Managing Customer Experiences in an Omnichannel World: Melody of Online and Offline Environments in the Customer Journey

In recent years, with the development of technology, the number of contact points between companies and their customers has multiplied. From the company point of view, companies may reach their customers through multiple marketing channels. Moreover, business intelligence necessitates increasing data sources, strengthening the power of analysis tools, and developing knowledge to be used as a competitive advantage. On the other hand, today’s mostly digitized customers expect more than just commoditized products or services. Customer activation creates experiences that make them feel strong as agents perpetrating the structure (brand strategies) by taking an active role instead of being passive. In other terms, customers are in the main decision position to plan the structure. Thus, companies should design unique and memorable customer experiences through different channels in an integrated way, which is called omnichannel. Omnichannel customer experience management is possible by determining and coordinating customer touch points. In other terms, a melody should exist at these interaction points. This book aims to contribute to this advancement by first providing general reviews of the literature, then covering the pillars to design omnichannel customer experiences, and lastly providing technology-enhanced applications from several industries. This book aims also to provide fresh conceptual insights and thinking about the ways to design and develop omnichannel customer experiences.

This chapter shows that nowadays, ordinary people also encounter huge amounts of information. What used to be part of privileged leaders can now be owned by anyone. What has been gathered in the past by dedicated services is now available to almost anyone. The technical tools for access have become cheaper than ever. Infinite information is accessed through the Internet, and people share their explanations and analyses through social media. What used to be strictly confidential information of the secret services is nowadays part of everyday life. A new economy is being created. Professions and industries are disappearing and new ones are emerging as the concept of knowledge acquisition, information processing, “secret” as such is transformed. In the past, government agencies have mobilized through the media, and nowadays people reach out to one another and form crowds in Internet-based social media. “Anyone” can be an influencer, opinion-forming journalist, e.g., through his blog, a revolutionary or a politician. There are risks and dangers: dangerous teachings and thoughts to communities reach the masses through the same channel. The democratization of technology is a formidable challenge to existing political systems that are trying to limit, hinder, people’s suddenly enormous freedom.

Besides having an important place in the daily lives of today’s consumers, technology impacts consumer behavior in variety of ways such as giving direction to their buying behavior, changing the characteristics that they expect from a product and the value they perceive, and influencing their satisfaction about the product. When omnichannel marketing is analyzed in this respect, it is an important issue that should be considered for the success of the marketing activities of the enterprises. This chapter will explain the single channel first and then multichannel marketing and omnichannel marketing concepts. The potential effects of omnichannel usage on issues about consumer behavior such as brand loyalty, customer satisfaction, perceived brand value, and buying behavior will be explained in detail. Then, the characteristics of the consumers using omnichannel and the factors affecting the success of these continents in terms of both consumers and businesses will be discussed. In this chapter, omnichannel marketing application examples will also be discussed in detail.

As competition has been rising tremendously in the emergence and realization of globalization, some business models with regard to retailing have changed. In this sense, there has been a huge introduction to new terms and concepts related to omnichannel operations, mainly focusing on new trends in multichannel strategies. With the aid of recent technologies and changing lifestyles of customers, there exists an obvious change in shopper behavior. In this globe, multichannel operations have been detected as a means to differentiate products and services which might in return add a potential value to the success of omnichannel management strategies thereby bringing a huge value to customers. This chapter discusses main terms and terminologies, along with common practices, on how customer preferences of multichannel operations have evolved throughout the years of competition and globalization while putting the main focus of concern in multichannel marketing attempts, changes in customer preferences in this trend, and the emergence of effective strategies that enhance the best fit of marketing management theories and practices in multichannel operations. Finally, the overall initiative of this chapter is to come up with some concrete strategies that might enrich the overall standing of omnichannel management operations and practices.

