Strategic use of IOS and social media within multi-channel marketing: aligning with IT capability

Purpose Given the critical role of internet tools in the multi-channel context, we propose that interactions enabled by inter-organizational systems (IOS) and social media can effectively mitigate multi-channel conflict. Furthermore, drawing upon task-technology fit (TTF) theory, we aim to explore the moderating roles of firms’ IT infrastructure capability and channel personnel's IT usage capability in influencing the effectiveness of these two types of interactions. Design/methodology/approach Utilizing a dataset comprising 484 survey responses from manufacturers, we employed the hierarchical multiple regression method to empirically examine the research hypotheses. Findings IOS- and social media-enabled interactions negatively correlate with multi-channel conflict. In addition, an alignment is observed between the two types of interactions and firms’ IT capabilities. Specifically, the negative relationship between IOS-enabled interaction and multi-channel conflict is more pronounced for firms with a high level of IT infrastructure capability. Meanwhile, the negative relationship between social media-enabled interaction and multi-channel conflict is stronger when channel personnel possess high IT usage capability. Originality/value This study is the first to investigate how IOS- and social media-enabled interactions can effectively alleviate multi-channel conflict, extending prior research on mitigating such conflicts and contributing to the literature on IOS and social media. Furthermore, this study enriches TTF research by highlighting the strategic alignment between these two types of interactions and IT capabilities.