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Retail customers are now omnichannel both for attitude and behavior. Since individuals interact with multiple touchpoints throughout their shopping journey, retailers must consider all channels holistically as consumers do, in order to provide them with a unified shopping experience. Thus, recently retailers are showing an increasing interest in the deployment of advanced in-store systems aimed at enhancing the shopping experience by providing customers with innovative tools able to engage them for obtaining deeper insights, saving time and feeling more independent while shopping. Such technologies can help retailers to better react to those emerging settings by: acquiring a positive image and reputation, being perceived as innovator; reducing management costs; maintaining and acquiring loyal consumers; making imitation strategies as difficult as possible for competitors; and reaching a unique and differentiated positioning. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether and how store technology positively affects the customer experience in an omnichannel retail environment and if the early adoption of in-store technology by retailers produces a sustainable competitive advantage.

To achieve the research aim and deeply explore the phenomenon of interest, a multiple-case study involving 15 retailers, operating in different industries of the Italian market, was carried through 80 semi-structured in-depth interviews with store managers and employees.

Results of the content analysis show that customers are increasingly willing to use the in-store innovations in order to obtain richer shopping experiences while retailers achieve a stronger brand loyalty as well as a better and updated brand image.

This paper contributes to the relevant literature by proposing two conceptual frameworks. It provides a deeper understanding of possible advantages and threats resulting from early technology adoption by retailers, which is becoming essential for improving the omnichannel customer management and increasing business performance.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and empirically examine the dynamic capabilities (DC) that drive the development of digital manufacturing capabilities (DMC) and the role of DMC in mediating their influence on firm performance.

Based on the dynamic capabilities view (DCV) of the firm, the authors develop a set of hypotheses that are tested through a survey of 110 managers in the manufacturing sector. The hypothesized model is tested through structural equation modeling.

The results indicate that although higher-order DC (HODC) have a strong influence on firm performance, their effects are partially mediated by the DMC that they generate, by positively affecting the extended production process.

The analysis contributes to a better understanding of the interplay between levels of the DC hierarchy by finding that DMC play an important role in translating HODC into enhanced firm performance.

By complementing the DCV with the disruptive innovation theory in a specific fast changing context, this study introduces a new construct (DMC) providing an original and considerable contribution to the literature. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first empirical study that includes and assesses all these elements together in the context of the manufacturing industry.

Drawing an inference from institutional theory and dynamic capabilities view, this study empirically examined the impact of three institutional dimensions (regulative, normative and cognitive) and green entrepreneurial orientation (GEO) on a business firm’s performance. In addition, the moderating effect of dynamic capabilities on the relationship between GEO and firm performance was also explored.

The data were collected from 527 information technology (IT) firms in Pakistan using paper–pencil questionnaires, and the hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling.

The findings showed that the regulative and normative institutional dimensions enhance GEO and firm performance in the selected developing country. However, the cognitive institutional dimension fails to report any substantial influence on GEO and firm performance. The findings raised concerns about lower individual accountability as well as the promotion of green practices and firm performance. In addition, dynamic capabilities positively moderate the GEO influence on firm performance.

With the interplay of institutional dimensions, GEO (as mediator) and dynamic capabilities (as moderator), this study developed and tested a unique framework to understand their influence on firm performance. Specifically, we extended the literature by giving evidence that among the three institutional dimensions, only regulative and normative are considered more important because of their direct and indirect (through GEO) positive effect on firm performance. In contrast, the cognitive institutional dimension failed to report any significant direct or indirect impact on firm performance in our study.

E-commerce expands product and service reach, emphasizing the need for strategic market approaches to enhance e-service quality and drive sales growth. This paper aims to assess the relationship between the perceived quality of e-commerce platforms (characterized by measures of order and return convenience), customer satisfaction with online shopping and repurchase intention from online stores as well as examine whether demographic variables such as age, gender and area of residency (urban/rural) influence the ratings of each of these variables.

An online, self-administered survey gathered 108 valid responses from e-commerce customers. Data were analyzed in Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) and Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS) through principal component analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM) as well as correlation, descriptive statistics, difference of means tests and nonlinear regression.

Online shopping on e-commerce platforms is seen as convenient for both placing orders and managing returns. Additionally, consumers express satisfaction with their online shopping experiences and exhibit a strong intention to repurchase. The analysis revealed linear relationships between order convenience and customer satisfaction, between order convenience and repurchase intention and nonlinear relationships between return convenience, customer satisfaction and repurchase intention. No significant difference was found between the way the demographic variables rated the convenience, satisfaction and repurchase intention constructs.

