With the spread of the Internet and smartphone, the traditional purchase of goods from offline stores is evolving to the purchase of desired goods at the most reasonable price regardless of online/offline. Such an innovation of shopping was started by...
With the spread of the Internet and smartphone, the traditional purchase of goods from offline stores is evolving to the purchase of desired goods at the most reasonable price regardless of online/offline. Such an innovation of shopping was started by the name of ‘omni?channel shopping,’ and is introduced as a representative case of online/offline fusion. Recently, firms of distribution business are concentrating their interest on omni?channel shopping in order to overcome the stagnant Revenue growth of individual distribution channels.
Omni?channel shopping can take advantage of the strengths of each distribution channel by providing customers with unceasing experiences. In addition, related services are developing gradually through the convergence and fusion of multiple channels and functions based on various information technologies including the Internet, mobile devices, and big data. Now customers have arrived at the age of effortless shopping.
Omni?channel shopping is now being tried by a few leading companies, and paid highly-elated attention to by scholars that encourage omni?channel shopping as a future method of shopping. Thus, the purpose of this study was to identify factors affecting firm’s intention to adopt omni?channel shopping and to analyse what significance there is between intention to adopt omni?channel shopping and expected effects.
To begin with, in order to identify factors affecting intention to adopt omni?channel shopping, this study explored previous studies and theories that verified the intention of introduction of IT and e?Commerce that are the foundation of omni?channel shopping. Out of them, this study subsequently managed to develope a structural equation research model based on the Innovation Diffusion Theory(IDT) and TOE Framework that were tested exhaustively on a theoretical base.
This study applied descriptive statistics, exploratory factor analysis, and CMB testing for each variable using SPSS 20, and performed confirmatory factor analysis, hypothesis testing, and moderating effect analysis using SmartPLS 3. The overall research model was built as a structural equation model for enhancing the explanatory power of the model and explaining the findings reliably.
The results of these analyses were as follows. From the revised research model were derived nine hypotheses, and they were tested and seven of them were adopted while two in technological context were rejected. That is, among the independent variables, technical readiness and complexity in technological context were rejected, and the hypotheses that relative advantage, top management support, environmental effect, and external support would have a positive effect on intention to adopt omni?channel shopping were adopted. What is more, the three hypotheses that the adoption of omni?channel shopping would bring positive expected effects to sales, internal operation, and brand image were found to be significant. In the results of analyzing moderating effect by group, significant results were observed partially for major classes of target customers and involvement in major products, but a moderating effect by group was not observed for company size.
This study attempted to analyse the intention of introduction of omni?channel shopping and expected effects by using the Innovation Diffusion Theory and TOE Framework. What is more, the findings of this study are meaningful in that they spread the importance of new distribution innovation like the advent of omni?channel shopping to the industry and present the importance of related researches in the academic field.