Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which customers evaluate inferior product presentations on a local shopping platform based on the retailer (small and medium-sized enterprise [SME] vs retail chain).

Design/methodology/approach

The authors conducted a between-subject online study (N = 728) with a 2 (SME vs retail chain) x 2 (high vs low-quality product presentation) between-subject experimental design. The authors conducted several analyses of variance to analyze the hypotheses and analyses of covariance for a mediating effect.

Findings

This study's results show that customers tend to overlook inaccuracies from a retail chain more often than they overlook inaccuracies from SME retailers. The authors show that the perceived competence of the retailer mediates the impact of the retailer's quality on customer purchasing intentions, not only for the presented product but also for the retailer itself.

Practical implications

Based on this study's results, the authors give implications for retailer cross-channel strategies and hint at the importance of emphasizing the retail size.

Originality/value

This paper provides important contributions to the literature on resource-advantage theory by explaining that consumers perceive quality differences within product presentations on online shopping platforms differently with regard to retail chains vs SME retailers. Moreover, the information processing theory helps to provide a theoretical foundation concerning differences in online store quality (via engineered low- vs high-quality product presentations in this study).

中文翻译：

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在在线产品展示的背景下，客户对中小企业零售商和零售连锁店的能力是否有不同的评价？

目的

本文的目的是探讨顾客在基于零售商（中小型企业 [SME] 与零售连锁店）的本地购物平台上评价劣质产品的程度。

设计/方法论/途径

作者进行了一项受试者间在线研究 ( N  = 728)，采用 2（中小企业与零售连锁店）x 2（高质量与低质量产品展示）受试者间实验设计。作者进行了多次方差分析来分析中介效应的假设和协方差分析。

发现

这项研究的结果表明，与忽视中小企业零售商的错误相比，客户更容易忽视零售连锁店的错误。作者表明，零售商的感知能力调节了零售商质量对顾客购买意向的影响，不仅对于所展示的产品，而且对于零售商本身。

实际影响

根据这项研究的结果，作者给出了对零售商跨渠道策略的启示，并暗示了强调零售规模的重要性。

原创性/价值

本文通过解释消费者对在线购物平台上产品展示的质量差异的感知对于零售连锁店和中小企业零售商来说是不同的，为资源优势理论的文献做出了重要贡献。此外，信息处理理论有助于提供有关在线商店质量差异的理论基础（通过本研究中设计的低质量与高质量产品展示）。