Mobile App Service Quality Dimensions and Requirements for Mobile Shopping Companion Apps
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Junior Management Science 4(3) (2019) 339-391 Volume 4, Issue 3, September 2019 Advisory Editorial Board: DOMINIK VAN AAKEN JUNIOR FREDERIK AHLEMANN CHRISTOPH BODE ROLF BRÜHL MANAGEMENT JOACHIM BÜSCHKEN LEONHARD DOBUSCH RALF ELSAS DAVID FLORYSIAK SCIENCE GUNTHER FRIEDL WOLFGANG GÜTTEL CHRISTIAN HOFMANN Belinda Kellerer, Portfolio Optimization and Ambiguity KATJA HUTTER Aversion 305 LUTZ JOHANNING STEPHAN KAISER Tobias Wulfert, Mobile App Service Quality Dimensions ALFRED KIESER and Requirements for Mobile Shopping NATALIA KLIEWER Companion Apps 339 Junior Management Science DODO ZU KNYPHAUSEN-AUFSEß SABINE T. KÖSZEGI Virginia Springer, Bewertung der Übertragbarkeit von ARJAN KOZICA TOBIAS KRETSCHMER neuronalen Studienergebnissen auf einen HANS-ULRICH KÜPPER Accounting-Kontext 392 REINER LEIDL ANTON MEYER Lukas Ferner, Measuring the Impact of Carbon Emissions MICHAEL MEYER on Firm Value Using Quantile Regression 422 GORDON MÜLLER-SEITZ J. PETER MURMANN Leona Schink, Die Legitimation einer Innovation durch BURKHARD PEDELL Cultural Entrepreneurship – Explorative Fallstudie MARCEL PROKOPCZUK eines symbiotischen Zusammenspiels zwischen TANJA RABL einem Start-up und dessen Schlüsselkunden 433 SASCHA RAITHEL ASTRID REICHEL KATJA ROST Annalena Düker, Das Management von MARKO SARSTEDT Produktrückrufen: Einflussfaktoren auf die DEBORAH SCHANZ Rückholung von Verbraucherprodukten 460 ANDREAS G. SCHERER STEFAN SCHMID UTE SCHMIEL CHRISTIAN SCHMITZ PHILIPP SCHRECK GEORG SCHREYÖGG LARS SCHWEIZER DAVID SEIDL journal homepage: www.jums.academy THORSTEN SELLHORN ANDREAS SUCHANEK ORESTIS TERZIDIS ANJA TUSCHKE SABINE URNIK STEPHAN WAGNER BARBARA E. WEIßENBERGER ISABELL M. WELPE HANNES WINNER CLAUDIA B. WÖHLE THOMAS WRONA THOMAS ZWICK Published by Junior Management Science e.V. Mobile App Service Quality Dimensions and Requirements for Mobile Shopping Companion Apps Tobias Wulfert Westphalian Wilhelms-University, Münster Abstract The increasing utilization of mobile apps for shopping leads retailers to provide customers with dedicated mobile shopping companion apps to create an omni-channel shopping experience involving traditional brick-and-mortar, electronic and mobile business. Mobile shopping companion apps extend the traditional and electronic services of brick-and-mortar retailers by an additional mobile channel providing the customer with a digital companion supporting the shopping within and outside the stores using mobile technology. A twofold approach is pursued in this thesis. Firstly, a structured literature review is conducted to identify candidate dimensions for developing a scale for measuring the service quality of mobile shopping companion apps. Secondly, design requirements for improving the service quality of these mobile apps are deduced from online customer reviews of three exemplary mobile shopping companion apps applying a qualitative content analysis. The mobile app service quality of mobile shopping companion apps can be measured using a hierarchical and multi-dimensional scale consisting of three primary dimensions, seven secondary dimensions and 22 related items. The primary dimensions interaction quality, environment quality and outcome quality structure the secondary dimensions responsiveness, information, security and privacy, design, performance, technical reliability and valence. Based on these dimensions, 22 implementation guidelines and 14 service design requirements are derived as potential areas for optimizing the mobile app service quality of mobile shopping companion apps and achieving a high overall service quality. A mobile shopping companion app should include a set of features consisting of 16 features from three different areas. Results show that measuring the service quality of mobile shopping companion apps require for a tailored measurement scale. Equally, design requirements are proposed for this particular category of mobile apps. Retailers should provide a single mobile shopping companion app providing all features and mobile services to the customer. Keywords: mobile service; mobile commerce; shopping companion; service quality. 