Web Sales Research Articles

DIGITALISATION IN ACCOMMODATION AND FOOD SERVICE ACTIVITIES IN ROMANIA AND EUROPEAN UNION

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the levels regarding the digitalisation and e-commerce footprint of enterprises in accommodation and food service activities for Romania and the European Union (EU). The goal of this research relating to the status of digitalisation and electronic commerce in accommodation and food service activities, is to better understand the magnitude (in Romania and EU) of the aforementioned from the viewpoint of specific indicators. And through those indicators to retrieve some answers regarding to: the degree of digitalisation, the level of enterprises where persons employed have access to the internet and also that have access to the internet for business purposes, the use of social media, the degree of enterprises with a website, the extent of difficulties for web sales of enterprises, what is the situation regarding the enterprises with e-commerce sales and enterprises total turnover from e-commerce sales. The research methodology included collecting information from recognized data bases (Google Scholar for theoretical part and Eurostat for the empirical approach).

An investigation of digital integration's importance on smart and sustainable agriculture in the European region

This paper develops a theoretical framework to provide a comprehensive analysis of the link between the digital transformation process in the business and public sectors and the sustainability of the agriculture sector. Sustainability can be analyzed through four dimensions: the economic issue captured by productivity growth and export value growth, the social issue captured by employment growth, and the environmental issue captured by the sustainable nitrogen management index. Digital businesses are captured by four elements of e-Commerce (e-Commerce sales, e-Commerce web sales, e-Commerce turnover, and online selling) and two estimations of e-Business (Cloud usage and customer relation management (CRM) usage). Digital public services are reflected by user-centricity, business mobility, and key enablers. It is the first to prove the existence of a nonlinear relationship between digitalization and sustainable agriculture. We apply various econometric techniques, including the panel-corrected standard errors (PCSE) model, feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) estimation, and two-step generalized method of moment (two-step GMM) model, to a database of 24 countries in the European Union between 2011 and 2019. The results point to the importance of digitalization in improving the agriculture sector's productivity, export activities, employment, and environmental sustainability. However, these impacts of digitalization on each dimension of the agriculture sector's sustainability are nonlinear in the shape of a U-curve, suggesting that the favorable effects only appear when the development of digitalization reaches a certain threshold. Our findings suggest critical policy implications for the promotion of digitalization as a tool to pursue smart and sustainable agriculture. It is crucial for policymakers to control the digitalization process and intervene, as digitalization, as much as it is innovative, can be detrimental to ethical, political, social, or cultural values.

Environmental Sustainability within Attaining Sustainable Development Goals: The Role of Digitalization and the Transport Sector

Accepting sustainable development goals leads to the reorientation of all sectors at all levels. The European Union (EU) actively accepts a vast range of policies to achieve environmental sustainability due to declining carbon dioxide emissions. Within the Green Deal Policy, and in particular the Fit for 55 packages, the EU declared ambitious goals to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by at least 55% from the transport industry by 2030 and 100% by 2035. These goals require introducing appropriate digital technologies into the ecologically friendly functioning of the transport sector to attain sustainable development. This paper aims at analyzing the impact of digitalization on environmental sustainability by providing an effective transport sector that functions with minimum environmental degradation. The object of research is the EU countries for the period 2006–2020. This study applies the panel-corrected standard errors technique to achieve the paper’s aims. The findings allow us to conclude that digitalization is conducive to environmental sustainability. Thus, digital inclusion, the input of the IT sector to GDP, and e-commerce have direct negative and statistically significant linear effects on carbon dioxide emissions. Growth of digital inclusion, input of the IT sector to GDP, and enterprises with web sales by one point allow for decreasing CO2 emissions by 0.136, 2.289, and 0.266, respectively. However, key enablers and digital public services for citizens have a nonlinear, statistically significant impact on carbon dioxide emissions. The findings could be the basis for upgrading incentive policies for reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

Digital transformation of business through e-commerce in small and medium-sized enterprises (SME's)

