Abstract

The development of various types of sales channels has increased interaction opportunities between corporations and end users. Furthermore, customers have gained increasing influence in business due to the development of performance measures as customers’ ability to influence corporate profitability has gained importance in economic governance. This affects today’s business leaders’ strategic decisions because they need to decide which marketing channels they should use to reach out to end users and how they should proceed in order to increase customer profitability. The purpose of this study is to identify the driving forces behind the strategic choices of the sales channel(s) and to describe the managers’ views of the customers behind the marketing channels and how satisfied, loyal and profitable these customers are. The strategic choices and motivations behind the choice of sales channels are characterized partly by managers’ personal experiences and views on the channel opportunities, coincidences and the fear that some channels will compete with each other. The majority of the managers believe that customers behind sales channels have different preferences, but they use no analysis of how satisfied and loyal their customers are. Satisfaction and loyalty are factors that should be analyzed because they are assumed to lead to customer profitability.

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