The main purpose of this chapter is to examine the attitudes and behaviors of digital consumers in omnichannel world. For this purpose, in order to understand the behavior of digital consumers, literature review has been made. The transformation of traditional consumers into digital consumers has been examined within the framework of marketing periods. What are the new types of consumers and demographic and psychographic characteristics of these, and how they are segmented in the market are important issues. Another important issue is how digital environmental factors affect digital consumers when shopping online. Purchasing processes of digital consumers and their behaviors, which channels they use and how they make purchasing decisions play an important role in understanding digital consumer behaviors. After the purchasing decision, it is examined whether digital consumers will transfer their experiences to other consumers, satisfaction and loyalty experiences, and whether they will buy again in digital environmental.

There have been significant developments in the field of retailing with digitalization. One of these developments is the emergence of omnichannel retailing. Although this has affected both firms and consumers considerably, the literature is dominated by the studies dealing with omnichannel retailing from the firms’ perspectives. The studies dealing with omnichannel retailing from the consumers’ perspectives have recently begun to attract the attention of researchers. For this reason, this study conducted a literature review to examine various consumer behaviors mentioned in the studies aimed at explaining consumer behaviors in the omnichannel retailing context. The distribution of these studies according to years and journals, research methods used, theories adopted, and the related five-stage consumer decision-making stages are summarized. Additionally, this review addresses future research avenues.

As the world moves toward globalization, new trends and applications are on the rise as an attempt to meet the ever-changing needs of consumers. In this sense, new technologies have been introduced as a means to differentiate the product and service offerings along with some emerging retailing perspectives. It is obvious that omnichannel retailing is cited as one of the emerging trends in marketing. In this globe, customer experience management plays a crucial role in establishing sustainable omnichannel retailing strategies. Considering all the variables in the business environment, it is seen that effective tools of omnichannel operations should well be implemented as a response to effectively compete in the business environment. This chapter reveals some of the major literature and applications in the context of omnichannel retailing whereby the most concern of interest is given to the importance of customer experience and its formation.

Marketplaces are changing, and customers are demanding improved experiences where they want, how they want, and when they want. The omnichannel concept is perceived as an evolution of multichannel retailing, which implies a blurring division between the physical and online stores. In the omnichannel environment, customers move freely among physical and online stores expecting seamless shopping experiences between channels. Among different generational consumer groups, Gen Z deserves marketers’ particular attention, which is the new rising segment for omnichannel experiences. The purpose of this chapter is first to verify the essence of generational differences in consumer’s omnichannel buying behavior by giving a special focus on the Gen Z segment. Secondly, this chapter discusses how retailers should integrate their online and offline store channels to provide the best retail brand experience to these distinctive Gen Z consumers.

