خطر منسوخ شدن در فن آوری های پیشرفته برای خرده فروشی: چشم انداز مدیریت

In recent years, a great deal of research focused on the introduction of advanced technologies for making traditional stores more appealing and attractive, with several benefits for the retail process. Since the introduction of these innovative systems involves several risks that can have a negative impact on business profitability, this paper aims at investigating to what extent it is possible to reduce these risks by proposing an explorative framework for a successful risk management strategies in retail context. Key results of this research concern the importance of the risk management also for retail sector, with emphasis on the introduction/adoption decision of innovative technologies in the points of sale, with consequences for retail-oriented industries. To achieve this task, the current study synthesizes findings from several fields such as management, marketing, and computer science.

Capacity of innovating has become a critical factor for firms and organizations in order to improve competitiveness, sales growth, efficiency and productivity (Guan et al., 2006). Hence, innovation capability of the firms needs to be improved in order to adopt new advanced systems more quickly than competitors (Wang et al., 2008). For this reason, the global pressure has increased the competitive spirit of enterprises through innovating, and it has reduced the life-cycle of new technologies. Abernathy (1985) suggested describing innovations on the basis of the impact of these on the firm's existing technological and market/business knowledge. Hence, these innovations can be incremental or radical (disruptive) according to the importance of the caused changes ( Marquis, 1969, Damanpour and Wischnevsky, 2006 and Sen and Ghandforoush, 2011). Radical innovations are new functionalities or new technologies that have not been previously identified and they emerge from a discontinuous process, whereas incremental innovations or adaptations are an improvement of existing functionalities by reducing cost, improving efficiency, etc. ( Sen and Ghandforoush, 2011). Due to the advantages of innovating and the consumers' expectations of novel technologies for improving their shopping experience (Pantano and Laria, 2012), also retailing may take advantages by adopting technology-based innovations for the points of sale. In fact, this sector can exploit the current advances in technology for making the points of sales more efficient and appealing by introducing innovative and interactive systems (Pantano and Laria, 2012, Pantano and Servidio, 2012 and Breugelmans and Campo, 2011). These innovations provide benefits for both consumers by supporting the decision-making process and retailers by providing updated information on clients behaviours and market trends (Sorescu et al., 2011, Vieira, 2010 and Shankar et al., 2011). On the one hand, these technologies allow consumers to (i) achieve information and customized contents on favourite products, services, sales, promotions, etc., (ii) compare and choose among alternatives, (iii) search for items, and (iv) calculate total purchases, by providing more convenient experiences in terms of time saving and providing entertainment (Hsiao, 2009, Yoon and Kim, 2007 and Bharadwaj et al., 2009). On the other, these technologies provide constantly updated information on market segments, preferences, needs, while shopping, etc., which can be exploited for the development of more efficient (direct) marketing strategies (Pantano and Laria, 2012). Hence, they are able to improve the traditional points of sale by enriching the provided information through the most recent advances in 3D graphics, as well as to provide retailers with information on consumers' in-store behaviour. To date, the most powerful innovative technologies are RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) systems (reader and writer for providing additional information on products), storefront displays enriched with virtual reality elements (i.e. virtual mannequins), smart shopping trolleys capable of supporting consumers during the in-store experience, and recommendation systems for mobiles (Kowatsch and Maass, 2010, Reitberger et al., 2009 and Breugelmans and Campo, 2011). Since the introduction of these technologies dramatically changes the retail process, in terms of store atmosphere, client–vendor relationship, quality of service, and consumers' shopping experience, several risks can be encountered with possible negative consequences on business profitability, concerning the consumers' acceptance and effective usage, the monetary investment and late returns on investment, the risk of frequent physical damages and obsolescence of the technical components, etc. Hence, the aim of this paper is to investigate to what extent it is possible to reduce these risks by proposing a new framework for technology risk management in retail context. The study provides an explorative and valuable analysis of obsolescence risks concerning the introduction of a new technology in the points of sale, by highlighting useful tools for scholars and practitioners for better understanding the critical role of risk management for introducing effective innovations in the points of sale. In particular, the first part of the paper investigates risk analysis with emphasis on the obsolescence from a management perspective; whereas the second focuses on the major risk issues involved in most current innovations to figure out the new framework for an efficient risk evaluation for innovations adoption in the retail context. Key results of this research concern the importance of risk management regarding the introduction of innovative technologies in retailing, with consequences for retail-oriented industries, by synthesizing findings from different fields such as management, marketing, and computer science.

