Technology-Enabled Retail Services and Online Sales Performance

Abstract

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.

• Web retailing
• e-services
• IT-enabled services
• e-commerce services
• Web functionalities
• e-tailing best practices