by Scott A. Neslin and Venkatesh Shankar
This article was published in the Journal of Interactive Marketing, 23 (2009), 70-81.
Multichannel customer management is “the design, deployment, and evaluation of channels to enhance customer value through effective customer acquisition, retention, and development” (Neslin et al. 2006). Channels typically include the store, the Web, catalog, sales force, third party agency, call center and the like. In recent years, multichannel marketing has grown tremendously and is anticipated to grow even further. While we have developed a good understanding certain issues such as the relative value of a multichannel customer over a single channel customer, several research and managerial questions still remain. We offer an overview of these emerging issues, present our future outlook, and suggest important avenues for future research.