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Cross-border e-commerce is flourishing worldwide and is particularly intriguing because it allows sellers and buyers to regularly cross national borders to distant and distinct countries via the Internet. Marketers need to understand the challenges retailers and consumers may face to develop effective marketing strategies, attract foreign consumers to retailers’ websites, and convert their visits into actual purchases. This dissertation contributes to the growing literature on cross-border e-commerce by examining how e-retailers can shape their marketing strategy to reach foreign consumers who may make a purchase and what drives consumers’ perceptions and preferences before making thatpurchase. To this end, study 1 examines how and to what extent small e-retailers can shape their marketing strategies to increase their use of digital marketing tactics and thereby improve their performance in foreign markets by comparing e-retailers originating from developed and emerging e-commerce markets. Study 2 focuses on how store values and country stereotype perceptions leadto higher trust between consumers and retailers in foreign e-stores, and how this differs for European consumers shopping at U.S. and Chinese e-stores. The thirdstudy addresses why consumers buy from foreign e-stores when they can buy domestically. It examines three different categories of determinants across generational cohorts: e-store characteristics, domain-specific values, and human values. Overall, this dissertation demonstrates the drivers of small retailers’ business performance and consumers’ purchase intentions in cross-bordere-commerce while showing that neither e-retailers nor consumers should be considered uniform or generalizable.
In this article, the impact of strategic orientations on the use of digital marketing tactics and, subsequently, on the international business performance of small electronic retailers (e-retailers) in cross-border electronic commerce (e-commerce) is analysed. Furthermore, these relationships are compared between e-retailers originating in both developed and emerging e-commerce markets. Using a sample of 446 small business-to-consumer e-retailers from 20 European countries, we find that the deployment of digital marketing tactics has a positive effect on international business performance. Of the strategic orientations examined, foreign market orientation is most associated with the use of digital marketing tactics. Remarkably, growth orientation only has a positive effect on e-retailers from developed e-commerce markets, while customer orientation negatively affects e-retailers from emerging e-commerce markets. The differences between e-retailers from developed and emerging e-commerce markets are prominent and show that markets should not be considered as either uniform or generalisable.
In cross-border e-commerce, electronic retailers (e-retailers) aim to extend their sales activities via the Internet beyond national borders. Unlike large companies, small and medium-sized enterprises are struggling with their international online expansion. This phenomenon is not limited to countries with a developed e-commerce market; e-retailers from emerging e-commerce markets, too, face the problem. This study investigates what the drivers are of business performance of SMEs in cross-border e-retailing, and how drivers differ between developed and emerging e-commerce markets in Europe. Structural equation modelling analyses with the lavaan package in R on a sample of 453 owners and directors of SMEs from 20 countries, show that foreign market orientation not only directly influences business performance in cross-border e-commerce, but also indirectly through communication efforts in foreign markets. These results hold for both developed and emerging markets, however, there are two interesting differences. First in the influence of foreign market orientation and communication efforts on business performance, and second in the impact of the number of years the electronic e-retailer is active in cross-border e-commerce.
Europe continues to be affected by Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, which has brought about high inflation rates, surging energy prices and general geopolitical instability. All of these notonly impact the purchasing power of consumers but also disrupt markets and global supply chains. Despite this, the findings of this year’s report show that e-commerce still continues to grow. In fact, the turnover in European B2C e-commerce increased from €849bn in 2021 to €899bn in 2022, even though the growth rate did decrease from 12% in 2021 to 6% in 2022. That said, thegrowth rate for 2023 is forecast to slightly increase to 8%, with the turnover in European B2C e-commerce also continuing its positive growth tendency.
