Multichannel in a complex world

The proliferation of devices and channels has brought new challenges to just about every organisation in delivering consistently good customer experiences and effectively joining up service provision with marketing activity, data and content. A good multichannel strategy and execution is increasingly becoming essential to marketers and customer experience professionals from every sector. This report seeks to identify the key issues, challenges and opportunities that surround multichannel and provide some best practice insight and principles on the elements that are key to multichannel success. As part of the research for this report, we spoke to six experienced customer experience and marketing practitioners from large organisations across different sectors. In Multichannel Marketing: Metrics and Methods for On and Offline Success, Akin Arikan (2008) said: ‘Because customers are multichannel beings and demand relevant, consistent experiences across all channels, businesses need to adopt a multichannel mind-set when listening to their customers.’ It was clear from the companies interviewed for this report that it remains challenging for many organisations to maintain consistency across so many customer touchpoints. Not only that, but the ability to balance consistency with the capability to fully exploit the unique attributes of each channel remains an aspiration for many. The proliferation of devices and digital channels has added complexity to customer journeys, making issues around the joining up of customer experience and the attribution of value of key importance to many. Whilst senior leaders within the organisations spoken to seem to be bought in to multichannel, this buy-in was not always replicated across the rest of the organisation and did not always translate into a cohesive multichannel strategy. A number of companies were undertaking work around customer journey mapping and customer segmentation, using a variety of passive and actively collected data in order to identify specific areas of poor customer experience and create action plans for improvement. Others were undertaking projects using sophisticated tracking and tagging technologies to develop an understanding of the value and role of specific channels and to provide better intelligence to the business on attribution that might be used to inform future investment decisions. A consistent barrier to improving customer experience is the ability to join up many different legacy systems and data in order to provide a single customer view and form the basis for delivery of a more consistent and cohesive multichannel approach. Whilst there remain significant challenges around multichannel, there are some useful technologies allowing businesses to develop better insight into customer motivation and activity. Nonetheless, delivery of seamless multichannel experience remains a work-inprogress for many

Multichannel integration evidence from the States and a review of the field

Members of the Henley Centre for Customer Management requested a report on the status of multichannel marketing. The focus of the research examines best practice examples from the United States and a detailed review of the field. The research was conducted over the summer of 2012 and identified over 240 quality articles for inclusion in the review. Using systematic review methodology a number of key themes and respective indicators emerged from the field. Results of the study identified common multichannel platforms, tools that assist management in determining high-quality multichannel decisions, features of consumer behaviour, successful investment decision-making processes, channel optimisation and a review of consumer expectations of a multichannel marketing world

Orchestration of the Marketing Strategy under Competitive Dynamics

Constructing suitable marketing strategy and implementing it effectively is an art and science both like orchestration of a symphony. The discussion in this paper blends this analogy with the science of marketing demonstrating the levels of strategy development in a competitive marketplace. The paper presents the marketing-mix in contemporary context and argues that performance of a marketing firm can be maximized, when a firm develops a creative marketing strategy and achieves marketing strategy implementation effectiveness. The discussion in the paper reveals that marketing managers of different levels simultaneously operate within the firm and perceive the need for strategy development with varied preferences. A consequence of this is development of robust strategies and their effective implementation which, in turn, leads to increased market performance. Thus, it is important for researchers to investigate various strategy integration perspectives and this paper provides guidance by reviewing the existing literature.Marketing strategy, strategy integration, marketing-mix, customer value,strategy implementation, market competition, risk factors, brand building, customer centric strategy, routes to market

Exploring Cross Channel Dissynergies in Multichannel Systems

In this paper, the authors propose that in a multichannel environment, evaluative conflicts (dissynergies) between service channels exist. Building on status quo bias theory, they develop a model which relates offline channel satisfaction to perceptions about a new self-service channel. Data were collected from 639 customers of a German bank currently using offline investment banking. Results of structural equation modeling show that offline channel satisfaction reduces the perceived usefulness and enhances the perceived risk of the online channel. These inhibiting effects represent a status quo bias. The two perceptions fully mediate between offline channel satisfaction and intention to use the new self-service channel. Trust in the bank shows both adoption-enhancing effects and an adoption-inhibiting effect. Finally, the negative relationship between offline channel satisfaction and perceived usefulness is significantly stronger for men, for older people, and for less experienced Internet users. This study has both theoretical and managerial relevance as it helps to understand consumer behavior in multichannel environments and provides implications for the design of multichannel service strategies

Business process management tools as a measure of customer-centric maturity

In application of business process management (BPM) tools in European commercial sectors, this paper examines current maturity of customer centricity construct (CC) as an emerging dimension of competition and as a potential strategic management direction for the future of business. Processes are one of the key components of transformation in the CC roadmap. Particular departments are more customer orientated than others, and processes, customer-centric expertise, and approach can be built and utilized starting from them. Positive items within a current business process that only involve minor modification could be the basis for that. The evidence of movement on the customer-centric roadmap is found. BPM in European telecommunications, banking, utility and retail sector supports roadmap towards customer-centricity in process view, process alignment and process optimization. However, the movement is partial and not flawless, as BPM hasn’t been inquired for supporting many of customer-centric dimensions

IMC customer-based perception: strategic antecedents and consequences on post-purchase customer behaviour

Last decades Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) have been mainly analysed from a managerial perspective, overlooking the customer opinion. Thus, this research studies IMC customer-based perception, its strategic antecedents and consequences on post-purchase customer behaviour (satisfaction, word-of-mouth recommendations, and repurchase intention), from a multi-country perspective. The structural equation modelling and multi-group analysis are based on the customers´ survey data in Belarus and Spain. The results suggest that technology orientation positively affects IMC, and, customer orientation does not. IMC positively affects customer satisfaction, which in turn positively impacts on WOM and repurchase intention. WOM does not influence on repurchase intention. IMC directly affects WOM and repurchase intention in Spain and does not in Belarus, which is the significant country difference

A Decision Model for E-commerce-enabled Partial Market Exit

Struggling retail chains often try to recover profitability by closing some of their stores. The challenge in this strategy lies in determining how many stores to close, as store exit has implications for both the customers and the supply chain. After a store closes, its customers are lost forever to the competition, unless there is a surviving open store nearby or an electronic alternative such as an e-store. From the supply chain perspective, after a store closes, its supporting regional distribution center is left with less business, and thus reduced viability. This paper develops a decision support model to study the profitability of alternative retail network structures by varying the proportion of stores that are closed, the average price sensitivity of demand, the price difference between the online store and the traditional retailers, and customer retention rates

Critical review of the e-loyalty literature: a purchase-centred framework

Over the last few years, the concept of online loyalty has been examined extensively in the literature, and it remains a topic of constant inquiry for both academics and marketing managers. The tremendous development of the Internet for both marketing and e-commerce settings, in conjunction with the growing desire of consumers to purchase online, has promoted two main outcomes: (a) increasing numbers of Business-to-Customer companies running businesses online and (b) the development of a variety of different e-loyalty research models. However, current research lacks a systematic review of the literature that provides a general conceptual framework on e-loyalty, which would help managers to understand their customers better, to take advantage of industry-related factors, and to improve their service quality. The present study is an attempt to critically synthesize results from multiple empirical studies on e-loyalty. Our findings illustrate that 62 instruments for measuring e-loyalty are currently in use, influenced predominantly by Zeithaml et al. (J Marketing. 1996;60(2):31-46) and Oliver (1997; Satisfaction: a behavioral perspective on the consumer. New York: McGraw Hill). Additionally, we propose a new general conceptual framework, which leads to antecedents dividing e-loyalty on the basis of the action of purchase into pre-purchase, during-purchase and after-purchase factors. To conclude, a number of managerial implementations are suggested in order to help marketing managers increase their customers’ e-loyalty by making crucial changes in each purchase stage

B2B customer experience factors: understanding the relationship with SME customers – interim report

As part of the 2014 programme, our members asked us to extend the research done in 2013 (“Measuring Customer Satisfaction And Understanding Customer Effort In A B2B Context” - Tony Harrington and Andrew Bryan) to incorporate the SME customer sector. This project was set up to explore customer experience factors in the SME segment and to address a number of questions:- What are the most important factors that contribute to the customer experience from both the supplier’s and the SME customer’s perspectives? From the customer’s perspective, what about the relationship with the supplier requires the ‘most’ or ‘least’ effort and what changes do customers suggest? Where a customer has both a personal and a business relationship with the supplier, how does this impact their views? The approach was to develop an online survey for completion by SME customers and their supplier. Initially, seven companies and the Henley SME Forum volunteered to participate in the research. However, it proved to be extremely difficult to go from agreement to be involved to actually getting survey responses and, in the event, the survey achieved the following result:- A good response was achieved from 2 companies with around 40 SME responses for each company. A poor response was achieved from 1 company and from the SME Group so their data is currently of limited value. There were other companies that would still like to participate and there are 3 offers to participate at a later date. Analysis of the responses showed that useful conclusions could be made from the data collected so far but that it would be more valuable if more companies were persuaded to participate in the future. As a result, this report has been prepared as an interim statement of what has been learnt and to provide specific feedback to the participating companies. With member’s permission, further responses will be sought at a later date to refine the learning and provide feedback to more companies. This report presents the results of analysis from the survey on a company-by-company basis. Most of the data is only relevant at company level but consolidated results are shown where possible. The results from the analysis of responses lead to a number of initial conclusions. SME companies look to their suppliers to deliver against their promises in a responsive, consistent and proactive manner. Their priority is to have their problems solved in a timely manner. Relationship factors are more important in the B2B relationships between large companies than for SME’s. The SME customer is much more interested in just having the service performed with a minimum of fuss and doesn’t really want to develop a relationship. Questions about customer effort (or the ease of doing business) are as valuable in the SME segment as in any other in terms of identifying opportunities for improvement. Businesses should consider whether their SME customers might also be a customer in their personal home life. If so, they should be aware that this will have an effect on their satisfaction – and could be either positive or negative