IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-00861112.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Effect of channel congruence on a retailer's image

Author

Listed:
  • Christophe Bezes

    (LARGEPA - Laboratoire de recherche en sciences de gestion Panthéon-Assas - UP2 - Université Panthéon-Assas)

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to assess whether the image of a retailer - beyond the distinct contributions of the website and the stores - is improved by the perceived congruence of its channels, and for what types of customers. An online survey was conducted on 1,478 customers taken from the behavioural databases of a major French multichannel retailer. Structural modelling and one-way ANOVA were used to test the working hypotheses. Congruent channels improve retailer image even when these channels have a less good image. However, channel congruence cannot be elevated to a universal guiding principle as it only affects multichannel and online buyers, with no detrimental impact on retailer image. The study is mainly limited by the type of retailer studied, and the choice of an online questionnaire, limiting the representativeness of the offline purchasers. In order to improve its image, a multichannel retailer must seek maximum congruence of its website and stores. Congruent channels lead to benefits for the retailer even when they are poorly valued by consumers. Despite a broad theoretical consensus, this is the first study to demonstrate empirically that website and store congruence improves retailer image, and not only online purchase intentions. It is also one of the first published researches that uses congruence as a mediating variable.

Suggested Citation

  • Christophe Bezes, 2013. "Effect of channel congruence on a retailer's image," Post-Print hal-00861112, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00861112
    DOI: 10.1108/09590551311330537
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Swoboda, Bernhard & Winters, Amelie, 2021. "Reciprocity within major retail purchase channels and their effects on overall, offline and online loyalty," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 279-294.
    2. Lacœuilhe, Jérôme & Louis, Didier & Lombart, Cindy, 2017. "Impacts of product, store and retailer perceptions on consumers’ relationship to terroir store brand," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 43-53.
    3. Nguyen, Hang T. & Ross, William T. & Pancras, Joseph & Phan, Hieu V., 2020. "Market-based drivers of cobranding success," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 122-138.
    4. Sohn, Stefanie, 2017. "Consumer processing of mobile online stores: Sources and effects of processing fluency," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 137-147.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00861112. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.