HC3152 - Internet Technologies and Harvey Norman's Retail Strategy
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This report examines how Harvey Norman, a major Australian retailer, is adapting to the disruption caused by internet technologies in the retail sector. It discusses the impact of trends like omnichannel retailing, IoT, and mobile technologies on Harvey Norman's operations. The report highlights Harvey Norman's efforts to integrate online and offline channels, improve customer experiences through technology, and leverage IoT for supply chain management and intelligent building solutions. It also provides recommendations for Harvey Norman to further enhance its IT strategy, including becoming a major IoT reseller and focusing on product availability, software updates, and interactive customer engagement. The analysis draws upon recent peer-reviewed journal articles to provide a comprehensive overview of the challenges and opportunities facing Harvey Norman in the evolving retail landscape. Desklib provides access to this and other solved assignments to help students study.

HARVEY NORMAN
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Executive Summary
The retail sector has been majorly facing the disruption in Australia. There are overseas business
which have entered in Australian market and thereby, hampering the market. With this, there is a
major change in the retail landscape as well, and the consumer where they have started becoming
tech savvy, affluent and busy as well. Hence, the expectations of the evolvement of technology
has been bringing a major change in the behavior of the people.
The aim is to focus on providing the recommendations and focusing on how the retail sector is
majorly changing due to the growth of technology and how it is bringing an impact on the
industry. It is recommended that Australia needs to work on reimagining the consumer
requirements and deal with the biggest challenges which the company can face in the next 5
years.
The retail sector has been majorly facing the disruption in Australia. There are overseas business
which have entered in Australian market and thereby, hampering the market. With this, there is a
major change in the retail landscape as well, and the consumer where they have started becoming
tech savvy, affluent and busy as well. Hence, the expectations of the evolvement of technology
has been bringing a major change in the behavior of the people.
The aim is to focus on providing the recommendations and focusing on how the retail sector is
majorly changing due to the growth of technology and how it is bringing an impact on the
industry. It is recommended that Australia needs to work on reimagining the consumer
requirements and deal with the biggest challenges which the company can face in the next 5
years.

Contents
Executive Summary.........................................................................................................................1
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Current Operation of Harvey Norman.............................................................................................3
Research on Effect of Internet Technologies on Retailing sector...................................................3
Conclusion & Recommendations....................................................................................................5
Harvey Norman has been effective through internet technologies..............................................6
References........................................................................................................................................6
Appendices......................................................................................................................................8
Executive Summary.........................................................................................................................1
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Current Operation of Harvey Norman.............................................................................................3
Research on Effect of Internet Technologies on Retailing sector...................................................3
Conclusion & Recommendations....................................................................................................5
Harvey Norman has been effective through internet technologies..............................................6
References........................................................................................................................................6
Appendices......................................................................................................................................8
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Introduction
The increased deployment of the new technologies like the smart mobile devices and the social
network has a major impact on the in-store technological solutions, which leads to different
opportunities and challenges for the retailers. The line between the online and the physical
channels is still blurred but a new approach to channel integration is seen to be emerging with
omnichannel that aims to deliver a seamless customer experience which is regardless of the
channel. The results focus on the discussions of information technology in retail and the new
business models, future roles of the traditional stores with economic advancements. The key
issues are related to the need of channel integration with impact of the mobile technologies and
the growth of the role of social media (Foye, 2017). There is a need to respond to the diversified
customer requirements with balance between personalization and privacy with supply chain
redesigning.
Current Operation of Harvey Norman
Harvey Norman was established by Gerry Harvey and Ian Norman in 1982, which is one of the
best company to focus on the franchising, property and the other retail business. The operations
are set under the franchise system and then delivering the retail offerings to the customer. The
product range is found to be wider and the advancement of the technology is with the market
leadership that helps in achieving the success in organization (Duvall, 2018). Apart from this, the
company is working on selling the products of different categories like the smaller appliances,
electrical goods, flooring and the carpets, with bedding, furniture and other communications. The
culture is multifaceted with the difficulty to describe about the orientation for the franchise
system. There are specific proportions of the earnings and the revenue which is generally spent
on the local community.
