Adoption of in-store mobile payment: Are perceived risk and convenience the only drivers?

Smartphones are changing the way consumers shop, even in brick-and-mortar settings. This study explores consumers’ adoption of proximity mobile payment technology (p-m-payment), which enables them to pay with their smartphones for purchases in a physical store. With a perceived value perspective, the authors identify utilitarian, hedonic, and social benefits and financial and privacy risks as key drivers. They also investigate differences compared with the drivers of more familiar mobile shopping usages and highlight the role of experience. The paper discusses implications for both mobile and channel research and recommendations to help retailers take advantage of p-m-payment technology.     

The Impact of Mobile App Adoption on Cross-buying: The Moderating Roles of Product Category Characteristics and Adoption Timing

With more and more companies introducing mobile apps and consumers using them during the purchase journey, it is increasingly important to understand the consequences of app adoption on behavioral outcomes. This paper investigates the impact of app adoption on the number of additional products purchased by customers (i.e., cross-buying) and how this effect varies across different product categories and different customers. We focus on two key product category characteristics (utilitarian vs. hedonic nature and perceived risk) and on adopters who vary in their adoption timings (early vs. late adopters). Using data from an online retailer and a combination of propensity score weighting with difference-in-differences and Heckman correction estimation techniques, the results show that app adoption has a positive effect on cross-buying overall, but the effect varies greatly across products and consumers. App adoption promotes additional product purchases for hedonic products but leads to less cross-buying for utilitarian products. In addition, early adopters purchase a higher number of additional product categories than late adopters, with this difference decreasing over time and for new consumers compared to existing customers. These results offer novel insights into the behavioral consequences of app adoption and provide managers with useful recommendations for improving the effectiveness of their mobile app investments.     

Understanding determinants and barriers of mobile shopping adoption using behavioral reasoning theory

Technology has transformed the way retail business is done with leading players shifting to mobile specific platforms. The purpose of this study is to examine the mobile shopping adoption using a novel approach of behavioral reasoning theory, which aims to test the relative influence of reasons for, and importance of reasons against adoption of mobile shopping among Indian consumers. The hypotheses were tested using the representative sample of 237 Indian consumers and analyzing the data using PLS-SEM technique. The findings support that ‘reasons for’ and ‘reasons against’ are prime determinant of attitude and intentions. Among the reasons for, price saving orientation is the major determinant for mobile shopping adoption and among the reasons against, self efficacy is the major determinant against mobile shopping adoption. The findings also confirm that value of “openness to change” significantly influences reasons for adoption and has no impact on reasons against and attitude towards mobile shopping. The findings of this study emphasize the importance of examining both the pro-adoption and anti-adoption factors while developing marketing strategy.     

Consumers' attitudes and intentions toward Internet-enabled TV shopping

An increasing number of households are equipped with Internet-enabled televisions (IETVs) that yield opportunities for online activities. This research contributes by investigating the motivational factors of consumers’ attitudes and intentions toward IETV shopping. A quasi-experimental study in the environmental context of a living room was designed to explore IETV shopping behavior. Findings indicate that utilitarian motivations are determined by characteristics of technology and hedonic motivations from the physical environment. Attitudes toward IETV shopping are primarily influenced by hedonic shopping motivations. Conclusions suggest that by providing an IETV shopping app, retailers would make online shopping more enjoyable and comfortable for consumers.     

Engaging the unengaged customer: The value of a retailer mobile app

Mobile apps are becoming a go-to tactic for retailers because they offer the promise of highly convenient digital engagement. We hypothesize that two types of customers are best served by these apps — “offline-only” customers currently purchasing exclusively from the retailer's physical store, and “distant” customers who reside far from the physical store. For offline-only customers, the app complements the physical engagement they currently have. For distant customers, the app offers convenient engagement their remoteness currently precludes. We model app access and purchase behavior of 629 customers who downloaded a retailer's app. We find that apps generate more incremental sales among distant customers compared to near customers, and more incremental sales among offline-only customers compared to online customers. On an illustrative base of 100 K app users, we find accessing the app would generate $2.3 M in incremental sales. Consistent with our segmentation results, we find that the users with the greatest purchase lift (9.5%) due to app usage are those that are distant and offline-only. Our results confirm the economic value of retailer apps and their role as a segmentation strategy to enhance customer engagement.     

