The myth of digital and online businesses

When we recently started a project for a well-known, large international company, we were asked to find out how the digital customer journey nowadays differed from the non-digital one. Our client desired to know which customers and prospects embarked on an online decision path and which ones decided offline. They wanted to find out which customers used digital touch points and which ones physical ones.

Far too often, we still encounter top management teams believing that customers are either digital or physical, that there is an online customer journey and an offline one, that there is digital business and non-digital business. Fact is, there are no such things as digital, analogue, online or offline businesses. There is only business. People increasingly make use of all types of touch points and channels for being inspired, evaluating options, making purchasing decisions, buying things and even enhancing the use of the purchased products. In consumers’ minds these artificial boundaries have fallen a while ago. It’s about time companies follow suit and change the way they think, behave and organise.

For an entertaining article on the topic click here.