Research on Effect of Internet Technologies on Retailing
sector
According to Blázquez M. (2014), the retail sector comes under the competitive category
where there are operations based on how one is dominated by the multichannel retailers. The
internet has transformed and will continue to do so with retail sectors, in the upcoming times.
There are more retailers who are moving into this for better profitability. Harvey Norman is
trying to adopt to the internet technologies, where it has been working on adoption Internet of
The increased deployment of the new technologies like the smart mobile devices and the social
network has a major impact on the in-store technological solutions, which leads to different
opportunities and challenges for the retailers. The line between the online and the physical
channels is still blurred but a new approach to channel integration is seen to be emerging with
omnichannel that aims to deliver a seamless customer experience which is regardless of the
channel. The results focus on the discussions of information technology in retail and the new
business models, future roles of the traditional stores with economic advancements. The key
issues are related to the need of channel integration with impact of the mobile technologies and
the growth of the role of social media (Foye, 2017). There is a need to respond to the diversified
customer requirements with balance between personalization and privacy with supply chain
redesigning.
Current Operation of Harvey Norman
Harvey Norman was established by Gerry Harvey and Ian Norman in 1982, which is one of the
best company to focus on the franchising, property and the other retail business. The operations
are set under the franchise system and then delivering the retail offerings to the customer. The
product range is found to be wider and the advancement of the technology is with the market
leadership that helps in achieving the success in organization (Duvall, 2018). Apart from this, the
company is working on selling the products of different categories like the smaller appliances,
electrical goods, flooring and the carpets, with bedding, furniture and other communications. The
culture is multifaceted with the difficulty to describe about the orientation for the franchise
system. There are specific proportions of the earnings and the revenue which is generally spent
on the local community.
Research on Effect of Internet Technologies on Retailing
sector
According to Blázquez M. (2014), the retail sector comes under the competitive category
where there are operations based on how one is dominated by the multichannel retailers. The
internet has transformed and will continue to do so with retail sectors, in the upcoming times.
There are more retailers who are moving into this for better profitability. Harvey Norman is
trying to adopt to the internet technologies, where it has been working on adoption Internet of
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Things, which could be helpful for the addition of solutions from the quantifying technology.
The company has been working on the management of the products and the services for the
residential and other projects which are related to commercialized building (Inman et al., 2017).
To bridge the gap between the channels, the different technologies like the augmented reality, 3D
virtual models have been introduced in the retail sector and have been changing the retail sector.
Harvey Norman is also working on improving the store experiences which is the key to generate
value perceptions in retailing. The technology is the part for the in-store which is used for
improving the experiences and meeting the customer expectations. The technology can create an
attractive environment with making the shopping experience engaging and memorable as well.
The technologies like store ordering, display screens have been introduced to create a new
merchandise layout for the products with convenience to buy in-store.
The introduction of IoT has been able to redesign the factory workflow and improved the
tracking of materials with optimizing the cost of distribution. The examples are related to how
UPS is working on IoT enabled fleet tracking technologies which leads to cutting the costs and
improving the supply efficiencies as well. The retail site intelligence is one of the complete retail
platform for the video analytics (Lee et al., 2015). It has been seen that IoT is able to bring a
change with intelligent building solution for the real time evaluation of environmental and risks
factors that are managed through measuring the efficiency of the different resources like energy.
The quantifying and establishing a demonstration facility helps in providing the staff with better
training and the support in engineering sector. The company is able to adapt the technology with
gaining momentum in the technological and competitive pressures to push the firms with
adopting the same. IoT focus on cost benefit analysis which is of a major interest and the higher
investment costs allows to assess the IoT induced opportunities with resources that are seen to be
spent judiciously (Barrett et al., 2015).
