SRIDHAR BALASUBRAMANIAN, RAJAGOPAL RAGHUNATHAN, AND VIJAY MAHAJAN 12 SRIDHAR BALASUBRAMANIAN is Associate Professor of Marketing, Department of Marketing, The Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC; e-mail: balasubs@bschool.unc.edu RAJAGOPAL RAGHUNATHAN is an Assistant Professor and VIJAY MAHAJAN is a Professor, Department of Marketing, McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin, TX; e-mail: aj.raghunathan@bus.utexas. edu and vijay.mahajan@bus.utexas.edu e present a conceptual framework that clarifies the utilities that con- sumers using a channel derive from both the purchase process and the pur- chased products, and the mutual influences between these process and prod- uct utilities. Drawing on interviews with customers, we examine how the following factors influence product and process utilities, and hence con- sumers’ choice and use of channels: (a) their economic goals, (b) their quest for self-affirmation, (c) their quest for symbolic meaning associated with the product and with the shopping process, (d) their quest for social interaction and experiential impact, and (e) their reliance on schemas and scripts for shopping.We examine how these factors may influence channel choice at the following three stages of the purchase process—forming a consideration set, choosing a product, and buying the product. Consumers may navigate between channels when they use distinct channels across these stages. Our analysis yielded implications for researchers examining consumer behavior in the multichannel environment and recommendations for marketing managers operating in that environment. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. and Direct Marketing Educational Foundation, Inc. JOURNAL OF INTERACTIVE MARKETING VOLUME 19 / NUMBER 2 / SPRING 2005 Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/dir.20032 W CONSUMERS IN A MULTICHANNEL ENVIRONMENT: PRODUCT UTILITY, PROCESS UTILITY, AND CHANNEL CHOICE