Conclusions and Further Research

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This research investigated the impact of certain organizational and retail specific factors on the success of the web presence. Success was measured from a sales and marketing perspective and used three metrics: number of hits, sales leads generated and on-line sales. An important contribution of this research is the adoption of such a multi-point evaluation. Few of the factors investigated impacted on-line sales, yet they did impact the other two measures—hits and sales leads generated. An explanation for this may be due to the fact that customers are using retail websites to gather information, but still prefer to complete the transaction off-line. Thus, any evaluation of a website success should not just focus on the metric of on-line sales, as the website may be more important as a marketing tool rather than a sales execution means.

Specific organizational factors—early adoption of web technology, internal IS/IT expertise, having an e-business strategy and a person who champions the e-business project—result in more successful e-business presences. In particular, the extent to which these organizational factors are present greatly improves the degree to which customers seek information from, and inquire about, products on a retailer's website. However, these same organizational factors do not significantly impact the amount of sales completed on-line.

Previous research has shown that specific product characteristics—easy to ship, small value items, customizable to individual needs—make certain products more likely to be successful on the Web. This study of Irish gifts found no evidence to indicate that the presence of a particular product characteristic made it more successful relative to other Irish gift products. This study investigated a specific retailing sector—one in which tangible goods which incur shipping costs are supplied—and further research would be required to verify these findings in other sectors and for other products. In addition, the number of products on offer through the website is not a good predictor of the likely success of the website. The extent to which a retail company integrates its web presence with its physical presence is likely to produce significant success for the website in terms of sales leads generated and on-line revenues.

This research has a number of limitations. The research method employed was a postal survey and, as such, the research suffers from the limitations inherent within such a research method. In particular, the research method provides a view of the state of affairs at a particular point in time. The data presented investigated e-tailers selling Irish gifts. As such, the results are not generalizable to other sectors or other businesses.

Further research is required to further investigate the conclusions drawn in this research. In particular, there is a need to replicate the study using a wider or alternative population sample, as this study was confined to Irish retail organizations that sell giftware on-line. Further research is also required to verify the success measures adopted and indeed to verify the need to adopt multiple metrics when investigating website success in terms of marketing and sales. In addition the website success measures presented in this research could be broadened and developed in future research.

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