This study contributes to the empirical literature on service quality in e-commerce by providing a streamlined model of the interactions among the factors as well as by isolating the nonlinear relationships and comparing results across three demographic variables. From a managerial standpoint, the findings suggest that strategies aimed at providing complete qualitative information and enhancing order and return convenience improve customer satisfaction and foster repurchase intention.

The contemporary business environment is characterised by an increasing reliance on artificial intelligence, automation, optimisation, efficient communication and data-driven decision making. Based on the limited academic literature that examines the managerial perspective on enterprise chatbots, the paper aims to explore organisational needs and expectations for enterprise chatbots from a managerial perspective, assesses the relationship between managerial knowledge and managerial opinion regarding enterprise chatbots, and delivers a framework for integrating chatbots into the digital workforce.

The paper presents a quantitative design. An online, self-administered survey yielded 111 valid responses from managers in service and manufacturing organisations based on convenience and snowball sampling strategies. Given the nature of the data and the research questions, the research was conducted using principal component analysis, parallel analysis, correlation, internal consistency and difference in means tests.

This research explores the managerial perspective on enterprise chatbots from multiple perspectives (i.e., adoption, suitability, development requirements, benefits, barriers, performance and implications), presents a heat map of the average level of chatbot need across industries and business units, highlights the urgent need for education and training initiatives targeted at decision makers, and provides a strategic framework for successful chatbot implementation.

This study equips managers and practitioners dealing with enterprise chatbots with knowledge to effectively leverage the expected benefits of investing in this technology for their organisations. It offers direction for developers in designing chatbots that align with organisational expectations, capabilities and skills.

Insights for managers, researchers and chatbot developers are provided. The work complements the few academic studies that examine enterprise chatbots from a managerial perspective and enriches related commercial studies with more rigourous statistical analysis. The paper contributes to the ongoing discourse on decision-making in the context of technology development, integration and education.

The matter of interest is the reporting and disclosure of intellectual capital (IC) in the global “knowledge economy” era. The aim of the paper is twofold: to verify the level of disclosure of IC through the non-financial statements (NFSs) published by public companies and to identify the main firm-specific factors that explain the propensity to disclose.

Based on the 27 components of IC, a scoring system is designed to measure the level of disclosure of IC by 47 listed Italian companies. Content analysis (CA) is performed on the NFSs these companies published in 2020, to measure each company's so-called intellectual capital disclosure index (ICDI). A regression analysis is then applied to relate the ICDI scores to some firm-specific variables to determine their relevance and influence on the level of disclosure.

Although the NFS was not designed specifically for IC, the results of the analyses show an overall barely satisfactory ability of the NFS to give certain information on IC. Furthermore, the propensity to disclose IC appears significantly related to some firm characteristics considered here, such as capitalization, profitability, productivity, intangibility and financial structure.

The analysis relates to a representative but limited sample that does not allow for sectoral or time-series analyses. Extending the companies and years under observation would allow the results to be validated with broader and more in-depth analysis.

This paper provides exploratory but interesting evidence about the relationships between IC disclosure (ICD), firm characteristics and market capitalization. Despite several previous studies on the disclosure of IC, no analyses were found that focused on the information capacity of the NFS. Also, to the authors' knowledge, relatively few researchers have considered a set of financial ratios that include capital structure indices.

There have been significant developments in the field of retailing with digitalization. One of these developments is the emergence of omnichannel retailing. Although this has affected both firms and consumers considerably, the literature is dominated by the studies dealing with omnichannel retailing from the firms’ perspectives. The studies dealing with omnichannel retailing from the consumers’ perspectives have recently begun to attract the attention of researchers. For this reason, this study conducted a literature review to examine various consumer behaviors mentioned in the studies aimed at explaining consumer behaviors in the omnichannel retailing context. The distribution of these studies according to years and journals, research methods used, theories adopted, and the related five-stage consumer decision-making stages are summarized. Additionally, this review addresses future research avenues.

• Customers expect retail companies to adapt their strategies to their behaviour, so they should use different channels and devices in interaction;

• Multichannel and omnichannel strategies represent two distinct approaches to managing relationships with the customers;

• The key to developing a successful omnichannel strategy is to integrate channels and touch points that will create a frictionless experience for the customer;

• Introducing omnichannel interaction requires organizational and IT changes within the company.

Customers expect retail companies to adapt their strategies to their behaviour, so they should use different channels and devices in interaction;

Multichannel and omnichannel strategies represent two distinct approaches to managing relationships with the customers;

The key to developing a successful omnichannel strategy is to integrate channels and touch points that will create a frictionless experience for the customer;

Introducing omnichannel interaction requires organizational and IT changes within the company.

This study aims to understand how integration efforts at both communication and channel levels can foster customer engagement behavior in the retail sector from the perspective of employees.

