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1. Introduction
In recent years, the dynamics of e-commerce has been changing. More consumers use the Internet for shopping by using various devices in the purchasing process, for example, before, during and after their online purchase. Advances in mobile technology and its adoption by many consumers have rendered it essential for firms to redesign interaction and service delivery features to achieve optimum online user experience. Survival in today’s competitive e-commerce environment where the competitior is only one click away means that firms have to find ways to provide customers with a unique experience much more than low prices. Poor online customer experience accounts for the loss of 24 per cent of the annual online revenue, which equates to more than $50bn lost in the USA and £14bn lost in the UK yearly (Econsultancy, 2011). E-commerce companies have recognized the need to focus on providing a compelling shopping experience.
There has been considerable increase and shift in online shopping behavior changes as customers have started using Internet-enabled multi-devices (Wagner et al., 2013). Companies are forced to compete today in an environment that deals with diverse online channel formats, including e-commerce, m-commerce and social media Web sites. For example, consumers view the Facebook profiles of companies, use their smartphones to visit the companies’ Web sites and also use their computers to visit the e-commerce sites at different times. Online experience of the customer, thus, includes every point of contact (social media, Web site, apps) that customer chooses to use to interact with the firm. Contemporary social Web or social online networks have provided the opportunity to gain access to a diversity of customers viewpoints and ideas for companies to foster innovation (Oinas-Kukkonen and Oinas-Kukkonen, 2013). Interactions across multiple online channels, between customers and between firms are important to create a holistic online shopping experience. For instance, Amazon customers can post questions about a product, and another customer who owns the product can answer the question. Similarly, customers can interact with sellers and also Amazon simultaneously. This current study aims to bring together relevant literature from multi-channel retailing, services marketing and e-commerce to examine the role of synergy and complementarity among social and commercial electronic channels and their effects on online shopping behavior. Based on extensive review...