Understanding consumers' showrooming behaviour: a stimulus–organism–response (S-O-R) perspective

Abstract

PurposeThe present piece of research aims at enhancing our understanding of situational and intentional showrooming behaviour. The study further tests and validates a model based on the stimulus–organism–response framework to draw richer insights.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopts a two-phased approach to discover the consumers' rationale behind showrooming. In the first phase, a narrative-based examination followed by an inductive thematic analysis was employed. In the second phase, the stimulus–organism–response model was validated through structural equation modelling method.FindingsThe results of the study highlighted the factors that contribute to intentional and situational showrooming behaviour. Results show that consumers also showroom on account of situational circumstances such as assortment issues, poor sales-staff assistance and long payment queues at offline stores. However, intentional showroomers are primarily driven by perceived showrooming value which emerges as a combination of in-store search value and online purchase value. Past showrooming experience also plays a role in stimulating consumers to showroom. The results also revealed the moderating impact of product involvement and perceived product type, barring time pressure. The impact of showrooming self-efficacy was also observed.Research limitations/implicationsThe study majorly validates the factors stimulating intentional showrooming conduct intertwined with product-related factors, time pressure and showrooming self-efficacy. Hence, the future scope of the study lies in quantitatively validating the findings concerning situational showroomers as this would help draw richer insights.Practical implicationsThe findings of the study can be utilized by both offline and online retailers for managing showroomers.Originality/valueThe study offers rich insights on showrooming which has been identified as a major challenge being faced by offline retailers nowadays.