The Use of Mobile Apps to Facilitate Customers’ Choice-Making When
4.4 Discussion
This study aimed to expand knowledge of how mobile apps can be used to design a smart grocery retail setting that produced value for customers. Based on a scenario where participants were asked to buy groceries for a barbeque party with friends, they made choices based on information given on the grocery stores’ mobile app.
Findings show that compared to standard information, digital information given by the mobile app was the most preferred. Updated expiry date, personalized offer based on products in the basket, and an aggregated national customer experience index were the most salient information given by the mobile app when participants purchased fresh salmon.
Mobile apps have formed the groundwork for the development of digital informa- tion that can create smart settings in many aspects of people’s lives [7]. The present study demonstrates that mobile app information creates value in a grocery retail choice situation compared to traditional static information given to customers in the choice situation. This supports findings from Dacko [9], which demonstrated that users see mobile apps in retail stores as enablers providing high extrinsic value, for example, efficiency or better shopping value. Also, findings from the present study may demonstrate that the technology only barely mediates users’ intention to use self-service technology in retail. What matters is more about what kind of service quality, such as information quality, the mobile app can provide to the user [5].
When adopting mobile app solutions, grocery retailers should evaluate the ben- efits of the technology compared to the costs of its purchase, implementation, and maintenance. Thus, the economic profit of investments in grocery retail technology must increase revenue, decrease costs, or preferably both. According to Inman and Nikolova [10], revenue can be generated by charging a higher price from customers who are willing to pay more for groceries, increasing the purchase volume per cus- tomer, attracting new customers to the grocery store, and increasing the contribution from suppliers. Costs can be decreased by offloading labor in the grocery store (self- scan or digital shelves). To be able to generate an economic profit of mobile app investments in grocery retail, Inman and Nikolova [10] suggest starting by analyzing
4 The Use of Mobile Apps to Facilitate Customers’ Choice-Making … 45 how the retail shopper, facing technology, impacts consumer evaluation and reac- tions. Zeithaml [19] emphasizes that the evaluation of a product is based on what the customer receives and what is given, and thus, consumer evaluation is an impor- tant determinant of consumer likelihood to buy the product. To maximize consumer value, the grocery retailer should adopt technologies that either increase the benefit and/or decrease monetary sacrifices, time, and effort involved in making a purchase [10]. The present study demonstrates the advantages of using a conjoint experiment as a method in applied electronic commerce research. It enables us to make statistical predictions on how new technologies can generate value for customers.
4.4.1 Practical Implications
Based on the results of this study, mobile apps can create a smart grocery retail setting that adds value to the customers’ shopping experience and thus influences their choices. The four attributes that were investigated in this study should be noted by grocery retailers, suppliers, and brands that are involved in designing mobile app- based in-store solutions. Especially personalized offers and quality indicators for fresh food can have a significant impact on consumers’ likelihood to buy a product [20,21]. This ought to make these types of attributes attractive to include in mobile app solutions for smart grocery settings. From a sustainability perspective, smart quality indicators and updated expiry dates can also help customers make better choices, such as selecting healthier options and reducing waste. On the other hand, real-time price information may not increase the likelihood of buying the product.
Instead, real-time price information seemed to have a negative effect relative to the other attributes investigated. A real-time or fluctuating price may indeed increase customer uncertainty of a good price. Hence, designers of mobile app solutions for fresh food should carefully consider how or whether they include real-time or fluctuating price information as an attribute. It should also be noted that standard offer, standard quality statement, and standard expiry date, as presented in the mobile app, had a positive effect on the reported likelihood to buy. Hence, a mix of digital information and standard information in a mobile app can facilitate the customer decision process.
4.4.2 Limitations and Future Research
One of the main limitations of this study is that the interaction effect was overlooked between the different attributes and levels because a main-effect-only model was used in the conjoint experiment. A possible interaction effect could occur between different attributes like quality indicator and price (i.e., different quality indicator levels may have different implications for price levels). Also, order effects occurred during data collection because the 12 situations were presented in the same order
46 A. Fagerstrøm et al.
[22]. Future research can address these limitations by using a more advanced conjoint tool like Sawtooth™software to study interaction effects and to address order effect issues. Also, the dependent variable was an indirect measure of purchasing behavior because the participants indicated their likelihood to buy fresh salmon based on information from the mobile app through a questionnaire. As a solution, we suggest an experiment in a natural setting that uses a prototype mobile app, which will increase both ecological validity and external validity [23]. This could also expand opportunities to follow up and study consumers’ actual interaction with mobile in a more natural setting.
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