The Effect of Pricing and Advertising on Customer Retention in a Liberalizing Market

This study investigates the drivers of customer retention in a liberalizing market. The authors address key retention issues that allow them to contribute to existing retention research in several critical ways. They (1) examine the effects of pricing and mass advertising, (2) account for (new entrants) competitors' actions, (3) investigate the dynamic impact of marketing tactics, and (4) study the proposed relationships in a market recently opened to competition. Using longitudinal data for a sample of 650 mobile phone consumers and a split-population hazard model that accounts for the notion that some customers are never at risk of defection, the authors show that both the focal firm's (incumbent) and the competitors' price and mass advertising exert a significant influence on the probability of terminating an existing incumbent relationship. They find that the relationships between marketing variables and retention are not static but vary over time. Price is generally less effective in the early stages of market liberalization, which suggests that customers become more price sensitive in later stages. Finally, the study findings can have important strategic implications on designing customer management and marketing resource allocation strategies, as well as on providing a competitive regulatory framework in liberalizing markets.     

Does Online Information Drive Offline Revenues?: Only for Specific Products and Consumer Segments!

While many offline retailers have developed informational websites that offer information on products and prices, the key question for such informational websites is whether they can increase revenues via web-to-store shopping. The current paper draws on the information search literature to specify and test hypotheses regarding the offline revenue impact of adding an informational website. Explicitly considering marketing efforts, a latent class model distinguishes consumer segments with different short-term revenue effects, while a Vector Autoregressive model on these segments reveals different long-term marketing response.We find that the offline revenue impact of the informational website critically depends on the product category and customer segment. The lower online search costs are especially beneficial for sensory products and for customers distant from the store. Moreover, offline revenues increase most for customers with high web visit frequency. We find that customers in some segments buy more and more expensive products, suggesting that online search and offline purchases are complements. In contrast, customers in a particular segment reduce their shopping trips, suggesting their online activities partially substitute for experiential shopping in the physical store. Hence, offline retailers should use specific online activities to target specific product categories and customer segments.     

Augmented reality in smart retailing: A (n) (A) Symmetric Approach to continuous intention to use retail brands’ mobile AR apps

Smart retailing has recently emerged as a new form of retail brand management enabled by novel technologies such as mobile augmented reality applications, to create better experience and value for customers. Augmented reality has also received significant attention as a growing field in marketing theory and practice. However, there is a limited understanding on how and why customer interactions with an augmented reality app can result in positive customer benefit perception, engagement and behavioural consequences. This study examines the chain of effects from AR attributes on the building blocks of continuous intention to use a shopping AR app and to pay a price premium, by incorporating the roles of a customer's benefits perception, psychological inspiration and engagement via a(n) (A)Symmetric Approach. The results support all direct hypothesised relationships among the variables, except the relationship between interactivity and utilitarian benefits, which was found to be insignificant. The study further demonstrates the moderating role of AR customisation in the proposed model, and reveals that the impact of utilitarian and hedonic benefits on shopping AR application engagement is non-linear. Non-linearity also transpires in the impact of psychological inspiration on willingness to pay price premium. Interestingly, the findings indicate that augmented reality customisation to some extent enhances the relationships in the hypothesised model.     

Demystifying the impact of self-indulgence and self-control on customer-employee rapport and customer happiness

Past research mostly ignores the link between customers' purchase orientations and their engagement with frontline service employees. This paper addresses this gap by using socio-emotional selectivity theory to investigate the effects of customers’ self-indulgence/control on their rapport building efforts with frontline service employees and on their own happiness. It also explores the moderating effects of age, gender and shopping day on the impact of self-indulgence/control on happiness. Data from 252 Australian customers shows that self-control has no significant influence on rapport or happiness while rapport and self-indulgence positively affect happiness. Finally, all the moderating effects only find partial support.     

Comparing the effectiveness of rewards and individually targeted coupons in loyalty programs

Loyalty programs (LP) and rewards are ubiquitous in retailing, designed to increase customer expenditures and retention, gather abundant customer-level data, and design individually targeted coupons. Although studies have analyzed the individual impacts of LP rewards and targeted coupons on shopping trip incidence and expenditures, they have not compared the two instruments. By investigating the LP of a leading German grocery retailer that uses both LP rewards (points to redeem for free products) and individually targeted coupons, the current study establishes a comparison of their profitability and relative contributions to increasing shopping trips and expenditures. The investigated LP also relies on in-store kiosks to interact with customers, so they can decide when to redeem LP points and request coupons. By jointly modeling the effects of LP point redemptions and coupons on shopping trip incidence and expenditures, using their decision to access the kiosk as a dependent variable and rich data that span thousands of customers over 60 weeks, this study reveals that both instruments increase shopping trip incidence, kiosk access, and expenditures. The LP point redemptions have a stronger effect on shopping trip incidence; coupons have a stronger effect on kiosk access. Although a single redemption of LP points leads to a greater increase in expenditures than a single coupon redemption (€1.46 vs. €0.48), coupons yield three times greater expenditures after controlling for usage frequency; lower discounts also contribute to coupons’ higher profitability. Therefore, LP point redemptions and individually targeted coupons are complementary tools for retailers. This empirical study provides practical insights and pertinent managerial implications regarding the management and design of modern LPs.     

