Effects of cross-platform multichannel shopping on online customer-firm relationship length, depth, and breadth: An empirical investigation

The rise of online retail platforms has facilitated customers to purchase from the same firm across multiple platform channels. It is challenging for firms to maintain online customer-firm relationships as customers are easily attracted by competitors on different platforms. While previous studies focus on offline-online multichannel shopping, how cross-platform multichannel shopping affects customer-firm relationships is largely neglected. Utilizing longitudinal customer data from an online seller with channels on two major Chinese retail platforms, we found that cross-platform multichannel shopping lengthens, deepens, and broadens online customer-firm relationships. Cross-platform multichannel shopping has a stronger positive effect on the length and depth of online customer-firm relationships as the duration before multichannel shopping increases. After cross-platform multichannel shopping, customers who revert to the original channel weaken their relationship with the firm compared to those who keep using both channels or migrate to another channel. Our empirical results contribute to the literature by examining novel multichannel shopping behavior and its dynamic process. The findings also provide insights into customer relationship management by targeting cross-platform multichannel shopping customers.