Data were collected through 231 face-to-face questionnaires completed by frontline employees in shopping centers. A structural equation modeling approach was applied to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results highlight the importance of integration efforts as external stimuli for enhancing employees’ perceptions about customer engagement behavior. Findings extend the stimulus-organism-response model by predicting responses that go beyond employees’ behavior to predict customer engagement behavior. Results also confirm the mediating role of attitudes toward marketing communications and synergy realization in the proposed model.

Retailers should integrate their multiple channels and operate consistently and in coordination through them to develop employees’ perceptions about customer engagement behavior. Managers should regularly collect information from their employees as they represent an important touchpoint in omnichannel retailing.

There is a gap in the omnichannel retailing literature regarding how integration efforts at a communication level may complement integration efforts at a channel level for developing customer engagement. This study addresses this gap by adopting a novel perspective using frontline employees as a source of information for assessing customer engagement behavior. It extends knowledge about how customer engagement behavior may be developed and strengthened from the employees’ point of view.

Este estudio analiza, desde la perspectiva del empleado, cómo la integración de la comunicación y la coordinación de los canales de distribución fomenta el engagement de los clientes en el sector minorista.

Los datos fueron recogidos a través de 231 cuestionarios personales realizados a empleados de centros comerciales. Las hipótesis se contrastaron mediante un modelo de ecuaciones estructurales.

Los resultados destacan la importancia de la integración para fomentar la percepción de los empleados acerca del engagement del cliente. Estos resultados extienden la aplicación del Modelo de Estimulo-Organismo-Respuesta para predecir no sólo el comportamiento de los empleados si no el engagement del cliente. Los resultados también corroboran el rol mediador de la actitud hacia las comunicaciones de marketing y la obtención de sinergias.

Los distribuidores deben integrar todos los canales y actuar de forma coordinada y consistente para mejorar la percepción de los empleados acerca del engagement del cliente. Se debe recabar información periódica sobre las percepciones de los empleados ya que constituyen un importante punto de contacto en la gestión omnicanal de los establecimientos comerciales.

Este estudio aborda un gap existente en la literatura acerca de cómo los esfuerzos de integración a nivel de comunicación complementan los esfuerzos a nivel de canal para fomentar el engagement del cliente. La novedad de este estudio reside en estudiar estos aspectos desde la perspectiva de los empleados.

本研究旨在从员工的角度了解沟通和渠道层面的整合工作如何促进零售部门的顾客参与行为。

数据收集于购物中心一线员工所填写的231份面对面问卷。应用结构方程建模方法来检验所提出的假设。

本文结果强调了整合工作作为外部激励对于提高员工对顾客参与行为的认知的重要性。研究结果通过预测超越员工行为的反应来预测客户参与行为, 从而扩展了刺激-机体-反应模型。结果还证实了对营销传播和协同实现的态度在所提出的模型中的中介作用。

零售商应该整合其多种渠道, 并通过这些渠道持续协调地运作, 以培养员工对顾客参与行为的认知。管理者应该定期从员工那里收集信息, 因为他们是全渠道零售的一个重要接触点。

在全渠道零售业的文献中, 关于沟通层面的整合工作如何补充渠道层面的整合工作以发展顾客参与的问题, 存在研究差距。本研究通过采用新颖的视角, 将一线员工作为评估顾客参与行为的信息来源来解决这一差距。它扩展了关于如何从员工的角度发展和加强顾客参与行为的知识。

Omnichannel retailing has changed the behaviour of consumers by empowering activities like showrooming which is the process of collecting product information in store then making the purchase online. Since individuals, particularly Millennials, interact with multiple touchpoints throughout their shopping journey, retailers must consider how these experiences influence purchasing behaviour. Literature regarding showrooming has focussed primarily on antecedents to the phenomenon and the negative effects to brick and mortar retailers, however limited studies have investigated the quantitative influence of showrooming from the consumers' perspective. While data show that interest in online shopping is spiking, a vast majority of retail sales are made in-store suggesting barriers to online shopping still exist. Thus, the purpose of this research is to identify the role of showrooming in decreasing risk in an online shopping context. Additionally, Millennial generational cohorts (MGCs) were proposed as moderators in exploring the differences between the dimensions of perceived risk and online shopping intention.

To explore the relationship between showrooming and MGCs online shopping behaviour an online survey was administered. Data were collected from 480 Millennial consumers at a large southwestern university. Multiple linear regression was used to determine the direction, magnitude and significance of relationships within the models.

Results from the analysis revealed showrooming and MGCs influence online shopping behaviour as it relates to dimensions of risk. Moreover, showrooming increased online shopping intention specifically in relation to product and financial risk.

This paper contributes to the relevant literature by proposing a relationship between showrooming and online shopping behaviour. This research provides evidence that Millennials are not a monolithic generation and consume differently.