Abstract
With the evolution of the retail industry, the concept of omnichannel has emerged as a new strategy that merges the online and the offline world. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the benefits of an omnichannel retail strategy through a systematic literature review focused on consumer-related concepts. This chapter follows an exploratory methodology to collect and analyze available literature on omnichannel retail, which also focuses on consumers. The results have been reviewed through a scientometric analysis and an in-depth, qualitative analysis to highlight the main research areas and find underexplored topics. With this chapter, the authors are bringing a significant scientific contribution by identifying and filling a research gap. In fact, the present systematic literature review highlights the consumer perspective and highlights new research areas that other authors are encouraged to explore to further enrich the omnichannel literature.
TopIntroduction
In the past two decades, the retail industry has been impacted by the significant evolution of digital technologies and e-commerce systems. Such evolution created serious challenges in the retail sector which pressured on organisations to start a process of digital transformation (Verhoef et al., 2015).
With the growth of e-commerce, the dominance of traditional brick-and-mortar retail has declined, with a reduction of foot traffic and sales in physical stores. Indeed, according to Coresight Research, in 2019 9,275 retail stores were closed in the US, which corresponds to +34% store closures in just one year. In the same year, there have been only 4,455 store openings, that have only risen by 3% compared to 2018. Moreover, in 2020 the Covid-19 pandemic has forced consumers to disrupt their consumption habits, raising the number of consumers who buy online by 27.6% worldwide (Cramer-Flood, 2021).
A survey revealed that nearly two thirds of consumers prefer to buy in a store, despite purchasing mostly online (BigCommerce & PayPal, 2021). The boundaries between online and offline shopping are blurring, as consumers spend more time online but still enjoy the experience of physical stores. In fact, statistics forecast that the use of digital devices before or during shopping will influence 58% of in- store sales by the end of 2022 (Statista, 2020).
This scenario is pushing retail companies to invest more in omnichannel sales, in order to offer a better experience for consumers. Thus, they can offer consumers the benefits of online sales together with the advantages of the physical store experience, as consumers usually interact with multiple touchpoints during the purchase journey.
The objective of this chapter is to first assess the need for an additional systematic literature review in the field of omnichannel retail. Then, the existing review papers will be analysed to identify areas with research gaps. In particular, the chapter will be focused on evaluating the availability of studies related to the consumer perspective of omnichannel. In fact, the concept of omnichannel has been increasingly adopted by companies in the past years. This has increased the interest of researchers and several studies have demonstrated the benefits of an omnichannel strategy for retailers. But the omnichannel concept not only focuses on the organisation: it also involves the consumer. For this reason, the purpose of this chapter is to explore previous literature about omnichannel retail with a focus on consumers.
The present chapter starts with an overview of omnichannel retail, to give evidence of its increasing popularity and to highlight the main related concepts. Following this, the chapter presents a systematic literature review and a description of the methodology used. This is followed by an analysis of the results emerging from the systematic literature review and a discussion of the research findings.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Customer Satisfaction: A measurement of how happy a client is in relationship with the experience with a brand or product.
Webrooming: Type of consumer behaviour that consists into researching product information online, before purchasing in a physical store.
Multi-Channel: Management approach consisting in the adoption of multiple sales channels, without focusing on the integration between them.
Consumer Behaviour: Conscious or unconscious actions undertaken by a person in relation to a brand or a product/service, during research, purchase, or post-purchase.
Showrooming: Type of consumer behaviour that consists into visiting a retail store with the main purpose of doing product research, before buying the product on a digital channel.
Retail: Sales of goods from a company to final consumers through a number of different channels, online or offline.
Omni-Channel: Management approach that consists into an evolution of multi-channel management where the existing sales channels are integrated together to offer a better customer experience.
Digital Transformation: The process through which the society, including consumers and organisations, change their habits, processes, and ways of working as a consequence to the advance of digital technologies.