From Multi-Channel Retailing to Omni-Channel Retailing: Introduction to the Special Issue on Multi-Channel Retailing☆
Introduction
Retailing has changed dramatically in the last two decades due to the advent of the online channel and ongoing digitalization. In specific retail markets, the online channel has become very dominant and can be considered a disruptive development (Christensen and Raynor 2003). An example is the travel industry with many new online players, such as BOOKING.COM, EXPEDIA and TRIPADVISOR, inducing a shake-out among traditional travel intermediaries. In other industries such as food-retailing, this impact has been less disruptive. Still, many retailers’ business models have been affected (Sorescu et al. 2011) as the retail mix has changed and their customers are behaving differently due to these developments.
To counter these developments, many retailers have initiated multi-channel strategies. These strategies at first mainly involved the decision as to whether new channels should be added to the existing channel mix (e.g., Geyskens et al., 2002, Deleersnyder et al., 2002). This decision pertains to traditional brick-and-mortar players, as well as to new online players, who face the question of whether they should be present offline as well (Avery et al. 2012). The scope of multi-channel retailing has, however, been broadened by considering issues such as the management of customers across channels and the integration of the retail mix across channels (e.g., Neslin et al. 2006). We are now moving to a new phase in multi-channel retailing. In recent years, we have observed a further digitalization in marketing and retailing with specific challenges (Leeflang et al. 2014). More specifically, with the dawn of the mobile channel, tablets, social media, and the integration of these new channels in online and offline retailing, the retail landscape continues to change. The popular press is suggesting that we are moving from a multi-channel to an omni-channel retailing model (Rigby 2011). Brynjolfsson, Hu, and Rahman (2013, p. 23; italics added) argue: “In the past, brick-and-mortar retail stores were unique in allowing consumers to touch and feel merchandise and provide instant gratification; Internet retailers, meanwhile, tried to woo shoppers with wide product selection, low prices and content such as product reviews and ratings. As the retailing industry evolves toward a seamless “omni-channel retailing” experience, the distinctions between physical and online will vanish, turning the world into a showroom without walls”. Surprisingly, the movement to omni-channel retailing has heretofore not been conceptualized as well, despite its growing importance in practice.
Observing the stronger focus on multi-channel retailing in the last decade and the ongoing research in multi-channel retailing (see Neslin et al., 2006, Neslin and Shankar, 2009 and Verhoef 2012 for overviews), with the support of editor Shankar Ganesan we initiated this special issue on multi-channel retailing and customer touchpoints in 2012. With customer touchpoints we mean an episode of direct or indirect contact with a brand or firm (incl. retailers) (e.g., Baxendale, Macdonald and Wilson this issue, Court et al. 2009). We received 55 submissions for this special issue, signaling the large interest in this topic among retailing researchers.
As discussed above, multi-channel retailing is moving to omni-channel retailing. Given the importance of this development, we believe an initial in-depth discussion of this movement is warranted. We therefore begin our introduction to this special issue by discussing the move from multi-channel retailing to omni-channel retailing. Subsequently, we discuss the main streams of research within multi-channel, and the articles in this special issue covering these topics. We also position these papers as to whether they mainly fit within the multi-channel paradigm or can be classified within the omni-channel paradigm. We end with some important research directions.
Section snippets
Multi-Channel to Omni-Channel
Within the literature, the paper by Neslin et al. (2006) has been very influential in the development of multi-channel retailing research. Neslin et al. (2006, p. 96; italics added) formally define multi-channel customer management as the design, deployment, coordination, and evaluation of channels to enhance customer value through effective customer acquisition, retention, and development. Thereby, they consider channels as customer contact points, or a medium through which the firm and the
Major Research Streams
The multi-channel literature can be characterized by three major research topics (Verhoef 2012):
- (1)
Impact of channels on performance
- (2)
Shopper behavior across channels
- (3)
Retail mix across channels
The articles included in this special issue also can be classified into these three themes. As such, our special issue reflects the current state of the multi-channel research field. In the first research stream, the focus is mainly on the contribution of a specific channel or multiple channels on several
Classification of Contributions to the Special Issue
The contributions to the special issue can be classified along two dimension: (1) multi-channel versus omni-channel focus and (2) the three research streams discussed above. This classification is provided in Table 2. As this table shows, the papers are relatively equally distributed across the three research themes. The majority of the contributions have a multi-channel focus, although there are a couple of contributions with an omni-channel focus. However, the omni-channel studies in this
Conclusion and Some Future Research Directions
Multi-channel retailing is moving to omni-channel retailing. This is an important next development in retailing and will affect how retailers operate. In this introduction, we have conceptually discussed this change. In this special issue, we have published both articles with a multi-channel and an omni-channel focus. The studies focusing on omni-channel topics are still a minority in this issue, but we expect that future researchers will move in that direction. Specific research questions in
Acknowledgements
We want to thank all contributors to this special issue. We received 55 submissions, of which finally 11 submission are published herein. We want to note that when there was any potential conflict of interest between the authors of papers due to for example co-authorship, a co-editor of the special issue without any conflicts of interest handled the paper. We are grateful to the reviewers (see Appendix A), who provided us with very helpful reviews during this process. Finally, we thank the past
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The authors acknowledge the supportive comments on an earlier version of this paper given by Murali Mantrala and Steven Brown editors of the Journal of Retailing.