The Online Shopping Experience (OSE): Expanding an Existing Framework: An Abstract

Abstract

Why do people shop? The famous and seminal article written by Tauber (1972) can be considered as the root for new kinds of research in marketing, focusing less on consumer decision-making and more on consumer motives, practices, experiences, and obviously, shopping. Since then, the marketing literature has highlighted the concept of experience in numerous fields (Schmitt 1999; Verhoef et al. 2009), including shopping. As consumers are increasingly taking control of their online shopping processes (including information search, product selection, and decision-making), providing them with relevant experiences in this context has become an essential issue for marketers. Indeed, if the firms want to interact with consumers at the right time, they need to understand how to best reach and engage with them. The specific case of “online shopping experience” (OSE) is of particular interest as both the context and the experience itself are co-designed by marketers and consumers. The OSE and its impacts on online shopping (conversion and repurchase) have attracted increasing attention in academic research (Pentina et al. 2011; Rose et al. 2012; Kawaf and Tagg 2017). However, there is still no consensus on what the “online shopping experience” (OSE) lived by the consumers is. The “online shopping experience” (OSE) and its impacts on online shopping (conversion and repurchase) have attracted increasing attention in academic research. However, there is still no consensus on what the OSE lived by the consumers is. This gap poses two main challenges: (1) at a conceptual level, the construct of the OSE is still ill-defined, and (2) at an operational level, the lack of a reliable construct prevents from evaluating such an OSE and its impact. A preliminary exploratory work suggests that OSE represents a construct that incorporates four constituent dimensions: physical characteristics, ideological aspect (values), pragmatic aspects (practices and tools), and social aspect. The research proposed herein focus on exploring the validity of this conceptual framework in an American context, based on a qualitative study with US online shoppers. While the findings in general support the existing theoretical framework of OSE, we have noted some unique aspects characterizing the US sample and interesting new aspects of this phenomenon that deserve future research effort. This study is an incremental step towards the development of a measurement instrument of the OSE and its nomological network.