A Model of Household Grocery Shopping Behavior

The shopping trip to the grocery store is one of the most basic elements of consumer behavior. The authors seek to provide an understanding of the factors that account for variations in shopping behavior across households. They present a model of shopping behavior that assumes that households seek to minimize the travel cost associated with shopping and the cost of holding goods in inventory. As in the classic EOQ model, observed shopping behavior reflects the manner in which households balance these costs while meeting their consumption needs. A number of propositions derived from the model are tested using data on shopping trips made by households over a one-year period. The results support the model and indicate that the relationship between household characteristics and shopping behavior can be fairly complex: for some households shopping may have a recreational aspect while for others it may compete directly with wage-earning activity.     

Adoption of Online Grocery Shopping: Personal or Household Characteristics?

This article analyzes how sociodemographic characteristics impact the adoption of online grocery shopping, and relies on the Motivation-Opportunity-Ability (MOA) model to explore what these sociodemographics actually capture and how they are linked with consumer motivations. The researchers exploit a survey among 468 customers of Belgian supermarket chain Colruyt. Their logistic regression shows that while variables at the personal level do affect adoption of the online channel, consumers’ motivations to adopt in fact lie on the household level. In particular, the effect of age disappears or becomes less strong when it is combined with household characteristics. An examination of respondents’ self-reported motivations confirms that age does not only capture a person’s ability to use the technology but also its usefulness for that person’s household, in that age is correlated with the presence of young children and the working situation in the household.     

On the Go: How Mobile Shopping Affects Customer Purchase Behavior

Mobile shopping (M-shopping) has become increasingly important in marketing and retailing. Using a unique dataset from an Internet-based grocery retailer, we evaluate changes in customers’ spending behavior upon adopting M-shopping, i.e., using smartphones or tablets to compose, modify, or place orders online. We find that order rate, i.e., number of orders placed per year, increases as customers adopt M-shopping. Especially for low-spending customers, both their order rate and order size, i.e., the amount of the order in dollars, increase as they become accustomed to M-shopping. In addition to the effect on customer's spending behavior, we also find that M-shoppers tend to use mobile devices to shop for habitual products that they already have a history of purchasing. We propose that customers utilize mobile devices because the technology provides convenient access, which leads them to incorporate M-shopping into their habitual routines. Managerially, we recommend that firms should fully leverage their mobile platforms, but they should also keep in mind that mobile devices may not be the most optimal channel for launching new products or promoting products that require more consideration during the buying process.     

An examination of mobile app usage and the user’s life satisfaction

Increased engagement with mobile apps is an emerging trend with people today. Mobile devices have become so personalized that many people consider their mobile device as an extension of themselves. Research has suggested that one driving factor in a person’s adoption of mobile apps is the pursuit of happiness. However, there is little research regarding the influence of apps on a person’s well-being. The purpose of this paper was to examine mobile app usage among college students and the relationship between app usage and one’s satisfaction with life. Findings suggest that there is a correlation between mobile app usage and a person’s level of satisfaction with life. Gender differences in app usage were also found.     

Understanding the sequential interdependence of mobile app adoption within and across categories

This research examines the interdependencies in users’ sequential app adoptions within and across diverse app categories. We employ a Zero-inflated Negative Binomial (ZINB) model to analyze a unique, granular, and individual-level mobile app adoption dataset, revealing three main findings. First, users’ app adoption decisions are highly history-dependent and category-specific in a nonlinear fashion. Early adoption can enhance subsequent downloads within the same category for app categories with high needs evolvement and horizontal differentiation (e.g., Game and Education apps). However, it may crowd out subsequent downloads in other categories with low needs evolvement and horizontal differentiation (e.g., Communication and Social media apps). Second, these effects are further moderated by users’ individual characteristics such as app usage tenure and phone price. Third, there exist nontrivial app adoption spillovers across app categories. For example, users’ adoptions of apps with relatively high hedonic values (e.g., Game and Music apps) can suppress their subsequent need for apps with relatively high utilitarian values (e.g., Education and Online banking apps), and vice versa. Together, these results offer novel managerial implications for app developers and platforms to promote apps in different categories based on users’ adoption histories.     

