Breaking Down Customer Journey Management Capabilities
Breaking Down Customer Journey Management Capabilities
About the Research
Customer Journey Management Capability in Business-to-Business Markets: Its Bright and Dark Sides and Overall Impact on Firm Performance
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (JAMS), 2023; Volume 51, Issue 5
Authors:
Christian Homburg
Moritz Tischer
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In the landscape of business-to-business (B2B) markets, mastering the art of managing customer interactions, or customer journey management capability (CJMC), can be a game-changer, according to new research by Christian Homburg and Moritz Tischer. Their study cuts through the complexities of B2B transactions to reveal how adept management of customer touchpoints—those critical interactions along the customer’s path to purchase—can drive a company's performance skyward.
Yet, as Homburg and Tischer uncover, the road to optimizing these customer journeys is fraught with hurdles. Despite the potential of CJMC to bolster loyalty and profitability, a staggering 80% of B2B suppliers flounder, unable to secure the expected returns on their investments. The research sheds light on the multifaceted nature of CJMC, balancing its bright and dark sides: while effective touchpoint management can significantly boost customer loyalty, it also ramps up internal costs related to coordination. These findings underscore the delicate dance companies must perform in synchronizing touchpoints across the pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase phases efficiently.
Offering more than just a diagnosis, Homburg and Tischer equip businesses with a robust toolkit for measuring and enhancing CJMC. Their comprehensive approach, blending interviews, workshops, and data analytics, crafts a nuanced understanding that helps firms navigate the choppy waters of B2B customer relations. With its finger on the pulse of modern marketing challenges, this study not only charts a course for academic inquiry but also serves as a beacon for practitioners striving to capitalize on the intricacies of customer journeys. As B2B markets continue to grow and evolve, embracing these insights could well be pivotal in shaping the future of how businesses interact with their customers, striving for a blend of engagement and efficiency that drives sustained growth.
From the Authors
What organizations and industries will benefit from your findings?
Our study is an industry-spanning B2B investigation. Therefore, all firms across B2B industries will benefit from our findings (i.e., automotive, building and construction, business services, chemicals, food and nutrition, IT and electronics, logistics and transportation, mechanical engineering, medicals and pharmaceuticals, mining and metals, pulp and paper, utilities, wholesale).
When does B2B CJMC pay off?
Our findings suggest that managers should not regard B2B CJMC as a universal, one-size-fits-all solution. Our results show that B2B CJMC is particularly profitable for suppliers operating in environments characterized by high customer switching costs. Consequently, suppliers with a high degree of B2B CJMC should try to increase customers’ switching costs through, for example, a business model of interlinked products and services that lock in customers. Furthermore, while B2B CJMC significantly enhances customer loyalty, it also increases the customer-related coordination costs for suppliers offering a high number of touchpoints.
However, our simple-slope analysis shows a non-significant effect on these costs under an extremely high level of the moderator. An explanation is that most touchpoints are digital or automatized in nature and thus hardly cause any additional coordination costs. As a result, B2B CJMC can be particularly distinctive for suppliers with an extremely high number of digital touchpoints. Finally, suppliers should devote time and money to the deployment of B2B CJMC when they have a service focus or, like many current B2B firms, are in the process of transforming to a service provider and also devise effective means to mitigate the coordination costs related to this capability.
