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To compare and contrast clothing buyers who buy in stores, on the internet, and through catalogs so as to better understand these behaviors.

We surveyed 805 US consumers. They reported attitudes and shopping behaviors. These were compared among those who shopped chiefly in stores, on the internet, and through catalogs.

Consumers who shopped more and spent more for clothing did so via all three shopping modes. Buying on the internet was more highly related to buying by catalog than it was to store buying. Heavy buyers of clothing by all three shopping modes were more involved with fashion, more fashion innovative, and more innovative regarding online buying than light and medium buyers regardless of the shopping mode. Fashion opinion seeking and reliance on sales associates for information were unrelated to amount of buying for all three shopping modes.

The findings are limited to US consumers and the convenience sample. Other limitations include the specific measures used, and the cross‐sectional survey method prevents us from making causal statements. The effects of other, unmeasured variables could not be assessed. Future studies could avoid these limitations by using data from several countries, representative samples, and additional variables.

Brick and mortar stores have less to fear from the internet than often thought. Catalogs are more likely to lose sales to the internet than are stores. The most profitable apparel companies might be catalogs or physical retailers who add/build web sites, while pure play companies may have a more difficult time achieving profitability. Apparel managers should focus research attention on learning more about the psychology of their buyers. While involvement with clothing leads to buying more via all three shopping modes, it is more important for store buying than buying by catalog or internet. Remote buyers of clothing are less fashion involved. Catalogs and apparel web sites might wish to feature new fashions, but they may be more successful in selling “standard” or normal clothing online than the latest fashions. They might broaden the selection of fabrics and colors to offer buyers more choices in the styles they already like. Clothing innovators shop more frequently via all three modes, but are most strongly drawn to stores.

Little research compares shopping across modes. Because modern clothing retailing involves all three modes, the study provides an unusual picture of this shopping behavior.

The use of print catalogs for direct marketing has a long history of success. Today, telecommunication networks, such as the Internet, offer the potential to reach a larger market through the use of online catalogs that could be dynamic, flexible, and consumer‐responsive. This paper reports the results of an empirical study that compared individuals’ attitudes and intentions to shop using print and Internet catalogs. The findings suggest that individuals perceived differences between the two catalog media on the shopping factors of reliability, tangibility, and consumer risk. Further, product value, pre‐order information, post‐selection information, shopping experience, and consumer risk emerged as the factors that influenced attitudes and intentions to shop using print and Internet catalogs.

Internet shopping has received considerable attention in the popular press as the future of in‐home shopping. Although actual sales figures attributed to this direct mode of shopping are relatively modest in comparison to predictions, there are too many potential benefits to consumers and retailers alike to ignore Internet shopping as a fad. The authors present findings from an exploratory, empirical investigation of perceptions of Internet catalog shopping and more traditional print catalog shopping. The study extends previous research on strategy developments for direct modes of shopping and examines two factors (personality and important other people) that might influence perceptions. Preliminary results suggest that there are significant differences in individuals’ perceptions of Internet catalog shopping and print catalog shopping, and perceptions differ by individual differences in personality (levels of need‐for‐cognition) and influence of important other people. Finally, the authors present research propositions that deserve further attention.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of consumers' shopping orientation on their satisfaction level with the product search and purchase behavior using multi‐channels.

A total of 181 students in a large US mid‐western university provided usable responses to the survey. Exploratory factor analysis and multiple regression analyses were employed to examine the research questions.

The results showed that more than three quarters of the respondents shopped via the internet and catalogs, and about 95 percent shopped at non‐local retailers. About 60 percent reported that they never shopped from TV shopping channels. Confident/fashion‐conscious shopping orientation and catalog/internet shopping orientation were found to be key predictors of customer satisfaction level with information search via multi‐channels. Both confident/fashion‐conscious consumers and mall shopping‐oriented shoppers were more satisfied with store‐based retail channels for apparel purchases, whereas non‐local store‐oriented shoppers and catalog/internet‐oriented shoppers were more satisfied with non‐store‐based retail channels for their apparel purchases.

The sample of this study was biased by gender and age. For the apparel retail industry, this paper offers practical knowledge about the relationships between shopping orientation and consumer search and purchase behavior in a multi‐channel retailing context.

No study has utilized the shopping orientation framework to explain consumer behavior in a multi‐channel environment. This study provides understanding of consumer product information search behavior on four dimensions (price, promotion, style/trends, and merchandise availability) via multi‐channels.

