D0I 10.

1108/09590550210423654

A consumer model for

channel switching
behavior
James Reardom amd
Demmy E. McCorkle

The authors

James Reardon is Wells Fargo Professor of Marketing

at the University of Northern Colorado, Greeley,
Colorado, USA.
Denny E. McCorkle is Professor of Marketing, Southwest
Missouri State University, Springfield, Missouri, USA.

Keywords
Consumer behaviour, Marketing, Distribution channel

Abstract

With the phenomenal growth of direct order marketing

with the Internet and catalogs as alternative channels,
customers increasingly face more choices of where to
purchase goods and services. This paper develops a
formal consumer model to explain channel switching
behavior. Becker's theory of time allocation is expanded
to consumer decision making between distribution
channels. The final model suggests that consumers face
a tradeoff when deciding where to buy goods and
services. From this tradeoff an indifference curve is
developed where the consumer chooses between
alternative distribution channels on the basis of the
relative opportunity costs of time, costs of goods,
pleasure derived from shopping, perceived value of
goods, and relative risk of each channel. Strategies for
direct and multi-channel marketers are developed using
this model.

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International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management

Volume 30 . Number 4 . 2002 . pp. 179–185
Ⓒ MCB UP Limited . ISSN 0959-0552

1
Introduction substituted for market services (e.g.
personal shoppers, delivery).
According to the Direct Marketing Based on the extended Becker’s model,
Association, consumer direct order consumers are assumed to choose a
marketing sales are growing faster than
overall US consumer sales. From 199ł to
2000, these sales increased by 9.1 percent
annually (compared to ł.ł percent
overall), with an
8.3 percent annual growth expected
through 200ł (compared to 4.1 percent
overall). With direct mail (including
catalogs) leading the media for direct order
sales (34.8 percent), interactive sales
(including Internet) are forecast at ,24.2
billion in 2000 and are projected to
increase 41.3 percent per year to
reach ,36.4 billion by 200ł (Direct
Marketing Association, 2001).
Many have attributed this continuing
growth in direct order marketing to its
relative time savings and convenience
compared to traditional retailing channels
(Darian, 1987; Eastlick and Feinberg,
1994; Gehrt et al., 1996; Lavin, 1993).
More specifically, recent industry studies
have focused on the use of alternative
distribution channels and found an
increasing use of the Internet as a
communication channel for information
and comparison shopping, and as a
distribution channel for online purchasing
(NPD Group, Inc., 2001; NRF 2000).
Although there is a large body of research
investigating consumers’ store patronage
behavior, there has been a lack of
theoretical development to adequately
explain consumers’ channel-switching
behavior between traditional store and
direct order marketing channels (Darian
1987; Gehrt and Carter 1992). This study
attempts to build a theoretical model that
explains consumers’ choice of distribution
channels by extending Becker’s (196ł)
time allocation model.
Under Becker’s model, a household is
assumed to allocate optimal amounts of
time and money income on a series of
household activities to achieve the
maximum level of utility. Often shopping is
considered a transaction cost instead of a
household activity. However, the shopping
experience has the hallmarks of household
production (i.e. goods and services
produced by household members) in that
household labor (i.e. time by member of
the family) can, to a certain degree, be
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Management Volume 30 . Number 4 . 2002 .

distribution channel that gives them the acquisition activities.

maximum utility for minimum input of
household resources.
Becker’s model is particularly suited to
explain channel-switching behavior. In
essence, a consumer’s choice between
commodities is largely one of transaction
cost to the consumer. This transaction cost
involves all the fundamental elements of
Becker’s model of time allocation: household
time, resource availability, the implication
of psychic costs/benefits, and capital
constraints.

