Multichannel Management Research Articles

Unlocking e-commerce potential: micro and small enterprises strike back in the food and beverage industry

PurposeThe recent pandemic period (COVID-19), while negatively impacting many companies, has contributed to the growth and adoption of online platforms such as marketplaces and e-commerce. This environment has led many companies, which previously acted only through offline channels, to adopt new technologies and online channels and develop new e-commerce strategies. Small and micro enterprises are most vulnerable due to their limited resources and lack of capabilities. For this reason, the main objective of this paper is to unveil the e-commerce implementation capabilities that micro and small enterprises should build and the challenges they must face when managing an e-commerce strategy.Design/methodology/approachThe authors adopted an inductive qualitative research design approach focused on multiple case studies. The firms operate in the food and beverage industry.FindingsThe findings identify several e-commerce implementation capabilities that micro and small enterprises operating in the food and beverage industry should build to manage e-commerce strategies. These are related to outsourcing management, multichannel management, time management, internal stock management and marketplace choice. Moreover, the paper identifies key e-commerce implementation challenges these firms must cope with. These regard distribution management, potential loss of control, fresh product management and lack of resources, time and capabilities.Originality/valueThis research shows that proper capacity management in the implementation of micro and small enterprises e-commerce strategies is critical to achieving efficient results and preventing challenges that threaten such strategies. The research offers guidelines and frameworks for micro and small enterprises to understand how to manage e-commerce and face its challenges.

The Civil Law Regulatory Path of Internet Rumor Governance in the Context of Big Data

Relying on the Internet, network rumors have the characteristics of fast spreading speed, great influence and strong harm, which will have a certain impact on people's production and life, therefore, they have also entered the vision of the government governance, but the delineation of the boundaries between the governance of network rumors and the protection of the freedom of expression has caused a lot of social controversy. At present, China's network rumor governance system faces legal dilemmas such as low legal status, legislative gaps, lagging legislation, fragmentation of the legal system, and the strong color of public law; China's network rumor governance system also faces practical dilemmas such as the difficulty of private remedies, and the impossibility of recovering the damaged reputation in a timely manner. Therefore, in order to better manage rumors, maintain the peace and stability of the country and society, and protect the immediate interests of the people, we should start from legislation and control rumors by law. Firstly, the definition of rumor should be clarified through legislation, secondly, the types and methods of punishment should be clarified through legislation, and finally, the legal system of Internet rumor management in China should be improved through multi-channel management of Internet rumors, so as to realize the grand goal of China under the rule of law.

Consumer rebates from e‐commerce platforms and multichannel management of third‐party sellers

The examined model includes a supplier selling goods through an online platform and an offline retailer. The examination explores how the platform's rebates to consumers alter the supplier's multichannel management and affect the retailer and consumers. A key model point is whether rebates make the supplier emphasize online or offline sales, which depends in turn on whether the platform or the supplier bears the rebate costs. Results indicate that greater rebates issued at the supplier's expense lead to emphasis on offline sales, for which double marginalization occurs. Such sales benefit the retailer, but hurt consumer surplus and social welfare.

Multi-Channel Management and Design: An Analysis of their Impact on Multi-Channel Conflict and Success

Despite the widespread use of multiple sales channels and the significant potential benefits and drawbacks associated with this strategy, relatively few studies have researched this topic. Therefore, this paper identifies and explores the impact of key mechanisms for multi-channel management (multi-channel instructions, incentives, and communication) and unique characteristics of multi-channel design (the number of sales channels, degree of sales channel overlap, and degree of vertical integration). Based on a large-scale empirical study, it shows that while these management mechanisms all ultimately serve to increase the success of a multi-channel strategy, they do so in different ways and with different strengths. Moreover, results indicate that the effectiveness of these mechanisms varies significantly depending on a company’s multi-channel design. For example, with a larger number of sales channels, the effectiveness of multi-channel instructions and multi-channel communication increases, whereas the effectiveness of multi-channel incentives decreases. Besides providing conceptual and empirical insights into the particularities of the use of multiple sales channels, this paper also gives practical guidance to managers on how to best handle a multi-channel system.

Strategic orientations, marketing capabilities and innovativeness: an adaptive approach

PurposeThis study aims to investigate marketing capabilities that represent the marketing mix from an adaptive perspective: brand management, customer relationship management, price management and multi-channel management. Also, this study identifies how adaptive marketing capabilities (AMCs) enrich superior innovativeness and speed-to-market regarding innovation orientation and marketing orientation as the two critical functions.Design/methodology/approachA questionnaire-based research was performed to test the proposed hypotheses. The data were collected from predominately marketing or research and development managers/senior specialists in 247 firms.FindingsStrategic orientations that cover market and innovation orientation facilitate a firm’s AMCs, positively affecting its innovativeness and speed-to-market. Also, AMCs mediate the relationship between strategic orientations, and innovativeness, and speed-to-market. Further, this study confirms the complementary association of AMC-related variables in enhancing firm innovativeness and speed-to-market.Research limitations/implicationsThis study is subject to the limitations inherent in survey design, particularly convenient sampling and single informants.Originality/valueThis study broadens understanding of dynamic capabilities theory by examining how marketing capabilities can be enhanced and examined from an adaptive perspective for firms. This study also presents a model for the potential relationships among strategic orientations, AMCs, innovativeness and speed-to-market.

