Quality, value, satisfaction, trust, a

formats, customers who value search convenience above all other types of convenience will also
choose to shop online.
From a marketing standpoint, the results of Hypothesis 2 and 3 suggest that retailers should
try to better understand their customers; specifically, they should try to find out what type of
convenience their customers want. It is possible that customers may value multiple convenience
dimensions. For example, a customer may value both search convenience and possession
convenience. One way to better satisfy this customer is to offer multiple channel outlets (maintain
both a traditional brick-and-mortar store and an online store). By having multiple channel outlets,
the retailer facilitates both search convenience and possession convenience. In other words, the
customer can use the online store for his information search, then go to the traditional store and
leave with his desired purchase. Offering multiple channels to reach customers offers ultimate
convenience.
Upon further review of hypothesis 4, the seemingly counter-intuitive results can be easily
explained. It is true that online shoppers must wait longer for their purchases than in-store
shoppers. But a post hoc examination of the item wordings that measured possession convenience
for online shoppers reveals that this wait was not adequately captured. Instead, we asked if the
order was delivered in a timely fashion. This captures satisfaction with possession, rather than how
conveniently the possession actually took place. In subsequent scale refinement attempts,
possession convenience might be captured more precisely if an objective measure was used.
Suppose the question was worded, “How long did it take for you to receive the product(s) you
ordered?” An in-store shopper would answer “zero” (the most convenient possession), and the
longer one had to wait for his online order, the less convenient his possession would be.
Conclusion
This study is an initial attempt to delineate the different retail convenience dimensions for
in-store and online shoppers. Several limitations must be mentioned. A convenience sample was
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