Female consumers' preferences for shopping via CD/ROM, television or catalogue versus in a specialty store were investigated. Videotaped shopping simulations were viewed by 191 subjects who selected preferred options within each of six forced‐choice pairs. Specialty store was most and television least preferred. Catalogue was most preferred among non‐store options. Fashion Opinion Leadership, Clothing Interest Inventory and Shopping Orientation measures, and demographic and open‐ended questions were used to profile and explore preference behaviour. Analysis with Chi‐Square Automatic Interaction Detector (CHAID) profiled five consumer segments. Subjects had positive and negative perceptions of each venue and believed that shopping through electronic media will be dominant non‐store options in the future.

As online purchasing grows in importance, understanding which consumers use this new distribution channel is an important question for e‐commerce managers and consumer theorists. The purpose of this study was to examine selected demographic and psychological characteristics that lead consumers to buy clothing online. It surveyed 805 consumers who described their online clothing buying as well as how innovative and involved they were for clothing and fashion, how innovative they were with regard to buying on the Internet, and how much they purchased clothing through catalogues. Although all these variables were positively correlated with amount of online clothing purchase, a multiple regression analysis showed that being an adventurous online buyer and a heavy catalog shopper had the most impact on online clothing buying. These findings imply that online apparel buying is motivated more by Internet innovativeness than by clothing innovativeness.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a greater understanding of why and how different ages use shopping channels, analysing preferences and motivations for use.

Qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted with a sample of 50 female participants, aged 20-70. All were customers of a fashion retailer that has ecommerce and mcommerce platforms, stores and catalogues, in order to gain a better understanding of loyal consumers’ multi-channel behaviour.

Multi-channel shopping behaviour increased with age; the 20s did not engage in multi-channel shopping behaviour but viewed each channel as a separate entity. Mcommerce is the preferred shopping channel for the 20s, but its popularity and motivations to use decreases with age. Ecommerce is the most popular shopping channel due to convenience, selection, adventure/exploration and idea shopping. The physical store was the preferred channel for the 60+, who shopped there for convenience and enjoyment. Catalogues were seen as out-dated and no longer considered a transactional channel.

There are no previous studies that have investigated channel preferences and motivations across a 50-year age span using loyal customers. The majority of previous studies looking at multi-channel shopping behaviour are quantitative and so this qualitative enquiry provides a richer insight into reasons for consumer preferences and motivations. The study contributes novel findings to the literature as it shows that multi-channel shopping behaviour increases with age, and younger consumers (20s) are not partaking in it at all.

Most research related to consumer choice of retailers emphasizes retailer attributes and/or consumer characteristics. Since many retail formats, including online retailing, have emerged in recent years, knowledge of how consumers select retail formats must be updated. A source of influence that has been examined to a very limited extent for store retailers but not for emerging retail formats is situational influence. From a modern interactionism perspective, this study investigates the influence of situational as well as consumer and retailer factors on preference for online, catalog, and store formats. Key results show that situational factors have significant influence on online and catalog format selection and perceptions of attributes that are crucial to that selection.

The shift from physical (brick and mortar) stores and hard copy catalog stores toward electronic stores (e‐tailing) may be seen as a continuous innovation building on past changes brought about by in‐home shopping methods such as catalog, TV and direct mail. Why are e‐tailers then having such difficulty retaining their customers? In this paper, we examine the influence of consumer characteristics on perception of shopping benefits associated with electronic and physical shopping. Based on a mail survey of upscale US households, the empirical study finds the two shopping formats to be clearly different from each other in terms of perceived shopping benefits. The data supports the influence of individual characteristics (such as age, household income and family composition) as well as past behaviors on the shopping benefits associated with the two modes of shopping.

The research purpose was to identify whether changes occurred between 2000 and 2003 in the retail channel use of rural consumers for searching product information and for purchasing food and fiber products and to investigate whether differences existed between channel use groups (i.e. store only shoppers, store and catalog shoppers, and multi‐channel shoppers) concerning perceived time property, satisfaction with local offerings, community attachment, shopping criteria, and financial security.

Survey methodology was used. Questionnaires were mailed to participants living in non‐metropolitan statistical areas of the USA with populations less than 12,500. In 2000, 2,198 participants returned the questionnaire. Follow‐up questionnaires were mailed to the same participants during 2003 and returned by 847 participants. The analysis is based on the responses of the 847 participants.

To search for information on apparel, food, or home furnishing products, internet use increased slightly as did use of the internet to purchase apparel and home furnishings. Multi‐channel shoppers rated themselves as time‐pressed, dissatisfied with local offerings, unattached to their community, and unconcerned with financial security while shopping.

Rural consumers are slowly increasing their use of internet even as they report their satisfaction with shopping with local brick and mortar stores increased during the time period studied. The time is right for rural retailers to enhance both personal and professional relationships with their customers. Rural retailers can capitalize on consumer satisfaction and provide outstanding value and service to keep local customers in local markets.

The paper provides information on new and different retailing practices that satisfy rural consumers in the USA.