A Conceptual Framework of Cloud-Based Mobile- Retail Application for Textile Cyberpreneurs Nik Zulkarnaen Khidzir Global Entrepreneurship Research and Innovation Centre / Faculty of Creative Technology and Heritage Universiti Malaysia Kelantan Kota Bharu, Kelantan, Malaysia zulkarnaen.k@umk.edu.my Wan Safra Diyana Wan Abdul Ghani Faculty of Creative Technology and Heritage Universiti Malaysia Kelantan Bachok, Kelantan, Malaysia wsdiyana@gmail.com Khairul Azhar Mat Daud Faculty of Creative Technology and Heritage Universiti Malaysia Kelantan Bachok, Kelantan, Malaysia azhar.md@umk.edu.my Abstract— Cloud-based m-retail application is commonly used by internet retailers and cyberpreneurs for conducting online business operations. The emergence of third-party e- commerce platforms along with incentives from Malaysian government has easily enabled the utilization of mobile marketplace app among both Malaysian sellers and customers. As m-retail has just started to gain attention in Malaysia, more works must be done to overcome the academic research limitations in terms of technological and non-technological perspectives. Meanwhile, textile and apparel products are among the most popular to be sold via the internet in addition to the growing number of related businesses. The uses of latest technology such as cloud-based mobile-retail application may help business owners to sustain for business survival. In designing a mobile applications for specific users, a thorough investigation must be performed. A conceptual framework of the apps might be helpful in providing a general overview of required elements for developing a successful mobile-retail applications. Extensive literature reviews, qualitative analysis, interviews and questionnaires have been conducted in designing and validating the proposed framework. The analysis results shows mean values from the survey are > 3.5 for the core element variables in this research. Thus, the statistical analysis validation results indicates the importance of the element as the fundamental component for the proposed framework. Therefore, this paper intends to propose a conceptual framework of cloud-based mobile-retail application specifically to be used by textile cyberpreneurs which might be helpful for related key players. Keywords— mobile retail; mobile application; cloud-based mobile application; textile cyberpreneurship; conceptual framework. I. INTRODUCTION Internet retailers are facing new challenges in conducting business nowadays. Apart from using common websites to sell their products, they are now given a few other choices of retail platforms to engage with potential customers. As mobile devices are greatly used nowadays for multiple purposes, the internet retailers must take advantages of this phenomenon to expand their business opportunities and engage in mobile retail (m-retail) activities. Textile and apparel products are among the most popular to be sold in Malaysia via the internet [1]. Some of the well-known textile brands have managed to create their own mobile applications for selling purpose while some others have utilized the existing mobile marketplace applications that are provided by third-party electronic commerce (e-commerce) merchants. The basic functionality of these applications or apps is to enable the sellers to promote and sell their products, while the customer may use them to search and buy the required items from the seller. In Malaysia, the e-commerce and mobile commerce (m- commerce) technologies have always been encouraged to be scrutinized and utilized by Malaysian entrepreneurs. Malaysian government has offered various incentives that are related to empower the usage of latest information and communication technologies (ICT) among businesses which include e-commerce and digital entrepreneurship industries [2]. The microentrepreneurs and small and medium enterprises (SME) are also invited to embark into the state- of-the-art technology utilization in targeting for business growth through several programmes such as eUsahawan [3], eRezeki [4] and SME Cloud Adoption [5]. Besides, the improvement of network infrastructure by telecommunication industries has enabled the internet retailing activities to flourish among Malaysians. As the number of mobile devices users is increasing in Malaysia [6], the possibility for the users to shop or sell by using mobile devices is somewhat high. Moreover, the existence of social media has indirectly promulgated the chances to conduct internet retailing among individuals and businesses. Social media is a powerful marketing tool [7] and very common to be used by Malaysian retailers for online business purpose [8]. Whilst social media too have launched their own mobile apps, the m-retail activities might also escalate among mobile device users, be it customers or sellers. Along with the emergence of mobile marketplace apps and easy payment gateways, m-retail is a promising sector with a lot of opportunities for businesses. Nonetheless, academic researches about m-retail or mobile shopping (m-shopping) are quite limited in Malaysia [9][10]. This may happen as a result from the e-commerce and m-commerce statuses which had only started to rise recently [11]. In order to accelerate the adoption of e- commerce among businesses, Malaysian government had introduced National eCommerce Strategic Roadmap [11] that emphasized the importance of technology utilization for economic growth. Generally, for a technology to be utilized by business owners or personnel, their needs must be identified and aligned with the business tasks that will be performed via the technology. If the technology or application is usable and helpful in fulfilling their needs, the chance to use it is higher. Hence, a thorough investigation must be conducted to understand the needs of business owners before developing a specific mobile app that can enable m-retail activities. For any information system (IS) or application to be practically implemented, a conceptual view or framework of the app shall be created as a reference to Proceeding of EECSI 2018, Malang - Indonesia, 16-18 Oct 2018 978-1-5386-8402-3/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE 625 brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by Proceeding of the Electrical Engineering Computer Science and Informatics