The Perception of Channel Integration Quality: Effects on Relationship Quality and Online Customer Engagement

During the last decade, marketing channels have encountered significant reforms. They were affected by the change in conceptual frameworks, operational goals, user behaviors, structural dynamics, and interactive capabilities. The changes represent a shift from traditional, linear channel models to more integrated and dynamic omnichannel retail systems. However, merely becoming an omnichannel business is insufficient to continue satisfying consumers’ needs in the old ways. First of all, it requires a deep understanding of how different actors in the market can help firms to reconfigure their service delivery if they want to meet the customer expectations in the changing market environment. This paper aims to establish the impact of various channels’ integration on the perceived quality of relationships with the company. Furthermore, it also explores the facilitation of such integration for the customer’s continuous engagement. A web-based survey, consisting of 384 respondents, was completed to investigate these ties empirically. The perceptions of consumers on how the digital channel integration they receive affects the quality of their relationship with a company were analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) via SmartPLS 4. The study’s results thus provide clues for the scholarly as well as practical communities involved in designing marketing and customer relationship management strategies.