Consumer Characteristics and Shopping for Fashion in the Omni-channel Retail Environment

Abstract

Purpose: Omni-channel retailing is a new retail phenomenon. Consumers in the omni-channel environment do not rely on one channel but integrate different channels from the same retailers freely during a particular shopping journey. The purpose of this study is to better understand omni-channel shoppers in the fashion retailing context. The present study uses consumer characteristics -- fashion innovativeness, technology innovativeness, and fashion purchase involvement -- as determinants predicting consumers' omni-channel shopping intentions for fashion products. Research design, data, and methodology: Data were collected from 403 U.S. consumers, and the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was performed to test proposed hypotheses. The survey for this research consisted of three parts. The first part measured consumer traits in terms of their innovativeness and purchase involvement. The second part was designed to measure consumers' omni-channel shopping intentions, and the third part gathered consumer demographic information. Results: The findings confirmed that fashion innovativeness, technology innovativeness, and fashion purchase involvement positively affected consumers' omni-channel shopping intentions. Conclusions: Fashion retailers should integrate various customer touchpoints and offer mobile-enabled technologies to boost consumer traffic to both online and offline stores. They also need to create a shopping environment that is optimized for customer engagement in various shopping processes and allow them to explore different shopping channel options for best purchase decisions.