Multichannel Management: Structure Determined by Measurement and Allocation

At retail, however, retailers count their hits to store locations. “That’s about as scientific as counting the number of cars in a parking lot,” she said. “The irony is that this is a metric that’s increased over time even though it’s what retailers find least effective.”

Forrester’s research has shown that 74 percent of SKUs in multichannel merchants’ offline channels are available online, and 12 percent of SKUs are available only online. What’s more, the dot-com portions of companies often report only to themselves, creating an additional silo. “That can lead to innovation and allow the online division to go through a few hurdles,” she said, “but when you have a siloed approach, it creates a bit of a messy customer experience.”