The Effect of Customer Service and Content Management on Online Retail Sales Performance: The Mediating Role of Customer Satisfaction

This paper analyzes the mediating role of customer satisfaction by studying the relationship between IT-enabled customer service and content management efforts and online sales performance. Using data on the top performing Web retailers in the U.S. based on their online annual sales, we show that the extent of retailers’ efforts in online customer service and content management is positively linked to customer satisfaction, which in turn is positively related to the retailers’ online sales performance. In addition to directly increasing the revenue, our results indicate that customer service and content management features can also indirectly improve the retailers’ financial performance. Specifically, customer service management impacts the sales performance via the average ticket amount, while content management affects the sales via the repeat visit

Technology-Enabled Retail Services and Online Sales Performance

Drawing on the past literature on four retail service areas: content management, customer management, multi-channel management, and visitor traffic management, this research offers an empirical analysis of the relationships between these four service areas and the online sales performance of Web retailers. Using data from an independent source on the profiles as well as operational and sales performances of the top-ranked Web retailers, we map the retailers’ online features into a unified conceptual framework that incorporates the above four broad areas, and empirically study their direct implications on online sales performance. The results show that the retailers’ efforts in content, customer, and multi-channel management features have a significant positive impact on their online sales. However, while retailers expend considerable efforts on attracting visitors to their retail Web sites, our result is inconclusive regarding whether or not the visitor traffic management features have an impact on retailers’ sales performance

A bibliometric study of the literature on technological innovation: an analysis of 60 international academic journals

This paper aims to contribute to the debate on technological innovation, organization and work. Although technological innovation remained a debated topic in the academic literature during the past years, its implications for organizational processes seem still not sufficiently theorized and empirically investigated. By using two complementary journals’ rankings a search in the ISI Web of Science platform from 1985 through 2013 was performed. To analyze the 998 scientific retrieved contributions a bibliometric analysis has been conducted, adopting also Social Network Analysis tools. Our results reveal a significant growth of the technological innovation literature over the investigated period, the multidisciplinarity of the field and, particularly, the relevance of management and business & economics contributions. Overall, this study offers a broad overview of the literature on technological innovation and emphasizes the opportunity to investigate the role of technological innovation within the organizational life.This paper aims to contribute to the debate on technological innovation, organization and work. Although technological innovation remained a debated topic in the academic literature during the past years, its implications for organizational processes seem still not sufficiently theorized and empirically investigated. By using two complementary journals’ rankings a search in the ISI Web of Science platform from 1985 through 2013 was performed. To analyze the 998 scientific retrieved contributions a bibliometric analysis has been conducted, adopting also Social Network Analysis tools. Our results reveal a significant growth of the technological innovation literature over the investigated period, the multidisciplinarity of the field and, particularly, the relevance of management and business & economics contributions. Overall, this study offers a broad overview of the literature on technological innovation and emphasizes the opportunity to investigate the role of technological innovation within the organizational life.Monograph's chapter

Revisiting the standing of International Business journals in the competitive landscape

© 2016.Journal rankings are contentious, proliferating and bring about a significant change to research productivity and quality assessment. In this paper, we assess the quality and impact of International Business (IB) journals in relation to each other and management and business journals more broadly. In so doing, we overcome methodological limitations of previous journal rankings by adopting a novel approach that incorporates a worldwide meta-ranking. Its key advantage is the ability to look at the standing of journals both within and between subject-areas. Comparisons between subject areas are important because centralization of resource allocation decisions within institutions has ramifications for disciplines and staff involved. Results indicate that within the IB domain, JIBS continues to top the list, JWB has solidified its position and joined the upper tier of IB journals, the space below JIBS and JWB is increasingly contested, pointing to the emergence of a multi-tier set of "core" IB journals. In the wider competitive landscape of management and business journals, IB journals perform well in the upper tier, but there is a long tail of IB journals at the lower end of our meta-ranking