1. Introduction Now, distribution business environment changes rapidly. As per capita GDP in Korea increases, so does consumer's purchasing power. But the pattern of purchase aims at value-based consumption, and with the change of population structure, the class of main purchaser also changes from women to various strata of people.
With the advent of the Internet and mobiles, the border of nations disappears and a variety of channels come to the fore. So new shopping patterns that could not be imaginable in the past become reality. In order to overcome restrictions between channels, the circles of distribution business take great interest in the establishment of omni-channel style new distribution channels, which connect and integrate all the online, mobile and offline stores. And this phenomenon of the integration/convergence of online and offline seems to play an important role in the determination of future distribution business.
The purpose of this study was to examine (1) the effect of consumer's purchase characteristics on their choice of online/offline shopping channels, (2) the influence of consumer's purchase characteristics on their omni-channel choices, and (3) the effect of consumer's online shopping satisfaction and mobile familiarity on their omni-channel choices, thus finding out study implications.
2. Background of Theory 2.1 Literature Review The tendency of preceding studies on consumer's choice of shopping channels have been in line with the stream of developmental process of distribution business types. When offline distribution took the lead in distribution business, the main purpose of studies was to examine the cause and reason of offline merchandiser's store choice behavior theory-oriented store choice. In this vein, studies in its early days focused on department stores. And then with the rapid growth of discount stores, the focus of studies changed into discount stores. In particular, as discount stores made its way into local commercial spheres, studies focused on its effect on local supermarkets or traditional markets, thus analyzing problems and groping after countermeasures. However, with the development of online distribution, the theme of studies changed into the cause and reason of consumer's online shopping choice and extended to online/offline choices. With the advent of multi-channels, analyses have been carried out on the diverse consumer subjects of online/offline merchandisers. At the present time of omni-channels when consumers purchase goods in a variety of channels regardless of online/offline merchandisers, however, it seems to be necessary to carry out studies on omni-channels, in addition to the intensification of the existing online/offline-focused studies.
2.2 Consumer Characteristic-Oriented Online/Offline Store Choice Behavior In offline stores, locations, services and the properties of goods basically play an important role, but in online environment, such unique features of online environment as the reliability of sellers, information availability, discounts and services seem to be taken into account crucially. Therefore, in the present co-existential environment of online and offline stores, consumer's standard for the perception and evaluation of online and offline stores seems to be different from their traditional one in the conventional one-sided environment (namely, online environment or offline environment). And this difference of perception provides clues to understand why the same consumer presents a different store choice behavior, namely 'a systemic difference', in online and offline stores. In other words, an important precondition to understand consumer's online/offline store choice behavior is that consumers already perceived the fact that online stores and offline stores provide different utility respectively.
However, if we take into account that consumer's fundamental criterion of store choice is based not on facts but on their perceptions, the above functional approach seems to be a little problematic in its validity. In this regard, a more reasonable perspective seems to be that in the present reality of coexistence of online and offline stores consumers integrate both and form a schema, and then develop a conception of it. In fact, a study finding that consumers use online shopping in order to avoid the inconvenience of offline shopping validates this principle of expectation and satisfaction.
2.3 The Condition of Success for Omni-channel Distribution Strategy In order for omni-channels to succeed, consumers must not make loss or have disadvantage in any channels they select to purchase goods. In this vein, the price of goods must be the same first of all. If the price of goods is different, it is inevitable for consumers to examine channels and then choose a most advantageous one. Second, online purchase must allow consumers to return their dissatisfied goods of quality or defective goods to an offline store. When this condition is satisfied, consumers can conveniently purchase in any channels. Third, if an online store has no stock for a purchasing order, the good must be either delivered to consumer's house later or delivered to the consumer in an offline store when he or she prefers to do. Fourth, the delivery process of online/offline goods ordered could be checked by its purchaser at any time.