The crisis caused by Covid-19 confirmed that only those companies that are able to quickly and efficiently transform their business, first of all, by applying and using digital technologies, can be competitive and survive on the market. The paper analyzes the percentage of companies that apply digital tools through electronic sales and trade in the Republic of Serbia and neighboring countries, both full members of the EU and candidate countries for the EU. Using Eurostat data, it was shown the percentage of companies that made e-sales, then the percentage of turnover from e-commerce, as well as the percentage of companies that made sales through their own websites in pre-crisis 2019 as well as in the years after it. The results show that in terms of e-commerce, Serbia achieved the best results in 2019 and that it is above the average of the Western Balkans countries, as well regarding the percentage of turnover from e-commerce Serbia is far below the average of EU countries and countries of the Western Balkans, while in terms of web sales via its own website, Serbia is above the average of the Western Balkans countries.

The importance of digitalization in powering environmental innovation performance of European countries

We empirically examine the influences of the digital business and digital public services on environmental innovation (EI) performance in the European region during the 2011-2019 period. We use four diverse measures to capture the performance of EIs of 24 European countries, including the percentage of enterprises implementing EI investment (% of surveyed firms); the percentage of enterprises implementing EI activities (e.g., implementation of resource efficiency actions, sustainable products, or ISO 14001 certificates) measured, a number of enterprises having new ISO 14001 registration and a number of EI related patents. There are four measures of e-Commerce, including online selling, e-Commerce sales, e-Commerce web sales, e-Commerce turnover, and two measures of e-Business, including CRM usage and cloud usage. Digital public service performance is captured by three indicators, including user centricity, business mobility and key enabler. Our study provides the theoretical framework to explain the link between digitalization and environmental performance. The nexus between digitalization and environmental innovations is empirically analyzed by using the panel corrected standard error (PCSE) model and the feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) model for the panel data featuring the cross-sectional dependency. Our estimation results highlight the importance of digital businesses, including e-commerce sales, e-commerce turnover, e-business (including CRP and cloud usage), in improving the EI investments, EI activities, EI related patents, and the number of enterprises with new ISO 14001 registration during the 2011-2019 period in the European region. Digital public services are less crucial in promoting EI performance as compared to digital businesses as these variables are not statistically significant in some cases. We also provide empirical evidence on the mechanism to explain the improvements in EI. Digitalization appears to have favorable impacts on EI investments of firms and government's financial support, and the public's awareness regarding the importance of EI.

Application of Digital Images and Corresponding Image Retrieval Paradigm

We live in a world where digital images are constantly generated during our daily activities, whether private or business. They play an important role in our private life, showing important moments, people, places, or events and keeping their memory. Images are unavoidable in business, especially in digital marketing, web sales, social networks, medicine, security, and education. In general, images contribute to a better understanding of the message, increase the attractiveness of textual content, provide a better user experience, and can convey emotion quickly. The key advantage of the image is that very often, even a cursory glance at the image is enough to convey a message and arouse emotion and interest. But with the increase in digital image numbers, storage, organization, and retrieval problems arise. The paper describes the importance of images in different areas of application and different image retrieval paradigms that include text-based, content-based, and combined approaches. Also, the most popular image search tools and cloud storage services are compared and discussed. The conclusion comments on the applicability of existing approaches to image searches in different application domains and highlights the advantages and disadvantages of each of the approaches.

The relationship between online retailing and the regional economy

Computer technology is steadily penetrating everyday life, offering many new opportunities. Information technology has enabled different organizations to increase sales and generate additional sources of income. The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of web-based retail on the regional economy of Russia. The research methodology is based on a correlation and regression analysis. The study is based on 85 Russian regions, which are part of 8 districts, for 2016–2020. The study is based on key indicators characterizing web commerce in the regions: share of web sales in total retail sales, share of organizations engaged in web sales, and percentage of the population that purchases goods online. The correlation analysis made it possible to assess the level of correlation both between the studied factors and each of them in relation to the integral indicator of the socio-economic status of the regions. Despite the importance of all the studied factors of e-commerce development for Russia, there are significant differences in their adequacy in the regions, which are combined into districts.The regression modeling performed allowed identifying which factors are the most significant for individual districts of Russia and the country as a whole. The study provides results that characterize the lack of a close relationship between the level of socio-economic development and the share of the population using the Internet for shopping for most regions. The most significant are the business aspects of e-commerce - increasing the share of Internet sales in the total volume of retail sales and the share of organizations engaged in Internet sales. Therefore, the creation of an appropriate business climate and regulatory conditions for the functioning of e-commerce should be a priority in the formation of a strategy for regions’ socio-economic development.

