$2\mathrm{.}1.$ Data collection

We conducted semi$-$structured interviews with $25$ managers from $18$ German companies that operate internationally. The German retail market was chosen because it is a central and large market in Europe, it is one of the most developed countries in terms of nonfood online retail $($e$.$g$.,$ Germany is Amazon's second largest market with over $14$ bn Euros in revenue$),$ all top $100$ retailers in Germany are nowadays multi$-$ or omni$-$channel retailers $($i$.$e$.,$ operating on$-$ and offline$)$ and finally the accessibility to senior retail leaders of a large set of organizations was given.

We used theoretical sampling for our interviews, starting with six interviews and then gradually developing the sample size until preliminary saturation of the data was reached $[$Eisenhardt$,1989$; Glaser and