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There have been significant developments in the field of retailing with digitalization. One of these developments is the emergence of omnichannel retailing. Although this has affected both firms and consumers considerably, the literature is dominated by the studies dealing with omnichannel retailing from the firms’ perspectives. The studies dealing with omnichannel retailing from the consumers’ perspectives have recently begun to attract the attention of researchers. For this reason, this study conducted a literature review to examine various consumer behaviors mentioned in the studies aimed at explaining consumer behaviors in the omnichannel retailing context. The distribution of these studies according to years and journals, research methods used, theories adopted, and the related five-stage consumer decision-making stages are summarized. Additionally, this review addresses future research avenues.

As the world moves toward globalization, new trends and applications are on the rise as an attempt to meet the ever-changing needs of consumers. In this sense, new technologies have been introduced as a means to differentiate the product and service offerings along with some emerging retailing perspectives. It is obvious that omnichannel retailing is cited as one of the emerging trends in marketing. In this globe, customer experience management plays a crucial role in establishing sustainable omnichannel retailing strategies. Considering all the variables in the business environment, it is seen that effective tools of omnichannel operations should well be implemented as a response to effectively compete in the business environment. This chapter reveals some of the major literature and applications in the context of omnichannel retailing whereby the most concern of interest is given to the importance of customer experience and its formation.

Consumer behavior has evolved because of technological development. Nowadays, consumers carry out the different stages of the decision-making process by combining multiple devices which has been defined as multi, cross and omnichannel behavior. These behaviors have attracted the attention of academics and become a hot topic in literature. As a result, vast amounts of studies on the subject need to be revised and clarified. Thus, the aim of this chapter is to synthetize the primary academic literature that analyzes multi, cross and omnichannel behavior from the consumer point of view. To do that, first, the main concepts (multi, cross and omnichannel) and their differences are clarified. Second, the major findings of channel mix literature regarding the topics, channel scope and theories are exposed and described. Third, the opportunities and future lines of research are presented. This chapter contributes to the literature by clarifying the conceptualization of multi, cross and omnichannel behaviors; offering a complete picture of the main topics, channel approaches and theories addressed in channel mix literature; and presenting future research opportunities and open research questions in a channel mix context that could serve as a starting point to build further research.

• Customers expect retail companies to adapt their strategies to their behaviour, so they should use different channels and devices in interaction;

• Multichannel and omnichannel strategies represent two distinct approaches to managing relationships with the customers;

• The key to developing a successful omnichannel strategy is to integrate channels and touch points that will create a frictionless experience for the customer;

• Introducing omnichannel interaction requires organizational and IT changes within the company.

Customers expect retail companies to adapt their strategies to their behaviour, so they should use different channels and devices in interaction;

Multichannel and omnichannel strategies represent two distinct approaches to managing relationships with the customers;

The key to developing a successful omnichannel strategy is to integrate channels and touch points that will create a frictionless experience for the customer;

Introducing omnichannel interaction requires organizational and IT changes within the company.

Innovations in technology and evolution of internet elicited the usage of technology and internet during the shopping process of consumers. Changes in consumer shopping processes opened doors for shifts in consumer buying behavior. As a result of the variations in consumer buying behavior, retailers formed new channel structures to fulfill customer requirements. New channel structures created different retailing formats and enhanced the complexity of retailing processes. As the complexity of retailing processes increased, complexity of consumer shopping behavior increased as well. In this sense, multichannel retailing emerged and expanded all around the world and paved the way for omnichannel retailing. Transformation of multichannel retailing to omnichannel retailing created two different shopping forms as: Showrooming and Webrooming. In this chapter, showrooming and webrooming concepts will be studied and the complementarity dimensions of these concepts will be explained in detail.

Marketplaces are changing, and customers are demanding improved experiences where they want, how they want, and when they want. The omnichannel concept is perceived as an evolution of multichannel retailing, which implies a blurring division between the physical and online stores. In the omnichannel environment, customers move freely among physical and online stores expecting seamless shopping experiences between channels. Among different generational consumer groups, Gen Z deserves marketers’ particular attention, which is the new rising segment for omnichannel experiences. The purpose of this chapter is first to verify the essence of generational differences in consumer’s omnichannel buying behavior by giving a special focus on the Gen Z segment. Secondly, this chapter discusses how retailers should integrate their online and offline store channels to provide the best retail brand experience to these distinctive Gen Z consumers.

Besides having an important place in the daily lives of today’s consumers, technology impacts consumer behavior in variety of ways such as giving direction to their buying behavior, changing the characteristics that they expect from a product and the value they perceive, and influencing their satisfaction about the product. When omnichannel marketing is analyzed in this respect, it is an important issue that should be considered for the success of the marketing activities of the enterprises. This chapter will explain the single channel first and then multichannel marketing and omnichannel marketing concepts. The potential effects of omnichannel usage on issues about consumer behavior such as brand loyalty, customer satisfaction, perceived brand value, and buying behavior will be explained in detail. Then, the characteristics of the consumers using omnichannel and the factors affecting the success of these continents in terms of both consumers and businesses will be discussed. In this chapter, omnichannel marketing application examples will also be discussed in detail.

In an omnichannel environment, customers switch channels from product discovery to eventual purchase decision strategically. Hence, the biggest challenge for retailers nowadays is how to operate an effective omnichannel strategy. To improve inventory operational efficiency, this chapter investigates the influences of price setting and customers’ return probability on inventory forecasting. Subsequently, we explore how retailers participate in providing appropriate information delivery and product fulfillment. Specifically, a stylized newsvendor model, which incorporates customers’ showrooming behavior, is developed to address retailers’ inventory problem. Furthermore, we compare the benefits of buy-online-and-pick-up-in-store (BOPS) and showroom strategy which originates offline but is completed online. Three main findings are obtained as follows: (1)online and offline inventory order quantities augment with the ascending of pricing offline and online, respectively. Meanwhile, the inventory decisions increase when customers’ return probability declines; (2) the implementation of showroom helps retailers expand their pure online market coverage than BOPS, while it reduces the total inventory quantity if the proposition of unit online inventory cost accounting for product price exceeds physical store; and (3) showroom strategy is more profitable than BOPS option as long as unit online inventory cost is small enough. In addition, we find this boundary where showroom increases total profit expands with the attenuating of return probability.

As competition has been rising tremendously in the emergence and realization of globalization, some business models with regard to retailing have changed. In this sense, there has been a huge introduction to new terms and concepts related to omnichannel operations, mainly focusing on new trends in multichannel strategies. With the aid of recent technologies and changing lifestyles of customers, there exists an obvious change in shopper behavior. In this globe, multichannel operations have been detected as a means to differentiate products and services which might in return add a potential value to the success of omnichannel management strategies thereby bringing a huge value to customers. This chapter discusses main terms and terminologies, along with common practices, on how customer preferences of multichannel operations have evolved throughout the years of competition and globalization while putting the main focus of concern in multichannel marketing attempts, changes in customer preferences in this trend, and the emergence of effective strategies that enhance the best fit of marketing management theories and practices in multichannel operations. Finally, the overall initiative of this chapter is to come up with some concrete strategies that might enrich the overall standing of omnichannel management operations and practices.

This study explores the importance of application search engine (ASE) technology in the omni-channel strategy. For this purpose, this chapter firstly explains the concepts of the omni-channel and the search engines and the importance of them. Then, omni-channel in the framework of ASEs is discussed. Finally, recommendations for further researches are presented.