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How do consumers choose offline shops on online platforms? An investigation of interactive consumer decision processing in diagnosis-and-cure markets

Jennifer JooYeon Lee (Metropolitan College, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA)
Zecong Ma (Greehey School of Business, St Mary's University, San Antonio, Texas, USA)

Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing

ISSN: 2040-7122

Article publication date: 10 August 2021

Issue publication date: 10 May 2022

518

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is twofold: (1) to understand the process and consequences of the two-way communication between consumers and businesses on online-to-offline (O2O) diagnosis-and-cure services platforms and (2) to examine how consumer request-specific factors and service quote-specific factors influence consumer decisions in the interactive marketing context.

Design/methodology/approach

The study analyzes a dataset of 17,878 service requests and 57,867 price quotes obtained from an O2O platform bridging consumers and automotive repair shops. On the platform, consumers request service quotes by uploading the description of automotive damage and multiple service providers suggest price quotes. The authors formulated a logit model to examine consumer decisions of responding service quotes.

Findings

This paper finds that (1) consumers receiving more severe diagnostic results are more likely to respond to the price quotes, and (2) diagnostic severity and inconsistency moderate the impacts of geographic distance, shop size, and quote price on consumers' responses to the service quotes.

Research limitations/implications

This paper fills the gap in the literature by advancing the consumer decision processing model to address the interactive shopping experience on O2O diagnosis-and-cure services platforms. The findings are limited by the data and the research context.

Practical implications

For marketing practitioners, the empirical results imply specific positioning and targeting strategies for markets with informational and geographic barriers to expand the market scope and customer base.

Originality/value

The present work is the first to examine the consumer decision process on O2O diagnosis-and-cure service platforms. It adds value to the literature by investigating how consumers update their problem awareness through the service request-specific factors (i.e. diagnostic severity and diagnostic inconsistency) and how the request-specific factors moderate the impacts of the quote-specific factors (i.e. shop distance, shop size and quote price) on consumers' responses to price quote. The conceptual model and empirical findings provide theoretical and practical values for e-commerce researchers and practitioners.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Dr. Chang Hee Park and Dr. Sirajul Shibly for their valuable comments.

Citation

Lee, J.J. and Ma, Z. (2022), "How do consumers choose offline shops on online platforms? An investigation of interactive consumer decision processing in diagnosis-and-cure markets", Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, Vol. 16 No. 2, pp. 277-291. https://doi.org/10.1108/JRIM-03-2020-0046

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited

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