The impact of omni-channel strategies on consumer behavior in sport product purchases

This study addresses the gap in understanding sports consumers' behavior regarding omni-channel strategies, with a focus on the moderating roles of customer experience and brand trust. Drawing on the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) framework, the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), and commitment-trust theory, a quasi-experimental omnichannel retail setting was utilized with a sample of 166 sports product consumers. The results indicate that consumer outcomes differ significantly across strategies for repurchase intention, customer satisfaction, and brand loyalty (p < .001, partial η 2 ranging from 0.454 to 0.521). Specifically, following the logical progression of the consumer journey, Webrooming emerged as the primary driver for repurchase intention (M = 4.94), whereas the Online-to-Offline configuration was most effective in enhancing customer satisfaction (M = 4.96) and brand loyalty (M = 4.96). Scheffé's post-hoc tests revealed several significant pairwise differences, confirming that channel advantages are outcome-specific: digital research excels in driving intent, while integrated physical touchpoints are essential for securing relational outcomes. Customer experience and brand trust both significantly moderated the effects of omni-channel strategies on all three outcomes. In both cases, differences between strategies were more pronounced among consumers with lower experience and trust.This study elucidates the differential impacts of omni-channel strategies on sports product consumers and highlights the importance of methodological rigor, specifically post-stratification weighting as a robustness check, in enhancing the generalizability of retailing research. The substantive conclusions remained unchanged when the same models were re-estimated on the raked, weighted sample, confirming the stability of the findings under post-stratification adjustment.