Development of a Direct to Consumer (D2C) Maturity Model in E-Commerce

Many brand manufacturers want to use digital sales channels to sell their products directly to consumers. By doing so, they want to achieve different goals: Increase their power to control the market and prices, provide a better overview over their assortment as a merchant, increase their margin through disintermediation effects, etc. However, there are considerable challenges of D2C online sales: Manufacturers must provide or replace in some way almost all the value-adding functions of wholesalers and retailers. At the same time, they cause potential conflicts with their distribution partners, which must be handled or compensated. Digitalising technologies give brand manufacturers the chance to sell directly to the consumer, bypassing intermediaries like wholesalers and retailers. However, that means that the manufacturers must provide more or less all the value functions, which are usually provided by the intermediaries. A maturity model can help to analyse the readiness of a manufacturer to sell online directly to the consumer....