Does the Nature of the Interaction Matter? Understanding Customer Channel Choice for Purchases and Communications

Abstract

Managing the increasing number and complexity of customer-initiated interactions across multiple channels consistently and effectively has become a key priority for marketing academics and practitioners. To achieve this, it is imperative that marketers understand how and why customers choose the available channels. In this study, we distinguish between two types of interactions, purchases and communications, and argue that the nature of these interactions influences the way customers behave in the presence of multiple channels. Drawing upon perceived risk research, this study develops an integrated conceptual framework that provides a theoretical understanding of customer channel choice for these interactions. The framework is tested empirically in financial services and the results reveal that channel choices significantly differ for purchases and communications. Channel choices for purchases are more inertial and more strongly affected by attitudes (i.e., relationship quality) than for communications. At the same time, preference for a personal touch in channel choice is more pronounced for purchases than for communications, and marketing activities are more effective at driving channel choice for communications. These results offer some recommendations for managing interactions across channels more effectively. For example, the use of personal channels is advised for managing high-risk interactions (i.e., purchases), while for low-risk interactions (i.e., communications), firms can use marketing activities to migrate customers to cheaper channels.

Service marketing and quality strategies

“…Both of these strategies of the firm concurrently pursue low cost based services, differentiated analysis, and strategies leading to an enhanced performance in most of the service companies [38]. Therefore, the objective of this investigative analysis to to locate the link between the measures of customer based service performance, those of marketing measures of the company success, and the related performance for the business growth, which means strategic measures of company success, related to strategic service marketing positioning decisions related to customer related and that a help find the main role to measure the overall business progress and achievements [39]. The companies, which fail to measure the service marketing performance at the level of customers may fail to understand the successful outcome of marketing programs and related to service decisions.…”

A theory of multiformat communication: mechanisms, dynamics, and strategies

“…For example, in high-risk exchanges (which tend to be ambiguous), a richer format can elevate the human component and minimize potential losses by providing more trustworthy information, which also incurs greater costs. In low-risk (less ambiguous) exchanges, a leaner format reduces both customers’ and firms’ costs but still supports effective communication (Polo and Sese 2016 ). Although this theory originally pertained to manager–employee relationships, marketing scholars have applied it productively too.…”

Whether a retailer should enter an e‐commerce platform taking into account consumer returns

“…The first stream investigates channel choice strategies. Some scholars studied consumer channel choice (Black et al., ; Balasubramanian et al., ; Polo and Sese, ). Others investigated firms’ channel choice strategies.…”