Are men from Mars,women from Venus? Examining gender differences towards continuous use intention of branded apps

In this age of technology, consumers have become comfortable shopping with their mobile devices. In light of this growing trend, the branded app market has grown steadily, surpassing all other types of mobile commerce. Although many retail businesses go mobile, consumers’ continuous use of the branded app remains a key challenge in gaining a competitive advantage in the contemporary market. By integrating both the stimulus-organism-response (S–O-R) model and gender schema theory (GST), this study aims to investigate how gender differences affect the factors that drive branded app continuous use intention (CUI). Survey data collected from 715 millennial mobile shoppers were analyzed using the partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique. The results demonstrate that telepresence and social presence have a significant effect on customer engagement (CE) and value co-creation (VCC), which consequently impact CUI. Furthermore, the moderation results indicate that both genders play rather different roles in the proposed relations. Therefore, our work contributes to the information system and consumer behavior literature, while providing practitioners with useful information about effective strategies to drive the continuous usage of a branded app.     

The impact of the introduction and use of an informational website on offline customer buying behavior

Do customers increase or decrease their spending in response to the introduction of an informational website? To answer this question, this study considers the effects of the introduction and use of an informational website by a large national retailer on offline customer buying behavior. More specifically, we study a website's effects on the number of shopping trips and the amount spent per category per shopping trip. The model is calibrated through the estimation of a Poisson model (shopping trips) and a type-II tobit model (the amount spent per category per shopping trip), with effect parameters that vary across customers. For the focal retailer, an informational website creates more bad than good news; most website visitors engage in fewer shopping trips and spend less in all product categories. The authors also compare the characteristics of shoppers who exhibit negative website effects with those few shoppers who show positive effects and thus derive key implications for research and practice.     

Vision (im)possible? The effects of in-store signage on customers’ visual attention

We used two eye-tracking field experiments to investigate the extent to which in-store signage is used during navigation and decision making, and how the viewing of signage influences customers’ visual attention and choice behavior. One hundred and seventy-five customers at a grocery store were exposed to signage stimuli while carrying out predefined shopping tasks. Experiment 1 shows that attention toward signage is affected by customers’ levels of store familiarity and in-store search stage (navigation vs. decision making). Experiment 2 demonstrates that signage has a considerable impact on the direction and magnitude of customers’ visual attention during decision making.     

Mediating Role of Company Information in the Relationships among Perceived Risks and Purchase Intentions in an Online Retailing Context

The exponential growth of the online retail sector has attracted the attention of researchers across the globe. Understanding the consumer decision-making process in an online retail context is of vital importance to all online retailers. The objective of this study was to examine the direct and indirect impacts of perceived risks on consumers’ purchase intentions in an online shopping context. This study applied structural equation modeling to test the study model with data from 234 samples. We found a significant negative full mediating impact of performance risk, financial risk, physical risk, and psychological risk on consumers’ purchase intentions. Moreover, we found a partial mediating impact of social risk on purchase intentions. However, we did not find a mediating impact of time risk on purchase intentions. These empirical results may help online retailers to better understand their consumers, their intentions to purchase, and their level of risk perceptions. Accordingly, online marketers can frame contemporary strategies to attract retail customers, leading to greater profitability of the organization.     

Conceptualizing smart shopping with a smartphone: implications of the use of mobile devices for shopping productivity and value

This conceptual paper addresses the implications of the use of mobile devices in an omni-channel retail environment for consumer shopping productivity and shopping value. We reconsider the existing literature on shopping productivity and adopt the perspective of bounded rationality paradigm rather than the classical assumption of customers’ perfect rationality. It enables us to consider both maximizers (those who seek the best outcome) and satisficers (those who stop their information search as soon as an appropriate option is available). After a thorough review of shopping productivity literature, we propose a conceptualization of shopping productivity including four dimensions: time/effort savings, right purchase, money savings, and hedonic benefits from shopping. We then present a conceptual framework relating use of mobile devices in an omni-channel retail environment to consumer shopping productivity and shopping value. The type of goods and consumer tendency to maximize are included in the framework as possible antecedents of the use of mobile devices in an omni-channel retail environment and moderators of the relation between consumer shopping productivity and shopping value.