Consumer behaviors and attitudes represent a continuously evolving field, thus, by understanding consumer behavior towards Apps from marketing strategy standpoint, managers can benefit from acquiring much information from applying and translating new insights into strategies and tactics that could be helpful for retailer's decision makers. Furthermore, the buying behavior of online shoppers is substantial in the prosperity of Apps marketing strategies and by identifying and understanding the factors that influence the consumer's buying decision, Apps retailers can design their online marketing strategy accordingly to maximize customer satisfaction and ultimately increase the sales volume. This chapter mainly proposed an integration of Internet consumer attitudes, behavior and Apps marketing strategy. This chapter is twofold in terms of having implications both in theory and practice. Indeed, this study helps in understanding consumer decision-making process in Apps environment and produce new knowledge to online and Apps retailers, marketing managers as well as marketing and IT scholars. The Apps related technologies have developed as an important medium for marketing in various areas, including expanded geographic scope, novel opportunities for appreciating customers and offering cost efficiencies.
TopIntroduction
The area of online marketing is diverse. In recent years, marketing has transformed drastically in the areas of academic and industry (Heinemann & Schwarzl, 2010a). Dwayne et al. (2004) state that the adoption of marketing as firms’ guideline is evolving, to some extent due to the customer databases that enable personalized service at cheaper cost, computer-mediated communication, and partly because of intensive competition and globalization. The notable growth of IT, information system and the capacity to store and process great amounts of personal information has reflected the increased use of the Internet in marketing activities (Dinev & Hart, 2005). Consequently, a new marketing phenomenon is emerging which is Apps marketing. According to Slater, Hult, & Olson (2010), it is fair to state that the firm’s performance is optimized when they develop a creative marketing strategy and ensure the effectiveness of marketing strategy implementation in today’s intensive business world. In fact, a stockholder of all businesses is thinking about how to use Apps related technology in their company performance and practice especially in their marketing strategy.
The remarkable of increasing growth in numbers of Internet users and the promising potential of electronic commerce have pushed firms to conduct business online (Chang & Chen, 2008). Since the early 1990s, the gaining importance of Internet has driven many manufacturers and retailers to invest a significant amount of capital to build the Apps channel (Chu et al., 2010). The scale of the electronic commerce in the global market grows since then. Consequently, the marketing strategies of the firms could be perceived from the layout of their web-page (Tang, 2011), but the Apps related activities replacing Webpage scenarios. The gaining importance of the Apps as an effective marketing channel and the commercial tool has driven businesses to improvise their online venture. Currently various types of organizations from for commercial to non-profit organizations are struggling to implement Apps in their marketing efforts to target their market globally to gain more market share. This makes the understanding that Apps marketing is critical for business survival. Therefore, a growing number of firms and organizations in the various industry are exploiting and creating business opportunities on Apps (Liao & Cheung, 2001) as a new medium of communication.
Combination of Apps Consumer Behavior and Marketing Strategy
The recent slowdown of electronic commerce raised the need to understand online consumer behavior. Close & Kukar-Kinney (2010) quote that “since e-commerce is becoming a critical and important aspect of marketing strategy and customer relationship, there is a growing need for developing new knowledge, models, and theories on Internet customer behavior”. The best reason to make this combination rational is the work of Grewal & Levy (2007), which conducted a meta-analysis of all studies published between “2002” and “2007” (a total of 130 articles in journal of Retailing), indicating that, due to the advancement in the retail strategy implementation, more researches should accept the finding derived from consumer behavior. Therefore, ignoring attitudes and behaviors of people towards Apps is a mistake. Various consumer activities on the web and speedy adoption of information technologies stress the indispensability to conduct more in-depth studies on alterations in consumer buying behavior because it is evident that buying and consumer behavior is evolving ordinary (Cai & Xu, 2006; Hong-Youl et al., 2010; Ieva & Gaile-Sarkane, 2009; Khalifa & Limayem, 2003). In addition, Internet marketing research is thriving and the hottest topical area in future study and it will be about traditional consumer behavior topics with an internet strategy concept. Previous studies (Butler & Peppard, 1998; Grewal & Levy, 2007; Khalifa & Limayem, 2003) declared that consumer behaviors and attitudes represent a continuously evolving field, thus, by understanding consumer behavior towards Apps from marketing strategy standpoint, managers can benefit from acquiring much information from applying and translating new insights into strategies and tactics that could be helpful for retailer’s decision makers.