What drives customers' purchase behavior in a click-and-mortar retailing context: a value transfer perspective

To examine the effectiveness of a multichannel strategy, this study mainly investigates two issues: (1) whether customers' five value perceptions (i.e. product quality, service quality, innovation, price and store image) extend from e-stores to physical stores and (2) whether customers' five value perceptions derived from e-stores/physical stores facilitate purchase intention within and beyond the channel context.

This study develops a research model to elaborate on the relationships between the focal constructs and collects 177 useable responses via an online community and personal contacts survey. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) methods and mediation analyses are conducted to validate the proposed hypotheses.

The results show that the values perceived in e-stores/physical stores generally motivate online/offline purchase intention, respectively. Next, based on Tversky's belief/feature matching process, the five value perceptions correlate with their counterparts across online and offline channels. The results of the mediation analyses suggest that the advantages established in online channels may be contagious to offline channels at the belief level. Specifically, four of the five online value perceptions may have different effects on offline purchase intention: (1) product quality perceived in e-stores directly (negative) and indirectly (positive) results in offline purchase intention, demonstrating cannibalization effects and (2) service quality, innovation and store image perceived in e-stores indirectly and positively contribute to offline purchase intention, indicating synergetic effects.

The findings of this study provide several important theoretical and practical implications for multichannel and omnichannel retailing strategies.