Psychographics & the customer journey

Shopping enjoyment

Nicholson et al. (2002) have shown, as mentioned before, that there is a relation between channel selection and shopping enjoyment. It is expected that shopping enjoyment has a positive influence on channel selection.

Therefore, it is interesting to investigate whether consumers that enjoy shopping use more channels for searching for information about products and whether they use more channels to purchase products.

Crosstabs were used to find interesting relations, these crosstabs can be found in Annex B20. Within this research, a positive relation is found between shopping enjoyment and channel usage for searching for information about fashion and purchase fashion. Table 10 shows the percentages of consumers that agreed or totally agreed on ‘I like shopping’ and ‘I take my time when I shop’ distributed over channel usage for searching and purchasing fashion. Consumers that like shopping do more than other consumers search through channels and buy fashion through different channels. Searching and buying behaviour of the population in general is compared with searching and buying behaviour of consumers that like to shop. For instance, 93% of the respondents that like to shop use advertisement leaflets to search for information about fashion, while only 79% of the total population uses advertisement leaflets. 69% of the consumers that like to shop, buy fashion through websites, while only 63% of the consumers that like to shop buy fashion through websites.

TABLE 10, DISTRIBUTION SHOPPING ENJOYMENT - CHANNEL USAGE

General I like shopping I take my time when I shop

search magazines 45% 54% 54%

search advertisement leaflets 79% 88% 86%

search the shop 87% 93% 92%

As mentioned before is expected that innovative consumers search more extensive and at different channels during their customer journey. It is interesting whether there is a positive relation between innovativeness and searching behaviour during the customer journey. Innovativeness is measured within the questionnaire through five statements. By making a cross tabulation for innovativeness and consumers search behaviour during the customer journey, interesting results are found. Consumers were asked whether they searched on different channels for fashion and how often they searched. Innovative consumers are expected to search more extensive. Therefore these analysis consider whether consumers search regularly (once a month or more often) for fashion through the channels. The percentage of consumers that agreed on the statements for innovativeness is distributed over searching on channels, the results are shown in Table 11 and Annex B21.

Positive and significant relations are found for all channels. For instance, 37% of the respondents in general do regularly search on websites to buy fashion. 47% of the respondents which agreed or totally agreed on ‘I regularly purchase different variants of a product just for a change’ search for information about fashion on websites.

68

TABLE 11, DISTRIBUTION OF CONSUMERS' SEARCH BEHAVIOUR - INNOVATIVENESS

general purchase variants try new products boring try new products gadgets

magazines 13% 19% 21% 24% 17% 28% hedonic benefit of shoppers. According to former research multi-channel behaviour can be influenced by social norms and channel selection behaviour may depend on the usage of channels by reference groups (Keen et al.

2004 & Verhoef et al. 2007). Table 12 shows the distribution of channel usage compared to motivation to conform, these results are obtained by crosstabs (annex, B22). Consumers were asked whether they need motivation to conform through three statements; ‘being accepted by others is very important to me’, ‘I find it boring when consumers criticize my behaviour’, ‘I like to solve problems without much thinking’. The percentage of consumers that need motivation to conform (agree or totally agree on the statements) and their channel usage during the customer journey are shown in Table 12. Consumers that find it important to be accepted by others are more likely to use advertisement leaflets and family and friends to get stimulated to buy fashion. These consumers are also more likely to search for information at family and friends, and social media. For instance, 15% of the consumers in general use social media to search for information about fashion, while 19% of the consumers that find it important to be accepted by other people use social media to search for information about fashion. This is interesting because social media (and family and friends) is an extremely social channel. Consumers that find it boring when other criticize on their behaviours are likely to get simulated and search for information about fashion by magazines, advertisement leaflets and in the shop. Because not all three statements show similarities within the results, there cannot be drawn a general conclusion on the relation between motivation to conform and channel usage. However, we did found that consumers which find it important to be accepted by others are likely to use social channels for getting stimulated and search for fashion.

TABLE 12,DISTRIBUTION CHANNEL USAGE - MOTIVATION TO CONFORM

general acceptation criticize on my behaviour solve problems stimulate

69 Brand/retailer loyalty

It is expected that loyal consumers switch less between different channels. Through four statement consumers were asked about their loyalty towards brands and retailers. Consumers which totally agreed or agreed on the loyalty statements across channel usage during the customer journey is shown in Table 13. These results were obtained from crosstabs shown in Annex B23. Because there are too many insignificant results (n.s.) we cannot conclude that there is a relation between channel usage and loyalty. However, relations were found between specific channel usage and agreement with the objections ‘the brand of the product is important for me in my purchase decisions’ and ‘the place where I do my shopping is important to me’. Consumers that find brands important are likely to get stimulated by magazines to buy fashion and search for information about fashion through magazines and applications. Consumers that find the place to buy products important get stimulated by advertisement leaflets or catalogues to buy fashion and they search for information about fashion through magazines and advertisement leaflets.

TABLE 13, DISTRIBUTION CHANNEL USAGE DURING THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY - LOYALTY

general shopping in same way brand is important same brands place is important stimulate

Time pressured consumers are expected to shop more online than consumers which have lots of time. In order to find interesting relations between buying on different online channels for the three product categories and time pressure, cross tabulations are analysed. Respondents which agreed or totally agreed on the statements about time pressure are distributed across their online buying behaviour for fashion, personal care and groceries. These results are shown in Table 14 and Annex B24. From this table we can conclude that there is a positive relation between time pressure and online buying. Consumers that feel pressured in time are more likely than other consumers to buy fashion, personal care products and groceries through websites. Thereby, consumers that feel pressed in time more often buy fashion through an application than other consumers.

TABLE 14, DISTRIBUTION ONLINE BUYING - TIME PRESSURE general always busy pressed for time

Fashion buy website 63% 71% 74%

70