Using AHP for Determining Priority in Seamless Strategy: A Case Study of the Click-and-mortar Bookstore

The click-and-mortar issue has attracted considerable attention in recent years. Many diverse arguments and viewpoints have been proposed to reinforce comprehension of seamless integration, but there has been little empirical research on how to develop an effective seamless strategy for consolidating the click-and-mortar environment. It is known that business capital is often scarce and different types of industries have different seamless strategy considerations; however, how to posit their expenditures in the right place on the basis of a priority method is seldom discussed. In order to provide a deeper view of the click-and-mortar decision making, this research divides the conceptual discussion into a proposed framework using the Analytic Hierarchical Process (AHP) to gain an integrated perspective to assist managers in placing business capital problems. It is argued that three types of support (logistics, technical and service) should be further extended and considered from seven seamless criteria for click-and-mortar evaluation. Two popular click-and-mortar bookstores in Taiwan were selected as the object. This framework generated several values for the enterprise to decide whether these seamless strategies should be adopted on the basis of its industrial characteristics. The research results can have practical implications for managers as they direct limited resources toward integrating and converging existing brick-and-mortar operations with a coherent and complementary Internet strategy.