Omni-channel shopper behavior: Toward a conceptual model

The evolution of interactive media has made selling to the customers extremely complex in the modern digitalized retail environment. With the advent of personal computers, mobile phones and tablets, retailers are facing increasing challenges of integrating these new channels to provide their customers with a seamless experience. Customers’ active presence in the social media platform has added another climax to the scene. This has prompted many retailers to engage in multiple-channel retailing strategies (Verhoef, Kannan, & Inman, 2015), where both online and offline offerings provide the shopper with holistic shopping experience built around customer-brand-channel interactions. This paper examines omni-channel shopper perceptions through an exploratory qualitative methodology. The customer interviews are content analysed which reveal deep and highly contextual information pertaining to research-shopper behaviour and influence of word-of-mouth. Results provide substantial academic value and deeper insights into the culturally and economically significant buyer behavior in Singapore, with distinct implications for omni-channel design strategy formulation for marketers.