Know-How Exchange : Student Questions

I'd probably start by selecting a few retailers who sell both online and offline, and see if their annual reports contain any useful information. Then I'd search for news articles in the trade press and perhaps Advertising Age about online/offline apparel sales.

Chances are that (a) any information about consumer attitudes vary by type of apparel/company/target audience (e.g., Victoria's Secret is probably different from Lands End, etc.), and (b) studies that measure and track those attitudes are probably proprietary and would not be available in public sources.

If you can find a company in your area that sells apparel both ways, maybe they would agree to share some information with you. You will need to narrow your topic anyway, so perhaps just looking at a single company would be a good idea regardless.

If you're buying clothes online you cannot try them on: you have to wait for shipping, then there's all that tedious "It's too big, small, wide, short" etc.,.

Contact a few major online and offline retailers and ask them for help: I suggest Nordstroms, Zappos, and JCPenny.

Monika,
I wonder at you wanting to discuss online *versus* in-store shopping. Because most consumers don't regard this as an either-or situation. That means it's a question that's harder for them to answer because they don't think of it that way.

However, there will be people who buy more online than they do in-store and vice-versa. The question is why they choose the former over the latter and vice versa. Because when it comes to attitudes to buying, clear cut answers are the last thing you'll find - which is why asking meaningful questions gets answers that are difficult to interpret. That your question would puzzle most people only makes the problem harder.

So: where do we go from here? Firstly ask your friends and family about your question. You will find preferences both ways, and these will form the guideline for your dissertation. As I say, there are no clear answers so looking for them isn't going to help you.

A few questions for them:
1) Why do you look for clothing online when you can't try it on?
2) Why buy from a shop when it's more expensive?
3) Do you shop online with your friends on a Saturday afternoon?
4) Anything else you have discovered for yourself!

Does this give you a few pointers?

For a literature review, there's a wealth of articles easily found online, including:
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/business/retailers-lure-online-shoppers-...
https://ideas.repec.org/p/dgr/rugsom/04f04.html
https://www.google.com/think/case-studies/offline-shoppers-who-research-onl...
https://infographicjournal.com/online-shopping-vs-offline-shopping/
https://www.wanderful.com/docs/Press-Release-Shopping-Behavior-Survey.pdf
Many of Paco Underhill's books

You might want to add the fact that many in store customers are looking at and trying on clothing and then (even while they are in the store) search the Internet for the best price. They use the brick and mortar store's resources and then buy online. It is a real problem for boutiques and large stores as well.

It may well start a tend of brick and mortar stores carrying exclusive lines that cannot be purchased online.