Literature review

It has long been recognized that service

retailers should examine customers as vital
participants in the transaction process (Mills,
1986). Hollander (1964) recognized that
marketers could shift work to others upward
or downward in the distribution channel.
Despite the early recognition that retailers
may shift work to consumers, there is still
relatively little research on the area of work
shifting between consumers and channel
members.
The decision to purchase can be viewed as
a
resource allocation decision. According to
Nobel Laureate, Gary S. Becker, ‘‘the
household is truly a ‘small factory’: it
combines capital goods, raw materials and
labor to clean, feed, procreate and otherwise
produce useful commodities’’ (Becker, 196ł,
p. 496). As such, the decision about which
channel to use to purchase goods and services
is essentially a household production
decision, because household members
allocate time and resources in the purchase
decision. While it appears logical that the
choice of shopping channel choice fits within
this model, there is no research to date that
adequately makes use of Becker’s theory to
model channel choice.
Although the importance of household
production was recognized by early marketing
scholars (Alderson, 19ł8; Bartels, 1944),
there is a lack of scholarly research pertaining
to the subject of household production
and subsequent consumption. This is
particularly true with regard to the
expenditure of household time in the

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Modeling household time allocation U = u(Z) such that C = c(P, Wo,Z;K). (7)

Becker’s (196ł) theory of time allocation is

referred to as an integration of the theory
of the consumer with that of the firm
(Deaton and Muellbauer, 1980).
Mathematically, a household obtains utility
from the underlying commodities, Z, which
are produced using market goods and time
as inputs (Michael and Becker 1973).
Thus:
U = u (Z). (1)
The technology, by which market goods Y
are used in combination with time and
capital K, is represented as a household
production function:
Z = z (Y, Lo; K) (2)
where Lo is a household’s time spent
in producing Z.
The utility function (equation (1)), is
maximized subject to the production
function constraints (equation (2)), and a
constraint on the household’s available
time and income:
T = Lw + Lo (3)
I = PY (4)
where T is the total time available, and Lw
is the household’s time spent in the labor
market. I is income, and P is a vector of
the price of market goods. The time and
money income constraints can be
collapsed into a single resource constraint
on the household’s ‘‘full income’’, or S
(Becker, 196ł). Thus:
S = Wo T + V = Wo (Lw + Lo) +
V = I + Wo Lo (ł)
where Wo is a vector of wage rate of
the household member and V is
unearned income.
The utility function (equation (1)), is
maximized subject to the constraints of the
production functions (equation (2)), and full
income (equation (ł)). In solving this
optimization problem, Deaton and
Muellbauer (1980) proposed a two-stage
approach. At the lower stage, the cost of
producing the vector Z is minimized, just
as for the firm. The objective is to
minimize the cost at a given technology K
and Z. The solution is a function:
C = c(P, Wo,Z;K). (6)
The upper stage of the household
optimization problem is then to choose Z
to maximize utility:
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 A consumer model for channel switching
behavior
Then, the demand function for household
produced commodities, Z, can be derived
as follows:
Z = z(S, P, Wo;K). (8)
Several consumer researchers have built
parallel to Becker’s (196ł) theory by
examining the time allocation of consumers in
the purchase process (e.g. Etgar, 1978;
Nickols and Fox, 1983; Strober and
Weinberg, 1977, 1980; Feldman and Hornik,
1981; Lusch et al., 1992). While using some
of the same antecedents, these models are
largely tangential to the current research.
Development of an extended model
Consumers often substitute buying a good
through one distribution channel with