Since the innovations in the stores generate important changes, wide costs and high level of uncertainty (Fanelli and Maddalena, 2012), an efficient management risk analysis plays a key role for predicting and reducing the possible risks, by modifying the subsequent firm's behaviour (McGaughey et al., 1994, Alhawari et al., 2011 and Holzmann and Spiegler, 2010). Despite the increasing attention in this direction, it is difficult to predict which technology has the most potential to become part of the new points of sale by improving the traditional retail process. In fact, the current studies on the introduction of advanced technologies mainly focus on the risk of acceptance by consumers (Kowatsch and Maass, 2010 and Pantano and Servidio, 2012), thus the present study aims at proposing a new framework that focuses on the technology risk management for well performing the technology-based innovation management for retailing. After explaining this framework and embedding it in a existing promising technology, we propose a method for better mapping the risks encountering in innovation systems and resulting in technological change for the traditional points of sale. According to the literature (Solomon et al., 2000, Hillson, 2002 and Feldman and Sandborn, 2007), we identified the physical, technical and market risks of internal technological components that might affect the obsolescence of the whole technology. To achieve this task, we used the Risk Breakdown Structure (Hillson, 2002) and the Probability–Impact grid (Ward, 1999). Since these tools do not take into account the interdependencies between risks that would be able to increase the negative effect of each risk, we introduce a further analysis focusing on the risks interdependencies that shows to what extent some risks with low impact in the probability–impact grid acquire more importance, owing to the great influence on other risks. From this analysis, the risk of screen substitution (1.2.3.1), previously evaluated as a moderate–high risk, emerge as one of the most important due to the impact on others. In fact, the risk of perceived difficult of use system (1.1.1), of data glove substitution with other technologies (1.2.4.1), and of introduction of new technologies that do not require glasses with polarized lens (1.2.5.2) are directly affected by this one. Hence, this component of the immersive store would be able to determine the obsolescence of the whole system, and its damages, malfunctioning, improvements have high impact both from a technical point of view and consumers' usage. Similarly, improvements and investments in this direction will be able to enhance the quality of the whole system and the users’ satisfaction. For this reason, the matrix of interdependencies emerges as a new useful tool for providing further critical information able to reduce the uncertainty concerning the introduction of a new technology and supporting retailers in the decision-making process and risk management, by facilitating the evaluation of the actual influence of any kind of risk on the others. In fact, the interdependencies matrix is able to provide a “qualitative” measure of the risk impact by considering the “width” of the influence of one risk on the others. Furthermore, our findings show the different importance of each risk, owing to the different role of each risk on the obsolescence of the innovation at the point of sale. Hence, the different risks have a different impact on the total obsolescence of the whole system, by acting at a different level. In fact, some risks have a stronger impact on the system, because their occurrence may cause the malfunctioning of the entire system or the occurrence of other risks (as emerging from the matrix of interdependencies). Since the introduced innovations have a different importance according to the elicited changes (Marquis, 1969, Damanpour and Wischnevsky, 2006 and Sen and Ghandforoush, 2011), each innovation can be considered “incremental” or “radical/disruptive”. Similarly, also risks can be defined as “radical” or “incremental” according to the different effects on the obsolescence risk of the innovative technology to be introduced. While the technical improvements of the systems can regard small enhancements in the features, we might face an “incremental” risk for the system obsolescence. If a strong improvement in the system functionalities is implemented (for example a deep change in payment methods), we encounter a “radical” (or disruptive) risk for system obsolescence. Hence, the high rated risks in the PI matrix and the ones with the strongest impact on the others can be considered as radical risks, due to the weight of their effect on both the system functioning and the acceptance by consumers. As the consequence, decision makers would take more into account the radical ones while evaluating the obsolescence risk for the adoption choice of a new technology to be introduced in the point of sale. If they are combined with the information emerging from the analysis of Technology Life Cycle, retailers achieve more information for reducing uncertainty and better evaluating the investment on this technology. In our case study, the screen is the core element of the immersive environment, thus its malfunctioning, damage or improvements have impact both for consumers’ experience and other components. As a consequence, its effect can be disruptive from the obsolescence risk analysis, by prompting retailers to focus especially on this element for reducing the global obsolescence risk emerging from the adoption of immersive technologies in the points of sale. Furthermore, our findings show how the radical innovations such as the immersive stores may encounter both incremental and radical risks able to affect the whole technology in different ways. In particular, each technology-based innovation to be introduced in the point of sale would encounter incremental and radical risks which are not mutually exclusive (rather, usually it could have both risk's types) that should be exploited in with different modalities; particular attention have to be paid to the radical risks and interdependencies (conditional probabilities) which may generate them.