The rise of augmented reality (AR) technology presents marketers with promising opportunities to engage customers and transform their brand experience. Although firms are keen to invest in AR, ...research documenting its tangible impact in real-world contexts is sparse. In this article, the authors outline four broad uses of the technology in retail settings. They then focus specifically on the use of AR to facilitate product evaluation prior to purchase and empirically investigate its impact on sales in online retail. Using data obtained from an international cosmetics retailer, they find that AR usage on the retailer’s mobile app is associated with higher sales for brands that are less popular, products with narrower appeal, and products that are more expensive. In addition, the effect of AR is stronger for customers who are new to the online channel or product category, suggesting that the sales increase is coming from online channel adoption and category expansion. These findings provide converging evidence that AR is most effective when product-related uncertainty is high, demonstrating the technology’s potential to increase sales by reducing uncertainty and instilling purchase confidence. To encourage more impactful research in this area, the authors conclude with a research agenda for AR in marketing.
Using Web APIs registered in service sharing communities for mobile APP development can not only reduce development period and cost, but also fully reuse state-of-the-art research outcomes in broad ...domain so as to ensure up-to-date APP development and applications. However, the big volume of available APIs in Web communities as well as their differences make it difficult for APIs selection considering compatibility, preferred partial APIs and expected APIs functions which are often of high variety. Accordingly, how to recommend a set of functional-satisfactory and compatibility-optimal APIs based on the APP developer's multiple function expectation and pre-chosen partial APIs is on demand as a significant challenge for successful APP development. To address this challenge, we first construct a Web APIs correlation graph that incorporates functional descriptions and compatibility information of Web APIs, and then propose a correlation graph-based approach for personalized and compatible Web APIs recommendation in mobile APP development. Finally, through extensive experiments on a real dataset crawled from Web APIs websites, we prove the feasibility of our proposed recommendation approach.
Mobile application developers switch their monetization strategies for strategic purposes. We investigate the determinants and consequences of app developers’ switching behavior between paid and free ...strategies over time. Using large-scale daily app rank data from the iOS App Store, our estimations reveal that the prior performance of an app and its duration of staying in a monetization strategy significantly impact the developers’ decision of switching. We also find that better-performing apps tend to have longer stays in the paid strategy, whereas developers tend to switch their monetization strategy to free when the performance of a paid app declines. Furthermore, app developers’ switching behavior and duration of the app in each strategy have significant effects on the subsequent app performance in the App Store. Finally, we find the impact of switching behavior varies by app category. Managerial implications with estimated economic outcomes on strategic moves by app developers towards higher app performance are provided.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), latent tuberculosis occurs through latent infection by Mycobacterium tuberculosis without evidence of active tuberculosis (TB) symptoms. As patients ...don’t develop the same symptoms as active TB, the treatment is abandoned before the end, as it lasts about six months. This leads to significant treatment avoidance, requiring new forms of adherence to latent TB treatment. One of the strategies to help to latent TB treatment is the possibility of using applications for mobile devices, once the use of ICTs to aid in the treatment of LTBI can increase the rate of treatment adherence. Thus, this work aimed to study the creation of a technology that helps the adherence of these patients, being made available an application that is easy to use, intuitive, free and developed in a language for Android phones, which accompany the patient throughout the treatment.
Mobile apps are becoming a go-to tactic for retailers because they offer the promise of highly convenient digital engagement. We hypothesize that two types of customers are best served by these apps ...— “offline-only” customers currently purchasing exclusively from the retailer's physical store, and “distant” customers who reside far from the physical store. For offline-only customers, the app complements the physical engagement they currently have. For distant customers, the app offers convenient engagement their remoteness currently precludes. We model app access and purchase behavior of 629 customers who downloaded a retailer's app. We find that apps generate more incremental sales among distant customers compared to near customers, and more incremental sales among offline-only customers compared to online customers. On an illustrative base of 100 K app users, we find accessing the app would generate $2.3 M in incremental sales. Consistent with our segmentation results, we find that the users with the greatest purchase lift (9.5%) due to app usage are those that are distant and offline-only. Our results confirm the economic value of retailer apps and their role as a segmentation strategy to enhance customer engagement.
Retailer mobile applications are one of the principal retail purchase and information search channels. Customer experience is key to retail app success. However, its dimensions and impact on retailer ...performance have been the subject of only a limited number of studies. This research builds on existing customer retail app experience literature by considering four dimensions as precursors of satisfaction with the retailers’ app and customer loyalty (cognitive, affective, relational and sensorial). Data were collected from a sample of 545 retailer app users and analysed using PLS-SEM. The results demonstrate that the affective dimension has the most influence and they highlight the importance of the sensory experience, which even surpasses the cognitive experience. The effect of the relational dimension on customer satisfaction, meanwhile, could not be positively confirmed. Analysis of the moderating effect of gender, age and device type used identifies effects that have not, until now, been demonstrated in current literature.
•The customer retail app experience contributes towards customer retailer loyalty.•Affective, sensorial and cognitive experiences influence customer satisfaction.•Customer satisfaction mediates the effect of experience on customer loyalty.•Age, gender and device type used moderate customer experience.•The effect of relational experience on customer satisfaction could not be supported.
Although mobile applications (apps) are now widespread, to date few studies have considered the effects that app use has on loyalty towards the retailer. This study aims to explore the impact of ...affective and cognitive app experiences on loyalty towards retailers. A theoretical model, validated empirically with data from a survey using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM), is proposed. The results show the key role of affective experience and its impact on cognitive experience and that both dimensions positively influence the satisfaction and trust that users have in apps, which in turn has a positive effect on loyalty felt towards the retailer. These findings contribute towards improving the theoretical knowledge of the impact of apps on the retailer-customer relationship, and guide businesses in developing and implementing appropriate app-related strategies.
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