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The management of electronic retail channels is not limited to virtual companies only. Also store‐based (stationary) retailers are expected to set up electronic distribution channels. This paper discusses the occurrence of such channels from a European perspective. The authors introduce a Web‐scan framework to analyze the nature of Web offerings and thelogistical elements of e‐tailing. The application of this structure showed that store‐based retailers have already invested in Web‐based activities, mainly for information and/or communication issues. The set‐up of strong electronic channels of distribution is still in an early phase.

The purpose of this study is to characterize consumers with high impulse buying tendency (IBT) by comparing them with low-IBT consumers in an online shopping context.

Data were collected through a postal survey to a random sample of Swedish citizens, resulting in 144 responses, which were analysed statistically..

Results indicate that high-IBT consumers, compared to those with low IBT, are on average younger, more likely to be female and more frequent online shoppers with higher levels of trust in the internet. However, they seem more likely than low-IBT consumers to abandon their online shopping carts before completing the purchase, often because of need uncertainty.

The findings can give retailers a better understanding of consumers with high IBT and thereby increase the possibility to target and communicate with them more effectively. This is an interesting opportunity as both multi-channel shopping and impulse buying behaviour is likely to become even more common in the future.

The study contributes to the understanding of impulsive consumers, as it addresses the role of situational and socio-demographic attributes of high-IBT consumers compared to low-IBT consumers. The differences in online purchases, intentions to buy fashion online, shopping cart abandonment and trust in the internet suggest that even if IBT is a relatively stable and general personal trait, the tendencies to act on buying impulses may be more context-specific.

The purpose of this study is to conduct a survey of Mexican millennials to measure the extent of negative bias and perceived advertising value they experienced toward the ads they encountered while performing a search for local products and services from their smartphones.

Using a paper survey with a scenario question, responses were collected from 1,215 millennial smartphone owners about the strategies they used for scanning mobile search organic and sponsored results and quickly reaching the information they needed when performing a mobile search. The 315 participants who reported clicking on ads were further surveyed on their perceptions of ad informativeness, entertainment, irritation and credibility. These constructs were used as the predictors of advertising value in a structural equations model which was estimated with partial least squares.

A substantial bias against sponsored results was found, with two-thirds of respondents skipping the ads when performing a mobile search from their smartphones. However, 28.2 per cent reported clicking on the most relevant result without regard to it being organic or sponsored, and an additional 5.6 per cent reported clicking on an ad as their first strategy. In the structural model, all four hypothesized antecedents of advertising value were significant, and some gender differences were detected.

With the increasing penetration of smartphones, and rapid growth of mobile search, these results are particularly relevant for local merchants, who can use mobile search ads to leverage their location and communicate with searching consumers at the precise moment when they are most receptive to timely and relevant advertising.

This study is the first to measure the extent of consumer bias against sponsored results in a mobile search, and the first empirical estimation of the advertising value of mobile-sponsored results.