A Conceptual Framework on Webrooming Behavior of Luxury Customers (The Case of Gold and Jewelry)

The development of e-commerce and online shopping has given rise to emerging concepts of consumer behavior, including webrooming. Due to the novelty of the concept of webrooming in this study, an attempt has been made to provide a conceptual framework to explain this behavior and the factors affecting its formation.

In this regard, a field survey study was conducted by distributing questionnairy among a sample consisting of 384 gold and jewelry customers in Tehran. The questionnaires consisting of 9 dimensions and 38 items were distributed among the members of the statistical sample after ensuring reliability and validity. Data analysis along with partial least squares technique and Smart PLS software were used.

According to the results, the benefits of online and offline channels have a significant impact on webrooming attitude; It was also discovered that attitude, perceived risk, anticipated regret, subjective norms and behavioral control have a significant impact on behavioral inclination and webrooming.

The results of goodness of fit showed that the proposed model in this research has a good validity and fit. Given that webrooming has a negative impact on online sales; the results help online retailers mitigate this phenomenon by targeting webrooming antecedents.