Multi-channel shopping: understanding what drives channel choice

Observes that traditional retail, catalog, and online-only businesses face a critical decision - to accept a new, yet unrefined business model that includes multiple channels or to retain their single channel model and risk becoming obsolete and left behind by new, multi-channel competitors. The decision process and implementation of a multi-channel strategy could be simplified if businesses understood what drives consumers to a single channel, multiple channels, and which channels are preferred. Outlines the key issues facing multi-channel marketers, and encourages multi-channel businesses to take a customer-centric view rather than a channel focused view to work through the challenges unique to the multi-channel marketer. A model of multi-channel buyer behavior is proposed to help the multi-channel marketer develop a customer-centric view. Presents a series of propositions which serve to encourage and direct future research in this area.