Cross Channel Shopping/Marketing

After listening to Roy Wallen’s guest lecture, I thought I should also give my 2 cents on cross channel shopping/marketing. Consumers now a day are relying on more than one channel of shopping/marketing. People are learning about products through one channel (television advertisement, printed advertisement, internet or word of mouth), doing their research using another channel (i.e. internet reviews, price compare etc) and purchasing the products through another channel (i.e. internet, phone or in store). Recently I bought a car and it was a big decision for me because of the amount of money involved and number of options available. My first challenge was to find out my options (such as new/used, SUV/sedan, FWD/AWD etc.) based on my budget). I used internet to learn about user reviews and compare prices then I asked my coworkers, friends and families to learn about their experiences about different brands. I checked out auto magazines and printed advertisements to learn about different deals and finally went to dealers to take a test drive and purchase. I used more than one channel of marketing to make my decision.

I also completely agree with Roy on his point that customers don’t make distinction between channels. Customer experience is cumulative so companies should try to re enforce their brands and provide positive customer experience on multiple channels. For example, I bought a GPS on Wal-Mart website and chose to pick it up from a nearby Wal-Mart store. When I tried it for couple of days, it kept freezing up on me so I went to the same store from where I had picked it up and told them that the product was not as good as I thought and I wanted to return it. The Wal-Mart store manager told me that they could not take it back since I had bought it on Wal-Mart website and I would have to ship it back to Wal-Mart warehouse in order to get my money back. I considered it as a bad experience from Wal-Mart regardless what channel I used to buy the product and probably avoid shopping from them again.

According to an interesting study done by Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, two thirds of all shoppers regularly use more than one channel for shopping. Click here to access the study results.

Also, according to this study, multi-channel shoppers are most loyal and likely to spend more money than mono channel shoppers. This is because shoppers that use more than one channel are likely to do more research and hence they clearly know what they want and where they want it from.

So, it is very critical for marketer/retailer to make sure that they treat customers same (i.e. positively) on every channel and give them the best treatment regardless where they buy it from. Customer should be able to return the product that they bought online or use the coupon that the got online in store. Some of the industries that provide best cross channel shopping are fast food chains (i.e. Domino’s, Chipotle) and Banks (i.e. Chase).