Online shopping and moderating role of offline brand trust

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine how offline brand trust moderates: the relationship between consumers' general attitude toward the internet and their perceptions of the quality of a retailer's web site and the relationship between their perceived web site quality and intention to shop from the web site. Design/methodology/approach Two hundred young female consumers participate in the study. Each selected one of three pre‐determined apparel retailer brands that she has either had experience with or are familiar with. Participants are then asked to keep their selected retailer in mind when completing an online questionnaire. They are also asked to browse the retailer's web site in search of a shirt or blouse. Factor and multiple‐regression analyses are conducted to test hypotheses. Findings Offline brand trust exerted a significant moderating effect in the relationship between the efficiency factor of attitude toward the internet and the usability and information quality factor of web site quality. Offline brand trust also played a moderating role in the relationship between the interactivity factor of web site quality and online shopping intention. Implications for multi‐channel apparel retailers are discussed. Originality/value While a great deal of research has been conducted to study brand trust, most has focused on product brands not on retail brands. Furthermore, none of the studies on brand trust has questioned nor investigated the moderating role of retail brand trust in the relationship between consumer characteristics and their attitudes and behaviors toward the company's new business format. This paper seeks to contribute to the extant literature on brand trust and multi‐channel retailing by exploring the role of offline brand trust in shopping at a multi‐channel retailer's web site.