Omnichannel businesses in the publishing and retailing industries: Synergies and tensions between coexisting online and offline business models

Since the emergence of the Internet, many brick-and-mortar companies from various industries have established an online business model (BM) alongside their traditional offline BM. Despite the increasing coexistence of online and offline BMs within a single company, however, most prior research has focused on studying online and offline BMs in isolation. Consequently, still little is known about the interplay of dual BMs in omnichannel businesses. We address this research gap through an empirical investigation of the synergies and tensions that arise from coexisting online and offline BMs as well as the factors that influence the emergence of such synergies and tensions. Drawing on a series of six case studies with three publishers and three retailers, we identify an extended set of BM synergies and tensions, which concern all major BM dimensions. In addition, our case analysis reveals that companies are able to exploit different synergies, but also face different tensions between their online and offline BMs. The observed differences can be traced back to the level of online-offline BM integration, online-offline product distinctions (e.g., in terms of product content and publication cycles), and general organization context factors (e.g., offline brand strength, organization structure). By uncovering both the benefits and the complexity of running online and offline BMs in parallel, our study contributes to the theoretical understanding of omnichannel businesses, and provides managers with practical guidance on how to design, integrate, and manage their dual BMs successfully.