1. Introduction and share of the retail sales is rapidly growing with a pro- jected revenue of USD 156 billion for the American market The ubiquity of smartphones including the possibility for 2017 (EMarketer, 2017; Meola, 2016). While the tradi- to be always connected to the internet allows customers to tional brick-and-mortar retailing and Electronic Commerce buy products using mobile applications (apps) on the move (e-Commerce) only grew by three respectively 14 percent in without temporal or spatial constraints (Heinonen and Pura, the first quarter of 2017, m-Commerce revenues increased by 2008, p. 4). Innovations such as the introduction of the 43 percent (Lipsman, 2017, p. 37). This increase is mainly smartphone and the increasing speed of cellular networks caused by high growth rates for smartphone-based mobile impact the retail sector by converging the retailers’ value shopping (EMarketer, 2016). Further, a steadily increasing chains (Grewal et al., 2017; Verhoef et al., 2015). Customers number of customers prefer to use the mobile channel for increasingly use mobile apps and provided mobile services shopping while at the same time spending more money on (m- services) for shopping leading retailers to provide their m-Commerce (Meola, 2016). In the first quarter of 2017, customers with dedicated mobile apps for shopping to create nearly every fifth dollar was spent by the customers using an omni-channel shopping experience (Yang and Kim, 2012, mobile devices (Lipsman, 2017, p. 8). p. 778). Acknowledging the increasing importance of electronic Overall, the Mobile Commerce (m-Commerce) revenue DOI: https://doi.org/10.5282/jums/v4i3pp339-391 340 T. Wulfert / Junior Management Science 4(3) (2019) 339-391 and mobile sales and distribution channels as drivers for conference paper without elaborating on the proposed mea- overall company success and future development and the surement dimensions. This thesis contributes to the extant stagnating role of the traditional brick-and-mortar busi- literature by introducing a dedicated measurement scale for ness, traditional retailers previously only operating brick- assessing the SQ of mobile shopping companion apps and ex- and-mortar stores recently entered e-Commerce and m- tensively elaborating on its dimensions. Commerce providing additional electronic services (e-ser- vices) and m-services and especially mobile shopping com- RQ1. How can the service quality of mobile shop- panion apps for their customers (Lu et al., 2009; Kuo et al., ping companion apps be assessed? 2016; Rudolph et al., 2015). Mobile shopping companion Most of the previous papers on ESQ and MSQ close after apps executed on mobile devices provide an omni-channel the development of a scale assessing the quality of a service experience for the customers supporting the shopping within (e.g., Parasuraman et al., 2005; Stiakakis and Petridis, 2014). and outside the stores. They support and enrich the cus- Only a few deliver concrete suggestions on how to improve tomers’ online shopping experience and extend the features e-services and m-service with regards to the identified SQ di- of general mobile shopping apps by accompanying the cus- mensions (e.g., Knote and Söllner, 2017). Again, these sug- tomer in-store enhancing the customers’ offline shopping gested design requirements are only partly transferable to the experience in the brick-and-mortar stores. Thus, they offer specifics of mobile shopping companion apps. Besides being several features that are neither usefully realizable on sta- able to measure their MASQ, retailers demand for concrete tionary channels nor the traditional internet (Rudolph et al., design requirements as suggestions for improving their mo- 2015, p. 43). bile shopping companion apps. As SQ is perceived by the re- With an increasing number of brick-and-mortar retailers tailers’ customers, the users of the mobile apps, their percep- also competing in the m-service environment with mobile tions and opinions have to be taken into account for deriving apps and customers demanding higher quality services, the design requirements for each of the identified dimensions. measurement of the retailers own Mobile App Service Qual- Hence, a further contribution of this thesis is to derive de- ity (MASQ), enabling the specific improvement of their m- sign requirements from online customer reviews that might services is essential to those retailers (Huang et al., 2015; Kuo lead to a high SQs for mobile shopping companion apps ac- et al., 2016). Service Quality (SQ) is an important determi- cording to the MASQ measurement scale. For this thesis, the nant for the success of a company influencing "business per- online customer reviews for the mobile shopping compan- formance, lower cost, customer satisfaction, customer loy- ion apps provided by Walmart Stores, Inc. (Walmart), Tesco alty, and profitability" (Seth et al., 2005, p. 913). Thus, PLC (Tesco) and Marks and Spencer plc (M&S) are analyzed brick-and-mortar retailers aim at providing the best MASQ as examples for major mobile apps in the United States and to further increase their mobile and traditional sales and to the United Kingdom. Online customer reviews are a form of put themselves in a superior position compared to their com- electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) and are publicly accessi- petitors (e.g., Bauer et al., 2006; Kuo et al., 2016; Lu et al., ble in the mobile app stores (Hennig-Thurau et al.,