Channel benefits portfolio management in the eBusiness era

Abstract

The role of channels and their management in the eBusiness era is becoming increasingly important to customer relationship management. Traditional use of the application portfolio approach has been concerned with providing an appropriate basis for making investment decisions about IT applications for the firm. This paper argues that there is a gap between the established IS portfolio application theory and the requirements to support management investment decisions about eBusiness applications; Therefore, the paper proposes a channel benefits portfolio (CBP) approach to inform managers' channel investment decisions concerning business‐to‐customer channel interface. The suggested approach provides a conceptual framework and means to facilitate the alignment of the firm's portfolio with their customers' portfolio. The paper reports exploratory findings regarding customer channel preference and customer channel choice behaviour in the information search and purchasing stages during the customer decision‐making process on the basis of the CBP.

Citation

Louvieris, P. and Oppewal, H. (2004), "Channel benefits portfolio management in the eBusiness era", Qualitative Market Research, Vol. 7 No. 4, pp. 257-264. https://doi.org/10.1108/13522750410557067