another channel because of the relative
household time and effort involved (Darian,
1987; Eastlick and Feinberg, 1994).
According to Kelley et al. (1990), consumers
actually participate in the transaction
process at the retail level by acting as
‘‘partial employees’’. That is, consumers
trade-off time and energy to achieve better
quality or lower prices at the retail level (e.g.
self-service at Wal-Mart). Consumers are
willing to trade their time and effort in
exchange for a value differential. Other
retailers make other trades with consumer
time. For example, entertainment may be an
integral part of the shopping experience.
Many malls are increasing expenditures to
encourage customers to drive further and
stay longer within the mall. In a similar way,
many of today’s direct order catalogs are
designed for leisure reading and viewing,
with more than just direct ordering in mind
(Gehrt and Carter, 1992; Greene, 1984;
Shim and Mahoney, 1992). Also, many
Internet Web sites contain entertaining and
helpful content to encourage repeat visits and
create a desire of consumers to trade
whatever it is they get from other channels
to the Internet.
Although not separately modeled, Becker
(196ł) suggests that consumers obtain
process value from conducting household
activities in the form of psychic income.
Consumers obtain psychic income, or
pleasure, from the shopping experience.
Thus, consumers obtain utility from shopping
both in terms of utility from their purchases
and the pleasure of shopping. In order to
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International Journal of Retail & Distribution
Management Volume 30 . Number 4 . 2002 .
obtain these utilities, consumers input
shopping and transaction time, money, and
the use of capital, such as automobiles. The
goal of the rational consumer is to maximize
the utility from shopping subject to cost and
full income constraints. The cost function of
shopping is the opportunity cost of time, the
price of the product, the quantity of products,
and subject to some capital usage
(e.g. Deaton and Muellbauer, 1980).
The choice for a consumer to choose one
distribution channel over another can be
viewed as an optimization problem. Assuming
a two-channel system, one traditional retailer
(I) and one direct order marketer (j), it can be
shown that consumers will switch between
channels when the utilities derived from
using one channel relative to the costs
involved outweigh the same for an
alternative channel, subject to the full
income and capital constraints. Following
Becker’s logic, the utilities derived from
shopping at a traditional retailer versus a
direct marketer include the relative pleasure
from the shopping experiences, relative
prices and quantity purchased, and
differentials in the time involved in the
shopping process. These utilities are
maximized at a given income, wage rate,
and available capital, assuming the wage rate
as an opportunity cost of time (Becker,
196ł).
If capital is freely available or a low cost
viable substitute is available, the capital
constraint will not be considered in a
marginal decision. However, if there are
capital constraints on the shopping process
(e.g. lack of transportation to the store, lack of
access to a computer to shop on the
Internet) this is likely to have a large
differential effect. For simplicity, we assume
that there is no marginal effect of capital on
the choice of channels. Likewise, since full
income is relatively constant in both
circumstances, we can assume no marginal
effect of the full income variable except to the
extent that price and time usage have in
changing future behavior. For example, if a
consumer buys from a direct order marketer
and saves two hours of time, this time can
then be allocated to leisure or work. The
value of this time is taken into consideration
with the time costs associated with the
model.
Since consumer decisions are made at the
margin, we can model channel choice by
 A consumer model for channel switching International Journal of Retail & Distribution
behavior
Management Volume 30 . Number 4 . 2002 .