Making the circular economy digital or the digital economy circular? Empirical evidence from the European region

This paper answers the question of whether digitalization enables the circular economy or circularity promotes the digital transformation process. We use six diverse measures to reflect the circularity of European countries: municipal waste, the number of circularity patents, circular material usage, recycle waste rate, recycling biowaste rate, and recycling e-waste rate. In order to assess digital businesses, we use four measures of e-Commerce – online selling, e-Commerce sales, e-Commerce web sales, and e-Commerce turnover – and two measures of e-Business: customer relation management usage and cloud usage. We use user-centricity and key enablers to assess digital public services. Our estimation results reveal that the initial development of digitalization can enable European countries to transit to the circular economy. However, the overdevelopment of digitalization hinders this process. By contrast, we present a nonlinear relationship between digitalization and circularity, suggesting that digitalization can positively impact the circularity level after reaching a certain level.

Effects of Digitalization on Natural Resource Use in European Countries: Does Economic Complexity Matter?

This paper empirically analyses the influences of the digital transformation process in the business and public sector on natural resources rents. Our paper employs the digital businesses (e-Commerce, including the value of online selling, e-Commerce turnover, e-Commerce web sales, and e-Business, including customer relationship management (CRM) usage and cloud usage) and the digital public services (user-centricity, business mobility, and key enablers), while we deal with the total natural rents (coal rents, mineral rents, natural gas rents, and forest rents). The various econometric techniques are applied to a sample of 26 European Union countries during the 2011-2019 period. Our estimation results demonstrate that both digital businesses and digital public services lead to a rise in total natural rents. More specifically, the digital businesses appear to have increased influences on coal rents, and gas rents, while the digital public services drive mineral rents, gas rents, and forest rents up. Conversely, digital public services tend to reduce coal rents and digital businesses lead to a decrease in mineral rents and forest rents. Notably, the economic complexity or the quality and diversification of the production system is the key variable for the digital economy aiming at shirking natural rent-seeking. The findings are consistent when we consider the specific type of natural resource rent regardless of whether they are affected differently by digital transformation.

Task and Sales Manager Web Application

The purpose of the Web Application and Sales Manager Web application is to automate the existing hands-on system with the help of fully computerized software and software, to meet their needs, so that their important data / information is stored longer and easily accessible. and similar fraud. The required software and hardware are easily accessible and easy to operate. This application can lead to a flawless, secure, reliable, and fast management system. It can help the user to focus on other tasks instead of focusing on keeping records. Thus, it will help to plan for better utilization of resources. An organization can store computer records without unnecessary access. That means you don't have to be distracted by useless information, while being able to access information. Basically, the project outlines how to manage efficiency and better customer service.

Digital Business and Economic Complexity

ABSTRACT This paper empirically analyzes the digital transformation process in the business sector on the economic complexity among European countries from 2011 to 2019. The digital businesses are reflected by e-Commerce, including values of selling online, e-commerce sales, and e-commerce web sales, and e-Business, including customer relationship management usage and cloud usage. Our estimation results show that digitalization in the business sector positively influences economic complexity. There is evidence on the long-term cointegration between digital business and economic complexity. Furthermore, we provide some evidence that an improvement in economic growth, financial development as well a reduction in the pervasiveness of corruption are transmission channels through which digitalization in the business sector positively impacts the performance of economic complexity. On the other hand, economic complexity also plays a critical role in accelerating the process of digitalization in the business sector. Furthermore, these effects are only evident in the long term.

Are digital business and digital public services a driver for better energy security? Evidence from a European sample.

