A study of Malaysian consumers’ channel switching behavior using an extended decomposed theory of planned behavior

Abstract

The study of multichannel shopping behaviour and channel switching behaviour is becoming more important from both business and consumer perspectives. The Internet is increasingly managed in relation to other channels and customers are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their use of multiple channels. Businesses and retailers need to understand the factors that affect consumers’ channel switching or channel choice behaviour in order to determine effective individual channel strategies and resource allocation. The purpose of this study is to examine the channel switching behaviour of Malaysian consumers between online and offline channels using the Decomposed Theory of Planned Behaviour (DTPB) with the new dimension of descriptive norm (DN) in addition to attitude, subjective norm (SN), and perceived behavioural control (PBC) to explain the phenomenon. The decomposition approach adopted by the model provides a more comprehensive set of antecedents that can better describe the intention to adopt a certain technology (i.e., Internet channel), hence, improving the practical contributions of this research. Partial Least Squares (PLS) based Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) technique was used to analyze the data. The study was based on convenience sampling method, with the survey instrument administered to the Malaysian consumers from the regions of Klang Valley and Penang. A total of 497 completed surveys were obtained. The respondents had to meet the criteria of shopping online and/or brick and mortar store prior to participating in the survey. Findings show that DTPB was successful in predicting consumer channel switching behaviour. In addition, the main constructs including attitude, SN and DN significantly affected consumers’ channel switching intention in both Internet and brick and mortar store channels. PBC was the only construct that did not predict intention. This study provides multichannel retailers with a better understanding of the factors that affect consumer channel switching behavior. The factors influencing channel switching help to explain some barriers of the multichannel retailing development.