A Study On Consumer’s Transference Behavior From Offline Store To Online Store

With the rapid development of e-commerce and gradual perfection of online shopping environment, the number of China online shopping user increases continuously. The booming development of online retailing market attracts traditional retailers to develop online business in droves, which results a multi-channel pattern that combines offline store and online store. Although the traditional retailers are very enthusiastic about online retailing, the investment is rather limited and their online stores are in an experimental stage, which has low influence and sales. Therefore, how to raise the purchase of consumers in online stores is a challenge for all traditional retailers after the development of online retailing. In the multi-channel retailing context, many consumers would first survey and experience in the offline store, then purchase in the online store. In recent years, the behavior of cross-channel purchase of consumer becomes a new issue in the field of marketing study, but relative studies are still in infancy. Based on this, this dissertation aims at revealing the internal mechanism of consumer multi-channel purchase behavior, thus enriches and replenishes results of consumer behavior study in the multi-channel retailing context, and provides instruction to entrepreneurs for effective marketing strategies during developing online retailing.This dissertation studies the direct influence of offline store image and offline store trust on online purchase intention and the mediating effect of perceived online service capability, further studies the moderators between offline store image, offline store trust and perceived online service capability. In order to make the research more comprehensive and precise, this dissertation works in three stages.First, this dissertation defines the concept of perceived online service capability and develops scale in the multi-channel retailing context. On the basis of literatures review and consumers interview, this dissertation defines the perceived online service capability as consumers’evaluation of abilities of multi-channel retailer’s online store delivers services effectively and efficiently, and then specifies five dimensions:information capability, protect capability, fulfillment capability, recovery capability and complementary capability. Based on the data of consumers, this dissertation develops a reliable and valid multi-dimension scale.Second, based on cognitive dissonance theory, trust transfer literatures, schema theory and other relative theories, this dissertation builds up a theoretical model of consumer’s transference among different channels and tests empirically. The results indicate that offline store image has positive effect on online purchase intention, offline store trust has positive effect on online purchase intention, and perceived online service capability plays a mediate role between offline store image, offline store trust and online purchase intention. Finally, considering the complexity of the consumer behavior in the multi-channel retailing context, this dissertation studies the moderator between offline store image, offline store trust and perceived online service capability. According to cognitive dissonance theory and schema theory, this dissertation introduces two moderators, and they are involvement and perceived congruence. The results indicate that involvement has positive moderating effect on the relationship between offline store image and perceived online service capability. Perceived congruence positively moderates the effects of offline store image and offline store trust on perceived online service capability.The innovations of this dissertation are:(1) In the multi-channel retailing context, the dissertation defines the concept of perceived online service capability and identifies five dimensions, and then develops a reliable and valid multi-dimension scale.(2)This dissertation finds offline store image and offline store trust can affect online purchase intention directly, and they can affect online purchase intention via perceived online service capability, expands research achievement of consumer purchasing behavior mechanism.(3) This dissertation finds and verifies the positive moderating effect of involvement on the relationship between offline store image and perceived online service capability, and perceived congruence moderates the effects of offline store image and offline store trust on perceived online service capability. This dissertation enriches theoretical research achievement of the conditions of consumer purchasing behavior.