This paper empirically analyses the impacts of the digital transformation process in the business and public sectors on energy security (ES). We employ 8 indicators to represent four aspects of energy security, including availability, acceptability, develop-ability, and sustainability. Digital businesses development is captured by e-Commerce (including e-Commerce sales, e-Commerce turnover, e-Commerce web sales) and e-Business (including customer relation management (CRM) usage and cloud usage). Digital public services development is reflected by business mobility and key enablers. Different econometric techniques are utilized in a database of 24 European Union countries from 2011 to 2019. Our estimation results demonstrate that digital businesses play a critical role in improving the acceptability and develop-ability of energy security, while digitalization in public services supports achieving energy sustainability goals. The use of modern digital technology such as big data, cloud computing is extremely important to ensure the security of the energy system, especially the availability of energy. For further discussion on the role of digital public services, we reveal a nonlinear association between digitalization in the public sector and energy intensity and energy consumption, suggesting the acceptability and develop-ability of energy security can be enhanced if the digital transformation process achieves a certain level.

Exploring the Impact of Electronic Commerce on Employment Rate: Panel Data Evidence from European Union Countries

The objective of this study is to explore the impact of electronic commerce on employment rate for a sample covering the whole 27 Member States of the European Union (EU-27), from 2010 to 2019. Moreover, this research explores the clusters of nations with reference to electronic commerce adoption and employment rate dynamics. The outcomes of cluster analysis show that Western Europe reveals the most developed e-commerce marketplace in EU-27, shown by Internet accessibility and high penetration rate of digital tools, and the lowest figures are registered in the Eastern part of Europe. Furthermore, the empirical findings of the panel data fixed-effects and the generalized least squares regressions suggest that electronic commerce influences employment rate positively. By including country-level control variables (real GDP growth rate, research and development expenditure, employed ICT specialists, enterprises with Internet access), the outcomes reveal that one percentage change in enterprises’ total turnover from e-commerce sales, enterprises’ turnover from web sales, and enterprises with e-commerce sales of at least 1% turnover will increase employment rate by 0.205, 0.258, and 0.350 percentage points. Furthermore, the econometric evidence from the method of moments quantile regression models with fixed effects reinforces our findings. Enterprises’ total turnover from e-commerce sales and the percentage of enterprises with e-commerce sales of at least 1% turnover positively influence employment rate for all quintiles, but in the case of enterprises’ turnover from web sales, the effect is positive only for the quintiles ranging from 0.5–0.8.

An examination of the effects of omni-channel service offerings on retailer performance

PurposeBoth online and brick and mortar retailers have invested heavily in developing omni-channel service offerings. Though seen as a competitive necessity, these omni-channel service offerings increase costs and complexities. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of strategies involving bundles of omni-channel services related to order fulfillment and returns management on retailer performance.Design/methodology/approachArchival data were obtained for 152 retailers and analyzed using ordinary least squares regression. Robustness tests using an alternative dependent variable and a model-based classification strategy corroborate our findings.FindingsRetailers offering full sets of high integration omni-channel services (buy online pick up in store, ship from store and in-store returns) have better performance (e.g. sales, growth and competitive position) and web sales than retailers that offer only a partial mix of these high integration services. Retailers offering a partial bundle of high integration services, in turn, have better performance and web sales than retailers that offer none of these services.Originality/valueThe research extends work that has examined the performance effects of omni-channel services on individual retailers. Our results indicate retailers benefit the most when offering a full set of high integration omni-channel services, suggesting retailers who have only adopted a subset of these services could improve performance through broader adoption of services. The results further indicate partial adoption of high integration services is better than no adoption.

The Impact of Digital Social legitimization on Website Visits and Web Sales

The present manuscript examines the role of digital social influence, as attained through Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and YouTube, in attracting customers and achieving sales performance. The theoretical mechanism that serves as the basis for the study is social legitimacy theory. Specifically, the influence exerted by social media, and the resulting social legitimization of the marketer, are expected to drive both website visits and, ultimately, sales for the USA’s largest e-commerce retailers. The findings indicate that that all five manifest social media indicators converge into a single variable with significant loadings. This provides support for the multidimensional nature of the hypothesized digital social l egitimization construct. However, the structural equations analysis indicates that there is not a direct link between digital social l egitimization and Web sales performance. Nevertheless, digital social l egitimization does in fact positively impact website visits. In turn, these visits are associated with higher e-commerce sales.