Are e-books a different channel? Multichannel management of digital products

Are e-books a different channel? Multichannel management of digital products

User Experience Evaluation of Cross‐Channel Consumption: Based on Grounded Theory and Neural Network

With the rapid development of e‐commerce technology, cross‐channel consumption has become the mainstream mode of contemporary consumers. However, there are several problems of cross‐channel consumption such as inconsistency of online and offline channel information and service, disfluency of channel switching which have brought adverse effects on user experience. The question arises here as to what factors influence user experience and how to build a scientific and effective evaluation index system. Different from previous studies based on sellers, this paper used grounded theory to analyze and summarize the evaluation index system of user experience under cross‐channel consumption from the perspective of consumers. We summarized and refined four first level indexes which are “online platform attribute, offline entity attribute, channel switching attribute, and individual demand” and 13 second level indexes which are “platform operation, platform information, platform service, platform promotion, product quality, service quality, environment quality, channel consistency, channel switching cost, channel switching fluency, psychological expectation, personal interests and individual needs.” Then, we used BP neural network to build the evaluation model and trained and simulated the performance of the sample. The results show that the evaluation model has a good generalization ability and can effectively evaluate user experience under cross‐channel consumption. Finally, implications and limitations are also discussed. This study helps to enrich the theoretical research on user experience and consumer behavior. It also provides targeted basis for in‐depth analysis of cross‐channel consumption behavior, establishment of user experience evaluation index system, and improving user experience and multichannel management of physical stores.

Consumer Rebates from E-Commerce Platforms and Multi-Channel Management of Third-Party Sellers

This paper presents an examination of how the offering rebates to consumers from an e-commerce platform affects both pricing and multi-channel management of a third-party seller who distributes goods through the platform's online marketplace in addition to an independent offline retailer. The seller sells goods directly to consumers through the online channel, although it charges a wholesale price to the offline retailer. Online revenues are shared with the platform according to the royalty rate. We first consider a short-run model in which both royalty and rebate rates are given exogenously. When the platform issues consumer rebates at its own expense, greater rebates make the online channel more attractive not only to consumers, but also to third-party sellers. Consequently, an exogenous increase in the rebate rate makes the seller adjust its pricing to shift its profit center online, which benefits the online platform but hurts the offline retailer. By contrast, if consumer rebates are issued at the seller's expense, then the opposite occurs. That is, interestingly, greater rebates for online purchasing are beneficial to the offline retailer because the seller moves its profit center offline. Moreover, we address the long-run model in which the platform determines royalty and rebate rates endogenously. We show that a continuum of multiple equilibria exists with respect to these decisions, all of which produce an equal payoff for each firm. Lastly, we discuss how an e-commerce platform should utilize consumer rebates in a complementary way with its royalty rate decision in the face of demand uncertainty.

Reconceptualizing Integration Quality Dynamics for Omnichannel Marketing

Omnichannel marketing, the notion of seamless integration between channels to provide consistent service experience for customers, has become one of the most crucial aspects of multichannel management for companies in recent years. Although many companies have embraced omnichannel strategies, there remains a gap of understanding factors influencing integration quality (INQ) within all these channels. Drawing on omni and multi channel services research, this paper develops and validates the dimensions and sub-dimensions of omnichannel integration quality. This research further examines how the perceived INQ impacts cross-buying behavior and customer value in an omnichannel environment. This research is based on 20 in-depth interviews, two focus group discussions (n = 18) and 301 survey data from multichannel banking customers in Australia. PLS path modeling was used to test hypothesized relations and validate the hierarchical INQ model and its effects on outcome constructs. The findings of this research confirm that INQ is a hierarchical construct consisting of four primary dimensions and ten sub-dimensions. Furthermore, this research provides evidence of cross-buying intentions as a behavioral outcome of INQ, which acts as a partial mediator between INQ and perceived value.

