Adding bricks to clicks – The main attributes to click-and-mortar shops influencing the shopping experience

About two third of Dutch e-retailers are interested in adding bricks to their clicks, in other words: opening physical shops in addition to their online shop. The attributes of these click-and-mortar shops influencing the shopping experience in the Dutch retail market are the topic of this research. As this is a relative new trend in retail little scientific literature is available, therefore the aim of this research is to partly fill this knowledge gap for both theory and practice. The research question is: ‘What are the main attributes of a click-and-mortar shop influencing the shopping experience and how do these influence the shopping experience?’. A literature study and interviews with experts in retail are used to create a theoretical foundation for designing a consumer questionnaire. This questionnaire measures the preferences of consumers for the attributes of a click-and-mortar shop in two categories: functional and physical. For the physical attributes a stated choice experiment is designed, in which respondents are repeatedly shown two hypothetical shops opened by an e-retailer to make a choice for visiting. This method can determine the relative influence of the attributes on the shopping experience. The sample of respondents includes 374 consumers. Three types of consumers are found in the sample: fun shoppers, run shoppers and not-interested shoppers.