With the increased deployment of the new technologies, there are omnichannel retailing
which is related to IT and has been working on perceiving it as an evolution of the multichannel
(Piotrowicz & Cuthbertson, 2014). The mobile and social media are even gaming that is added to
the traditional online and physical channels. They are able to provide a seamless and unified
experience to the customer. There are changes which are mainly driven by the new technologies
like the mobile payments, e-coupons and the e-valets that help them with reduced costs and
The company has been working on the management of the products and the services for the
residential and other projects which are related to commercialized building (Inman et al., 2017).
To bridge the gap between the channels, the different technologies like the augmented reality, 3D
virtual models have been introduced in the retail sector and have been changing the retail sector.
Harvey Norman is also working on improving the store experiences which is the key to generate
value perceptions in retailing. The technology is the part for the in-store which is used for
improving the experiences and meeting the customer expectations. The technology can create an
attractive environment with making the shopping experience engaging and memorable as well.
The technologies like store ordering, display screens have been introduced to create a new
merchandise layout for the products with convenience to buy in-store.
The introduction of IoT has been able to redesign the factory workflow and improved the
tracking of materials with optimizing the cost of distribution. The examples are related to how
UPS is working on IoT enabled fleet tracking technologies which leads to cutting the costs and
improving the supply efficiencies as well. The retail site intelligence is one of the complete retail
platform for the video analytics (Lee et al., 2015). It has been seen that IoT is able to bring a
change with intelligent building solution for the real time evaluation of environmental and risks
factors that are managed through measuring the efficiency of the different resources like energy.
The quantifying and establishing a demonstration facility helps in providing the staff with better
training and the support in engineering sector. The company is able to adapt the technology with
gaining momentum in the technological and competitive pressures to push the firms with
adopting the same. IoT focus on cost benefit analysis which is of a major interest and the higher
investment costs allows to assess the IoT induced opportunities with resources that are seen to be
spent judiciously (Barrett et al., 2015).
With the increased deployment of the new technologies, there are omnichannel retailing
which is related to IT and has been working on perceiving it as an evolution of the multichannel
(Piotrowicz & Cuthbertson, 2014). The mobile and social media are even gaming that is added to
the traditional online and physical channels. They are able to provide a seamless and unified
experience to the customer. There are changes which are mainly driven by the new technologies
like the mobile payments, e-coupons and the e-valets that help them with reduced costs and

allowing personalization and price optimization. Harvey Norman is working on improving in IT
sector where they are connected to the mobile customers who can access the information and buy
anything (Moorhouse et al., 2018).
The retailing through IT has brought the change with approaches to digital and specific
mobile channels. The channels are used for the purchasing process and it is impossible for the
companies to control this usage. The interactive channels and entertainment environment
companies are adopting the customer-to-customer interactions to social media with peer-to-peer
communication (Verhoef et al., 2015). It is important to focus on the different research channels
which are based on working with econometric models and the common research approaches
which involves the different survey data and the experiments. The technology has a major effect
on the customer purchasing behavior and the mobile channel usage is affecting the shopping
behavior across the different channels at a higher level. The multi-channel retailing to omni-
channel has brought the major development that is affecting on how the retailers can operate.
With the changing technology, IoT has been working on the integrated model with
exploring driving factors of individual willingness to use IoT from the perspectives of the
technology and social context. IoT has been able to bring the change in designing, architecture
and implementation sector from the technical standpoint (Gao & Bai, 2014). It has been able to
take hold of the applications which are important for the internet to communicate. The IoT
technologies are effective for the supply chain management, tracking of the retail and warehouse
management. The technology, then tends to provide the greater efficiencies in different industries
with benefits to the consumers which are substantial (Pantano et al., 2017). Harvey Norman is
working on improving the approach to its customer through proper training of the employees and
implementing the new technologies so that they are able to keep themselves up-to-date in the
market.
Conclusion & Recommendations
The focus of the company can be to provide a proper contribution to understand the role of
information technology in retailing. Here, the increased use of the mobile devices and the social
network has made the traditional online-physical channel obsolete. The changes are seen with
emerging business models for omnichannel (Priporas et al., 2017). The cross-channel integration
sector where they are connected to the mobile customers who can access the information and buy
anything (Moorhouse et al., 2018).
