As technology and purchasing behaviours change, e-commerce has naturally become multichannel. It is currently rolled out both online and in physical shops. Customers can access it both in the real and virtual worlds: in any case they want to follow a coherent purchasing path and benefit from optimal customer relations.
Multichannel e-commerce management was born from this idea. It consists in implementing a marketing strategy, based on all distribution channels at the same time, so as to widen the company's audience by multiplying points of contact (online sales platforms, marketplaces, mobile applications, "brick and mortar" shops, traditional advertising campaigns, third-party distributors, etc.).
This being said, a multichannel strategy can only work if coherent management is adopted in all channels, thus preventing self-competition: one channel swallowing up another, when one channel's success means others are left to the side. With a view to defining a relevant communication strategy, encompassing all channels, multichannel e-commerce management aims for:
improved assessment of sales challenges;
better coherence in the use of channels, in line with targets and internal communications rules;
a unified and harmonious way of dealing with customer relations in an ecosystem made up of multiple channels.
