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Role of digital channels in car buying has increased manifold and consumers are making significant use of various digital channels throughout the decision-making process. However, there are very less number of studies available if one wishes to understand the specific reason(s) for the use of a particular digital channel of communication. This study deals with the identifications of the reason(s) leading towards the usage of particular digital channel of communication while buying a car.

Quantitative methodology was adopted for the study. A total of 10 digital channels namely the websites, social networking sites, YouTube, Smartphones, Online communities, Digital TV, Digital Outdoors, e-mails and others were considered in the study. Data was collected from 603 car buyers from Delhi using digital channels of communication.

The results of the study revealed that Website and YouTube were used for being compatible. Social networking sites, smartphones, digital outdoors and e-mails were used for being informative. Online communities were used for offering customers and experts' reviews. Digital TV was used for being easy to use.

The study considers the respondents from Delhi only. A more representative sample covering various parts of the country would offer more relevant results for the marketers as digital divide existing between rural and urban India cannot be simply ignored.

The study reveals that car buyers are making ample usage of digital channels wherein website is the most used digital channel and smartphones are the most used digital devices used by the car buyers.

Study also reveals that car buyers might use search engines to reach the marketer's website, so effective search engine optimization (SEO) strategies should be adopted. Important keywords used in the search engines should be used in the website as well as in the links.

Majority of the available studies use digital as an umbrella term for myriad digital channels. So understanding about the usage of specific channel of communication remains an under-researched area. Such understanding strengths and broadens the existing knowledge about technology mediated consumer behaviour especially in extended problem-solving product category.

Collaborative consumption firms leverage networked peers, communicating, collaborating and even delivering services to one another through a central marketplace channel. This raises questions as to the nature of this new form of digital channel strategy and deployment from a firm’s perspective. As a first step, this research seeks to help bridge the gap in knowledge by establishing an understanding of the digital channel usage of collaborative consumption firms.

A qualitative content analysis of 30 collaborative consumption firms was conducted using multiple data sources and coded into typologies against a predetermined coding scheme. These results were then compared against existing literature on digital channel usage in regards to a wider company usage.

This study identifies the digital channel usage and digital channel typology of each of the 30 firms associated within the collaborative consumption domain. The study shows a distinct increase in the use of social and community digital channels between traditional firms and collaborative consumption firms. As a result of this study, a concise definition of a collaborative consumption firm is provided, the digital channel usage of collaborative consumption firms is detailed and insights are provided for each sub-type of collaborative consumption.

This study contributes to the understanding of the collaborative consumption phenomena, the business model of collaborative consumption firms and digital channels. This study assists in describing the shift from traditional firms to peer-to-peer systems. Finally, a theoretical model is provided that demonstrates the nuance of collaborative consumption channel choice within each subcategory for future researchers to test and reflect upon.

This study demonstrates how collaborative consumption firms are allowing customers to drive interaction rather than traditional business-to-customer messages. A theoretical model is provided which shows contemporary marketers how to best dictate a digital channel strategy for a collaborative consumption style initiative.

Contributions include: a definition of what a collaborative consumption firm and its channels pertain to and how to design a collaborative consumption digital channel strategy. This study presents a digital channel comparison between collaborative consumption firms and traditional organisations.

The following paper highlights the findings from Nickelodeon UK's digital study designed to better understand the changed viewing dynamics in digital homes and how that will impact upon building brand loyalty. The findings have been captured in two models: viewer segmentation in cable and satellite, and digital environments and channel/brand loyalty in cable and satellite and digital environments. These two models show how the various segments of viewing will shift in a world of increased competition and how achieving brand loyalty will be more challenging. This is the first set of findings published on digital kids in the United Kingdom as it pre‐dates all audience measurement systems.

This study aims to gain a clearer understanding of digital channel design. The emergence of new technologies has revolutionised the way companies interact and engage with customers. The driver for this research was the suggestion that practitioners feel they do not possess the skills to understand and exploit new digital channel opportunities. To gain a clearer understanding of digital channel design, this paper addresses the research question: What digital channels do companies from a wide range of industries and sectors use?

A content analysis of 100 international companies was conducted with multiple data sources to form a typology of digital “touchpoints”. The appropriateness of a digital channel typology for this study was for developing rigorous and useful concepts for clarifying and refining the meaning of digital channels.

This study identifies what digital channels companies globally currently employ and explores the related needs across industries. A total of 34 digital touchpoints and 4 typologies of digital channels were identified across 16 industries. This research helps to identify the relationship between digital channels and enabling the connections with industry.

The findings contribute to the growing research area of digital channels. The typology of digital channels is a useful starting point for developing a systematic, theory-based study for enabling the development of broader, comprehensive theories of digital channels.

Typologies and touchpoints are outlined in relation to industry, company objectives and customer needs to allow businesses to seize opportunities and optimise performance through individual touchpoints. A digital channel model as a key outcome of this research guides practitioners on what touchpoint to implement through an interrelated understanding of industry, company and customer needs.

This is the first paper to explore a range of industries in relation to their use of digital channels using a unique content analysis. Contributions include clarifying and refining digital channel meaning; identifying and refining the hierarchical relations among digital channels (typologies); and establishing typology and industry relationship model.

The purpose of this study is to identify and understand the emotions behind a passenger’s airport experience and how this can inform digital channel engagements.

This study investigates the emotional experience of 200 passengers’ journeys at an Australian domestic airport. A survey was conducted which implemented the use of Emocards and an interview approach of laddering. The responses were then analysed into attributes, consequences and values.

