Battle of the Channels: The Impact of Tablets on Digital Commerce

Abstract

T he introduction of tablets in online retailing has created an additional touchpoint through which e-commerce firms can interact with consumers. In this paper, we seek to understand and measure the causal impact of tablets on e-commerce sales. In doing so, we examine the complementary and substitution impact of the tablet channel on the smartphone and PC channels. We rely on a unique data set from Alibaba, the largest e-commerce firm in the world, and exploit a natural experiment via the iPad app introduction to empirically identify our results. The results show that users' adoption of tablets enhanced the overall growth of Alibaba's e-commerce market, with an annual increase of approximately US$923.5 million. Our results demonstrate that the tablet channel acts as a substitute for the PC channel while it acts as a complement for the smartphone channel. Furthermore, the use of tablets spurs casual browsing, which leads to the purchase of more impulse products and a wider diversity of products. Cross-device browsing behavior is found to enhance sales outcomes, and the degree of interrelationships between devices varies across the course of the day. We provide insights for retailers about how they can increase their sales volume and revenue in the emerging tablet economy.

Why and When Consumers Indulge in Smartphones: The Mental Association Between Smartphones and Fun

“…Although many studies in the marketing modeling literature investigating the implications of mobile platforms have emerged, [37][38][39][40] our knowledge regarding the consumption psychology of smartphone use is very limited. 6 Moreover, while recent studies have shown that various interfaces may affect the willingness to pay, 10 preferences for affect-laden food, 11 information-processing difficulty, 39 and even decisionmaking processes, 12 research considering smartphones a holistic concept is limited, and further research could allow us to better understand how devices shape our minds.…”

Harder and Smoother on Touchscreens? How Interaction Mode Affects Consumer Product Judgment

“…For example, holding a resume attached to a heavy clipboard leads people to think the job candidate as more important [4]. Incidental exposure to the haptic sensation of roughness (vs. smoothness) increases individuals' attention to the unfortunate others and promotes charitable behavior [35]. The current research seeks to add to this line of research by proposing that haptic experiences obtained from interacting with devices can affect consumers' haptic judgment on products displayed in the digital environment.…”

“…For example, it has been found that reaching out to touch a product on a touchscreen device can make the consumption experience more vivid in people's mind and thus lead to higher purchase intention as opposed to using a mouse to click on the product [32]. Furthermore, touchscreens lead to more impulsive and diversity-seeking purchase behavior [35]. However, scant attention has been paid to mid-air interaction, which has shown great potential in the e-commerce context [13].…”

How information processing and mobile channel choice influence product returns: An empirical analysis

“…For many companies, the mobile internet has become the main growth driver, as the example of Facebook shows (Forbes, ). Mobile devices, however, are fundamentally different from desktop devices; they vary in display sizes (Sohn, Seegebarth, & Moritz, ; Xu, Chan, Ghose, & Han, ), input method (finger vs. mouse and keyboard; Chung, Kramer, & Wong, ), convenience (Clarke, ), and context of use and ubiquity (Forman, Ghose, & Goldfarb, ) and timeliness of information access (Ghose, Goldfarb, & Han, ). Oftentimes, on mobile devices, consumers are presented with additional aids to simplify and speed‐up purchase decision processes, such as pop‐ups, bigger “purchase” buttons or a much stricter funnel towards purchase.…”

“…Despite the increasing attention devoted to the effects of the internet on consumer behavior by marketing and information systems literature in the past two decades (Bang, Lee, Han, Hwang, & Ahn, ; Koufaris, ; Schellong, Kemper, & Brettel, ; Xu et al, ), it is not well understood yet, how the consumer decision‐making process and related psychological processes and strategies are impacted by the introduction of the mobile internet. The changed information environment might alter purchase decisions consumers take (Darley et al, ).…”