Understanding the customer has been the focus of attention of businesses and academia for many decades. Starting in 1960s, complex buyer behavior models developed by Nicosia, by Howard and Sheth (1969), were followed by Engel, Blackwell and Miniard in 1978 (Engel, Blackwell, & Miniard, 1990) to understand the buying process, shaping the thoughts today about consumers’ experiences in an omnichannel world. Interest in customer perceptions and expectations (Parasuraman, Berry, & Zeithaml, 1991), SERVQUAL (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, & Leonard, 1985) and SERVPERV (Cronin & Taylor, 1994) moved the academia to discuss the relationship marketing (Morgan & Hunt, 1994; Parvatiyar & Sheth, 1999; Peterson, 1995; Sheth & Parvatiyar, 1995). Wilson’s model (1995) of buyer–seller relationships extended the former models with additional concepts like social bonds, comparison level of alternatives, power roles, technology, structural bonds and cooperation as influencers on relationship development stages. His emphasis reflects a high relevancy in the omnichannel world of customers’ interactions today. Winer (2001), a pioneer to discuss the customer relationship management focused on a database to know about customers’ purchase history and interests. The millennium look at customer lifetime value is again relationship focused. For Fader, Hardie, and Lee (2005) rather the long-term focus of the consumer value and actions are important to understand the loyalty and nonlinear nature of relations. While Reinartz and Kumar (2003) focused on profitable customer lifetime and customer heterogeneity, Verhoef (2003) analyzed the impact of customers’ relationship perceptions and relationship marketing instruments on both customer retention and customer share development. The customer-centric thinking was first discussed by Grönroos (2006) within a new definition of marketing. The service dominant logic (Vargo & Lusch, 2008) resulted in the next highlight, the co-creation of value with customer involvement and customer advisory (Güngör, 2012; Güngör & Bilgin, 2011; Messner, 2007) empowering the customers and giving them the control over the supplier networks. Different factors will be influential at different stages of the buying process of customer clusters. The Web- and non-Web-based customer-centric measures can be multifold. Andersson, Movin, Mähring, Teigland, and Wennberg (2018) and Bank (2018) emphasize the importance of technology readiness focus throughout the customer–supplier journey. The question to be answered is, to which extent the empowered customers and the suppliers of this age are ready to adopt, embrace and finally use new technologies in the omnichannel world of holistic interactions that form new visions, expectations, values and desires in a tremendous speed. Ideas and experiences are shared and exchanged in online communities without the need of the involvement of the suppliers. This “holistic view” challenges firms further through the seamlessness it requires to create unity. Customer-centric research needs a new push for the development of instruments and measures to cope with the consumer decision process challenges. Process thinking is needed to capture the purchasing habits in an omnichannel world and to build a new thought for customer journey experience with the aim to understand technology-linked value propositions of customer clusters to optimize channel interactions. Customer journeys have to focus and describe the online/offline experiences at the hybrid shopping mile, trace the behavioral influential factors of the customers’ and sellers’ world in a technological environment. This chapter will discuss “Technology based Orbit Interactions” for “The Hybrid Shopping Mile and its Customer Journey Mapping” with a “Customer Intelligence Framework.” The outcome of the hybrid customer journey mapping gives orientation for customer-management decisions in developing new approaches.

In retail industry, it is very important that companies start to own an omnichannel approach in order provide an integrated experience. This approach is recognized as a key to have sustainable growth for companies and brands. In this study, it is aimed to examine the application of omnichannel decisions in different marketing channels and the contributions of this approach in the strategic plans of companies to create an overall customer experience in Turkey. For this purpose, a thorough literature review was provided on different marketing channel approaches, especially retailing and wholesales. In-depth interviews with companies showed that companies in Turkey are underway to include omnichannel approach in their short-term plans to improve their sales volume, and these companies also use this approach as a positioning by creating an integrated customer experience through customer relationship management.

We consider start-up companies that have been established for rapid growth and are active in the international market. In this study, we examine the conditions required for starting a start-up. We analyze how it is possible to add value to an idea that makes a business unique. First, we’ll show you when to talk about start-up. The starting point is that a start-up company is organized on a community basis. This much greater knowledge is coupled with high-level technological competences. In addition, there is a need for some “big idea,” innovation, which investors see as fantasy. A new niche market must be found where hundreds of thousands of customers worldwide can be served without any geographical constraints. The founder must have a high-risk appetite, and even naughtiness, because the novelty he invented will narrow the market of others and harm the interests of others. Here’s a look at the financing options for start-ups. At the end of this chapter you will find case studies on different start-ups.

Innovations in technology and evolution of internet elicited the usage of technology and internet during the shopping process of consumers. Changes in consumer shopping processes opened doors for shifts in consumer buying behavior. As a result of the variations in consumer buying behavior, retailers formed new channel structures to fulfill customer requirements. New channel structures created different retailing formats and enhanced the complexity of retailing processes. As the complexity of retailing processes increased, complexity of consumer shopping behavior increased as well. In this sense, multichannel retailing emerged and expanded all around the world and paved the way for omnichannel retailing. Transformation of multichannel retailing to omnichannel retailing created two different shopping forms as: Showrooming and Webrooming. In this chapter, showrooming and webrooming concepts will be studied and the complementarity dimensions of these concepts will be explained in detail.

This study explores the importance of application search engine (ASE) technology in the omni-channel strategy. For this purpose, this chapter firstly explains the concepts of the omni-channel and the search engines and the importance of them. Then, omni-channel in the framework of ASEs is discussed. Finally, recommendations for further researches are presented.

