Challenges and Opportunities in Multichannel Customer Management

deployment, coordination, and evaluation of channels through which firms and customers interact, with the goal of enhancing customer value through effective customer acquisition, retention, and development. The authors identify five major challenges practitioners must address to manage the multichannel environment more effectively: (a) data integration, (b) understanding consumer behavior, (c) channel evaluation, (d) allocation of resources across channels, and (e) coordination of channel strategies. The authors also propose a framework that shows the linkages among these challenges and provides a means to conceptualize the field of multichannel customer management. A review of academic research reveals that this field has experienced significant research growth, but the growth has not been distributed evenly across the five major challenges.