ACTIVITY THEORY APPLIED AT CHANNEL EXPANSIONS IN SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES

Abstract

Today’s commonly carried out channel expansions of commerce could be both costly and problematic to manage. Especially for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that often suffer from a lack of digital competence, time and monetary resources in generally. Still, these transitions would be necessary to carry out because of customer demands and expectations concerning 24/7 availability, and access to digital commerce alternatives. Scarce resources are important reasons to search for how to carry out channel expansions with minimized problems. Activity theory (AT) focuses on the whole in order to detect problems that hinder successful outcomes. Hence, this theory was applied to prior findings, from a project about SME’s channel expansions, highlighting several problems that could appear during these activities. Implications for research foremost involve issues connected to the use of AT; implications for practice particularly concern if and how AT could be used to support channel broadening activities. Keywords: channel expansion, channel transition, digital commerce, “expansive visibilization of work method” (Sic! Engeströms’ expression), multichannel, omni-channel, small and medium-sized enterprise (SME).