The impact of digital sales channels on web sales: evidence from the USA's largest online retailers

The present study uses aggregate data from the USA's 100 largest online retailers to examine the effectiveness of the various e-commerce digital sales channels. These digital sales channels include direct website visits, display ads, e-mail, organic search, paid search, referrals, and social media. The focus is on examining the direct effects of each traffic channel specifically on web sales performance. Hypothesis testing is done using a log-log model with a Box-Cox transformation, and the average ticket value is used as a control variable. The findings indicate that all digital sales channels have a direct effect on web sales. However, the slope of each equation suggests some degree of differentiation between digital sales channels, with implications for determining the most efficient portfolio of digital sales channels when faced with limited resources.

The impact of digital sales channels on web sales: evidence from the USA's largest online retailers

The present study uses aggregate data from the USA's 100 largest online retailers to examine the effectiveness of the various e-commerce digital sales channels. These digital sales channels include direct website visits, display ads, e-mail, organic search, paid search, referrals, and social media. The focus is on examining the direct effects of each traffic channel specifically on web sales performance. Hypothesis testing is done using a log-log model with a Box-Cox transformation, and the average ticket value is used as a control variable. The findings indicate that all digital sales channels have a direct effect on web sales. However, the slope of each equation suggests some degree of differentiation between digital sales channels, with implications for determining the most efficient portfolio of digital sales channels when faced with limited resources.

Exploring the relationships among paid search budget, social media presence and online performance: An examination of the US e-commerce industry

Digital and social media marketing activities are vital to fostering consumer engagement, nurturing consumer–brand relationships and generating market intelligence. Yet the relationships among firms’ digital marketing investments (eg paid search budget), social media presence and online firm performance are not well understood. This study focuses on the US e-commerce industry, identifying segments of the top 500 US e-commerce firms based on their paid search budget, social media presence and e-commerce performance measures, such as their web traffic, web sales, conversion rates and average ticket sizes. It then explores the relative impact of paid search budget and social media presence on e-commerce performance. Results show that there are two clusters of e-commerce firms: high spenders with high presence and low spenders with low presence. While the former constitute only 5 per cent of the industry, they have 27 per cent more repeat customers, three times higher return on investment, and make half of the industry’s web sales. Results also show that compared with social media presence, paid search budget is three to four times more effective in driving web traffic and eight times more effective in driving web sales. The results provide important strategic implications for marketing and brand managers for their digital marketing investments and social media presence.

Elasticities and dynamics of on-line price promotions and advertising

Our paper deals with short and long-term effects of price promotions and advertising using experimental research on a web shop sales and page clicks. We try to assess how promotions and advertising elasticities are affected by different combinations of marketing activities. We also determine dynamic behaviour of web sales and page-clicks using category aggregated daily time series with various marketing activities as intervention pulses. Findings show higher elasticities for increased marketing efforts, peaking at highest discounts and maximum levels of advertising. Price elasticities have been found to be 0.32 to −2.64, while advertising elasticities were between 0 and 0.32. Analysis of dynamics of both marketing activities and carryover effects confirm an immediate effect of discounting on sales and a lagged effect of 1 period of advertising. The decay of advertising effect is faster than discounting and neither of the two has a carryover effect.

Omnichannel Promotion Effectiveness

Despite the importance of promoting online (offline) customers to buy offline (online), little is known about how such targeted promotions actually influence the web, in-store, and total sales. We exploit two randomized field experiment datasets from a large department store with mobile promotions sent to its loyalty members. Experiment 1 finds that the treatment of targeting online customers with offline shopping promotions (online-to-offline) is effective in lifting in-store sales and total sales. Experiment 2, however, finds that targeting offline customers with online shopping promotions (offline-to-online) increases web sales but fails to boost total sales. This targeting can be even harmful and reduce consumer total spending. Our findings do not support the channel-shift mechanism, because the targeted promotions may not always lead to sales that is substituted between the online and offline purchasing channels. Rather, they support the product category-shift mechanism, where offline (but not online) channel facilitates the purchases of touch and feel tactile products and new category sales with more unplanned purchases and cross-buying. The results demonstrate the value of omnichannel promotions and highlight the conditions under which online and offline targeting is most valuable for firms to promote the other channel.