CRM in a German multichannel retailing company : investigating and evaluating the sales people’s roles

Rashid, T; Patten, E

Abstract

2013 is the 20th birth-year of the World Wide Web, probably the most important technological invention since Gutenberg’s letterpress. It has enormous impact on people’s lives. In Germany, where bricks and mortar sales have stagnated over the last few years, the integration of the Internet as an additional communication and distribution channel has become one of the predominant issues for retail companies.
This paper aims to present the research topic and to show the need for research in the proposed area of multichannel retailing in Germany. The empirical case study will later be conducted in a German multichannel retail company that recently launched an online store as an integrated channel.
The paper is dived in three main parts:
In part 1 the methodology of the conducted systematic literature review is presented. It describes how the key words were selected, which resources were used and how the literature was classified, analysed and synthesized.
Part 2 describes the field of research, by drawing a picture of the development and current trends of multichannel retailing in Germany. It demonstrates how multichannel retailing has changed the customers´ purchasing behaviour. Furthermore, it exposes a linkage between multichannel retailing with customer relationship management (CRM).
In Part 3 the gaps in literature for the proposed research topic and the research objectives are presented.

Citation

Rashid, T., & Patten, E. CRM in a German multichannel retailing company : investigating and evaluating the sales people’s roles. Manuscript submitted for publication

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Deposit Date: Mar 17, 2015
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 4
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 22-34
• Related Public URLs: http://www.ijsrm.com/ijsrm/Home.html