Positive or negative spillover? The influence of online channel satisfaction on offline channel adoption

The existing literature shows that customers' satisfaction with a retailer's old channels can increase their acceptance of the retailer's new channels. However, high customer satisfaction may trigger a disconfirmation effect, resulting in negative spillover when e-retailers introduce offline stores. Based on theories of global versus local processing, this study aims to investigate how customers' satisfaction with online stores influences their acceptance of newly added offline stores by considering the synergic effects of brand trust and negative disconfirmation. After conducting a secondary data analysis and three lab experiments, our results indicate that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between customers' satisfaction with online stores and their acceptance of newly added offline stores. In addition, product category differences weaken the positive spillover effects of online satisfaction. Channel task differences simultaneously strengthen the positive spillover effects and weaken the negative spillover effects of online satisfaction.