Customers do not think in channels. Businesses do. That difference seems simple, but it changes how we think about the customer journey in digital commerce.
A business may organise its world around marketplaces, social commerce, retail, CRM, media and ecommerce. The consumer does not. They move between platforms, stores and touchpoints depending on what they need, what they discover, what they trust and what makes sense at that moment.
The channel structure belongs to the business, not the customer.
The Business Sees Channels. The Customer Sees a Journey.
When we look at performance through an organisational lens, it is natural to ask:
Which channel drove the sale?
But the customer may not experience the journey that way. A shopper might discover a product through social content, compare it on a marketplace, see it again through another touchpoint, and eventually purchase somewhere else.
From the business perspective, those interactions may belong to different teams, budgets and performance reports. From the customer’s perspective, those interactions are simply parts of the same customer journey.
That distinction matters.
Because when we optimise each channel independently, we can end up improving individual parts of a journey without understanding what is actually driving the business.
The Same Consumer Can Behave Differently Across Channels
A consumer might shop on Shopee on Tuesday and at a local supermarket on Saturday. The transaction on each day is real. The channels are different.
But the consumer is the same.
This creates a measurement problem for FMCG teams, particularly when channel performance becomes the main lens for evaluating growth.
A growing channel does not automatically mean that the overall business is growing by the same amount. This is also why attributed sales and incremental business growth need to be evaluated differently.
The transaction may have shifted from another channel. It may have happened earlier. Or the channel may simply have captured demand that already existed. This is why looking at one channel in isolation can create a very different picture from looking at the business as a whole.
When Channel Optimisation Becomes the Wrong Problem
There is nothing wrong with optimising channels. The problem starts when the channel becomes the unit of thinking.
A team sees that ecommerce is growing and asks how to accelerate ecommerce. Another sees social commerce growing and asks how to move more investment into social. A retail team sees declining traffic and focuses on recovering its own numbers.
Each question can be reasonable within its own function. But the business problem may sit somewhere else. The customer journey does not stop at the boundary between teams.
So the more useful question is not:
“Which channel should we optimise?”
It is:
“What is actually driving the customer’s journey — and where is the business creating or losing value along the way?”
That question changes the role of channels. They become parts of a system, rather than separate businesses competing for credit.
From Channel Thinking to Journey Thinking
This does not mean every channel should be measured in the same way. Quite the opposite. Different channels can have different jobs.
One may create discovery.
Another may build consideration.
Another may remove friction at conversion.
Another may support retention.
The point is not to make every channel responsible for everything. It is to understand how the pieces connect. That is particularly important in digital commerce, where discovery, consideration and transaction can happen across different platforms and touchpoints.
The challenge is therefore not simply to make each channel perform better. It is to understand whether the system is working better.
The Business Problem Behind the Channel Problem
This is where channel thinking can become limiting. What looks like a channel performance problem may actually be a consumer understanding problem.
Or a proposition problem.
Or a portfolio problem.
Or a commercial problem.
Or a measurement problem.
The channel is simply where the symptom becomes visible.
The same principle applies beyond ecommerce.
When we optimise one function without understanding the system around it, we can make one part look better while moving the problem somewhere else. Good business thinking starts by understanding the customer journey before optimising the channels around it.
Not:
“How do I make this channel grow?”
But:
“What is the business trying to achieve, what is the customer actually doing, and how do these two things connect?”
That is the difference between managing channels and understanding the business behind them.
