Winnie Ng Picoto

An organizational perspective on m-business: usage factors and value determination

Mobile technologies have increasingly become an integral part of individuals’ work and personal lives. Although research exists in this domain, most of it focuses on the customer’s adoption factors rather than assessing the value or the impact of mobile business (m-business) usage on firms. The present study fills this gap in the literature through the analysis of the value m-business can provide for firms. The Technology-Organization-Environment framework, Diffusion of Innovation theory and Resource-Based theory ground this research’s conceptual model for assessing the post-adoption stages of usage and value of mobile business from an organizational perspective. The value of m-business includes the impact on marketing and sales, internal operations, and procurement. This research uses a mixed method research design; interviews are first conducted to develop a model to assess m-business usage, and survey data collected from 180 Portuguese organizations is then used to test the proposed model. The results indicate that seven of the nine proposed antecedents of m-business usage are significant, and that m-business usage has a positive and significant relationship with m-business value. Furthermore, the three dimensions of value (marketing and sales, internal operations, and procurement) are significant, but only two of them have direct positive impacts on firm performance. Implications of these findings for practice and research are discussed.

How Does Mobile Business Create Value for Firms

Mobile business is expected to create a large spectrum of business opportunities. There are many studies analyzing the contribution of IT to firm performance and whether IT is capable of creating value. One process-level model of IT business value, defined as the contribution of IT to firm performance, focuses on how IT impacts critical business activities within the firm’s value system (in the context of the firm’s value chain). Building on these concepts, we argue that the m-business value corresponds to the impact of m-business usage on firm performance, which is estimated through the perceived impact on the three major groups of activities on the value chain: (i) downstream dimension, (ii) upstream dimension, and, (iii) internal operations. We claim that m-business leverages the potential of the unique features of mobile technologies to improve business performance. This paper is exploratory and aims at answering the following research questions: (i) How does m-business create value to firms? and (ii) Which are the components of the construct m-business value for firms? Interviews were conducted with experts to explore the construct of m-business value and its components. The interviews’ results show that m-business does have impacts on the organizational downstream and internal dimensions. However, its impacts on upstream dimensions are not clear yet. We discuss the implications of these findings for future research and the limitations of the current study.

Value-focused objectives for CRM system adoption

– The purpose of this paper is to define objectives for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system adoption. The objectives provide a theoretical basis for strategizing about CRM system adoption. The objectives also provide managers to clearly direct CRM system adoption, thus ensuring a highly successful outcome. , – The authors conducted a sequential multi-method research in Europe. The initial qualitative phase constituted 62 in-depth interviews. Using Keeney’s (1992) value-focused thinking approach, the authors defined 102 CRM system adoption objectives. Quantitative purification techniques, using a sample of 210 organisations, a more parsimonious set of objectives were developed. The complete set of objectives were classified into fundamental and means objectives. , – Results present three fundamental and three means objectives. These objectives allow for successful CRM system adoption. The three fundamental objectives are: maximise CRM organisational culture; ensure an effective relationship with CRM providers; and minimise CRM project risks. The three means objectives are: maximise CRM usage, maximise relational marketing capabilities, maximise CRM orientation. , – This study provides strategic objectives that can be used by companies to plan adoption of a CRM system. Hence the fundamental and means objectives take the form a strategic planning template. , – Although technology adoption has been well researched and has also been extended to address CRM systems, the focus has largely been behavioural. The strategic objectives for CRM system adoption, presented in this paper, are novel. Objectives enable decision making and resource planning. The combination of fundamental and means objectives provide a theoretical basis for ensuring successful CRM system adoption.

A technology-organisation-environment TOE-based m-business value instrument

Mobile business m-business creates new business opportunities. Yet, existing research focuses on customer adoption factors rather than an assessment of the value of m-business for organisations. This study fills this gap through the development of a conceptual model of m-business value at the organisational level, which is grounded in the technology-organisation-environment TOE framework and the resource-based view RBV theory. The model suggests seven determinants of m-business use and value: technology readiness, firm size, managerial obstacles, competitive pressure, regulatory environment, partner pressure, and mobile environment. M-business value is a second order construct comprising the impact on downstream dimensions e.g., sales support, customer service, market growth, on internal dimensions e.g., internal processes, staff productivity, and on upstream dimensions e.g., procurement, coordination with suppliers. This study develops an instrument to assess m-business usage and value. Data collected from 111 professionals is then used to test the proposed instrument. Implications and contributions are discussed.

M-Business Organizational Benefits and Value: A Qualitative Study

Mobile technology innovations have allowed organizations to expand the way they conduct business. Organizations are increasingly leveraging the unique value propositions of mobile business (m-business) in terms of convenience, ubiquity, unison, and personalization to improve business performance and support their value chain activities. Building on a process-oriented model of IT business value, we propose that m-business value is derived from its perceived impacts on the value chain activities. This article addresses the following research questions: (i) How does m-business create value for organizations? and (ii) Which are the organizational impacts of m-business? Through qualitative research involving in-depth interviews with experts, this article defines m-business value by clarifying the impacts of m-business usage at the organizational level. While the interview results show that m-business does have impact on marketing and sales and internal operations, its impact on procurement requires further research. The findings extend existing literature by proposing a definition of m-business value, based on a more in-depth understanding of m-business impacts on firm performance, highlighting new m-business value components, and developing a conceptual model of m-business value assessment in which task requirements and business characteristics may play a moderating role. The implications of these findings on future research are discussed.

Continente Online: Building a Success Story in the Food Retail Business

The online marketplace has grown exponentially during the last decade and today most clickand-mortar businesses have developed Internet sales channels. The online food industry, and more specifically groceries, presents a huge challenge for managing operations online. It has proved to be quite difficult to provide online customers with a positive experience in shopping for groceries, given the numerous challenges faced, such as: the demand to manage the significant number of products available, the need to have both stocks and pricing updated and the requirement to optimize delivery protocols. Nevertheless, the online food retail business has been steadily growing during the past few years. Continente Online (CO) is the online channel of the SONAE (Modelo Continente Hipermercados, SA) hypermarket (a European term for a large supermarket combined with a department store) chain, which is the Portuguese leader in food retail and is usually considered to be a success story in online groceries. Today, CO is perceived to have helped the group gain customer recognition and achieve competitive advantages over its direct competitors. After a temporary inoperability of the CO website, the manager of CO had to decide whether to continue to invest in the online operations or to terminate them. This turning point allowed CO to take into account what they have learned in the past and how they could use those lessons to successfully relaunch a new online channel. At the end, the company decided to increase the investment in the online operations and to build a new and stronger website for CO. This case presents the evolution and learning curve of the management team of CO. It highlights the experimental approach used by CO, which has led to a deeper understanding of the online channel. The case also examines how this channel is aligned with the overall business strategy of the company and also how it helps CO to achieve its innovation objectives and excellence in customer experience. The students will be asked to evaluate how the business model and growth strategy for CO position this company for the future.

What's Behind CRM Research? A Bibliometric Analysis of Publications in the CRM Research Field

ABSTRACT The diversity of approaches to customer relationship management (CRM) brings about the need for systematic reviews. The objective of this article is to identify and categorize the most used publications in the CRM field. We conducted a bibliometric analysis using the Web of Science database. To identify and categorize the subfields, we conducted an exploratory factor analysis. The most used publications were categorized into: (1) methodology in the CRM research field; (2) relationship marketing; (3) service quality and customer loyalty; (4) implications of market-oriented strategy; (5) CRM theory and its practical implications; (6) strategic management; and (7) customer value.