ABSTRACT
The outbreak of COVID-19 since the end of 2019 has led many people to work for home, reducing economic activity in many countries except online shopping, which is thriving during the pandemic. However, shopping is not take-and-go activity,as it needs references to help make the decision. Buying goods online is not as convenient as buying at physical stores where the customers can check the actual state of goods, obtain recommendations from the clerks or compare it with other similar goods. All these physical activities are persuasions. However, the main references for buying online are online third-party comments and brand image. People noticed the comments online, whether positive or negative about the product. Consumers write comments on the Internet according to their different impressions on the brands. Therefore, how the brand image and online comments affect persuasion is worthy of study. This pilot study thus takes the purchase of mobile phones as an example to explore the factors of people's evaluation of comments and brand image. The analytical results of exploratory factor analysis show that the questionnaire design is suitable. The formal study can take these research results as a reference. © 2021 ACM.
ABSTRACT
This paper aims to examine the main challenges encountered by mobile grocery-shopping applications’ (MGSAs) users, wherein the analysis is based on the review comments for three popular MGSAs deployed by main grocery retailers in Europe. The research methodology used was qualitative in the form of a cross-sectional inductive approach, allowing for the identification of the main issues encountered by users and their classification into four categories for a more straightforward presentation. The research findings indicate that despite the below-average level of digital literacy, customers are trying to use MGSAs efficiently and are proposing different areas of improvement, such as the design, the general functionality of the applications, and other factors regarding the specific functionalities of MGSAs. The findings may be leveraged by grocery retailers to exploit this market efficiently in a post-pandemic context;moreover, the study’s results could provide meaningful knowledge to the mobile retail industry, as the detailed insights offer adequate support for enhancing mobile-shopping (m-shopping) applications.