Image Congruity’s Role In Website Attitude Formation

The internet poses many opportunities and challenges for retailers. Many traditional brick-and-mortar companies have adopted a multi-channel strategy by augmenting their physical retail presence with an online component. Retailers with physical stores that also have an online presence are called multi-channel retailers. Compared with pure online retailers, multi-channel retailers’online business has to carry the "burden" of consumers’prior brand knowledge from their offline operations. The degree of retailer image congruity-the similarity between the perceived functional and symbolic image of a retailer’s website and the existing image of the firm’s offline channel is posited to influence consumers’responses to multi-channel retailer’s website.However, researchers studying website issues focus only on consumers’ evaluations of website characteristics, failing to account for how prior attitudes towards the firm and congruity of the website with the retailer’s physical store image might affect information processing and attitude formation. The current study proposes that consumers evaluate the website of a multi-channel retailer through three simultaneous processes:(1) via an attitudinal transfer process in which consumers’prior attitudes toward the retailer will be transferred to the website and this transfer process is strengthened with higher degree of retailer image congruity;(2) via an expectancy-disconfirmation process in which consumers respond more positively when the website conveys comparable or more favorable retailer image; and (3) via a piecemeal process in which consumers form their attitudes toward the website by evaluating various website attributes and this piecemeal process may be enhanced with higher degree of retailer image incongruity. A web-based survey was conducted to test the hypothesis. Results support predictions and provide guidance for multi-channel retailers. On average, where consumers hold prior attitudes towards the retailer, expectations are that both consumers’ prior retailer attitudes and their evaluations of the specific website characteristics influence their attitudes towards the website. However, greater congruity between a retailer’s online and offline presence encourages the consumer to use a more holistic attitude transfer process. Alternatively, lower congruity encourages the consumer to rely more on a piecemeal attitude-formation process, strengthening the role of specific website characteristics relative to prior retailer attitudes.