Brick‐and‐mortar and E‐commerce

Retail places have been undergoing a rapid change in the past decade. Both places and consumers have been transitioning from the traditional brick-and-mortar stores into the digital realm of online stores. Place has been regarded as the most important element of retail marketing mix. Therefore, the switch from the offline to the online environment implies a fundamental change. The boundary between physical and online is becoming more and more blurry and consumers no longer view physical stores as a separate entity from their online counterparts. Naturally, it is not only the place itself that has changed but also the consumers’ perceptions of and relationship to places. The way in which consumers react to retail places and the emotions and affections that these places arouse in the consumers is affected by these changes. With the advancement of technology, tangible cues in brick-and-mortar stores are complemented with virtual communication that consumers obtain through their smartphones. The ways in which consumers connect to both physical and virtual places will transform their experience as well as the outcome of their store visit. This transition from the physical to online is challenging our understanding and conceptualization of place as we know it. In this chapter, we dive deep into the conceptual foundation of places. We argue that place encompasses much more than a mere physical presence and in fact spans far beyond the physical into the intangible digital realm. We provide a conceptual framework for understanding these multichannel places and how consumers form connections, links, and bonds with retail places in both physical and online environments. We illustrate our theoretical arguments by using examples based on empirical data collected in Finland in December 2018. The data includes consumer perspectives on both physical and online stores of four well-known retailers operating in the Finnish market (Iittala, Ikea, Pentik, Stockmann).