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This study aims to advance knowledge of channel integration, a key feature of omnichannel retailing, by investigating the role of specific touchpoints in delivering a consistent integration perception.

Quantitative methods were adopted, by testing a model built on the stimulus-organism-response framework. Data collection used a panel survey across the grocery and fashion sectors (1,031 and 739 consumers, respectively). An ordinary least squares regression with clustered standard errors was conducted, combined with a multiple correspondence analysis, followed by a mediation analysis.

This study identifies touchpoints relevant for channel integration perception and shows that they differ across product category and customer types (first time vs repeat customers). Furthermore, it pinpoints touchpoints that are directly and indirectly related to patronage intention, thereby exposing the mediating role of channel integration. By drawing on categorization theory, it discusses individual touchpoints’ contribution to channel integration perception, at general level and on different customer targets.

This study offers a new vision of channel integration perception that highlights touchpoints’ role. It contributes to the established channel integration quality framework by showing that integrated information is concerned not only with consistency of information across channels but also with the specific touchpoints through which such information is disseminated.

This study provides directly actionable managerial implications, by through strategic insights for customer journey and customer experience design/redesign and by offering a practical methodology for retailers to identify the touchpoints they can leverage to improve their customers’ channel integration perceptions – with consequences for patronage intention.

Although well documented for physical stores, consumer motives for buying apparel online have been poorly investigated. Drawing on the social exchange theory (SET), the authors tested a framework that relates time savings, effort savings and money savings to satisfaction, e-loyalty and e-word-of-mouth (e-WOM).

A cross-sectional, web-based survey was conducted in Canada during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Data were collected from 247 participants who made online clothing purchases and analysed using partial least-squares structural equation modelling. The reliability and validity of the measurement model were assessed, and the path coefficients of the structural model were estimated.

Money savings have a strong effect on e-satisfaction, which in turn determines e-loyalty and e-WOM. Time savings have also been found to influence e-satisfaction, whereas effort savings have no influence. Finally, the results indicate that e-satisfaction competitively mediates the relationship between money savings and both e-loyalty and e-WOM.

Utilising the SET, this study contributes to deepening the knowledge of online clothing purchase in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors provide a comprehensive view of the mechanisms through which time savings and money savings are the strongest drivers of customer satisfaction, which in turn influence customer loyalty and e-WOM when buying clothes online.