MULTICHANNEL INTEGRATION AND CONSUMER BEHAVIOR IN A DIGITAL AGE: THE ROLE OF PHYSICAL DISTANCE

The digital context is the ground on which many businesses currently clash. In fact, not only the large multinationals, but also small businesses can access domestic and international markets at low costs and without significant investments. E-commerce and the recent innovations brought by technology have changed the way of doing business. The number of consumers who buy online has increased compared to previous years (overall in the B2C, online sales of products and services amounted in value to 1,671 billion dollars in 2015, over 350 billion more than in 2014), but still shows the existence of uncertainties related to different factors: perceived risk for privacy, for product characteristics, for physical distances, for reviews on the Internet. It is for this reason that never before in the digital environment two factors of great importance are the physical distance of the online seller and the presence of a physical store in addition to the online channel. The objective of this work is to understand how the uncertainties and risks of the transaction linked to the virtuality of the online channel and the physical distance between buyer and seller can influence the final consumer purchase. Mainly we want to consider the physical distance dimension between business and consumer and we want to evaluate if the presence of an offline channel in addition to a mere virtual presence is sufficient in favoring the transaction.