ONLINE VS OFFLINE

The Effect of Shopping Environments on Tourism Consumer Behavior

Ashlyn Pack

MY INTEREST
Retail experience in the tourism industry
Curiosity in regards to odd behavior
Interest in online shopping patterns/habits
Began as curiosity regarding tourists behaviors
Ended as curiosity regarding online gift shops and their
effectiveness

MY HYPOTHESIS
Current Hypothesis:
A product (an agate slice) will be purchased more frequently in a tourist attractions (Ruby
Falls) offline gift shop than in the same attractions online gift shop of equal exposure.
The Process of choosing my hypothesis (from 2 to 3 to 1)

IV: Offline VS Online

Offline
A traditional gift shop composed of a
single store decorated with displays
where products can be touched,
tested, and purchased in store.

Online
A website featuring the same products
as a traditional gift shop where the
same products can be purchased and
shipped to the consumer

DV: frequency of purchasing an Agate

Agate slice
A thin usually ovular sliver of a
decorative rock
Why this?

Frequency
Number of slices per customer

THE SOURCE SEARCH

Tourism Consumer Behavior
VERY minimal results (1-3 semi useful articles)

Tourism
more but very few useful and many in foreign areas or very specific locations

Consumer Behavior
focused a lot on online vs offline behavior

Shopping Store Shopping Environment

More useful pieces but still limited

Ultimately
Difficult to find broad research on consumer behavior
Especially difficult to find behavior or preference behavior in tourism
Often too Broad, too Narrow, or stretching it

MAIN SOURCES
Levin, Levin, & Heath (2003)

EXTREMELY helpful at defining WHY consumers might have preferences

EXTREMELY helpful at showing research indicating online vs offline preferences
Breaks down the buying process into stages where preference changes
Finding indicating consumers prefer offline from the actual purchase and for
high tangibility products

Park, Hill, and Bonds-Raacke (2015)

Focused on emotions effect on consumer behavior and preference
Highlighted the huge impact regret and cognitive effort have on consumers
Finding indicates offline shops allow for less regret regarding purchases made

METHODOLOGY
Participants
Target Population

Undergraduate students
Age range reflects a high number
of consumers
Through a psych department
recruitment with the incentive of a
free trip to the attraction

Sample Size

50 participants in Online Group

50 participants in Offline Group
Sought Power of .99 with strong
effect size

Materials
Offline
Confederate marks a table made in
Microsoft Excel (Pencil/Paper)

Online
Participants are asked to leave their
purchase window open when
finished
If no window is left open it is marked
as 0 slices or no purchase
Marked using same table as offline

Tickets for the 100 participants

TABLE EXAMPLE
Participant #

Offline/Online

# of agate
slices

Participant #

Offline/Online

# of agate
slices

Off

On

Off

On

Off

On

Off

On

Off

On

Off

On

Off

On

PROCEDURE

Meet confederates at university center

Total volunteers divided by the exact half

of total to create 2 equivalent groups

Every kth person is placed in the 2nd group

to ensure random samples

Taken by bus to Ruby Falls

Both Groups take the tour

Offline group is sent to the physical gift

shop

Online group is taken by bus to a

computer lab ready with the online shop
open

Both shops feature an AD for the agate

slices

Debriefed on campus after shopping

experience

Offline
UC

Traditional
Gift Shop

Online

Ruby
Falls

Computer
Lab

The computer lab will be made for comfort

to simulate shopping at leisure at home.

 What got you interested in the topic

State your hypothesis and identify your IV(s) and
DV(s) (including explanation for operational
definitions)
How easy/difficult it was to find sources to support
your hypothesis
Briefly describe 2 main articles from your papers
introduction Including why you Feel they Support
your hypothesis
Your proposed methodology (participants,
materials, and procedure) including proposed
analysis (i.e. describe why it is appropriate for your
design)
What you learned about the overall process of
research and would you do anything differently in
the future?

ANALYSIS
Determine: If the means of the number of agate slices per customer are
significantly different depending on the offline and online groups.
Two Independent Samples T-test
Alpha = .05
If N = 100, df = 98
For one tailed (assuming offline is more effective)
tcritical = 1.661

IF I COULD START OVER

NARROWED IDEA/TOPIC SOONER
More in depth research
Explored other professions research on consumer (focused most on psyinfo
database)
Tried different databases (googlescholar?)
Write my final and definitive hypothesis first before developing a literature
review
NEVER UNDERESTIMATE how LONG proper research will take
READ more research to see how they write their work to get a better feel for
the style and best methods
Get more sources than you think you need (you will drop some)

REFERENCES
Levin, A. M., Levin, I. P., & Heath, C. E. (2003) Product category dependent consumer
preferences for online and offline shopping features and their influence on

multi-channel retail alliances, Journal of Electronic Commerce Research, 4(3).

Park, J., Hill, T.W., & Bonds-Raacke, J. (2015). Exploring the relationship between
cognitive effort exertion and regret in online vs. offline shopping, Computers in
Human Behavior, 49, 444-450.