Understanding the Omnichannel Customer Journey: Determinants of Interaction Choice

Abstract

Through the proliferation of channels and ways to engage in these channels, customers today have an unprecedented range of options to individualize their customer journey. This study investigated the underlying and overt reasons for customers’ interaction choices using focus groups, expert interviews, and laddering interviews with motor insurance customers to make three central contributions. First, omnichannel customer journeys are inherently individualistic but driven by effects that apply to any single interaction, sequencing effects, and customer journey patterns. The latter pertain to sections of the journey that cover multiple interactions and include both research shopping and the novel impersonalization/interactivity reduction effects. Second, the analysis of customers’ underlying reasons for interaction choices provides novel explanations for these effects and indicates why customers’ search efforts regarding motor insurance are limited. Third, four types of value-in-use that customers seek in their interactions were found to be the ultimate underlying motives and are suggested to segment customers more effectively than the predominant efforts that rely on observable interaction behavior.