The results indicate that across key stages of the airport (parking, retail, gates and arrivals) passengers had different emotional experiences (positive, negative and neutral). The attributes, consequences and values behind these emotions were then used to propose digital channel content and purpose of various future digital channel engagements.

By gaining emotional insights, airports are able to generate digital channel engagements, which align with passengers’ needs and values rather than internal operational motivations. Theoretical contributions include the development of the technology acceptance model to include emotional drivers as influences in the use of digital channels.

This paper provides a unique method to understand the passengers’ emotional journey across the airport infrastructure and suggest how to better design digital channel engagements to address passenger latent needs.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how companies can design digital channels to evoke desired emotions.

The successful business case of retailer Burberry has been examined to understand the strategy and customer engagement of digital channels implemented by decoding the emotional intensions.

Results illustrate that the ability to create engaging interactions via digital channels with customers has a significant impact on growth, revenue and brand advocacy. Findings from this study provide a new empirical support for the proposition that emotions can be utilised to guide company digital strategy for building digital channel relationships with customers.

This is the first study to examine the relationship between digital channels, emotion and customer responses to digital engagements. The inclusion of an emerging theory model is outlined to explain the successful process of reformulating business strategy through a dynamic and creative process of intersecting emotion, strategy and digital channels.

This chapter examines how increased digitalisation shapes employee voice behaviour through informal digital channels. A growing body of literature found positive effects of employee voice on organisational outcomes, and companies are offering various formal and informal channels for employees to speak up. However, despite the vast literature on employee voice, research on the role of the voice channel is limited. With digital voice channels gaining popularity since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, investigating how the interaction of employees with communication technologies affects their willingness to speak up digitally is ever more important. To do so, the authors chose a qualitative research design with semi-structured interviews. Adaptive structuration theory (AST) guided the qualitative content analysis. Findings indicate that the shift from analogue to digital informal voice channels influences employees’ willingness to speak up. Despite an effort to mimic analogue face-to-face conversations through advanced technologies, employees perceive a missing spark when communicating digitally, which discourages them from speaking up through informal digital channels. In this chapter, the authors analyse which factors constitute the missing spark.

This paper aims to examine the factors that can predict citizen-initiated contact with e-government as an attempt to identify important differences between service channel selections. Although more than two decades have passed since the initiation of e-government, digital channel choice is still being questioned, compared to traditional channels, and the level of selection with channels is being investigated.

This study states three research questions that are answered through a literature review and statistical analysis of a survey in a developed country. More specifically, it identifies the factors that impact channel choice and validates them with survey results. To this end, this paper utilizes data from a national Canadian survey, where citizens empirically evaluated their channel choice – e-government, new digital media and traditional service channels – for government contacts.

Statistical analysis over this data return valuable findings such as that the e-government channel is more appropriate for information collection, whereas traditional service channels are more likely to establish individual problem solving. Moreover, the digital divide appears to have an impact on citizen channel choice. Furthermore, digitally literate citizens who are aware of privacy issues are more likely to use new digital media. Finally, citizens are quite satisfied from their new digital media experience, but are not as satisfied with their traditional contact experience.

These outcomes show that e-government obstacles regarding digital divide, trust and efficiency remain active and have to be addressed more carefully by governments. This study shows that e-government and new digital media are not simple channel choices, but are complex in public service delivery. These outcomes confirm the significance of channel choice for transforming government, as e-government appears to be a part of a broader channel choice agenda.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into the utilization and goals of digital marketing, and examines factors that influence the adoption and use of digital marketing channels in SMEs.

The data comprises semi-structured theme interviews in SMEs among 16 managers and 421 survey respondents in Central Finland.

The results of this study reveal that SMEs seem not use the full potential of the new digital tools, and so are not deriving benefit from the opportunities they provide. Furthermore, the results also raise the question of whether SMEs have understood the fundamental change in the nature of communication brought about by digitization.

The data comes from one region and thus the research context limits the generalizability of the results.

SMEs seem not to be keeping pace with digital developments, mostly due to the lack of knowledge of digital marketing. Most of the studied SMEs do not apply the full potential of the new digital tools and hence are not benefitting fully from them.

Discussions on the future regional development of SMEs have called for training programmes to help SMEs exploit digitization. This is something that the government should take note of.

Whereas the adoption process of new technologies such as IT in general and the internet in particular have been examined in the SME literature, this is among the first studies examining adoption and usage of digital tools from the marketing perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how digital communication tools are used for internal communication (IC) in multinational corporations (MNCs). Specifically, the study illustrates the role of digital channels in IC, the benefits they bring and the difficulties involved in using them.

This research features a single-case study focusing on a listed Finnish multinational industrial corporation with a long history. Data for the study come from semi-structured theme interviews and a workshop in which the results were discussed.

Digital IC tools are able to facilitate IC in MNCs, although some challenges may arise in relation to planning their utilization. Related to the role of digital channels in IC, these findings highlight the importance of face-to-face channels in everyday IC and the role of digital channels as more formal communication channels.

This paper focuses on a single organization. Additional research would be required to attain generalizable results.

The effective use of new digital communication tools requires common guidelines across all areas of an MNC. Despite the great potential of new tools, the importance of face-to-face communication should not be ignored.

Most of the research on IC in MNCs was conducted before the digital communications era. Recent advances in information technology have created new challenges and opportunities for IC.