EXPRESS: Will Online Shopping Lead to More Brand Loyalty than Offline Shopping? The Role of Uncertainty Avoidance

While the growing transformation from offline to online shopping urges marketers to understand the impacts of this shift on brand loyalty, conclusions from the existing marketing literature have been inconsistent. Drawing upon the distinctions between online and offline shopping, authors develop a theoretical framework that focuses on uncertainty avoidance (UA) to reconcile the inconsistencies in the literature. Specifically, authors argue that high (low)-UA individuals are more (less) brand loyal when shopping online than offline because the product experience is less predictable in the former (vs. latter), a distinction between online and offline shopping that increases (reduces) high (low)-UA individuals’ tendency to stay with the brands. Consistent with this logic, we uncover that intangible value salience, a theoretically and managerially relevant boundary condition, attenuates the interplay between online (vs. offline) shopping and UA. Across eight studies that consist of secondary data, field surveys, and online and laboratory experiments, authors find converging evidence to support this theoretical stance. The current research offers insights into the loyalty literature and cross-cultural research. The managerial implications of the paper are also discussed at the end of the paper.