PurposeThis study aims to identify, within the context of the French fashion industry, the characteristics of multichannel shoppers, that is, consumers who use more than one channel in a single shopping trip. We especially investigate whether consumers' focus on quality versus price affects their multichannel shopping tendency and their flexibilities in their shopping lists (basket flexibility).Design/methodology/approachWe surveyed a representative sample of 400 French shoppers regarding fashion apparel purchasing. We use a logistic regression framework to measure the probability of a shopper becoming a multichannel shopper based on the key constructs and a battery of control variables.FindingsThe analysis shows that, in fashion buying, shoppers focused on quality and those with high basket flexibility have a higher probability of becoming multichannel shoppers. The probability becomes even greater when a shopper is both quality oriented and has basket flexibility.Research limitations/implicationsWe focus on the fashion apparel market for a deeper understanding of multichannel usage of products with both experience and search features. Future research can investigate other industries for higher generalizability.Practical implicationsOur research provides insights into multichannel fashion companies whose managements aim to effectively manage high-value customers who tend to use more channels when shopping. Specifically, an omnichannel marketing strategy should focus on capturing the quality-oriented and highly basket-flexible segment of consumers.Originality/valueOur study provides evidence that for products having high experiential as well as search features, quality-oriented and highly flexible shoppers engage more in multichannel shopping. Because these characteristics are related to the long-term value of customers, we provide the link between multichannel marketing and firm profitability in the context of the fashion industry.

This research investigates the impact of usage restriction in South Korea on both gamers and the industry using individual-level game usage and spending data.

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Much effort has been exerted to analyze online texts and understand how empirical results can help improve sales performance. In this research, we aim to extend this stream of research by decomposing online texts based on text sources, namely, companies and consumers. To be specific, we investigate how online texts driven by companies differ from those generated by consumers, and the extent to which both types of online texts have different effects on online sales. We obtained sales data from one of the biggest game publishers and merged them with online texts provided by companies using news articles and those created by consumers in user communities. The empirical analyses yield the following findings. Word visualization and topic analyses show that firms and consumers generate different contexts. Specifically, companies spread word to promote their own events whereas consumers produce online words to share winning strategies. Moreover, online sales are influenced by consumer-generated community topics whereas firm-driven topics in news articles have little to no effect. These findings suggest that companies should focus more on online texts generated by consumers rather than spreading their own words. Moreover, online sales strategies should take advantage of specific topics that have been proven to increase online sales. In particular, these findings give startup companies and small business owners in variety of industries the advantage when they use the online channel for distribution and as a marketing platform.

We focus on two kinds of game currency in online games, Game Money and Cash Money, and investigate how money expenditure behavior is explained by experience, achievement, and region as well as how the interplay among key variables differs between Game Money and Cash Money. The empirical analysis provides the following findings. First, experience increases Game Money expenditure whereas it lowers Cash Money expenditure, which suggests that gamers substitute gaming efforts for cash. Second, achievement is positively correlated with both kinds of game currencies. Finally, the relationship of money expenditure with experience and achievement is moderated by region. Specifically the negative effect of experience on Cash Money expenditure is more pronounced in suburban areas than in urban areas. The positive effect of achievement on Cash Money expenditure is also more pronounced in suburban areas than in urban areas. The authors conclude the paper with theoretical contributions and practical implications.