دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی عوامل تعیین کننده یکپارچگی حد واسط خرده فروشی - الزویر 2018

Abstract

The decision on whether and to what extent they should implement cross-channel integration is a crucial and complex task for multi-channel retailers. Although prior studies have sought to identify key determinants of this decision, most are descriptive or draw on divergent theoretical perspectives. The authors provide a cohesive theoretical model from the perspective of innovation diffusion, including not only technology-related but also organizational and environmental factors. The empirical findings based on the observations in the U.S. retail sector indicate that retailers’ information-technology capabilities and private-label provision drive their cross-channel integration. Moderate diversity facilitates cross-channel integration more than does high or low diversity. Firms’ financial resources seem to be less important or unimportant at a low level of industry concentration, but may influence retailers’ cross-channel integration at a high level of industry concentration. © 2018 Direct Marketing Educational Foundation, Inc., dba Marketing EDGE.

Discussion

The purpose of this research was to develop and empirically test a conceptual model that identifies the determinants of cross-channel integration in a multi-channel retailing context. This conceptual model was based on the innovation-diffusion perspective, including factors in three dimensions: technology-related factors, organizational characteristics, and environmental context. The empirical study of 77 publicly traded U.S. retail firms from 2008 to 2015 generally supported the model we hypothesized. Below, we discuss the obtained results embedded in the TOE context.

Technological Context

The results suggest that retailers with more advanced IT capabilities tend to adopt and implement a higher level of crosschannel integration, and that retailers selling private-label products tend to develop a higher level of cross-channel integration. Firms' retained earnings are not linked to their decisions on channel integration. Compared to firms' IT capabilities and relational resources, their internal financial resources seem less important. One plausible explanation for this is that if firms adopt cross-channel integration projects, their chances of finding investors may increase seeing that such projects are potentially linked to positive future performance and that they enable retailers to keep pace with changing consumer preferences in innovative ways. Firms' willingness to invest and risk borrowing from the capital market will depend on their motivation to innovate. We will return to this point in discussing the factor of industry concentration later in this section.