Multichannel marketing is offering customers more than one way
to buy something - for example, from a Web site as well as in
retail stores. For manufacturers, multichannel marketing also
includes the use of partners, sometimes known as channels, who
market directly to the customer as consultants, repackagers, or
retailers.
For retailers, advocates claim that, in addition to offering the
customer more options, multichannel marketing allows a business
more opportunities to interact with customers - each channel can
help promote the other channels. Since Web site and phone-in mail
orders collect information about the customer that a retail sale
may not, these channels make it possible to develop mailing lists
for future promotions and branding campaigns.
Eddie Bauer is sometimes used as an example of a multichannel
marketer that offers "brick, click, and flip" - retail stores, Web
site, and catalogs. At least one study says that customers of
multichannel companies spend 30% more than customers of one-channel
companies.
For manufacturers with partner channels, marketing directly from
a Web site sometimes raises the problem of how to preserve the
partnerships which Web site sales may tend to undercut. Approaches
to solving his problem include using the Web site to refer
customers to partners and limiting the quantities involved in any
one direct sale.