商业管理-Master Research Proposal：从渠道协调的角度研究线上线下营销策略的结合

1.0 Introduction介绍

Huang等人（2017）指出，未来大多数零售商将采用全渠道经营模式，中国企业已经有43%同时开展线上和线下业务。例如，阿里巴巴实施线下战略，通过投资银泰业务，综合利用银泰商城商铺、商品数据和会员，打破零售业发展的困境；巨美、京东、唯品会等电子商务企业也纷纷开设线下零售体验商铺，进行线上下推广。线路互补发展。线上线下结合拓宽了原有营销渠道，优化内外部有限资源，提高销售收入，获得营销协同效应，但在这一过程中也可能导致渠道冲突现象（何等，2016）。黄、潘、刘（2017）通过对苏宁电器的调研发现，O2O策略只会使原来的线下消费者转变为线上消费者，实际上对整体销售和业务绩效的提升影响不大。由此可见，在电子商务环境的驱动下，传统零售商的多渠道管理转型面临着机遇和挑战（肖东，2015）。

Huang et al. (2017) pointed out that in the future most retailers will use the full channel business model, there are already 43% of Chinese enterprises which carry out online and offline business at the same time. For example, Alibaba carry out offline strategy, through investment in Yintai business and comprehensive use of Yintai mall stores, data of goods and members to break the plight of development of the retail industry; JUMEI, Jingdong, VIPSHOP and other e-business enterprises have also opened offline retail experience shops to promote online and offline complementary development. Online and offline combination broadens the original marketing channels, internal and external limited resources will be optimized to improve sales revenue to obtain marketing synergies, but in this process, it may also lead to channel conflict phenomenon (He et al., 2016). Huang, Pan and Liu (2017) were through research on Suning Appliance to find that O2O strategy only made the original offline consumers change into online consumers, in fact, it has little impact on the improvement of the overall sales and performance of business. It can be seen that for traditional retailers driven by the e-business environment, their transformation of multi-channel management faces opportunity and challenge (Xiao and Dong, 2015).

2.0 Research aim and objectives研究目标

本研究以苏宁电器为例，从渠道协调的角度研究线上线下结合的营销策略。

基于本研究的研究目的和营销理论，形成以下研究目标：

研究目标1：从产品策略的角度分析苏宁电器应如何实施线下和线上协调策略；

研究目标2：从价格策略的角度探讨苏宁电器如何实施线下和线上协调策略

研究目标3：从促销策略的角度探讨苏宁电器如何实施线下和线上协调策略

研究目标4：对苏宁电器未来如何实施线下和线上协调策略提出建议。

The aim of this research is to take Suning Appliance as an example to study the marketing strategy of online and offline combination from the perspective of channel coordination.

Based on the research aim of this study and the marketing theory, the following research objectives are formed:

Research objective 1: From the perspective of product strategy to analyze how Suning Appliance should implement offline and online coordination strategy;

Research objective 2: From the perspective of price strategy to explore how Suning Appliance should implement offline and online coordination strategy

Research objective 3: From the perspective of promotion strategy to discuss how Suning Appliance should implement offline and online coordination strategy

Research objective 4: to make recommendations on how Suning Appliance should implement offline and online coordination strategy in the future.

3.0 Literature review文献综述

3.1O2O coordination effect配位效应

Multi-channel marketing increases enterprises’ chances of reaching consumers, and consumers can receive diverse services and information through different channels (Xiao and Dong, 2015), making it easier for consumers to buy. Multi-channel sales can reduce a customer's searching costs, improve the fairness and transparency of price. Enterprises adopt multi-channel strategy, which enables them to share multiple channels of customer information and logistics equipment, personnel to save business costs, thus establishing cost advantages. Wu (2017) also found that when consumers receive marketing incentives from a variety of channels, they can effectively reduce their perceived risk of new channels, and they are more likely to have multi-channel consumption behavior.

3.2 O2O substitution effect

Introduction of website as a channel of information will bring more negative effects to entity channel, most of the website visitors will seldom visit entity stores, the costs for all product categories are reduced (Scarpi, Pizzi and Visentin, 2014), namely, there is a "substitution effect." At the same time, the implementation of multi-channel strategy will stimulate consumers’ free rider behavior, for example, a consumer finds product information by visiting a company's website, and he buy products in another entity store (Choi, Chen and Chung, 2017).

3.3 An empirical study on O2O marketing coordination strategy

Long and Shi (2017) summarized the two types of collaborative development modes of entity retail and online retail business: first, complementing each other, that is, online shops and entity retail shops sell the same goods; second, they are independent, online and offline retail shops aim at different target markets and implement different marketing mix strategies.

Huang et al. (2017) studied the mechanism of multi-channel coordination marketing to form different coordination strategies. For instance, considering product strategy, there is a substitution effect of differences between online products and offline products in terms of type, specifications and other aspects on consumers’ multi-channel purchase behavior (He et al., 2016). From the perspective of price strategy, when there is a big difference between online and offline prices, there is a substitution effect on consumers’ multi-channel purchase behavior (Choi, Chen and Chung, 2017). In the aspect of promotion strategy, when there are big differences between online and offline promotion strategies, it will have a substitution effect on the multi - channel purchase behavior of consumers (Xiao and Dong, 2015).

Consumers will compare different channels, and if different channels bring different customer perceptions, it may make customers choose the most favorable channel for their own, resulting in substitution phenomena (Choi, Chen and Chung, 2017). Product strategy, promotion strategy, price strategy will affect consumers’ choice of online and offline channels, leading to customer migration (Xiao and Dong, 2015). It is inferred that the phenomenon of coexistence of coordination and substitution is likely to be due to the inconsistency of online and offline marketing strategies (Scarpi, Pizzi and Visentin, 2014).