Effects of Customer Relationship Management on Product Innovation in Nigeria. A Case Study of Xerox HS Nigeria Limited

Customers generally are regarded as king in every business and they should be treated as such. In doing so, an organization is expected to get close to them and treat them well. The study was carried out to determine the effects of customer relationship management on product innovation in Nigeria, with emphasis on Xerox H. S Nigeria Limited. The research design adopted was survey research. The population of the study consisted of 83 staff drawn from Lagos and Abuja Offices of the Company. Primary data were sourced through self-administered questionnaires, and the formulated hypotheses tested using Pearson Correlation (r) and multiple regression. The findings revealed that customer information management has significant effect on product innovation, and that there is a significant effect of customer value management on product innovation. Also, multi channel management have significant effect on product innovation. The study recommended among others that organizations make customer relationship management a priority so as to have adequate product innovation, also when designing and implementing a multi channel strategy, objectives and goals of internal and external parties affected by the multi channel approach should be considered.

A stochastic multi-channel revenue management model with time-dependent demand

Abstract E-commerce has seen rapid growth in recent years and many firms (e.g., airline companies) sell directly to their customers through different online channels or agents (e.g., Expedia, Ctrip, Qunar, elong) by paying different proportional fees. Besides the firm's revenue management decision of dynamically allocating its limited inventory to different demand classes, it may also get a different margin for selling the same product through different channels (at the same price). This paper examines the firm's optimal channel control strategy with combining its revenue management decision. We propose a multi-period multi-channel continuous-time model with time-dependent arrival rates. The market prices are different in different periods. The firm needs to decide the protection levels for all periods and the channel control strategy in each period. By developing a stochastic (Hamiltonian) channel control system and using the Maximum Principle, the optimal channel control rules are found and a threshold channel control policy is proposed. Based on the channel control policy, we show that there exist the unique optimal protection levels for all periods.

Is paid search overrated? When bricks-and-mortar-only retailers should not use paid search

While bricks-and-mortar-only retailers do not offer online purchasing, they often take advantage of multi-channel management strategies to reach consumers in a pre-purchase phase. We investigate whether paid search can increase the sales of brick-and-mortar retailers who promote their offers via an informational website. Although a sizeable one third of all retailers still trade without an online-shop, previous work has been silent about the effects of paid search for them. We make use of a randomized field experiment and an end-to-end tracking mechanism to investigate the cross-channel behavior of individual consumers. Our empirical results suggest that, whilst paid search increases the number of potential customers through enhancing the reach of marketing initiatives, store sales are not increased. We conclude that customers who search online to buy offline primarily use paid search as a navigational shortcut to the retailer’s website. Consequently, bricks-and-mortar-only retailers seeking to increase store purchases should approach paid search with caution.

How to Succeed with Multichannel Management

Citizens' use of e-government channels is considered key to achieving savings from the digitization of the public sector. Channel choice studies have found that citizens use multiple channels in a service encounter and e-government channels supplement, rather than replace traditional channels. This interplay between traditional and e-government channels remains to be explained. There is also a lack of empirical knowledge of how government organizations can apply findings from user studies and migrate citizens online while simultaneously reducing traffic through traditional channels. Therefore the authors present a detailed longitudinal case study of how public authorities collaborated to create a multichannel strategy for a mandatory online self-service application for single parents. After the strategy was carried out there was an increase in the use of the application and a substantial reduction in calls. The authors offer contributions to the channel choice literature and recommendations on multichannel management to practitioners.

Public Multichannel Management – an Integrated Framework of Off- and Online Multichannel Government Services

Government institutions have introduced multichannel environments over time following trends and technological innovations. These public multichannel environments often neglect specific channel characteristics and potentials and thus miss the opportunity to make full use of a strategic channel integration and combination with a focus on customer value creation. This study offers a systematic approach to establish an integrated public multichannel system not only taking into account user preferences, habits and their environment, but also the respective channel issuer and the characteristics of channels and public interfaces. Against this background, the study presents a systematic approach to expand services and channels according to their capacities, and provides academics and practitioners with a framework on public multichannel strategies.

Towards project communication management patterns

The paper aims at defining project communication management pattern basing on characteristics of patterns defined in other disciplines like: design patterns in software engineering, knowledge management patterns, enterprise architecture management patterns, enterprise architecture patterns for multichannel management, or project management patterns. All these established patterns share some common concepts and elements but are devoted to different fields and structures of activities and specific problems. The definition of project communication management pattern proposed in this paper is an attempt of adaptation of the existing pattern concepts to the characteristics and nature of communication management and its needs.