optimizing the marginal benefit subject to

costs. The relative marginal costs, RMC,
of

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Management Volume 30 . Number 4 . 2002 .

using one channel to the exclusion of the may perceive differing levels of risk in
other is: shopping
RMC = Q(Pi-Pj) + wage (Ti-Tj) (9)
given that the customer is buying Q number
of products at P price levels and inputting T
amount of time in the shopping process. The
first part of the equation, [Q(Pi-Pj)],
represents the direct money cost to the
consumer, while the second part,
[wage (Ti-Tj)], represents the indirect
opportunity cost of the consumer’s time.
Likewise, if we assume that the same
commodities are purchased through either
channel, the relative marginal benefit RMB
to the consumer can be shown as:
RMB = PIi – Pij. (10)
With the assumption of exogenous demand,
the only difference in benefit between the
distribution channels becomes the psychic
income or pleasure component PI from
shopping.
The indifference curve between the two
shopping channels can be constructed at a
point where the relative difference in the net
gain between the two channels is zero.
Thus, the consumers will be indifferent
between channel choice at:
(PIi – PIj) – [Q (Pi – Pj) +
wage (Ti – Tj)] = 0. (11)
Although this model provides a good start to
examining the process of distribution
channel choice, it is restrictive since the
purchased products are assumed to be
singular commodities. Furthermore,
although the shape of the utility function
(strictly quasi- concave) assumes a risk
adverse consumer, the previous model does
not allow differential risks between channels
to be considered. The model becomes more
accurate and practical by relaxing these
assumptions.
If we first relax the assumption that the
products are commodities, allowing for
product differences such as brands and
quality differences, we extend the benefit
side to include any differential perceptions
of value V and integrate this into the
indifference curve as follows:
[Q (Vi – Vj) + (PI I – PI j)] –
[Q (Pi – Pj) + wage (Ti – Tj)] = 0.
(12)
Research has indicated that the risk of a
purchase can be transferred to the retailer that
sells it (Dash et al., 1976; Hisrich et al.,
1972) and, more specifically, that customers
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through different channels (Akaah and While the theory of time allocation has been
Korgaonkar, 1988; Darian, 1987; examined in some depth and shown to be
Schiffman et al., 1976; Simpson and robust across situations, it needs further
Lakner, 1993; Van den Poel and Leunis, examination in the current context. Also,
1996). This risk can be modeled by further extensions are not limited to the ones
including a risk of loss of the price of a given above.
product through the
perceived probability of product failure, R, or
non-delivery:
[Q (Vi – Vj) + (PI I – PI j)] –
[Q (Pi – Pj) + wage (Ti – Tj) +
(Ri(Pi) – Rj(Pj))] = 0.

(13)
The assumption that only a single good is
bought on a shopping trip is somewhat
limiting. Instead, a comparative bundle of
goods, l.. .k, can be integrated to make the
model more realistic. Since we still assume
a single shopping trip for comparison, the
psychic income and opportunity cost
components do not change. These two
components denote the value or cost of the
transaction process as a whole, including
access time (e.g. travel time) and shopping
time. Thus, the resultant indifference curve
of integrating a basket purchase is:
[{Qk (Vik – Vjk)} + (PIi – PIj)] –
[{Qk (Pik – Pjk)} + wage (Ti – Tj) +
{(Rik(Pik) – Rjk(Pjk)})] = 0 (14)
where j represents a traditional retailer and i
a direct order marketer. The first
component in square brackets is the
relative marginal benefits and the second
the relative marginal costs to the consumer.
The relative marginal benefits include
differences in perceived value
{Qk (Vik – Vjk)} and psychic income
(PIi – PIj). The relative marginal
costs
include the cost of the goods {Qk (Pik –
Pjk)}, the opportunity cost of the
consumer’s time wage (Ti – Tj), and the
relative risk of loss
{Rik(Pik) – Rjk(Pjk)} .

Implications and discussion

There are two major sets of implications

from this model: theoretical and
managerial. The theoretical implications
arise from the extension of Becker’s (196ł)
model into the domain of partial household
production.

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The objective of this paper is to provide a objective. For this, depending on the product
basic model that can be adapted to shopping category and the individual, traditional
channel choice. Indeed, in the context of the
current e-tailing rage and the predicted
doom of traditional retailing, the introduction
of a general model to examine the channel
choice of consumers seems timely. In fact,
the more recent dot-bomb phenomena of e-
tailers going out of business, especially after
all the media hype, would seem a fertile
field in which to test this model. To date,
few if any models have been proposed that
allow for the empirical examination of
channel-switching behavior from the
consumer viewpoint.
The managerial implications for this model
are numerous, and include those discussed in
the following subsections.