The digitalization process has been influential on the way marketing is conducted. However, luxury brands have not yet fully channeled the benefits of the integration of various touchpoints. The aim of this chapter is to provide insights into building a luxury fashion omnichannel strategy through the integration of online and offline consumer journeys, based on the emerging needs and lifestyles of different luxury consumer segments. Accordingly, exploratory research is designed to understand luxury consumer typologies and luxury fashion shopping journeys. In-depth interviews were conducted for data collection in Istanbul, with 16 participants. Grounded theory coding was used for analyzing the data. Findings revealed four-consumer typologies –Luxury Beginners, Nouveaux Riches, Conservatives, Established Luxury Consumers. Luxury fashion journey map covering three major steps – pre-purchase, purchase, and post-­purchase – was illustrated based on the usage of both digital and non-digital channels and agents through the journey with discussions to present consumer differences. The results of the study add to the current literature and provide an omnichannel roadmap for the practitioners.

This chapter offers a specific point of view on the Town Centre retail, in ­order to develop a new way to enhance the customer retail experience in this place. The combination of shopping over the Internet and the interactive technologies represents for Town Centre retailers one of the possible solutions in the creation of a multisensory experience for people living in and visiting this urban area. By welcoming the challenge of creating multisensory experiences, “bricks and mortar” stores need to integrate digital solutions to create and handle experiences. Customers can interact with people and contents via digital technologies such as Quick Response, Electrochromic Glass, Touch Systems, Outdoor Totems, Holographic Technology, and Augmented Reality. From the analysis of the academic literature emerges an agreement that the use of the Internet and interactive technologies are not totally exploited as tools able to revitalize the Town Centre retail and create animated, lively streets that offer multisensory experiences. Based on the above considerations, this chapter provides a theoretical model in order to create an immersive retail experience within the physical store by combining the use of the Internet to conduct shopping and the interaction with several kinds of technologies.

Robotic process automation (RPA) is a rapidly emerging field of computer science. It refers to the use of software robots or similar virtual assistants, which are programmed to complete repetitive and labor-intensive tasks. It has been shown that RPA offers technologically advanced solutions to businesses around the world and can cut costs, raise levels of efficiency, and improve quality. In the effort to remain competitive in the market, RPA has become a powerful and competitive tool for companies spanning a range of different industries. In this chapter, the authors’ focus is on the role of RPA in the banking sector. In this chapter author will analyze the existing scientific research in this area, with a focus on the process requirements for implementing RPA in banks, RPA vendors, and the general benefits of robotization in banking. The chapter will provide additional value through a list of suggestions for the practical use of RPA in the banking industry.

Save Ideas Ltd is an Australia-based company and Internet portal for free and instant double protection of intellectual property (ideas of innovators and anyone), one with the Time Certificate stamp and another one based on blockchain technology. Blockchain protection is being upgraded by Initial Coin Offering (ICO) with process of issuing own crypto tokens for the expansion of Save Ideas and at the same time for funding the most promising registered ideas. Process of ICO as the way of financing will be presented in the case of Save Ideas in this chapter.

The purpose of this chapter is to try to describe how the digital goods or services in the Gaming Industry, which creates digital games as the core product, make omnichannel marketing applications different from other industries with case studies by considering physical products and other consumer touchpoints. Findings in the chapter were obtained as a result of case analysis of various companies that achieved certain successes in Gaming Industry and implemented Omnichannel Marketing techniques. To mention the findings of the chapter, it can be understood that the ways in which Omnichannel Marketing philosophy is implemented in the game industry are strategically highly variable and creative. Digital products, which are introduced as core products, can be seen in a very different physical environment in order to establish a 360-degree connection with the consumer. This study attempts to contribute to the omnichannel marketing literature specifically in Gaming Industry. It depicts different strategic approaches by trying to reveal Omnichannel touchpoints to the industry-specific consumer. The rarity of the analysis of Omnichannel Marketing practices in the Gaming Industry adds originality.