Teoría de la dispersión múltiple Introducción

‘What is the relation between omni channel shopping behaviour during the customer journey and personal characteristics?’

Omni channel shopping is a trending topic in retail. When consumers shop omni channel they continuously switch between channels online as well as offline. Channels are for instance brick and mortar shops and applications on mobile devices. Within an omni channel strategy the consumer is the central object. Omni channel retailers offer consumers a seamless shopping experience through all channels, consumers can use several channels but these channels feel as one. Within this research omni channel shopping behaviour is studied during the customer journey. The customer journey consists of the following five phases:

Stimulate Search for

information Purchase Delivery After sales service

Consumers can use different channels for every phase in the customer journey. Consequently, consumers are well informed through all these channels and are therefore more critical while making purchase decisions. Consumers know what they can buy, for what price and where. As found in the literature, consumers online behaviour is associated with demographics, channel knowledge, perceived channel utility and shopping orientation (Javadi et al., 2012). Whether consumers choose for online channels depends on their channel risk perceptions, price-search intensions, search effort, evaluation effort and delivery time. On the other hand, consumers choose offline channels since they like to shop in brick and mortar shops because of the product experience, touch and feel and service (Hogg & Penz, 2008).

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Within this research we discovered that consumers orientate more often online than that they buy online. It is more convenient to gather information about products online, because consumers can find online a clear overview of products, product features, alternatives and prices. According to literature research shopping behaviour depends on the product category, therefore, within this research three product categories were investigated. Namely fashion, personal care products and groceries. This study has also shown that shopping behaviour depends on the product category. Differences were found between shopping behaviour for the product categories. With all three product categories, consumers most often use online channels during their customer journey for fashion.

The present study confirms previous findings and contributes additional evidence that suggests relations between consumers’ omni channel shopping behaviour during the customer journey and personal characteristics (socio-demographics and psychographics). The most interesting relations are discussed below. First, positive relations were found between psychographics and omni channel shopping behaviour. Consumers that enjoy shopping often shop online as well as offline. Probably consumers search and shop online for fun. Hedonic shopping and online shopping are presumably related to each other. Interesting is the finding that consumers that do shop online for groceries are often price un-conscious. This is probably due to the fact that budget-supermarket (where price conscious consumers often buy their groceries) do not offer the possibility to buy groceries online. Further are price un-conscious consumers very likely to get stimulated by magazines to buy fashion.

Second, many interesting relations were found between demographics and omni channel shopping behaviour during the customer journey. Young consumers have better knowledge about online channels such as applications, websites and social media. This is clearly visible within the results. Regarding online shopping behaviour, a generation gap is arisen due to the development of the internet. Offline channels investigated within this research are catalogues, advertisement leaflets and the brick and mortar shops. Whether consumers use advertisement leaflets and catalogues while shopping often is related to age and education. Low educated consumers search for information about personal care products in advertisement leaflets and catalogues. Thereby low and middle educated consumers buy fashion through catalogues. Also interesting is the fact that low educated consumers use advertisement leaflets while shopping in a brick and mortar shops. Thereby, young respondents are unlikely to search for information through advertisement leaflets to buy groceries. Supermarkets spend much money on paper advertisements however this is probably not as effective nowadays as it was in the past. Younger consumers are not likely to search for information about groceries through those paper advertisements, they are more likely to search online. In addition, young respondents (below 50 years old) are unlikely to buy personal care products through catalogues. The generation gap is thus also visible for buying through catalogues. Probably is buying through catalogues decreasing in popularity because it is more convenient to buy products online.

Since the number of online sales increase, the delivery of products is getting more and more important. Within this study is found that socio-demographic characteristics and psychographics are related to pick-up point usage. Pick-up points are most often used by consumers below 50 years old. Further, low educated consumers are unlikely to use pick-up points for collecting online bought fashion. Interesting is the fact that price un- conscious consumers are more likely to use pick-up points for collecting bought groceries.

Nowadays, consumers use online channels while shopping in a brick and mortar shop. Within this study relations were found between online channel usage while shopping and personal characteristics. Consumers below 50 years old are likely to use applications on mobile devices and social media while shopping (70% of the respondents use applications and are below 50 years old, 82% of the consumers that use social media while shopping is below 50 years old). Especially consumers between 30 and 49 years old use more often applications on mobile devices. In addition, consumers with high incomes are more likely to use applications while shopping than consumers with low incomes. Especially consumers below 30 year old use most often social media while shopping. Thereby, social media is most often used while shopping by high educated consumers.

Further, within this study is found that consumers’ channel usage during a certain phase in the customer journey depends on whether consumers use the same channel in a previous phase of the customer journey.

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For instance, when a consumer gets stimulated to buy a product on a website than the consumer is likely to search for information about that product on a website. This indicates that it is very important for retailers to be on top of mind of consumers within every phase of the customer journey.

The findings from this study make several contributions to the current literature. First, omni channel shopping behaviour during the customer journey is related to consumers’ socio-demographic characteristics. Positive relations are found between several socio-demographic characteristics of respondents and their omni channel shopping behaviour during the customer journey. Second, omni channel shopping behaviour during the customer journey is related to psychographics. For instance, a positive relation is found between searching and buying fashion online and offline and shopping enjoyment. When consumers enjoy shopping they search and shop more often. Further, consumers that feel pressured in time are very likely to buy fashion, personal care products and groceries online. Another contribution to the current literature from this research is the fact that channel usage in the previous phase of the customer journey is of a major influence for the channel usage in following phases of the customer journey. For example, when consumers do not get stimulated by websites to buy fashion, they neither search for information on websites to buy fashion and they neither buy fashion through a website.