Online retailers are increasingly adopting the web showroom service to attract consumers to buy products online. However, this service may facilitate consumer webrooming behavior. Such behavior lead to a virtual channel in which consumers view web showrooms online but buy products at physical stores. This study aims to investigate the channel strategies for online retailers regarding whether to introduce web showrooms in the face of consumer webrooming behavior. To address this challenging issue, we develop a theoretical dual-channel retailing model under two market environments when the online channel and the offline channel are owned by a monopolistic retailer or two independent retailers, respectively. Our results show that the presence of consumer webrooming behavior is heavily dependent on the hassle cost of viewing web showrooms and the travel cost of visiting physical stores. Interestingly, when both costs are sufficiently large, more consumers exhibit webrooming behavior in the duopoly market than in the monopoly market. The results further show that it is beneficial for an online retailer to introduce web showrooms when consumer sensitivity to the travel cost is relatively low under both market environments. In particular, the monopolistic retailer benefits from the web showroom service by increasing its selling price, whereas the online retailer in the duopoly market gains benefits by inducing consumer switching behavior. Notably, when consumer sensitivity to the travel cost is relatively high, offering web showrooms in the duopoly market may increase the offline retailer’s profit but reduce the online retailer’s profit, which is counterintuitive.

在线零售商越来越多地采用Web陈列室服务来吸引消费者在线购买产品。但是，此服务可能会促进消费者的Webrooming行为。这种行为导致了一个虚拟渠道，在该渠道中，消费者可以在线查看Web陈列室，但可以在实体店购买产品。这项研究旨在调查在线零售商在面对消费者网络聊天行为时是否引入网络展示厅的渠道策略。为了解决这个具有挑战性的问题，当在线渠道和离线渠道分别由垄断零售商或两个独立零售商拥有时，我们在两种市场环境下开发了一种理论上的双渠道零售模型。我们的结果表明，消费者进行网络聊天的行为在很大程度上取决于浏览网络陈列室的麻烦成本和参观实体店的旅行成本。有趣的是，当两种成本都足够大时，双寡头市场中的消费者表现出的网络行为比垄断市场中的消费者更多。结果进一步表明，在两种市场环境下，消费者对旅行成本的敏感性相对较低时，对于在线零售商来说，引入网络展示厅是有益的。特别是，垄断零售商通过提高其销售价格而从Web陈列室服务中受益，而双寡头市场中的在线零售商则通过诱导消费者转换行为而获得收益。值得注意的是，当消费者对旅行成本的敏感性较高时，