Anja Weber, Erik Maier

• Retailers increasingly focus on preventing competitive research shopping through a closer integration of their retail channels. This integration often focuses on pre-purchase aspects of the purchase process (e.g., tablets in stores to access the online store). Cross-channel delivery might be a post-purchase means to reduce competitive research shopping. One distinguishes between click and collect (delivery from the online shop to the store) and home delivery (delivery from the store to consumers’ home). An experimental study and an adoption model, developed from a large field survey, confirm the positive effects of both forms of cross-channel delivery in reducing consumers’ propensity to research shop competitively. Situational drivers appear to be instrumental especially for click and collect (experimental Study 1), but also emerge as a general driver of value perception of the service in a large field survey (Study 2, n = 1,500). Our results suggest that retailers should communicate relevant, channel-specific benefits of cross-channel delivery (e.g., time savings) to drive adoption and lower competitive research shopping.