What conditions determine consumers' acceptance and use of omnichannel retailing in Swedish clothing industry

Abstract: Background  In the past, consumers would go to physical stores to gather information and end their shopping there, with physical stores being one of the few sources of product information. Today, with the coming of the digital age, there are gradually more and more channels to gather information. The development of e-commerce, social media, and entertainment type of Internet has diversified the ways of consumption, thus triggering a change in retail channels. By integrating multiple channels and enhancing the consumer's sense of consumer experience, the retail industry is gradually moving toward omnichannel. Consumers tend to combine information from physical stores with information from multiple data sources to search, compare and buy, which gives rise to omnichannel shopping behaviour.  To provide consumers with a smoother shopping experience, omnichannel improves the functional limitations of cross-channel in multi-channel retail, allowing consumers to choose the channel and method they prefer and are accustomed to. This process breaks down the constraints of time and space and provides consumers with a more comfortable shopping experience. Therefore, this paper will focus on what affected consumers’ acceptance and use of omnichannel system.  Purpose  The purpose of this study is to consider omnichannel retail as a complete commercial system, and study what are key drivers for consumers to accept and use this system. Method  This thesis takes a qualitative research analysis by conducting 10 semi-structured interview of respondents who live in Sweden. 237 initial codes were used to analyse the data by using template analysis, and thematic coding was performed through categorization and structured layer-by-layer coding.  Conclusion  The determinants of customer behaviour in omnichannel retailing in the Swedish clothing industry are: perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, perceived safety, perceived enjoyment, social influence, price value, and personal choice, and interaction was observed between these factors. These factors act synergistically on consumers' shopping intention and then influence consumer behaviour.