Designing Adaptive Nudges for Multi-Channel Choices of Digital Services : A Laboratory Experiment Design

Channel-switching, cross-channel free-riding, and research shopping is causing problems for companies offering multiple channels. Either customers could choose a channel that is more expensive for the company or they inform themselves in one channel but switch to a competitor for the final purchase. We aim to influence channel choice by using the recently proposed IS concept of digital nudging. In particular, we leverage the nudges of social norms and perceived risk in the online channel. In addition to this concept, we propose that the individual context of the user, like gender or personality, has to be incorporated as a moderator by designing customer specific (i.e. adaptive) nudges. To test these hypotheses, we outline an experiment design for a lab experiment and show how multi-channel choices can be influenced with design interventions in the form of nudges. As previous studies have only tested static nudges, we contribute to existing research by enhancing the nudge theory to adaptively consider user characteristics. Moreover, we apply the nudge theory to the new context of multi-channel choices. Finally, we provide guidance for practitioners on designing their own online channels.