater risk is associated with shopping online for apparel products, making it important to ...examine factors that reduce various risks influencing online purchase intentions. This study examines and compares the impact of two of the most important risk reducers for online apparel shopping – product brand image and online store image – on specific types of perceived risks and online purchase intentions for apparel. The results show that product brand image influences consumers' online purchase intentions both directly and indirectly by reducing various risk perceptions. Online store image impacts purchase intentions indirectly by decreasing risk perceptions. The results of this study provide fresh insight into understanding the impact of product brand image and online store image on each type of perceived risk associated with online shopping.
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