Nota editorial para el Research Topic The Impact of AI-Enabled Technologies in E-commerce and Omnichannel Retailing.
Proyecto en curso sobre el impacto de la Inteligencia Artificial en el marketing.
Consumers are increasingly combining distribution channels, both between purchases and when completing the same purchase in the so-called omni-channel behavior. In this work, we identify this omni-channel behavior among the customers of a global company in the fast fashion sector.
Through a multinomial logit model, we perform customer segmentation based on their behavior. In this segmentation, we consider the explanatory role not only of the individuals’ characteristics but also of the distribution services and each channel’s policies.
Thus, we observe how the product’s accessibility in the store, the store’s purchasing ambiance and web accessibility are key features of the channels that explain the customers’ omni-channel behavior.
To gain the competitive advantage needed to survive and compete in an environment led by large distribution chains, small-scale retailers need to develop distinctive competencies. This is particularly relevant in the case of retail pharmacies, which are already affected by continuously eroding profit margins, increasing liberalization of the sector and growing competition from new non-pharmaceutical outlets. Against this background, this paper contributes to identifying distinctive competencies with the potential to enhance business performance in retail pharmacies. Using structural equation modelling on a sample of Spanish pharmacies, it also establishes relationships between possession of certain distinctive competencies and success in building a sustainable competitive advantage.
Private sales clubs are a novel service institution arising out of the Internet's ability to allow an exclusively online channel to distribute out of season or out of fashion inventories to a large set of customers. They have become a thriving industry in the 21st century. In this paper we enhance understanding of this technology mediated institution as a distribution channel. Furthermore, we show how to measure the impact of the distribution services it provides through the Internet on customer satisfaction and of the latter on economic performance. We rely on the technique of quantile regressions in this endeavor. The latter allows for asymmetries in the response function that have been noted as a major issue to be addressed in the analysis of both customer satisfaction and economic performance variables. Our most important empirical finding is that the distortions introduced by ignoring asymmetries in the response function with respect to customer satisfaction are extremely misleading for managers of private sales clubs.
Services, prices and promotions in retail distribution