Digitalization in retailing: multi-sided platforms as drivers of industry transformation

Licensing policy and platform models of telemedicine: A multi-case study from China

Introduction

As a form of platform economy, telemedicine is not growing as fast as other digital platforms. The existing literature seldom pays attention to how licensing policy affects the development of telemedicine platform models.

Methods

This paper uses the method of multi-case study and the theory of policy implementation as mutual adaptation to research the influence mechanism of telemedicine platform licensing policy on the platform model in China.

Results

The findings of the current study are as follows: (1) three models can be classified in accordance with different platform providers in China: medical institution platform, Internet company platform and local government platform; (2) bargaining power, reputation mechanism and resource specificity are important dimensions in the analysis of platform models; (3) as an implementer in the process of licensing policy, the platform provider can not only directly determine the establishment and formation of platform model but also indirectly affect the sustainable development of platform model by affecting the supplier and the demander of platform; and (4) The impact between licensing policy and platform model is dynamic and bidirectional, mainly exerted via administrative orders, market-oriented mechanism and medical insurance.

Conclusions

The research enlightens practical exploration in telemedicine and enriches the theoretical innovation in platform.

The effects of utilitarian value on omnichannel continuance intention: the moderating role of product involvement

Purpose

This study aims to examine the factors that motivate consumers’ omnichannel continuance intention from the utilitarian value perspective and to test the moderating role of product involvement.

Design/methodology/approach

Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the research model with data on 382 omnichannel consumers.

Findings

Three perceived utilitarian value dimensions – quality, monetary savings and convenience – positively influence consumers’ omnichannel continuance intention through their attitudes. Convenience is the main driver of consumers’ omnichannel shopping. Moreover, the effect of perceived quality on attitude is greater for consumers with low rather than high product involvement.

Research limitations/implications

This study refines the research on omnichannel consumer behavior, adds to the factors known to influence consumers’ omnichannel selection and identifies the critical role of product involvement in retaining consumers. However, it only investigates the basic dimensions of perceived utilitarian value and does not distinguish between types of omnichannel services. Future research can expand upon consumer intention by considering more utilitarian values and omnichannel services.

Practical implications

Omnichannel retailers should consider the significance of these findings in guiding consumer retention and channel integration. Specifically, they may suggest more convenient methods for shopping and measures of consumer product involvement to provide utilitarian value.

Originality/value

This study adds to the literature on omnichannel selection by investigating consumers’ continuance intention. Analyzing the effects of utilitarian value extends prior research on information systems, channel integration, supply chain management and consumer experience.

What Causes the Virtual Agglomeration of Creative Industries?

The agglomeration paradigm for creative industries has fundamentally changed under the digital economy, giving rise to a new form of virtual agglomeration within these industries. This study explores the causes of this virtual agglomeration. We collected online Chinese news texts related to the virtual agglomeration of the creative industry, used text mining to identify nine factors affecting its formation, and refined the internal and external factors for an analytical framework based on the PEST (political, economic, social, technological) and value-chain models. We then combined the relevant literature and the creative industry’s development practices, analyzed the mechanism of each driving factor, and constructed a driving-force model for the creative industry’s virtual agglomeration. The external driving factors were government policy planning, the digital economic environment, emerging consumer demand, and the application of innovative technology; the internal factors were the digitalization of cultural resources, flexible manufacturing, digital marketing and promotion, online interactive services, and virtual platform facilities. Each factor was found to contribute to virtual agglomeration through different internal mechanisms. This study’s findings have theoretical and practical value for cultivating the modes of virtual agglomeration within creative industries.

Emerging trends in digital transformation: a bibliometric analysis

Purpose

Ubiquitous digital technologies are driving organisations to embrace non-traditional digitally transformed business models incessantly. Heterogeneous literature contributions have resulted in a spur in the research related to business transformation driven by digital technologies in recent years; consequently, the research under the digital transformation (DT), even though becoming a hotspot, remains very fragmented. The authors endeavour to holistically present the literature's intellectual structure under DT as a concept, its evolving journey and the emerging research streams in the business and management domains using the techniques of bibliometric analysis.

Design/methodology/approach

By performing bibliometric analysis on 234 research articles published over the last 20 years in the DT domain, retrieved from Thompson Reuters Web of Science TM, this study culls out thorough insights from the citation, co-citation and keyword analysis. Further emerging research streams were evaluated using VOSviewer software.

Findings

The study depicts an overall incremental trend of year-on-year publications, authors' performance, publication journals, associated institutions and research driving countries, along with key insights from co-citation network analysis. Furthermore, the study evaluates four research areas – organisational impacts, applied applications and insights, operational processes and social aspects, comprising eighteen research streams that comprehensively cover-up research under the DT domain.

Research limitations/implications

The study contributes to the literature of DT by amalgamating the status of the present research, but more importantly, by deriving the research areas and research streams, which can be further expanded by researchers as future research streams.

Practical implications

For the practitioners, the study aims to act as a ready reckoner repository with practice-oriented literature references to facilitate them building knowledge and taking effective strategic decisions to harness the benefits of DT more proficiently.