Omnichannel strategy and the distribution of public services in Spain

There are numerous benefits linked to application of e-Government, both for public organizations (greater efficiency, costs savings, etc.) and for citizens (accessibility, availability, etc.). These have brought about a generalized commitment of most governments to its implementation.Although the population usually tends to be very satisfied with these new technological products, their adoption rates have stabilized. At the same time, the levels of use of traditional interaction channels have remained the same or, depending on the aim, have even increased. The main reason for this is, perhaps, to be found in citizens seeing these new channels as a supplement to traditional channels and not as an alternative, which can substitute them.In order to achieve a generalized acceptation and use of e-Government, it is necessary to start out from knowing the citizens’ needs. The marketing field has proposed different strategies to respond to this challenge. These range from multichannel management to multichannel marketing and an omnichannel experience.This work presents the current situation of the development of e-Government in Spain, showing the real applicability and degree of efficacy of the previously mentioned strategies to increase the citizens’ rate of use of e-Government, compared to traditional management channels.

From research to purchase: an empirical analysis of research-shopping behaviour in the insurance sector

Though almost every insurer provides an integrated solution for online product research and purchase for existing and potentially new customers, there is still a significant percentage of customers turning into research-shoppers, a practice of using one channel for products search and another for purchase. This trend is visible from the channel usage statistics: according to various studies, while more than half of the customers worldwide use the insurers own website for product research, only a minor percentage of them stays there for purchase purposes. The preferred purchase channel often remains the one that enables personal contact to the sales person. This situation is mostly due to the high complexity of the insurance products. In addition, insurance products belong to the category of experience goods, where the evaluation of the product price and characteristics is difficult and can be based only upon previous experience, e.g. after experiencing a claim. While channel switch might lead to higher profit since multichannel customers were found to spend more, the change of the insurer is a serious threat. In this paper we address this issue and analyse the research-shopper phenomenon in the insurance industry. We investigate which customer and policy characteristics influence the research-shopping behaviour in terms of duration from research conducted via an online channel to purchase conducted using offline channels. Our empirical study is based on a sample of approximately 10 000 research-shopper customers of a large Swiss insurance company across the three insurance products: motor, household/liability and travel insurance. The obtained results show that there are several customer characteristics that have an effect over the duration to purchase and that these characteristics differ across different products. Our findings are relevant to academics and practitioners alike and are important for multichannel management and better understanding of the customer journey.

Citizen Relationship and Grievance Management System (CiR&GMS) through Multi-Channel Access for e-Government Services

Citizens are demanding greater access to interaction with government through their preferred channels or devices. The private sector uses different channels for their services, citizens except same level of services from the public sector. Therefore public sector needs to focus on creating multiple delivery channels (Traditional such as face to face, Telephone and Modern channels such as Website, E-mail, SMS), so that citizens can have ‘channels of choice', depending on specific needs, demands and preferences in order to increase citizens' participation and satisfaction. For this reason, the paper's purpose is 1) To understand multi-channel architecture, Integration, Management and its Strengths & Weakness 2) To develop a frame work for Citizen Relationship and Grievance Management System (CiR&GMS) for a single view 3) By applying proposed framework, To identify what types of channels are providing to access public services at National, State and Local level governments in India as a case study 4) To find out challenges and issues in implementation of multi-channel service delivery. The key findings of the case study are: a) There is no declining in providing traditional channels after introducing modern channels b) Many departments are offering mixed channels c) Usage of Mobile/SMS, Social media and Wi-Fi hotspots based channels are in initial stage d) t-Government channel is not yet initiated in any department e) Multi-channel integration and management is not yet initiated by many departments, these departments are managed channels as separate silos. The proposed framework may provide some guidance to the decision and policy makers in the public sector. However, such initiatives have many challenges to the developing countries like India.

Interplay between Social Media and Traditional Media: A Study in the Motion Picture Industry

Multiple media have been widely employed by marketers to promote brands, but previous literature documents different and opposing results in terms of how media interaction affects business outcomes. This paper extends the multichannel management literature by examining the interplay between traditional media advertising and social media marketing and how product appeal moderates this interaction. We first develop a stylized analytical model to show that traditional media advertising is more likely to complement social media marketing for narrow appeal products, but is more likely to substitute social media marketing for broad appeal products. Then, we empirically test this analytical result in the motion picture industry using social media data collected from Facebook and traditional advertising expenditure data from Kantar Media. The empirical results lend support to our central hypothesis. This study provides a theoretical explanation that reconciles the mixed results in the multichannel marketing literature and offers managerial implications for channel coordination decisions.

An Efficient Secure Multichannel Traffic Management Scheme in 2.4 GHz Home Automation Network with IoT Functions

A home automation system integrates electrical devices in a house with each other. In this paper, an efficient secure multichannel traffic management scheme for wireless home automation networks with IoT (Internet of Things) functions is proposed. The mechanism includes a channel resource optimization scheme by the centralized channel assignment algorithms and an intrusion detection scheme for security enhancement with the traffic management. We evaluated the performance of the mechanism by using the wireless data measured on real wireless home networks. The simulation results show that the scheme can effectively manage the multi-channel status of the networks and detect the intrusion attacks, which improve the overall network performance.