The retailing through IT has brought the change with approaches to digital and specific
mobile channels. The channels are used for the purchasing process and it is impossible for the
companies to control this usage. The interactive channels and entertainment environment
companies are adopting the customer-to-customer interactions to social media with peer-to-peer
communication (Verhoef et al., 2015). It is important to focus on the different research channels
which are based on working with econometric models and the common research approaches
which involves the different survey data and the experiments. The technology has a major effect
on the customer purchasing behavior and the mobile channel usage is affecting the shopping
behavior across the different channels at a higher level. The multi-channel retailing to omni-
channel has brought the major development that is affecting on how the retailers can operate.
With the changing technology, IoT has been working on the integrated model with
exploring driving factors of individual willingness to use IoT from the perspectives of the
technology and social context. IoT has been able to bring the change in designing, architecture
and implementation sector from the technical standpoint (Gao & Bai, 2014). It has been able to
take hold of the applications which are important for the internet to communicate. The IoT
technologies are effective for the supply chain management, tracking of the retail and warehouse
management. The technology, then tends to provide the greater efficiencies in different industries
with benefits to the consumers which are substantial (Pantano et al., 2017). Harvey Norman is
working on improving the approach to its customer through proper training of the employees and
implementing the new technologies so that they are able to keep themselves up-to-date in the
market.
Conclusion & Recommendations
The focus of the company can be to provide a proper contribution to understand the role of
information technology in retailing. Here, the increased use of the mobile devices and the social
network has made the traditional online-physical channel obsolete. The changes are seen with
emerging business models for omnichannel (Priporas et al., 2017). The cross-channel integration
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can be achieved where the retailers aim to implement the strategy which needs to focus on the
channels, balancing the privacy and the customization process in an effective manner.
Harvey Norman has been effective through internet technologies
Harvey Norman can also work on planning to become the major IoT reseller, as IT sector has a
major impact on its retail stores. The company can focus on improving generalizability with
social conformity and the focusing on the potentially biased responses. It is important for the
company to work on the product availability, latest software updates and manage the delivery
options of its products to the customers in an effective manner. The support is mainly by the
interactive screens where the customers should be engaged as well. The model of pull-order
system from product manufacturers, could also be an effective option for the company.
References
Barrett, M., Davidson, E., Prabhu, J. and Vargo, S.L., 2015. Service innovation in the digital age:
key contributions and future directions. MIS quarterly, 39(1), pp.135-154.
Blázquez, M., 2014. Fashion shopping in multichannel retail: The role of technology in
enhancing the customer experience. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 18(4), pp.97-
116.
Duvall T., 2018. Future of retail in Australia. Available
at:<https://home.kpmg.com/au/en/home/insights/2018/04/bernard-salt-next-5-years-retail-future-
australia.html>
Foye B. 2017, Harvey Norman adds IoT firepower to commercial business with Quantify
Technology partnership Available at:<https://www.crn.com.au/news/harvey-norman-adds-iot-
firepower-to-commercial-business-with-quantify-technology-partnership-474550>
Gao, L. and Bai, X., 2014. A unified perspective on the factors influencing consumer acceptance
of internet of things technology. Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, 26(2), pp.211-
231.
Inman, J.J. and Nikolova, H., 2017. Shopper-facing retail technology: a retailer adoption
decision framework incorporating shopper attitudes and privacy concerns. Journal of
Retailing, 93(1), pp.7-28.
channels, balancing the privacy and the customization process in an effective manner.
Harvey Norman has been effective through internet technologies
Harvey Norman can also work on planning to become the major IoT reseller, as IT sector has a
major impact on its retail stores. The company can focus on improving generalizability with
social conformity and the focusing on the potentially biased responses. It is important for the
company to work on the product availability, latest software updates and manage the delivery
options of its products to the customers in an effective manner. The support is mainly by the
interactive screens where the customers should be engaged as well. The model of pull-order
system from product manufacturers, could also be an effective option for the company.
