Moral Identity in Retail Markets: An Abstract

We are witnessing a rapid development in digital and innovative technologies and their application in omni-channel retailing. Such developments have entailed changes to consumer in-store shopping experience, which in turn, have been re-shaping consumer decision-making. As smartphones have become the norm of online shopping, the showrooming phenomenon has swayed the revenues of brick-and-mortar retailers. Consumers take advantage of the characteristics of the shopping experience in a brick-and-mortar store, come to a conclusion about the product they are willing to buy, and then use the online or physical retail channels to obtain it at a lower price. Besides product price, consumers follow their moral principles in purchase decision making (Muncy and Vitell 1992). Morality has been an influencing factor that guides consumers’ behavior as they recognize a need, and then search, buy, and use products. Their choices have to be justified and aligned with their ethical norms to satisfy their needs (Wilk 2001). In this article, we investigate the impact of price perceptions and moral values on consumers’ purchase intentions in showrooming. Across three studies, we provide evidence for the joint effect of product price variation and consumers’ morality on purchase intentions. In the first study, we showed that the price variation is associated with purchase intentions, to the extent that increasingly higher product price variation (i.e., increasingly lower price out-of-store) increases out-of-store purchase intentions. In the second study that introduced the price matching policy, this joint effect of price and moral identity is strong as consumers’ inferred motive is negative toward the retailer’s policy. However, in case of high price variation in the marketplace, price outweighs morality in forming purchase decision. In the third study, we found that the moral identity is not associated with purchase intentions when it comes to expensive products. In the same vein, the monetary sacrifice as a fraction of the price variation is substantial for expensive products, opting consumers not to buy in-store. In sum, we offer an investigation of showrooming which is considered one of the crucial phenomena that retailers have to face nowadays. To address the research gap, we conceptualize purchase decision making as a process in which subjective product price and objective price knowledge in the marketplace is translated into an objective judgement by weighing both the price information and moral beliefs. We showed that price variation influences consumers’ purchases intentions to the extent that increasingly price variation is positively associated with out-of-store purchase intentions, but this influence varies in the presence of price matching. Similarly, consumers’ morality is associated with purchase intentions. Theoretical contributions and managerial implications are discussed.