Originality/value

This study illustrates the bibliometric structure of the DT literature and presents insights from the growth of the literature year-on-year.

Value creation in mobile social media: a systematic review and agenda for future research

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to provide a systematic review of the current state of research regarding mobile social media use for value creation by firms and customers and an agenda for future research.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors conducted a systematic review following three main steps: keyword search, study selection and data extraction. A total of 53 articles were identified using academic databases and manual cross-referencing. By means of a thematic analysis method, the study addresses issues related to theory, methods, context, findings and gaps.

Findings

The study reviews and illustrates 14 value aspects of the mobile social media and value creation literature. The findings indicate that mobile social media are effective tools for firms to create and capture value from customers and for customers to co-create value.

Originality/value

The study contributes to the marketing and social media literature by proposing a conceptual framework that integrates the core components of value creation by firms and customers in the mobile social media context and by proposing an agenda for future research.

The critical factors shaping customer shopping experiences with innovative technologies

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to explore the customer shopping experience in the innovative technology setting. Specifically, the purpose is to understand how do innovative technologies influence the customer shopping experience?

Design/methodology/approach

This qualitative, explorative study has characteristics of a phenomenological research strategy. The data were collected from four focus groups and ten in-depth interviews with consumers. Abductive approach with an implementation of content analysis was used as a method of analysis.

Findings

The results show that there are three critical factors in customer's shopping experience in the context of innovative technologies; (1) channel choice, (2) value dimensions related to convenience and enjoyment, and (3) social interaction. All factors are highly intertwined and influence each other.

Originality/value

This study contributes to customer experience literature by offering a framework for understanding customer shopping experiences in the innovative technology setting. These findings have important implications for retail managers seeking to enhance customer experience and achieve a competitive advantage by utilizing innovative technology.

Digital transformation of organizations: what do we know and where to go next?

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to identify the development of the digital transformation literature and to the systematic literature review methodology.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors run a systematic literature review, followed by a rigorous thematic analysis of both academic and grey literature dataset, in order to develop a conceptual map of organizations' digital transformation. The authors aggregate the concepts and topics identified across the literature to find that they overwhelmingly tackle digital business models. At the same time, the authors identify a major blind spot resulting from ignoring the organization itself as a unit of analysis.

Findings

The findings show that developing a digital theory of the organization or the theory of digitally transformed organization is a major challenge to management researchers. The analysis exposed numerous research gaps that can be helpful for future research directions.

Originality/value

Digital transformation research enjoys an increasingly rapid rise to recognition across many academic disciplines and strongly impacts the management domain. adopt the view that published documents reflect the collective understanding of a phenomenon. This paper contributes to filtering the digital transformation literature, clarify complex relation between digital transformations of organizations and identify the key blind points.

Mechanism Underlying the Formation of Virtual Agglomeration of Creative Industries: Theoretical Analysis and Empirical Research

Industrial agglomeration serves as an effective model for developing the creative economy and manifests itself as the interdependence of creative subjects in geographical space. The traditional methods of resource agglomeration have undergone tremendous changes due to the development of digital technology. These transformations have given birth to a new organizational form of the virtual agglomeration of creative industries. The present work uses field interviews and grounded theoretical research methods to construct a theoretical model of this new organizational phenomenon. Questionnaire surveys and empirical testing using structural equation models are here combined to systematically analyze the formation mechanism of the virtual agglomeration of creative industries. The results show that digital technology, virtual platforms, digital creative talents, digitization of cultural resources, and government policies have driven the formation of the virtual agglomeration of creative industries. This has been achieved through network collaboration, freedom of participation, and trust guarantee mechanisms. The effect of emerging consumer demand on the virtual agglomeration of creative industries is not significant. In addition, the implications of this research are also considered and discussed.

Digital inbound marketing: Measuring the economic performance of grocery e-commerce in Europe and the USA

This research investigates the cost-result relationship of the Inbound Marketing actions used by grocery e-commerce. The analysis is based on the application of the Dorfman and Steiner (1954) model for optimal advertising budget, which is adapted by the authors to digital marketing and verified with empirical statistical analysis. Considering 29 leading companies in six countries over a time horizon of six years, an analysis of the mix of SEO and SEM techniques aimed at the attraction and conversion of Internet users to the web pages of their companies is carried out. The results confirm that e-commerce is optimizing Digital Inbound Marketing in line with the established model. Differences are identified depending on the type of format (pure player versus brick and mortar) and at the country level (UK and USA versus others).

Digitalization of the Marketing Activities of Enterprises: Case Study

The pace and scale of the digitalization of today’s global information society open up new opportunities for business. At the same time, they set new challenges for business owners and managers in the field of marketing. Given this fact, the purpose of the study was to present the impact of digitalization on the marketing activity of the enterprise in the field of services by promoting the use of online sales via electronic distribution channels, social networks, and mobile applications. A comparative system of estimating the parameters of the influence of digitalization on the marketing activity of the enterprise was proposed as a confirmation of this impact. Based on the developed “tree of goals,” the dynamics of the digitalization of services were projected and the prospects of development of this sphere of activity were outlined. For testing the proposed methodology, the railway passenger transportation company (JSC “Ukrzaliznytsia”) was chosen as the object of the research. Research methods used in the study include: (1) statistical; (2) SWOT analysis; (3) systematization, comparative, and structural-dynamic analysis; and (4) an expert survey. As a result of revealing the impact of individual elements of digitalization on the level of marketing activity, the number of recommendations regarding the development of digitalization of electronic ticket sales services and their accounting for enterprises dealing with railway passenger transportation were proposed.