References
Barrett, M., Davidson, E., Prabhu, J. and Vargo, S.L., 2015. Service innovation in the digital age:
key contributions and future directions. MIS quarterly, 39(1), pp.135-154.
Blázquez, M., 2014. Fashion shopping in multichannel retail: The role of technology in
enhancing the customer experience. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 18(4), pp.97-
116.
Duvall T., 2018. Future of retail in Australia. Available
at:<https://home.kpmg.com/au/en/home/insights/2018/04/bernard-salt-next-5-years-retail-future-
australia.html>
Foye B. 2017, Harvey Norman adds IoT firepower to commercial business with Quantify
Technology partnership Available at:<https://www.crn.com.au/news/harvey-norman-adds-iot-
firepower-to-commercial-business-with-quantify-technology-partnership-474550>
Gao, L. and Bai, X., 2014. A unified perspective on the factors influencing consumer acceptance
of internet of things technology. Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, 26(2), pp.211-
231.
Inman, J.J. and Nikolova, H., 2017. Shopper-facing retail technology: a retailer adoption
decision framework incorporating shopper attitudes and privacy concerns. Journal of
Retailing, 93(1), pp.7-28.
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Lee, I. and Lee, K., 2015. The Internet of Things (IoT): Applications, investments, and
challenges for enterprises. Business Horizons, 58(4), pp.431-440.
Moorhouse, N., tom Dieck, M.C. and Jung, T., 2018. Technological innovations transforming the
consumer retail experience: a review of literature. In Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality (pp.
133-143). Springer, Cham.
Pantano, E., Priporas, C.V., Sorace, S. and Iazzolino, G., 2017. Does innovation-orientation lead
to retail industry growth? Empirical evidence from patent analysis. Journal of Retailing and
Consumer Services, 34, pp.88-94.
Piotrowicz, W. and Cuthbertson, R., 2014. Introduction to the special issue information
technology in retail: Toward omnichannel retailing. International Journal of Electronic
Commerce, 18(4), pp.5-16.
Priporas, C.V., Stylos, N. and Fotiadis, A.K., 2017. Generation Z consumers' expectations of
interactions in smart retailing: A future agenda. Computers in Human Behavior, 77, pp.374-381.
Verhoef, P.C., Kannan, P.K. and Inman, J.J., 2015. From multi-channel retailing to omni-channel
retailing: introduction to the special issue on multi-channel retailing. Journal of retailing, 91(2),
pp.174-181.
challenges for enterprises. Business Horizons, 58(4), pp.431-440.
Moorhouse, N., tom Dieck, M.C. and Jung, T., 2018. Technological innovations transforming the
consumer retail experience: a review of literature. In Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality (pp.
133-143). Springer, Cham.
Pantano, E., Priporas, C.V., Sorace, S. and Iazzolino, G., 2017. Does innovation-orientation lead
to retail industry growth? Empirical evidence from patent analysis. Journal of Retailing and
Consumer Services, 34, pp.88-94.
Piotrowicz, W. and Cuthbertson, R., 2014. Introduction to the special issue information
technology in retail: Toward omnichannel retailing. International Journal of Electronic
Commerce, 18(4), pp.5-16.
Priporas, C.V., Stylos, N. and Fotiadis, A.K., 2017. Generation Z consumers' expectations of
interactions in smart retailing: A future agenda. Computers in Human Behavior, 77, pp.374-381.
Verhoef, P.C., Kannan, P.K. and Inman, J.J., 2015. From multi-channel retailing to omni-channel
retailing: introduction to the special issue on multi-channel retailing. Journal of retailing, 91(2),
pp.174-181.

Appendices
References: https://www.crn.com.au/news/harvey-norman-adds-iot-firepower-to-commercial-
business-with-quantify-technology-partnership-474550
References: https://www.crn.com.au/news/harvey-norman-adds-iot-firepower-to-commercial-
business-with-quantify-technology-partnership-474550
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