This paper has the ambitious goal of evaluating how apparel retailers obtain value from information technology (IT). The authors look at apparel retailing as a challenging interface with online customers in particular, since the customer may hesitate to buy apparel without seeing it. Unfortunately, because the questions asked are so broad, the results are high level and pretty much in line with intuition (for example, IT investment correlates with better customer service.) In general, the results show that technology investment makes an apparel retailer smarter (in terms of anticipating and meeting customer demands), but not necessarily more creative or better able to develop new products.

The paper relies on fairly dense statistical discussions, which might be more than the general business reader wants. The paper does not have any specific examples or A-B comparisons of individual case studies, but rather consists mostly of a statistical analysis of 49 publicly traded firms from 1995 to 2007. The paper would be of value to someone looking at large-scale trends and modeling; however, it offers only general information for retailers trying to decide whether to make a bigger-than-average investment in IT.