Effects of visit behavior on online store sales performance: personal computer (PC) versus mobile channels

PurposeThis study examines the dynamic relationships of visit behavior in the multiple channels [personal computer (PC) and mobile channels] on online store sales performance.Design/methodology/approachThe empirical data were from an online store for the period between August 14, 2015 and May 15, 2016. The data consisted of consumer visit behavior and online store sales performance. Vector autoregression with an exogenous variables model was adopted to investigate the dynamic relationships.FindingsThe empirical results show significant relationships between visit behavior metrics (number of visitors, average number of visits per visitor and average length of each visit) in the two channels and online store sales performance. The number of visitors through the PC and mobile channels strongly and positively affects online store sales performance both in the short term and in the longer term. Moreover, the number of visitors in the PC channel has the strongest influence on sales performance metrics, followed by the number of visitors and the average number of visits in the mobile channel. The PC channel's visit behavior metrics explain a larger proportion of the sales performance variance than that in the mobile channel.Originality/valueThe previous literature on consumer behavior in multichannel marketing mainly focuses on channel selection or migration, and examines the different factors affecting channel choice behavior. Little is known about the impacts of visit behavior in the multiple channels. This study adopts the heuristic-systematic information processing theory to unveil the impacts of visit behavior metrics in the PC and mobile channels on online store sales performance.

How Does the Mobile Channel Reshape the Sales Distribution in E-Commerce?

This study empirically investigates (1) how the sales distribution in the mobile commerce channel is different from the sales distribution in the traditional PC channel and (2) how mobile commerce channel adoption affects e-market users’ search intensity and their aggregate sales distribution. Our analysis shows that transactions in the mobile channel are more concentrated on “head” products compared with PC channel sales. However, it does not imply that the presence of the mobile channel concentrates the demand on head products in online markets, given that mobile channel users can purchase products in the PC channel as well. On the basis of the subsequent user-level analysis, we reveal that in the case of preference goods such as books, CDs, toys, and fashion items, mobile commerce channel adoption increased e-market users’ search activities and resulted in more “tail” product sales. For quality goods such as PCs, phones, cameras, and digital appliances, however, adoption intensified the search activities but resulted in more head product sales. Finally, for convenience goods such as home supplies and processed foods, adoption discouraged search activities and decreased the choice of tail products.

Blurring the Lines between Physical and Digital Spaces: Business Model Innovation in Retailing

Traditional retail practices are under stress as retailers ponder various ways of setting up a sustainable omnichannel business model. A significant challenge in their endeavor relates to the blurring lines between physical and digital worlds. This article analyzes three retailers’ exploratory efforts of alternative physical retail spaces. There are five key innovation areas to revamp for such a retail store: in-store technology, the role of sales associates, leveraging a mobile channel, data analytics, and collaborations. Moreover, physical retail space can serve as an aggregation hub that connects various retailer-customer interaction points across physical and digital spaces.

Predictable patterns in stacking and distribution of channelized fluvial sand bodies linked to channel mobility and avulsion processes

Despite the importance of channel avulsion in constructing fluvial stratigraphy, it is unclear how contrasting avulsion processes are reflected in stratigraphic-stacking patterns of channelized fluvial sand bodies, as a proxy for how river depocenters shifted in time and space. Using an integrated, geospatially referenced, three-dimensional data set that includes outcrop, core, and lidar data, we identify, for the first time in an outcrop study, a predictive relationship between channelized sand body architecture, paleochannel mobility, and stratigraphic-stacking pattern. Single-story sand bodies tend to occur in vertically stacked clusters that are capped by a multilateral sand body, indicating an upward change from a fixed-channel system to a mobile-channel system in each cluster. Vertical sand body stacking in the clusters implies reoccupation of abandoned channels after “local” avulsion. Reoccupational avulsion may reflect channel confinement, location downstream of a nodal avulsion point that maintained its position during development of the sand body cluster, and/or aggradation and progradation of a backwater-mediated channel downstream of a nodal avulsion point. Sand body clusters and additional multilateral sand bodies are laterally offset or isolated from each other, implying compensational stacking due to “regional” switching of a nodal avulsion point to a new, topographically lower site on the floodplain. The predictive links between avulsion mechanisms, channel mobility, and resultant sand body distributions and stacking patterns shown in our findings have important implications for exploring and interpreting spatiotemporal patterns of stratigraphic organization in alluvial basins.