Abstract

This study aims to find out customers’ decisions between online or offline channel about search products, experience products and credence products. For this purpose, we analyzed 120 volunteers with 5 experiments, to verify 6 hypotheses. We summarized traditional online and offline channel theory and tried to research this topic in five aspects, which are website design, offline shop distance, customer group selection, media publicity and offline channel’s help for online. According to the results of 5 experiments, we finally find out customer’s choice between online and offline channel influenced by the category of products and 5 different factors. Besides, we also offer some suggestions about how to attract customers from offline channel to online channel.

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