A con#umer’# channe1-#witching
behavior i# inf1uenced by tradeoff#
One such tradeoff is between time and
money. Direct order marketing channels
offer the advantage of time savings (e.g.
traveling to and from the store and shopping
time), but a disadvantage concerning time
when a purchase needs returning. While
direct order shopping through the Internet
can often result in better prices, the total
cost including shipping and handling often
erase such money savings. This money
savings will diminish further when the
current moratorium on sales tax is lifted.
Nonetheless, in its current state, an
experienced Web consumer can also save
money if they take the time to use
comparison shopping bots (e.g.
MySimon.com) and to benefit from the
frequent Internet marketing practice of
offering substantial discounts to acquire new
Web customers. Though, as Web marketers
are pressed for showing profits from their
investors, their strategies are more likely to
follow their catalog channel competitors and
compete more on the basis of product
availability and convenience rather than
strictly on price.
Another tradeoff is between time and
psychic income. Regardless of the time or
money saved by shopping from the Web or
from catalogs, some consumers will continue
to desire a shopping experience that extends
beyond the utility of it. These consumers will
view shopping in some product categories as a
pleasurable, perhaps even a social, experience
where saving time is not their primary

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retailers may hold the advantage and place addressing by direct order marketers in
the direct order marketers in need of order to compete with their physical store
strategies for improved competition in this counterparts. For example, financial risks
area. However, for other more technology- can be reduced by promoting money-back
oriented consumers, pleasure derived from
shopping on the Internet may be greater
than from shopping through other
channels.
Some Internet marketers have
successfully used pleasure or psychic-
enhancing strategies such as community
building, content publishing, and special
events. Community building is where
customers and Web site visitors are
encouraged to interact and socialize with
each other through live chat and postings on
discussion boards about their special
interests and shopping experiences with
the community sponsor or marketer (e.g.
Expedia.com, Travelocity.com). Besides this
interactive content, some Web marketers
also provide additional content of special
interest to their target market. This content
publishing often provides a wealth of
information and expertise to assist the Web
shopper in making a more informed and
confident decision (e.g. Amazon.com,
LLBean.com). Another means of providing
psychic benefits to Web users is through
special events. For example, the music
Web site CDNow.com regularly promotes
live streaming concerts and interactive
chats with their popular music artists.
While certainly not physical, savvy Web
marketers are finding virtual ways to add
psychic benefits to the Web shopping
experience, many to their benefit over
other direct order marketing channel
competitors such as catalogs.
Though fortunately for catalogs, many have
added a Web site as a supplemental
channel and means of improving their
interaction with customers.

A con#umer’# channe1-#witching
behavior i# inf1uenced by perceived ri#k
While the risks of shopping can be
associated with traditional store retailers,
these risks are increased through channels
operating from a distance. Besides
perceived financial risk, other risks such as
performance, social, front- end time-loss,
back-end time-loss, and source risk, have
been proposed for situations of direct order
shopping (McCorkle, 1990).
Some, if not all, of these risks may need

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guarantees and their added value of Marketing, Vol. 9, 0ctober, pp. 151-7.
convenient and helpful live customer service
by phone or online chat. Performance risk
and back-end time-loss risk is reduced when
returns can be made at physical stores or
through physical partners. Front-end time-
loss risk is reduced with a clear presentation
of product inventory availability and
shipping/ delivery times. Source risk is
reduced with seals of approval by outside
organizations such as the Better Business
Bureau, BizRate, and TRUSTe; by
developing and supporting privacy policies
and permission-based marketing practices;
and with continued assurances and
technology for secure transactions and
safeguarding of personal data such as credit
card and order information. Many customers
perceive higher levels of security and
privacy violations from direct order
marketers (Easley et al., 1992; Garman,
1996; Laczniak et al., 199ł; Phelps and
Bunker, 2001; Sheehan, 1999).

The prob1em of channe1-#witching

behavior can be addre##ed through u#e
of mu1ti-channe1 marketing #trategie#
Because a consumer is likely to vary their
shopping behavior by channel, perhaps the
strongest implication of our extension of
Becker’s (196ł) model is that the greatest
success will flow to the retailer with the
greatest channel choice available. The retailer
with multiple channel options (e.g. physical
store, catalog, Web, and/or wireless), will be
the retailer that can best serve the consumer’s
need for communication of information and
distribution of goods and services. Channel-
switching behavior becomes less of a problem
for retailers providing multiple channels for
their customers and Becker’s model
provides a manner to understand and
predict this behavior.

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