Abstract EN:

[Since grocery retailers offer consumers the opportunity to shop online, the issue of the way consumers live their shopping experience when they return to the store is particulary important. Recent research has already outlined the importance of taking into account the cross effects between channels. Indeed, the development of multichannel strategies has raised a number of challenges around the coordination, the integration, the coherence and the compatibility between channels, in order to develop a cross-channel strategy as a way to sustain retailers’ performance. Consistent with this retail strategy perspective, we study the cross-channel shopping experience. We define it as the way consumers compensate – consciously or not - the weaknesses of experiences lived in one channel with the strengths of other experiences lived in alternative channels in order to optimize their holistic experience with one retailer. Indeed, consumers’ experiences must be studied in a cross-channel perspective, escaping the silos and taking into account the different interactions between the multichannel experiences. In this context, and considering that the cross-channel shopping experience should neutralize the weaknesses and enhance the strengths of each channel, we specifically focus on the experience consumers live when they return to the store. This question is of importance as French grocery retailers have seen negative side effects arising since the development of electronic grocery shopping (diminution of the frequency of visit of physical stores, diminution of non-grocery products sales, cannibalization, etc. )]