The category of organic diapers is a particularly good fit for our study
for the following reasons. First, disposable baby diapers are a frequently
bought productwith a relatively high buyer involvement. Therefore,we
can reasonably expect the offline brand-level factors to exert substantial
influence on the online brand-level outcomes. Second, baby diaper
products are standardized; that is, the national brands sold on
OrganicKids.com are no different from those sold offline in terms of
product features. This makes the dataset suitable for investigating
multichannel influences. Third, organic products represent about 4% of
total U.S. retail revenue (Greene, 2013), demonstrating typical specialty
niche tendencies, that is, their appeal to a small segment of a larger market.
Hence, the results of this study can readily be generalized to other
niche categories with different prominent attributes.