Online Channel Integration: Creating Customer Value Online and its Implications for the Offline Channel
Type
dissertation project
Start Date
May 1, 2012
End Date
April 30, 2013
Status
scheduled
Keywords
Customer Value
Multichannel Management
Channel Synergies
Description
Marketing scholars as well as leading managers agree on the importance of harnessing the potential synergies that lie in the integration of the online and offline distribution channels. Although the interest in exploring various aspects of channel integration has increased during the last years, existing research has not focused on at least four different important aspects: First, marketing re-search and practice is still lacking a framework how firms can design synergies into their channels and how they can effectively hand off their customers from one channel to another. Second, little is known whether the creation of an integrated channel system actually increases the perceived cus-tomer benefits and whether these benefits translate into preferable customer reactions. Third, it has not yet been assessed whether actively managing and establishing integration strategies actually are a way to further increase the synergies between the online and the offline channels and whether online channel integration leads to higher sales in the online as well as physical stores. Fourth, the effect of integration strategies on different customer segments has not yet been analyzed. To investigate these research gaps, qualitative as well as quantitative research methods will be used. First, a unified classification of channel integration strategies will be developed by an extensive literature review. The resulting framework is validated with expert interviews and discussions of the framework in expert workshops. Second, a series of experiments will be conducted in cooperation with three companies and their customers to empirically test the hypothesized relationships. Since most multichannel customers use the online channel for search and the physical stores for purchase, the focus of this project lies in integration measures concerning the online store.
Member contributor(s)
Funder
Topic(s)
E-Commerce
Multichannel Management
Channel Choice Modeling
Method(s)
Experiments
Structural Equation Modeling (SEM)
Range
Institute/School
Range (De)
Institut/School
Division(s)
Eprints ID
211894