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1. Introduction
Whether a business should retain its existing business models or adopt a new and probably less proven business model is a crucial strategic question in today's fast-changing business environment. Businesses are motivated to establish new channels to reach more potential customers for larger revenue income (Neslin et al., 2006; Weinberg et al., 2007). Among various business models that have emerged, online to offline (O2O) deserves our attention as the model integrates channels of very different nature. Whereas offline channels feature intensive interaction with customers, online channels excel in reaching massive customers at low costs. Despite there has been a surge of academic articles exploring O2O in recent years, scholars have not yet arrived at a strong consensus about the definition of O2O. Some existing definitions of O2O focused only on features of online channels (e.g. Cao and Liu, 2015; Sett et al., 2020), whereas some definitions emphasized offline characteristics such as customer experience at stores (e.g. Chi et al., 2015; Hsieh, 2017). Vague definitions are common in O2O papers (see Appendix). For example, the difference between e-marketing and a simple definition of O2O, i.e. driving people from online to offline, is rather unclear. Lack of emphasis on online payment cannot distinguish O2O implementation from online catalogs. Inadequate attention to high-quality offline experience also cannot justify why offline channels should be integrated into online channels. This type of vague definition creates theoretical confusion and difficulties in evaluating expected benefits of the model.
In this paper, to justify the emerging O2O as a valid, new model, we use a combined approach of Tatarkiewicz's (1980) and Nickerson et al.'s (2013) to first find differentiae specifica of O2O, and subsequently integrate the differentiae specifica to create a definition of O2O which is distinctive from other relevant business models and initiatives. The differentiae specifica of O2O are conceptual dimensions that distinguish O2O from other similar concepts, and the identified differentiae specifica of O2O include directional integration from online to offline channels, information exchange, online ordering, locality and offline experience. A customer journey can be divided into three stages, namely the pre-purchase stage, the purchase stage and the post-purchase stage (Lemon and Verhoef, 2016). Information exchange and online ordering are related to the...