A conceptual model of channel choice: measuring online and offline shopping value perceptions

This study tries to understand how consumers evaluate channels for their purchasing. Specifically, it develops a conceptual model that addresses consumer value perceptions of using the Internet versus the traditional (physical) channel. Previous research showed that perceptions of price, product quality, service quality and risk strongly influence perceived value and purchase intentions in the offline and online channel. Perceptions of online and offline buyers can be analyzed to see how value is constructed in both channels. This model enables comparisons between online and offline shoppers perceptions. As such, it is possible to determine the factors that encourage or prevent consumers to engage in online shopping.

Employee and Team Digital Readiness:How to Get Employees and Teams Ready for Digital Transformation?

While human capital is crucial to digital transformation, little is known aboutemployee digital readiness, and how this may foster digital transformation.This chapter conceptualizes employee digital readiness and postulates its driversand consequences

Digital Roadmapping:Purpose, Phase and Perspectives

Developing digital roadmaps help managers to explore and determine the direction of digital transformation for their organizations. The act of developing a systematic digital roadmap fosters an understanding of the purpose of digitalization, how to attain digital skills and resources needed to attain the digital transformation goals, and drives organizational change in a coordinated and effective way. Digital transformation is a risky and uncertain journey, full of unexpected events, where important decisions rely on imperfect information

Employee and Team Digital Readiness:How to Get Employees and Teams Ready for Digital Transformation?

While human capital is crucial to digital transformation, little is known aboutemployee digital readiness, and how this may foster digital transformation.This chapter conceptualizes employee digital readiness and postulates its driversand consequences

Digital Roadmapping:Purpose, Phase and Perspectives

Developing digital roadmaps help managers to explore and determine the direction of digital transformation for their organizations. The act of developing a systematic digital roadmap fosters an understanding of the purpose of digitalization, how to attain digital skills and resources needed to attain the digital transformation goals, and drives organizational change in a coordinated and effective way. Digital transformation is a risky and uncertain journey, full of unexpected events, where important decisions rely on imperfect information

How Do Franchisees Assess Franchisor Trustworthiness?

This study investigates the antecedents of franchisees’ assessments of franchisor trustworthiness. It combines multiple theoretical perspectives to develop a framework that is empirically tested with survey data from 128 franchisees of a Dutch franchise system. The results show that franchisees’ perceptions of a franchisor's fulfillment of its functional duties on proactive and reactive quality assurance and strategic management positively influence franchisees’ assessments of franchisor trustworthiness. Moreover, the results show that the impact of the antecedents on franchisees’ trustworthiness assessments varies across franchisees: market competition attenuates the influence of strategic management and reactive quality assurance. Unit performance does not moderate the importance of the antecedents

Investigating the Effect of Consumer Traits on the Relative Importance of TAM Constructs in an E-Commerce Context

This paper tests whether the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) holds for different groups of customers. In doing so, we investigate the moderating effect of eight customer traits (socio-demographics, psychographics, and prior experience) on important relationships within TAM for an online shopping context. The results show that in general TAM is quite capable of predicting customers’ online purchase intentions. For some moderators, however, the impact of a predictor is significantly different. Sociodemographics have the strongest influence on altering the relative importance of the predictors, while the moderating influence of prior online shopping experience is significant in some cases. Psychographics are found to be mostly unrelated to the extent to which TAM predictor impact purchase intentions. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed

Uncertainty avoidance and the exploration-exploitation trade-off

Purpose - This study aims to investigate how a firm's uncertainty avoidance - as indicated by the headquarters' national culture - impacts firm performance by affecting exploratory (product innovation) and exploitative (brand trademark protection) activities. It aims to show that firms characterized by high levels of uncertainty avoidance may be less competitive in the exploratory product development stage, but may be more competitive in the exploitative commercialization stage by producing more durable brands. Design/methodology/approach - The study uses data from US Software Security Industry (SSI) trademarks, registered by firms from 11 countries during 1993-2000, that provide 2,911 trademarks and a panel of 18,213 observations. It uses the SSI database to identify the number of product innovations introduced by firms. Findings - Results show that uncertainty avoidance lowers the rate of product innovation, but helps firms to appropriate more value by greater protection of their brands. Uncertainty avoidance thus creates an exploration-exploitation trade-off. Practical implications - This study provides useful insights for managers regarding where to locate a firm's front-end development (product innovation) activities and commercialization (brand trademarking protection) activities. Originality/value - This is the first study to demonstrate the influence of a cultural trait on both explorative and exploitative stages simultaneously. As a methodological contribution, it shows how objective, longitudinal brand trademark data can be used to analyze the long-term impact of marketing activities on firm performance