Buying hedonic and high involvement products in a multi-channel environment

Abstract

Retailing has faced huge environmental changes due to the development of online channel, leading to a need to define the roles of sales channels in different situations. This thesis discusses how the characteristics of hedonic and high involvement products influence consumers’ purchase process in a multi-channel environment.

The theoretical framework of this thesis consists theories on product type, multi-channel retailing and purchase process. Based on theories, buying a hedonic and high involvement product requires physical product evaluation and profound information search. The purchase process has two phases; search and purchase. The search is conducted in online channel due to the effectiveness and convenience, but the product is bought from offline channel in order to reduce the purchase risk.

This is a qualitative study and consumer interviews were used as a method to data collection. The results of the empirical research revealed that product class has implications to purchase process and a new phase between search and purchase was identified. The purchase process of hedonic and high involvement products has therefore three phases; search, confirmation and purchase.

Consumer needs to have a physical experience in order to evaluate the quality of a hedonic product, which is acquired often already in the search phase. The risk and importance attached to the purchase decision drives consumers to enhanced information search, which is done mostly in online channel. Hedonic and high involvement products requires profound search phase, as consumers are not willing to make compromises with product requirements.

The search phase aims to find the perfect product and after adequate information gathered, consumer reaches the confirmation of the decision. It is important that consumer have had a chance to evaluate the product physically to reduce the purchase risk and to be convinced that product evokes right feelings. The confirmation of the decision is outcome of using the benefits of both channels, which supports the characteristics of the product. After this confirmation the channel choice criteria changes and consumer focuses to maximize the benefits.

The purchase phase was found to be mostly price driven and consumer searches the cheapest channel to buy the product. Online channel was found to have an advantage in price competition, but offline channel was also used for purchasing because of it’s ability to provide immediate satisfaction and enjoyable purchase experience. Therefore, individual’s preferences can have a great impact on purchase process overcoming the channel utility and complicating the anticipation of the process.