Who is the omnichannel shopper?

The omnichannel shopper is the latest evolution of the online shopper. They shop anywhere, anytime and are not restricted by physical locations or channels. They have been shown to spend more and spend more often than non-omnichannel shoppers. The purpose of this thesis is to identify the characteristics of the omnichannel shopper so that retailers can better target their investments in serving these valuable customers. We first review the multichannel and omnichannel literature to establish a hierarchy of omnichannel shopping behaviour. Second, we use secondary data derived from a quantitative telephone survey by Telstra of 800 randomly selected people of which 185 answered the questions used for analysis in this report. The data was collected between March and April 2014. The research finds that there are three statistically different groups of omnichannel shoppers and that these groups form a hierarchy. The Basic group operates at a level no different to the multichannel shopper of the “clicks and bricks” era. The mobile group shop in ways that were not possible before the advent of connected mobile devices. The advanced group uses their devices to shop multiple channels simultaneously. The research also finds that these basic, mobile and advanced groups of shoppers can be identified to a certain extent by their age, social media use, domicile location and income. This partially supports the Diffusion of Innovation theory of Rogers (Rogers 1983)which is based on the notion that early adopters can be identified by demographic and behavioral characteristics and was used in the studies of early adoption of internet shopping. In addition membership of the “Mobile Omnichannel” group can be predicted reliably 31% of the time by their access to social media networks from mobile devices. The underpinning theory used for this thesis was Innovation Diffusion Theory (IDT). IDT has been used to show that early adopters can be identified by certain demographic and behavioural characteristics. A range of these characteristics were distilled from the multichannel literature and tested in this thesis. Our results show ambivalent support for demographic factors but strong support for a behavioural factor (social contentedness) as a predictor of “Mobile Omnichannel” shopping. This research is limited by the number of demographic and behavioural variables captured in the original research. Furthermore, the data was collected exclusively in Australia. Further research could address a wider range of consumer characteristics and consider data from international markets. Retailers can now prioritise investments in omnichannel infrastructure based on what type of omnichannel shopper constitutes the most important part of their target market.