Personalization through a proactive live chat in an e-commerce: The case of Byside’s client, a multinational retail company

Retail e-commerce companies currently struggle in managing and optimizing the performance of a proactive live chat software application. It is assumed by companies present in the sector that providing personalized assistance to online visitors brings positive outcomes, however, there is no scientific evidence in this field to prove this assumption. This research aims to bring new insights into the contribution personalization can have regarding the performance of this app. Specifically, it investigates whether increasing personalization on the provided assistance to the online visitor has an impact on the number and value of influenced checkouts. To test the hypothesis that providing more personalized assistance to the online visitor through this application leads to increased sales, the performance results of this app in the Croatian market of a multinational retail client were analyzed. Two five-month periods were observed, one providing nonpersonalized assistance and the other with personalized assistance for online visitors, the results of both periods were analyzed using three independent samples t-tests. The outcomes showed a statistically significant positive effect of the personalized assistance in the application performance results. These results suggest that online visitors who received personalized assistance are more likely to proceed to the checkout funnel and complete the purchase and to perform checkouts with a higher value. On this basis, personalization should be considered when managing or optimizing proactive live chat campaigns in retail e-commerce. The thesis is finalized by outlining its limitations and proposing new avenues of research

New Concepts for Efficient Consumer Response in Retail Influenced by Emerging Technologies and Innovations

The retail industry is continuously confronted with new challenges and experiences a transformation from a supplier’s market to a buyer's market. It is, thus, essential for the retail industry to consequently focus on, anticipate and fulfil consumer’s demands. Technologies and innovative business solutions can help to support to establish a required customer experience and, thereby, gain a competitive advantage. A multitude of new services and products, channels as well as players can already be identified which drive the transformation. Therefore, retailers need to understand current trends and technologies and identify as well as implement relevant solutions for their transformation since otherwise, new players will dominate the market. Hence, this dissertation aims to review and analyse new technologies which are coupled with innovative business activities in order to provide customer-centric retailing. For this purpose, this dissertation consists of five articles and derives four major contributions which introduce different approaches to establishing consumer satisfaction. Firstly, a core technology for retail is artificial intelligence (AI) which can be meaningful applied along the entire value chain and improve retailers’ positions. Two focus areas have been identified in this context which are (i) the optimisation of the entire retail value chain with the help of AI with the aim to derive transparency and (ii) the improvement of consumer satisfaction and relationship. Secondly, focussing on the consumer-retailer relationship in the digital era, a concept with a data architecture is proposed based on a real use case. The outcome was that a specific customer orientation based on data can increase the brand value and sales volume. Thirdly, the work presents that new shopping concepts, named unmanned store concepts, gain continuous growth. Unmanned store concepts employ a variety of new technologies, are characterised by attributes of speed, ease, as well as comfort, and are deemed to be the new ideal of the expectations of modern buyers. Two different directions have been deeper analysed: (i) walk-in stores and (ii) automated vending machines. The critical success factors for the usage of unmanned store solutions are distance as well as high consumer affinity for innovations. In times of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has a huge impact on retail, a continuous innovation capability still needs to be established. Finally, this work introduces a tool for systematic innovation management considering the current circumstances. Taken as a whole, this dissertation with its five articles deals with significant research questions which have not been approached so far. Thereby, the literature is extended by the introduction of novel insights and the provision of a deeper understanding of how retailers can transform their business into a more consumer-oriented way

O papel da tecnologia CDP (Customer Data Platform) na criação de uma visão 360º do cliente

Com a transformação digital e a proliferação dos vários canais de comunicação, é cada vez mais desafiante para as empresas compreender o comportamento e necessidades dos seus clientes, com vista à criação de experiências personalizadas. Se, por um lado, o CRM permite agregar toda a informação acerca das interações do cliente com a empresa, tipicamente ligada aos departamentos de marketing, vendas e apoio ao cliente, o CDP, por outro lado, permite integrar e gerir todo e qualquer comportamento que qualquer utilizador tenha com a marca, independentemente do canal ou identificação que utilize. O presente estudo tem como objetivo investigar de que forma a tecnologia CDP ajuda a centralizar e unificar toda a informação do consumidor e a incrementar a sua relação com a marca, através da personalização em real-time nos momentos-chave da customer journey. Através de uma metodologia qualitativa, procedeu-se à realização de entrevistas semiestuturadas a empresas que usam CRM e empresas que usam CDP com o objetivo de perceber quais as necessidades e limitações que estas enfrentam no que diz respeito aos dados e à criação de experiências personalizadas para os clientes. Os resultados da investigação permitem concluir que, por o CDP possuir ferramentas mais capazes de integração e identificação do cliente nos vários canais, permite a criação de uma visão unificada de todo o seu comportamento com a marca. Ainda que o consiga fazer, o seu papel não é substituir o CRM mas trabalhar de forma paralela para que se criem experiências ricas e personalizadas para o cliente.With digital transformation and the proliferation of multiple communication channels, it is increasingly challenging for companies to understand their customers' behavior and needs in order to create personalized experiences. On one side, CRM allows aggregating all the information about customer interactions with the company, typically linked to marketing, sales, and customer support departments, CDP, on the other hand, allows integrating and managing any and all behavior that any user has with the brand, regardless of the channel or identification that they use. This study aims to investigate how CDP technology helps centralize and unify all the consumer's information and increase their relationship with the brand, through real-time personalization in crucial moments of the customer journey. Through a qualitative methodology, semi-structured interviews were conducted with companies that use CRM and CDP in order to understand what needs and limitations they face regarding data and the creation of personalized experiences for customers. This research results allow us to conclude that, because CDP has tools that can better integrate and identify the customer in the various channels, it enables the creation of a unified view of all his behavior with the brand. Although it can do so, its role is not to replace CRM, but to work in parallel to create rich and personalized experiences for the customer