New Insights from Practice: Exploring Online Channel Management Strategies and the Use of Social Media as a Market Research Tool

Abstract

The concept of online customer experiences, and in particular the role of social media in online customer behaviour, has recently received great interest from academia, business and market researchers alike. Despite the belief that social media, imbedded in a corresponding online channel strategy, can be the key to successfully track and analyse consumer behaviour, most of the research focuses solely on the consumer rather than the companies' strategic viewpoint. This study investigates current online channel management strategies of retail banking services, developing a much-needed typology of such practices. Based upon a thorough and rigorous data analysis process, we propose a typology of online channel strategies. The typology differentiates existing practices into initiators, reformers and consolidators, and discusses the differences between these categories with implications for theory and practice. We highlight the current and future roles of social media market research, and their strategic implications for the industry sector and market research in general, introducing the concept of ‘Strategic Social Intelligence (SSI)’.