3. Analysis Model and Hypotheses 3.1 Analysis Model Based on the contents and theoretical backgrounds of preceding studies, this study presents following <picture 1> as study model. First, the author tried to examine the effect of consumer's purchase characteristics on their business type-oriented preferences. Second, the author tried to look into the influence of consumer's purchase characteristics on their omni-channel preferences. Third, the author tried to examine the effect of consumer's online shopping satisfaction and mobile familiarity on their business type-oriented preferences.
3.2 Hypotheses H1: Consumer's purchase characteristics will have effect on their business type-oriented preferences.
H2: Consumer's purchase characteristics will have effect on their omni-channel preferences.
H3: Consumer's online shopping satisfaction and mobile familiarity will have effect on their business type-oriented preferences.
4. Verification of Hypotheses & Summary 4.1 Business Type-oriented Preference <Table 1> is the summary of examination of hypotheses on consumer's purchase characteristics. Purchase characteristics consisted of such 7 items as ① price sensitivity, ② shopping convenience, ③ rationality, ④ goods diversity, ⑤ shop pleasure, ⑥ sales staff service, and ⑦ loyalty to distributor.
Hypotheses discarded were more than hypotheses accepted. The primary reason of this result seems to be in that the number of people for the verification of business type-oriented hypotheses was less than 100 and therefore the number of samples was insufficient to reflect business type-oriented characteristics. In particular, supermarket was unclear in the concept of business type; convenience store was overly emphasized with its unique concept of convenience; and consumers seemed not to perceive warehouse discount store by its characteristics yet. Large store, department store and traditional market were representative offline business types and reflected consumer's characteristics diversely. Online shopping also seemed to be emphasized with its most important characteristic of 'convenience.' 4.2 Omni-channel Preference In the verification of consumer's purchase characteristic hypotheses for omni-channel preference, hypotheses discarded were more than hypotheses accepted as well. This result seemed to derive from that consumers were unfamiliar with the concept of omni-channel and therefore did not understand it sufficiently. This problem will be solved naturally in the future when the omni-channel increases. Although it is the early stage of omni-channels, rationality, shop pleasure and loyalty to distributor were significant. This finding seems to be a meaningful clue that presents the developmental direction of omni-channels in the future.
4.3 The summary of examination of business type-oriented hypotheses according to online shopping satisfaction and mobile familiarity Both convenience store and online shopping business types were significant in online shopping satisfaction and mobile familiarity. This result seems to derive from that the main consumers of them are the youngest stratum of people. When consumer's mobile familiarity was higher, they preferred department store, warehouse discount store and traditional market. This result seems to be caused by the fact that as for department store higher income consumers frequented to change new function mobile phones; as for warehouse discount store, consumers were younger; and as for traditional market, consumers pursued rationality. However, large mart and supermarket were not significant for anything. Since these two business types are representative offline business, their main consumers are older people who are familiar to offline shopping environment, and food occupies large portion of its sales goods, the result of study seems to be caused by consumer's firsthand shopping habits.
5. Conclusion Study findings seem to imply following facts: First, consumer's purchase characteristic has restricted effect on consumer's business type-based shopping channel choice. But consumer's purchase characteristic have diverse effect according to business type-oriented characteristics. Therefore, this finding can be useful reference in the establishment of consumer analysis based marketing strategy and goods operation strategy.
Second, since consumers are pleased to use online and offline alike in their preference of omni-channel, distinctive characteristics have not been found yet. But regarding consumer's purchase characteristics, the omni-channel preference of rationality-pursued consumers who calculate the gains and losses of their purchase precisely is higher. In order to expand omni-channel in the future, it is necessary to thoroughly realize the homogeneity of purchase conditions of online and offline.
Third, as for the effect of online shopping satisfaction and mobile familiarity on business type-oriented preference, when mobile familiarity is higher, consumers prefer department store, convenience store and warehouse discount store, except large store and supermarket. This finding seems to imply the fact that regardless of business types, the use of mobiles is routinized in all walks of life.
프랜차이즈 본부에 대한 가맹점의 양가태도가 갈등에 미치는 영향
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