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Conversational Commerce

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’."

Business performance and purchase intentions in cross-border e-commerce

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.

2021 European E-commerce Report

Selling to the multi-channel consumer

Het ontwikkelen van een goede multichannel strategie is één van de belangrijkste uitdagingen waar retailers vandaag de dag voor staan. Een toenemend aantal ‘traditionele’ retailers ziet het opzetten van een webshop als een belangrijke aanvulling op hun fysieke winkels en probeert te profiteren van de groeiende e-commerce markt. Om retailers te helpen bij de uitdagingen die het combineren van een webshop met fysieke winkels met zich mee brengen, hebben PwC en de Hogeschool van Amsterdam een verkennend onderzoek uitgevoerd. Het doel van het onderzoek is om in kaart te brengen hoe multichannel retailers hun bedrijf optimaliseren. In het bijzonder wordt gekeken naar de strategische en operationele uitdagingen waar multichannel retailers voor staan en de manieren waarop zij deze aanpakken. De resultaten zijn gebaseerd op interviews en een online enquête onder 41 multichannel retailers in Nederland.

E-Governance in European and South African Cities

Since the late 1990s, city councils have become increasingly aware of the potential for information technologies (ICTs) to improve the management of cities and as an instrument for economic and social policy. This has resulted in a wave of urban ICT strategies and policies, such as the adoption of ICTs within the city administration itself, projects that facilitate access to ICTs by weaker social groups and policies to improve the urban electronic infrastructure. By comparing eight cities - Barcelona, Cape Town, Eindhoven, Johnnesburg, Manchester, Tampere, the Hague and Venice - this book examines a range of innovative urban e-governance strategies and develops a framework of analysis that permits a common approach. Throughout the book, a distinction is made between access policies (aimed at improving access to ICTs for all citizens), content policies (directed to improve the use of ICTs in the city administration and semi-public domains) and infrastructure policies (to improve the provision of broadband infrastructure). For each of the cities, e-strategies and policies are critically reviewed and compared. The book reveals that urban e-strategies have evolved from an internal and technology-centred orientation to a more outward-looking approach.

Dutch Healthcare: An Overview and Application

Abstract from article: The Dutch healthcare system has changed towards a system of regulated competition to contain costs and to improve efficiency and quality of care. This paper provides: (1) a brief as-is overview of the changes for primary care, based on explorative literature reviews; (2) provides noteworthy remarks as for the way primary and secondary healthcare is organised; (3) an example of an E-health portal illustrating implemented processes within the Dutch context and (4) a proposed research agenda on various e-health topics. Noteworthy remarks are: (1) government, insurer, healthcare provider and patient are main actors within the Dutch healthcare system; (2) general practitioners (GP’s) are gatekeepers to secondary and other care providers; (3) the illustrated portal with a patient oriented design, provides access to applications implemented at care providers resulting in increased electronic availability and increased patient satisfaction; (4) a variety of fragmented information systems at health care providers exists, which leaves room for standardisation and increased efficiency. We end with suggestions for future research.