3.4 Critical analysis

In the past, the research perspective on O2O is mostly based on an enterprise perspective (Riquelme, Román and Iacobucci, 2016), and in the current situation of excessive competition, any corporate marketing strategy should be more from a consumer's point of view to consider, and a marketing strategy should be developed not only based on how enterprises and consumers achieve a one-time transaction, but should more focus on how to establish long-term relationship between enterprises and consumers to achieve the purpose of improving consumer loyalty. Therefore, this study will be based on the theory of relationship marketing, from the perspective of consumers to explore how to develop online and offline marketing coordination strategy.

4.0 Methodology

4.1 Research methods and data collection

The epistemology of this study will be based on the research philosophy of positivism, and the methodology of this study will be based on objectivism. In this study, quantitative research methods will be used to collect quantitative data through questionnaires. The survey will be conducted towards Suning consumers. It is expected that 150 objects will be surveyed. The questionnaires will be distributed and taken back through the network by using China's online survey website named Questionnaire Star. The questionnaire will be used because questionnaire can help researchers collect a large amount of data in a short period of time, and it only needs to spend less money and manpower, the data collected is also easy to be processed by statistical analysis (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2007). The content of the questionnaire is divided into three parts, the first part is to introduce the purpose of the questionnaire and how to fill out the questionnaire, the second part will be from three aspects: product, price and promotion to understand consumers’ evaluation on O2O coordination strategy, questionnaires of this part will be expressed by using Likertscale method, from 1 to 5, representing from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”. The third part of the questionnaire will examine the respondents' personal information, including gender, age, occupation, income, educational background and so on.

4.2 Research hypothesis

Riquelme, Román and Iacobucci (2016) were from the perspectives of product, price and marketing strategy to discuss the reasons leading to channel conflict caused by differences between online and offline marketing strategies. Based on the study of Riquelme, Román and Iacobucci’s (2016), it has formed the following research hypothesis.#p#分页标题#e#

Research hypothesis 1: online products and offline products are consistent to a certain extent in terms of category, specifications and other aspects can effectively improve the channel coordination effect of O2O. 

Research hypothesis 2: online products and offline products are consistent to a certain extent in terms of price can effectively improve the channel coordination effect of O2O. 

Research hypothesis 3: online products and offline products are consistent to a certain extent in terms of promotion can effectively improve the channel coordination effect of O2O. 

4.3 Data analysis

In this study, SPSS 21.0 will be used for data analysis. The data analysis process will be divided into three steps. The first step is to test the reliability and validity of the questionnaire. The validity test of the questionnaire will be tested by using factor analysis. Reliability test is to through Cronbach α to determine whether the reliability of the questionnaire is qualified, if Cronbach α is greater than 0.6, the questionnaire reliability will be qualified. The second step is to carry out descriptive statistics on the questionnaire data and evaluate the questionnaire results according to Best’s (1997) criteria. The third step is to use T test to determine whether there are statistical differences between the impact of multi-channel coordination strategy and non-cooperative strategy on the satisfaction of consumers.

4.4 Research ethics

The research data and conclusions of this study will be used in this study only and will not be used for other commercial purposes. The survey data involved in this study will be stored in the author’s private mailbox and no person will have access to these data and materials without the author’s permission. Thus, it provides a maximum degree of protection of personal privacy and any personal information will not be revealed. The author will be personally involved in the data collection, statistical and analysis process of this study to avoid possible errors.

4.5 Time arrangement

Time schedule of this research is shown as follow. 

 

12 Submitting November 3, 2017

4.8 Budget

4.7 Expected results of this study

Through this study, it will understand how to achieve the coordination effect of channels through product, price and promotion strategy in order to improve marketing revenue of enterprises to help to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.

 

References

Best, J.W. (1997). Research in education. 3rd ed. Englewood Cliff, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc.

Choi, T. M., Chen, Y. and Chung, S. H. (2017). Online-offline fashion franchising supply chains without channel conflicts: Choices on postponement and contracts. International Journal of Production Economics, 16(5), 104-115.

He, Z. et al. (2016). Evolutionary location and pricing strategies for service merchants in competitive O2O markets. European Journal of Operational Research, 254(2), 595-609.

Huang, J. et al. (2017). Investigation of Chinese students' O2O shopping through multiple devices. Computers in Human Behavior, 75(10), 58-69.

Huang, J. S., Pan, S. L. and Liu, J. (2017). Boundary permeability and online–offline hybrid organization: a case study of Suning, China. Information & Management, 54(3), 304-316.

Long, Y. and Shi, P. (2017). Pricing strategies of tour operator and online travel agency based on cooperation to achieve O2O model. Tourism Management, 62(10), 302-311.

Riquelme, I. P., Román, S. and Iacobucci, D. (2016). Consumers' perceptions of online and offline retailer deception: a moderated mediation analysis. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 35(8), 16-26.

Saunders, M., Lewis, P. and Thornhill, A. (2007). Research methods for business students (4th, ed.).Essex, Pearson Education Limited.

Scarpi, D., Pizzi, G. and Visentin, M. (2014). Shopping for fun or shopping to buy: Is it different online and offline? Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 21(3), 258-267.

Wu, J. J. (2017). Shopping online and off-line? Complementary service quality and image congruence. Asia Pacific Management Review, 20(3), 225-228.

Xiao, S. and Dong, M. (2015). Hidden semi-Markov model-based reputation management system for online to offline (O2O) e-commerce markets. Decision Support Systems, 77(9), 87-99.