Limitations of Multichannel Communication in Sustaining Partnership Relations with Customers. Example from American Automobile Market

Abstract

Present technology gives many possibilities of maintaining marketing communication be-tween a company and its customers, thus enabling developing multichannel communication which, contrary to one-channel communication, making use of one medium in order to deliver a message to its receiver, engages simultaneously several different kinds of communication media. This kind of communication has become popular among these business entities(and non-business as well) whose resources make it possible to use more than one way of communication; hence its populari-ty particularly among relatively big entities situated in the most technologically developed countries. But applying this method may prove difficult and not guarantee expected results. It happens so when the entity making use of this method of reaching its customers is not in possession of appropriate knowledge of the results of the influence of different combinations of messages applying several sources of communication in relation to specific market conditions in which function the sender of messages and their receivers. Such situation occurs often since gaining necessary knowledge guaran-teeing effective application of multichannel communication is troublesome and not seldom expensive and thus not easily accessible to any organization that would like to use this method. The paper depicts one of the latest research projects conducted in the USA (automobile sec-tor) on the advantages and limitations of relational multichannel communication. The author of the present article tries to reveal, taking the above mentioned research as an example, how uncertain may be the application of this method of communication and what should be taken into considera-tion in order to use it effectively.