The Impact Of Brick-and-mortar Stores On Customers' Online Channel Consumption Behaviors

Since the 21 st century,the development of China's Internet has entered the fast track,the number of Internet users has been increasing year by year.In addition,with the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology,renewal of consumers' minds,improvement of the efficiency of logistic and other external changes,retail industry experiences dramatic changes.All these changes provide consumers more choices.With the gradual increase in mobile phone penetration and various online shopping platforms,online shopping has been in full swing.Physical stores sales started falling.However,it is found that the passion of shopping online gradually declined.The significance of displaying in a physical store is valued more than before by retailers.Therefore,many e-commerce companies have set up offline physical stores,and are committed to build an omni-channel integration for both online and offline.How does a physical store affect consumer behavior in online channels? What is the difference in the consumption behavior between different types of customers online?For these problems above,this paper firstly introduces the related concepts about retail and development history of retail channels and studies the competition and coordination in omni-channel development from the perspective of literature research.In addition,this paper also analyzes the factors affecting consumer channel selection: channel characteristics,product features,consumers' personal characteristics,time factors,seasonal factors,and purchase frequency factors.This paper samples consumption data from 404 customers of A company that sells fresh food in last three and a half years.This paper uses a panel regression model to study the impact of opening physical stores to online stores.This article examines two issues.Firstly,this paper studies the changes about consumer behavior of the first type of customers in online channels before and after opening a store in a short time and long time respectively.Secondly,this paper studies the difference about consumer consumption behavior between the two types of customers in online channels within 21 months since the store is opened.The first type of customer group refers to the old customers who have only online channel consumption behavior before the store opening,and the second type of customer group refers to the new customers joined after the store opened.This paper finds that with the extension of the opening days of offline stores,the first type of customers reduces the consumption of online channels,and the second type of customers increases the consumption of online channels.After the introduction of the offline channel,the two types of customer behavior have undergone channel migration,and this two-way migration reveals the complexity of customer consumption behavior.The weekend factor plays a negative role in the impact of buying proportion of online channel.The seasonal factors of plays a positive role in the impact of buying proportion of online channel.The time gap among the purchase in physical stores has a positive impact to online shopping.Finally,based on the results of empirical research,this paper provides some suggestions for enterprise development.First,companies should pay attention to the role of physical stores in the omni-channel,companies should take advantage of physical stores to maintain the relationships with the old customer groups,and attract new customers to come to consume.Second,companies must develop a customer consumption record system to record and observe changes in customer behavior and adjust strategies in time.Third,companies should give the appropriate preferential measures to customers in summers and weekends as well.Fourth,enterprises should strengthen the integration of online and offline channels,strengthen the synergy effect between channels,and weaken the competition between channels.