Determinants of Cross-Channel Integration Strategy: Evidence from the U.S. Retail Sector

摘要

Retailers often follow a stage-adoption model, gradually shifting from silo to full integration of their different channels. Despite increased attention, theoretical and empirical knowledge of cross-channel integration strategy remains limited and offers few insights to help top managers in retail to make the right decision in integrating their different channels at the right level. Two particular problems exist with the previous literature. First, the majority of studies either are descriptive (Zhang et al. 2010) or draw on a wide range of determinants of cross-channel integration strategy. This resulting lack of a comprehensive theoretical base to explain the degree of integration of cross-channel strategy makes it difficult to integrate findings from different studies into a coherent body of knowledge. Second, Most studies adopt limited dimensions (Oh, Teo, and Sambamurthy 2012; Schramm-Klein and Morschett 2006) or simply aggregate these various dimensions to reflect the degree of integration of cross-channel strategy (Pentina and Hasty 2009; Stein-field, Adelaar, and Liu 2005), which makes it difficult to distinguish the relative importance of each dimension. In this article, we address these two problems. We develop and empirically assess the degree of integration of the cross-channel strategy, as well as its determinants.