The Research On The Mechanism Of Multichannel Integration Impact On Cross-channel Customer Retention

The development of information technology has brought about new shopping channels and new customer touch points,as well as the emergence of consumers with cross-channel shopping behaviors.The consumers' purchasing and decision-making modes have also changed.If consumers use multiple shopping channels with different attributes in a full transaction,the cross-channel purchasing behavior is occurring.In order to unlock business opportunities,retailers have adopted multi-channel integration to adapt to the cross-channel customers' shopping demand.In academic research,cross-channel purchasing behavior has become the focus of consumer behavior research in multi-channel environment.However,the multi-channel integration strategy did not achieve the expected effect.In practice,O2 O enterprises are difficult to make profits because of the "price war".Theoretically,whether the multi-channel integration can bring customer loyalty has always been controversial.Some scholars believe that multi-channel retail will make consumers choose different channels of multiple retailers to complete transactions for better prices and services.The new technology channels such as the Internet,self-service terminals,telephones,are used will reduce the opportunity to person-to-person communication and the loyalty of consumers who have specific needs for services.In addition,some scholars believe that enhancing the interaction between retail channels can reduce consumers' perceived risks to online channels and enhance consumers' loyalty to channels and retailers' overall loyalty.Therefore,it is the starting point for retailers to implement multi-channel retail to construct an appropriate multi-channel retail system to meet the diversified consumption needs of consumers.Although customers' purchasing behaviors have changed a lot in the multi-channel environment,the same product or service can be purchased through multiple channels.The product itself has not changed during the process,but the way of purchase and sales and the related services of the product have changed accordingly.In this scenario,what kind of multi-channel management services can be provided to meet the shopping needs of cross-channel customers and retain the customers? What impact will multi-channel integration have on the customer perception and retailer channel organization collaboration? Will the customers with rich network shopping experience travel betweendifferent retailers and different channels because of utilitarian motives or will they stay at the same retailer to complete the purchase because of the convenience of multi-channel integration system? The research is in the background of online and physical channel integration and based on the research "S-O-R" model,Integrated Marketing Communication and Social Exchange Theory;it combines the actual conditions of our country consumers Through the channel to buy,previous multi-channel retail and cross-channel customer behavior's literature review;Finally it determines the multi-channel integration as the independent variable,the channel customer retention as the dependent variable to investigate the mediating mechanism(quality of multi-channel service,quality of multi-channel communication)and regulating mechanism(network shopping experience)of multi-channel integration for cross-channel customer retention in order to identify impact across the channel customer retention cognitive mechanism and their individual differences.Therefore the research can provide empirical support and theoretical guidance on more targeted implementation of multi-channel integration strategy and increasing customer retention for multi-channel retailers.The research adopts the form of questionnaire survey and obtains the survey data of621 customers with cross-channel purchase experience.Data analysis and hypothesis testing are conducted on using SPSS and AMOS.The research conclusions are as follows:First,it has the direct influence relationship.Multi-channel integration has a significant positive impact on cross-channel customer retention.Multi-channel integration has a significant positive impact on the dimensions of cross-channel retention behavior and word-of-mouth recommendation in attitude;It also has a significant but weak impact on the dimension of premium payment.Among the three dimensions of multi-channel integration,service integration has a significant impact on all three dimensions of the dependent variable,information integration has a significant impact on the two dimensions of cross-channel retention behavior and word-of-mouth recommendation in dependent variables,business integration only had a significant effect cross-channel retention behavior.Multi-channel integration has a significant positive impact on the quality of channel communication and multi-channel service.Second,it has the mediating effect.Channel communication quality andmulti-channel service quality have significant mediating effects on multi-channel integration and cross-channel customer retention.Third,it has the moderating effect.The network shopping experience has a negative moderating effect on the relationship between multi-channel integration and cross-channel customer retention,but not on the relationship between multi-channel integration and multi-channel service quality.Based on the above conclusions,related management suggestions are proposed such as multi-channel retailers should focus on the synergies between channels and communication between channels,channels and customers and also should improve the communication environment between multi-channel retailers and cross-channel customers to promote inter-channel service quality and cross-channel customer retention.The dissertation provides basis for enterprises to design multi-channel integration strategy.The research has the following innovations:First,the mediating variables are service quality of multiple channels and communication quality of channels,This paper discusses the mechanism of multichannel integration on cross-channel customer retention from a new perspective of customers' overall perception of service quality of all channels of retailers.In the past study about the behavior of multi-channel integration across channels to customers,there were more researches on customer perception and attitude to a particular retail channel as the mediating variables.With the increasing of retail channels and customer contact,customer channels across the path of the shopping has become increasingly complex and unpredictable.This paper is below the integration of multi-channel to investigate mediating effect on multi-channel integration and customer retention across channels taking retailer channel communication quality and multi-channel service quality of customers as the mediating variables.Second,this paper discusses the response of multi-channel integration to crosschannel customer retention from two aspects of behavior and attitude.This study combines customer retention and customer loyalty related research results and illustrate the effect of multi-channel integration across channels to customers from two aspects of behavior and attitude.Third,Select the network shopping experience that the important individual characteristic of cross-channel shoppers,explore difference problem of "multi-channel integration-cross-channel customer retention".Targeting the specific target customer groups,this paper studies the moderating effect of customer network shopping experience on the relationship between multi-channel integration and cross-channel customer retention,multi-channel integration and multi-channel service quality by using multi-channel integration,in order to enhance customer retention for multi-channel retailers.