Smartphones as an Opportunity to Increase Sales in Brick-and-Mortar Stores: Identifying Sales Influencers Based on a Literature Review

Abstract

The increasing popularity of smartphones, the constant rise of e-commerce turnover and plungingdepartment storesales have a significant impact on brick-and-mortar stores revenue. Nevertheless, brick-and-mortar revenue still makes up 90% of total retail revenue. This gives rise to the question of how smartphones affect sales in brick-and-mortar stores. In order to investigate the impact of smartphones on brick-and-mortar store sales, this article presents the results of a literature review, summarizing statements about the impact of smartphones on brick-and-mortar store sales into sales influencers. These sales influencerswere categorized into three main types of sales drivers, namely: Utilitarian drivers, cost and time reduction drivers and hedonic drivers. Subsequently, the categorized statements were evaluated according to their potential positive or negative influence on sales. The resulting overview provides information about the current status of research in the field of smartphones as sales influencers in brick-and-mortar stores. It reveals extensively as well as partially researched sales influencers. Hence, the overview also acts as call for future research, encouraging research progression in the field of smartphone influenced sales in brick-and-mortar stores. It can be concluded that, according to the current literature, smartphones have the potential to increase sales in brick-and-mortar stores. However, the variety of sales influencers identified suggests that research is scattered. Hence, future research is needed to analyse how strongly each individual sales influencer affects sales in brick-and-mortar stores.