The Carry-over Effects of a Physical Store’s Image on Its Ecommerce Distribution Channel

With over 60 percent of the U. S. population currently online, consumer spending has increased steadily from $27 billion in 1999 to a projected $65 billion in 2004 (Jupiter Research, 2004). As the Internet has diffused into the late maturity phase of adoption in society, consumers that are going online now are characteristically risk averse and their familiarity with established offline retailers, such as Sears, Circuit City and Home Depot, leads them to those sites. Consequently, most traditional “brick-andmortar” retailers recognize that their customers require them to expand their distribution channel capabilities to the creation and maintenance of web-based shopping environments. As retailers operate online, they are now confronted by the challenge of designing and delivering a seamless integration of retail experiences across distribution channels. Though there has been some research concerning the carry-over effects of pleasure and arousal characteristics of a web site and its effect on subsequent exploration activities on other web sites (Menon and Kahn 2002), there has been virtually no research concerning the effect of established retail store image on expectations and subsequent evaluations. However, web retailers that establish sites that fail to live up to their customers’ store experiences and web site expectations may run the risk of alienating their customers as illustrated from these excerpts from the public forums at epinions.com: