Clicks and Mortar: Balancing Brick and Mortar Business Strategy and Operations with Auxiliary Electronic Commerce

Abstract

Balancing business strategy and operations between electronic commerce and brick and mortar channels (‘clicks and mortar’) is an ongoing challenge for many businesses. A group of traditional ‘brick and mortar’ firms were examined in order to understand how they balance strategy and operations between electronic commerce and traditional (brick and mortar) business channels. Results of the study indicated several distinct approaches to achieving this balance. Most of these approaches belie the idea that it is uniformly beneficial to deploy electronic commerce to mirror all of a firm's primary value chain activities. Instead, the study indicated that firm involvement with electronic commerce is often best minimized for the sake of successful business strategy and operations. Despite the necessarily limited and auxiliary role of electronic commerce for traditional firms, it still can help in supporting these firms' business to consumer operations in some surprising ways.