Title: Is this the beginning of the end for retail websites? A professional perspective

Authors: Ricardo F. Ramos; Paulo Rita; Sérgio Moro

Addresses: Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), ISTAR-IUL, Av. Forças Armadas, 1649-026 Lisboa, Portugal; CICEE – Centro de Investigação em Ciências Económicas e Empresariais, Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa, Rua de Santa Marta, Palácio dos Condes do Redondo 56, 1169-023, Lisboa, Portugal ' NOVA Information Management School (NOVA IMS), Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Campus de Campolide, 1070-312 Lisboa, Portugal ' Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), ISTAR-IUL, Av. Forças Armadas, 1649-026 Lisboa, Portugal

Abstract: This paper expects to understand professionals' opinion concerning the impact of the increasing use of social media (SM) and commercial mobile applications (MA) instead of retail websites in their online strategy. Unstructured interviews with internet professionals were applied on the LinkedIn professional SM platform, and 127 professionals provided their perspective. Data were analysed using a text mining approach and the outcome revealed professionals' resistance to set SM in the centre of the online strategy and highlighted the preference of users to use search engines that, in turn, will lead them to a retail website.

Keywords: retail website; social media; commercial mobile application; consumer behaviour; text mining.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIMA.2021.115422

International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising, 2021 Vol.15 No.3, pp.260 - 280

Received: 10 Oct 2019
Accepted: 02 Mar 2020
Published online: 02 Jun 2021 *

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