are still trying to exercise their right to go from one supplier to another in order to obtain good deal or to have a better experience. This indicates that customers need access to interactive multi channels and thereby fuelling the growth of interactive multi-channel marketing. This attitude of the customer makes marketers to rethink about the marketing channels to be employed in order keep their customers loyal (Little and Marandi, 2003). Consumers are able to access information about the product from various sources like the supplier website, market makers and online communities and becoming choosier in their spending (Kotler and Keller 2006). There is a growing awareness among the firms that the retaining the existing customer is easy when compared to winning the new customer to achieve its objectives (Dinsmore and Cabanis-Brewin, 2006) Due to the discerning nature of the consumers, marketers are facing challenges to regain or win the customers.
Virgin media selected interactive multichannel marketing strategy to maximize customer acquisition and retention in highly competitive UK market place. Virgin media obtained customer feedback about their products and services through the call centres and maintained constant with the customers. They daily answered 4000 customers who were new and existing customers. This interaction with the customers helped them to improve themselves and it easy to retain and to win the customers (Burton and River, 2007).
Interactive multi channel marketing plays major role in today’s market as it is easy to access and creates benefits to both customers and to the marketers. Interactive multi channel marketing introduces consumers to wide range of selection of merchandise and helps them to comparative shopping by browsing through the mail catalogues and online shopping services. Marketers can build continuous relationship with the customers who make the marketers easy to retain or to win the customers. Interactive multichannel marketing involves effective use of technology such as new software applications and hardware such as mobile technology etc in order to increase the interactivity between the customers and the marketer. Interactive multichannel marketing facilitate the two-way communication, not just a passive one-way communication between the customers and the marketers. Traditional communication channel like television advertising are pushed based, where the advertiser creates the message and broadcast it to the widest possible customers.( Kimmel,2005 ) There is no chance for the interaction between the customer and the marketer which is made possible in case of interactive multichannel marketing. It leads the companies to improve themselves in order to provide the best service to the customer. Therefore, the author aggress with the critic that interactive multi channels leads to increase market responsiveness which results in boosting the sales and therefore, retaining and wining customers become easy for the marketers during this economic downturn.
Interactive multichannel marketing offers businesses an unprecedented opportunity to increase revenue, expand customer reach, drive loyalty and improve margins. In 2007, companies employing interactive channels generated £95 billion in sales globally, which is about 6.3 per cent of retail sales, leaving room for significant growth. In the UK, interactive shopping is outperforming the high street with over £26.5 billion spent in the first half of 2008 alone, an increase of 38% over the same period the previous year (Lauchlan, 2009). This fact clearly supports critic’s view that interactive multichannel marketing increases the sales and the responsiveness and thereby making it easy for marketers to win the customer.
Interactive multichannel marketing is used by different companies like in UK it is used in ‘UK National Lottery’ by using internet, digital TV and lottery services (National Lottery 2005). It will reduce the cost of maintenance and operations, it increase the market responsiveness and increase the sales. The author agrees with the critics that multichannel can increase sales, reduce costs and reduce costs
In contrast to ‘bricks and mortar’ operations, the cost of investment in interactive marketing is much lower than that of the traditional marketing. Interactive multichannel marketing made it possible by implementing the customer self service strategies. Self service practice will enable the customers to order the products and services, to seek the information as per requirement, and to solve the problems at the same time and the place their needs dedicate ( and , 2004 ) Interactive multichannel marketing also provides new methods to improve customer service and is considered as the most cost effective tool as it reduces paper works and number of staff as well as by passes the operating offices (Nguyen and Hoang Tung, 2008) . As a result product cost will be decreased; this will ultimately attract the customers towards it and there by increases the sales. In this manner employing the interactive multichannel marketing, marketers can easily regain the customers. It involves direct mail, catalogues, telemarketing, interactive TV, kiosks, web sites and call centres with no need for a major up-front investment. Consumers are provided with flexibility and easy to navigate through it. Companies that might have found the initial start-up costs prohibitive can start trading online much faster, without the need for capital expenditure (Lauchlan, 2009).
National gallery, London made use inter active multichannel marketing and has increased its number of visitors. They used interactive kiosk for search of pictures with in the art gallery. Visitors can easily find the all parts of the gallery with the help of interactive kiosk an there by increased the responsiveness among the visitors. In this manner use of interactive multichannel marketing increases the sales and the market responsiveness.
According to IDC, the total world spending on interactive multichannel advertising will reach USD 65.2 billion in 2008, which represents nearly 10% of all the ads spending across all media and it is predicted that this spending on interactive multichannel marketing increases over USD 106 billion by 2011. (Nguyen and Hoang Tung, 2008) which will clearly explain the increase in responsiveness and results in the increase of sales. This makes marketers easy to regain and to win the customer satisfaction. Be more responsive to changing market conditions, interactive multi channel marketing offers businesses the chance to respond more quickly to changes in market conditions or to weak merchandising strategies based on sales performance. Businesses can easily add or remove products from their online catalogue, alter pricing, create promotions, and communicate these changes to customers quickly and easily - no more waiting for the next version of a printed brochure or catalogue. (Lauchlan, 2009)
Multichannel marketing increases the response of the market as through different channels information about the product can be sent to a large number of consumers. Twitter is a growing technology based community which is user-specific and user friendly. Largest brands today are using different communities to reach maximum consumers. The brands which are choosing these new technologies are getting more response from market (Chandle, 2009).
In this economic down turn consumers are spending less as they became more reluctant. They have the money but they are not spending it like they use to spend in the past. Consumers are no more aware about the products and so they are now more choosy and selective than ever before. There are lots of companies which are facing difficulty in running their outlets as there are no consumers. Sales started from the beginning of the year and continue till now which shows more stocks in the retail stores. Interactive Multi channel marketing is way through which the companions can overcome this recession. By using different channels the marketers can send their message to a large number of consumers. If the regular consumers of any brand got access to that product from different ways they will buy more as a result the sales of that product will increase. Using email for the marketing costs less than any other media used. Using interactive multichannel the cost of production, maintenance can be reduced. If the information of a product is available in the market through different channels then the response of market will improve which will ultimately result in the growth of sales. According to all the above findings, it has been found that, different companies use different types of interactive multichannel to market its products and services. Eventually the above theories and examples provide sufficient information for companies to grow in its sales, increase market responsiveness in addition to decrease in operational cost. Furthermore marketers need to consider not only multi-channels but it is a proper and efficient use of channel coordination needed so as to make the maximum benefits from different channels. These interactive channels help customers to access a product through different multiple channels based on their convenience. Marketers are focusing to capture this convenient behaviour of customers to further enhance the customer satisfaction whereby it can lead to increase the market share. In contrast to above advantages of interactive multichannel marketing, it has some limitations. As interactive multichannel marketing depends on the advanced electronic media, if there exist any technical problem which will ultimately results in the failure interactive multichannel marketing. It can sometimes lead to customer dissatisfaction and makes it difficult to regain or win the customers with in the volatile economy.
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