Proximity Trade and Urban Sustainability: Small Retailers’ Expectations Towards Local Online Marketplaces

The aim of this research is to identify the expectations offered by small retail businesses towards local online selling platforms as an innovative tool to ensure their future and the urban sustainability. Based on the previous findings obtained from an analysis of trends, actors and marketplaces operating in the retail sector, sixty semi-structured in-depth interviews have been carried out to Spanish local retail managers and owners. Opportunities and risks faced by local online marketplaces are presented from the perspective of small retail stores. Different attitudes towards online shopping platforms have been identified depending on their size, presence and experience in the online world, which has allowed us to categorize local retail businesses in six groups. Despite the perceptual and attitudinal differences between them, it is concluded that merchants have assumed that the current and future business model goes through the digitalization of their businesses and the selling on e-commerce platforms. The coexistence of the e-marketplace and the physical stores, conducted by the same retailers, could have a positive effect on the urban sustainability: on the one hand, with the economic strengthening and renovation of the historical centers and, on the other, with the maintenance of the population and traditional social relationships.

Digitalization in practice: the fifth discipline advantage

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to provide advice to organizations on how to become successful in the digital age. The paper revisits Peter Senge’s (1990) notion of the learning organization and discusses the relevance of systems thinking and the other four disciplines, namely, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision and team learning in the context of the current digitalization megatrend.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper is based on content analysis of essays from international organizations, strategy experts and management scholars, and insights gained from the author’s consulting experience. A comparative case study from the health and social sector is also included.

Findings

With the current digitalization megatrend sweeping across the globe, the practice of systems thinking would certainly become more crucial for organizations seeking to develop new digital ecosystems. In addition, the application of the other four disciplines of the learning organization would also help to nurture a digital culture for organizations to stay ahead of the competition.

Practical implications

Organizations and digitalization practitioners could benefit from applying systems thinking to develop digital ecosystems, and the other four disciples to nurture a digital culture.

Originality/value

This paper contributes to the existing literature by offering a relook and justifications on the relevance of the five disciplines, in particular systems thinking, in the present times. It offers advice to organizations on how to become successful as part of the digital transformation journey.

Conceptualising innovative price models: the RITE framework

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to lay a current, research-based foundation for investigation of the concept of innovative price models and its connection to business models.

Design/methodology/approach

The design is composed of a structured literature review of articles on price models published in 22 journals during 42 years. This then serves as a base for a subsequent conceptual discussion about the foundation of innovative price models.

Findings

The literature review yields only very few results that are loosely scattered across various areas and mostly without any kind of deeper exploration of the concept of price models. The paper therefore goes on to conceptually explore some fundamental conditions that might influence or even determine price models. The final outcome of this exploration is the relation, intention, technology and environment (RITE) framework that is a meta-model for conceptualising innovative price models.

Research limitations/implications

The literature review could include additional journals and areas, and empirical testing of the RITE framework as yet has been limited.

Practical implications

The RITE framework can be used by practitioners as a tool for investigating the potential and usefulness of developing the capability to handle innovative price models.

Originality/value

The RITE framework provides fundamental conditions, which influence, or even determine, how innovative price models are developed and applied.

The Path to Innovation: The Antecedent Perspective of Intellectual Capital and Organizational Character

Purpose: The high-speed growth of China's large-scale new economy indicates that innovation has become the most important economic growth pole. The study aims to explore the structure of the path to innovation, in which we focus on the mediating effect of organizational character. Design/methodology/approach: Considering the indigenous context of China's new economy, the study divides innovation into two types: technological innovation and business model innovation. Then, we build a path model to achieve the innovation by taking intellectual capital and organizational character as antecedents. Finally, a structural equation model is built to measure the path on the basis of sample data collected via a questionnaire survey. Findings: The results indicate that intellectual capital has a significant positive direct effect on technological innovation, but its direct effect on business model innovation is not significant. Organizational character not only mediates the relationship between the intellectual capital and technological innovation, but also plays a mediating role in the effect path from the intellectual capital to business model innovation. In addition, technological innovation has a positive impact on the business model innovation, and mediates the relationship between the intellectual capital and business model innovation. Originality/value: The study takes intellectual capital and organizational character as the common antecedents of innovation and breaks down the content of innovation research into technological innovation and business model innovation. Thus, it establishes a new theoretical analysis framework for dual innovation research and enriches the related theories. The framework would have stronger explanatory power for revealing the innovation strategy and behavior carried out by a large number of corporate organizations in China and the boom of new economy. Furthermore, it would lead enterprises to organize innovation activities more effectively and improve their innovation performances.