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In de afgelopen jaren hebben technologische ontwikkelingen de aard van dienstverlening ingrijpend veranderd (Huang & Rust, 2018). Technologie wordt steeds vaker ingezet om menselijke servicemedewerkers te vervangen of te ondersteunen (Larivière et al., 2017; Wirtz et al., 2018). Dit stelt dienstverleners in staat om meer klanten te bedienen met minder werknemers, waardoor de operationele efficiëntie toeneemt (Beatson et al., 2007). Deze operationele efficiëntie leidt weer tot lagere kosten en een groter concurrentievermogen. Ook voor klanten kan de inzet van technologie voordelen hebben, zoals betere toegankelijkheid en consistentie, tijd- en kostenbesparing en (de perceptie van) meer controle over het serviceproces (Curran & Meuter, 2005). Mede vanwege deze beoogde voordelen is de inzet van technologie in service-interacties de afgelopen twee decennia exponentieel gegroeid. De inzet van zogenaamde conversational agents is een van de belangrijkste manieren waarop dienstverleners technologie kunnen inzetten om menselijke servicemedewerkers te ondersteunen of vervangen (Gartner, 2021). Conversational agents zijn geautomatiseerde gesprekspartners die menselijk communicatief gedrag nabootsen (Laranjo et al., 2018; Schuetzler et al., 2018). Er bestaan grofweg drie soorten conversational agents: chatbots, avatars, en robots. Chatbots zijn applicaties die geen virtuele of fysieke belichaming hebben en voornamelijk communiceren via gesproken of geschreven verbale communicatie (Araujo, 2018;Dale, 2016). Avatars hebben een virtuele belichaming, waardoor ze ook non-verbale signalen kunnen gebruiken om te communiceren, zoals glimlachen en knikken (Cassell, 2000). Robots, ten slotte, hebben een fysieke belichaming, waardoor ze ook fysiek contact kunnen hebben met gebruikers (Fink, 2012). Conversational agents onderscheiden zich door hun vermogen om menselijk gedrag te vertonen in service-interacties, maar op de vraag ‘hoe menselijk is wenselijk?’ bestaat nog geen eenduidig antwoord. Conversational agents als sociale actoren Om succesvol te zijn als dienstverlener, is kwalitatief hoogwaardige interactie tussen servicemedewerkers en klanten van cruciaal belang (Palmatier et al., 2006). Dit komt omdat klanten hun percepties van een servicemedewerker (bijv. vriendelijkheid, bekwaamheid) ontlenen aan diens uiterlijk en verbale en non verbale gedrag (Nickson et al., 2005; Specht et al., 2007; Sundaram & Webster, 2000). Deze klantpercepties beïnvloeden belangrijke aspecten van de relatie tussen klanten en dienstverleners, zoals vertrouwen en betrokkenheid, die op hun beurt intentie tot gebruik, mond-tot-mondreclame, loyaliteit en samenwerking beïnvloeden (Hennig-Thurau, 2004; Palmatier et al., 2006).Er is groeiend bewijs dat de uiterlijke kenmerken en communicatieve gedragingen (hierna: menselijke communicatieve gedragingen) die percepties van klanten positief beïnvloeden, ook effectief zijn wanneer ze worden toegepast door conversational agents (B.R. Duffy, 2003; Holtgraves et al., 2007). Het zogenaamde ‘Computers Als Sociale Actoren’ (CASA paradigma vertrekt vanuit de aanname dat mensen de neiging hebben om onbewust sociale regels en gedragingen toe te passen in interacties met computers, ondanks het feit dat ze weten dat deze computers levenloos zijn (Nass et al., 1994). Dit kan verder worden verklaard door het fenomeen antropomorfisme (Epley et al., 2007; Novak & Hoffman, 2019). Antropomorfisme houdt in dat de aanwezigheid van mensachtige kenmerken of gedragingen in niet-menselijke agenten, onbewust cognitieve schema's voor menselijke interactie activeert (Aggarwal & McGill, 2007; M.K. Lee et al., 2010). Door computers te antropomorfiseren komen mensen tegemoet aan hun eigen behoefte aan sociale verbinding en begrip van de sociale omgeving (Epley et al., 2007; Waytz et al., 2010). Dit heeft echter ook tot gevolg dat mensen cognitieve schema’s voor sociale perceptie toepassen op conversational agents.
Presented at the 14th 14th European Conference on Management, Leadership and Governance ECMLG 2018: From the article: "Online shopping in The Netherlands is rapidly becoming more popular and many web-shops are aiming to develop improved customer journeys. As a consequence pure play web-shops switch to an Omni-channel approach while conventional businesses add ‘online’ to their offline sales. In The Netherlands fast growth of online sales is made possible by industry organisations such as ‘Thuiswinkel.org’, an organisation that supports their over 12.000 retail-members with knowledge, development and information on all possible aspects of online shopping. In 2017 these members raised the question whether it is possible to mimic the ‘traditional sales conversation’ to online environments by deploying AI based conversation technology. To research this question the specific actual benefits for consumers need to be determined of the conventional ‘offline-shopping sales conversation’. Next, the current online shopping opportunities presented by the B2C market of The Netherlands were studied including the level of interaction (conversation) that is technically provided. With so many industries active in the online arena it was decided to focus on the following industries: Electronics, Clothing, Food, and Financial services. This selection was made based on levels of online sales (highest for these sectors) and interests of Thuiswinkel.org members. Subsequently, the offline sales conversation benefits that were found as ‘most important’ in these industries, were used to construct online customer journeys. These are then used to formulate requirements for the comparison and selection of conversation systems. With this insight in how to achieve true conversational commerce in the defined customer journeys of the four industry’s the retailers’ question is answered. The outcome shows differences per industry in importance of a limited number of ‘e-sales conversation’ benefits. An important conclusion is that the current available technology cannot deploy all complex aspects of the offline sales conversation benefits in an online shopping environment. The technology still needs to progress significantly to adopt offline sales conversation aspects. On the other hand pure substitution of offline benefits may not be required. Further, the maturity of the functionality within each conversation system appears to be of importance as requirements differ per company. Additional research is required to extend on the differences and first insight found in the options to develop ‘e-sales conversation’."
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