Willingness to Use Online Channel in Various Stages of the Services Buying Process

The change of the marketing channel in the purchase process is already widely described in the literature. However, the consumers' tendency to use remote channels at subsequent stages of purchase process is relatively rarely described. The aim of the article is to analyze the consumers’ tendency to use the online channel in the service buying process - at the pre-purchase, purchase, post-purchase and resignation stage. Quantitative research on a group of 1103 adult consumers was carried out at the end of 2015. Respondents were asked about the intention to use three channels (off-line, phone and online) for the services most often used by households (financial, telecommunications and personal transport services) at various stages of purchase. In this article, the author aimed to answer four research questions: RQ1. What is the frequency of use of the online channels of services distribution at each stage of the purchasing process? RQ2. What is the relative frequency of use online channels in the declarations of respondents? RQ3. What is the intention of use the online channel at particular stages of the purchasing process? RQ4. In which stages of the purchase occurs the greatest differences between declaration the use and declaration of intention to use online channel? The obtained results indicate that, apart from the information seeking phase (pre-purchase), consumers would most preferably use the on-line channel in the post-purchase service stage. The willingness to use the online channel at different stages also differentiates the characteristics of the respondents. Implementation of on-line channels outside the search phase should apply to the post-purchase phase.