6. Cross-Channel Purchasing

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The Web – the most measurable medium in the history of marketing – is not being fully exploited internationally because of “nascent technologies, inconsistent metrics and a reliance on outdated media models”. Harsh words indeed from management consultancy McKinsey, in its latest quarterly bulletin.

Poor measurement extends to how businesses track the cross-channel impact of their marketing efforts – online influencing offline purchasing and vice versa. Examples of this include consumers who use stores to investigate products before buying – one US retailer has found that half of its customers say it is important for them to examine products in a physical location before they buy them online.

McKinsey gathered some insights into cross-channel impacts in a study of European marketing managers and its shows how “touch points” – how consumers encounter a brand or a brand message – are converted into sales. As the chart shows, travel and entertainment have the greatest crosschannel conversion rates, followed by computers and utilities.

Back to contents of State of the Net issue 11