Publication Date: 2019/09/15
Abstract: Purpose : In the era of the information technology, where online competition has contributed to the success of many businesses. The Bahraini retailers should be initiated and go ahead to roll in this field to expand their businesses and raise the ceiling of profits. This dissertation investigated the effects of utilizing retail store smartphone app on the sales level, revenues, expenses, online communication with customers, solving customers' online problems, and increasing the in-store sales. Design/methodology/approach: The researcher used quantitative research method to study the objectives, where questionnaire distributed among several Bahraini retailers that own smartphone app for their retail stores. Findings: The findings of utilizing the retail store smartphone app were as follow: First, there is a positive relationship between sales level, revenues and expenses. Second, there is a positive relationship between online communication through smartphone app with customers and solving their online problem. Third, shopping in-store is positively affected by the availability of the product's characteristics on the retail store smartphone app. Fourth, the decision of switching to online-only Store is negatively related to smartphone app’s maintenance cost. Implications: The Bahraini retailers implicate the research while applying smartphone app through, for example, acquiring new payment options, add more creative product characteristics such as 3D pictures and by switching to online-only stores and allocate the expenses among the business transactions. Conclusion: As a result of utilizing the retail store smartphone at the sales level increase together with everyone use and expenses, and to control the expenses increasing switching to an online-only retailer is the best idea. Another benefit of utilizing the retail store smartphone app is increasing in-store sale, where the smartphone app is considered as a great environment to surf among products' characteristics and communication channel with customers to answer the urgent questions or to solve their online problems.
Keywords: smartphone app, retailers, retail stores, in-store, an online-only retailer, e-store.
DOI: No DOI Available
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