Author: Jason Chan, Yaqiong Wang, and Xi Chen

Research Title: The Role of Physical Stores in the Digital Age: Quasi-Experimental Evidence
from Product Level Analysis
Respondents and Location: The participants of this study were 20,000 households from
different sale tracts in the three major cities of China: Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing.
Sampling Technique: Stratified sampling
Findings: One of the findings suggested the positive impact of offline stores, providing much-
needed guidance for retailers in terms of effective offline channel expansion to complement their
online channel.
Research Gaps: Little is known about the dynamics of the offline-online consumer behavior in
retail markets beyond the western world. The researchers noticing this gap, studied the impact of
newly open stores of a large Chinese retailer on the online sales of customers living near these
stores.