How to combine bricks and clicks: The case of Direct Optic going omni-channel

While customers increasingly expect seamless, integrated, consistent and personalized experiences across channels (Rigby, 2011; Schramm-Klein et al., 2011; Zhang et al., 2010), the current multi-channel and traditional business model of retailers, with its multiple silos, is unadapted to these new expectations. Retailers need to move towards an integrated approach of their channels and, ultimately, to go omni-channel (Rigby, 2011; Strang, 2013). This is an important challenge from their perspective (Brynjolfsson et al., 2013). Such a strategy arouses great interest among retail managers despite facing key issues regarding their core business model when going omni-channel (Brown et al., 2013). Numerous research have been devoted to multi-channel strategies, both from the customer and the retailer perspectives (Aubrey and Judge, 2012; Avery et al., 2012; Griffiths and Howard, 2008; Gulati and Garino, 2000). They suggest that online and offline experiences can be complementary (e.g. Rigby, 2011: p. 72). Yet in focusing on the multi-channel approach, research may be overlooking the new omni-channel approach that provides a frame for a single, unified experience for the customer across all channels. Thus, important issues in relation to omni-channel retailing strategy remain unaddressed in the literature and prompt this research. Following calls to investigate how to analyze, formulate and implement an omni-channel strategy (Brynjolfsson et al., 2013; Gallino and Moreno, 2013; Lewis et al., 2013; Strang, 2013), this article examines how a multi-channel retailer goes omni-channel. It does so by developing a qualitative study on how an online retailer Direct Optic combines bricks and clicks. More precisely, the objective of this research consists in investigating in– depth the motives, challenges and processes of orchestrating the convergence of bricks with clicks in an omni-channel perspective.