How the Roles of Internet Affect Successful Multichannel Retailing? ---The Exploratory Analysis from America

More retailers are now incorporating the Internet as a channel to their existing operations and becoming multichannel retailers. However, not all multichannel retailers are successful in their attempts and even some otherwise successful traditional retailers have failed to capitalize on the Internet as a retail channel. This paper explores the various multichannel strategies of some American prominent retailers in an attempt to identify key success factors in the incorporation of the Internet as a distribution channel. This exploratory analysis concludes with some managerial implications on the use of the Internet as an element of a retailers’ multichannel strategy