Competition in wearable device market: the effect of network externality and product compatibility

The rapid growth in consumer adoption of wearable devices has garnered the attention of both practitioners and academia. Competition in the wearable device market is both substantial and complicated. In this study, we investigate the impact of network externality on wearable device competition in a two-dimensional product differentiation model. We consider a market that has a broad array of products (horizontal differentiation) and various quality levels (vertical differentiation). We study two types of network externalities according to the product compatibility in two types of market structures. Our model indicates that firm profits are decreased by network externalities in horizontal dominance. Network externality also increases (decreases) the higher-quality (lower-quality) firm’s profit in vertical dominance. Moreover, firms should ensure that their products are incompatible with those of rivals when network externality is large, and they should release compatible products when network externality is small in horizontal dominance. Firms should always ensure that their products are compatible with those of competitors in vertical dominance.     

Leveraging internet of things and big data analytics initiatives in European and American firms: Is data quality a way to extract business value?

Big data analytics (BDA) and the Internet of Things (IoT) tools are considered crucial investments for firms to distinguish themselves among competitors. Drawing on a strategic management perspective, this study proposes that BDA and IoT capabilities can create significant value in business processes if supported by a good level of data quality, which will lead to a better competitive advantage. Responses are collected from 618 European and American firms that use IoT and BDA applications. Partial least squares results reveal that better data quality is needed to unlock the value of IoT and BDA capabilities.     

European competition law, the new e-communications framework, and the consumer in the information society: more than a virtual position?

Free and open competition benefits consumers. The consumer may ultimately benefit from a wider range of products and more competitive prices if workable competition on the information technology market has been safeguarded. However, consumers will lose the benefits of competition if firms engage in anti-competitive practices, such as arrangements on prices, market sharing and allocation of customers. Firms must also be prevented from abusing their dominant position on the market. Abuse could arise if unfair prices or unfair trading conditions are imposed. The main goal of the EC competition regulation is to achieve a system that ensures effective competition on the internal market to improve the position of the consumer. However, a consumer who actively seeks protection under the current competition rules may end up frustrated. In general, ex ante regulation appears to be a better instrument for safeguarding consumer interests. The framework of the new electronic communication directives, which must be implemented in national legislation on 25 July 2003 at the latest, indexes ex ante regulation but is largely based on a competition law analysis. Clear obligations can be imposed to safeguard the interests of the consumer in the information society. These obligations not only relate to Internet access, but also to transparency in consumer contracts, affordable prices and dispute settlement.     

The impact of big data analytics on firms’ high value business performance

Big Data Analytics (BDA) is an emerging phenomenon with the reported potential to transform how firms manage and enhance high value businesses performance. The purpose of our study is to investigate the impact of BDA on operations management in the manufacturing sector, which is an acknowledged infrequently researched context. Using an interpretive qualitative approach, this empirical study leverages a comparative case study of three manufacturing companies with varying levels of BDA usage (experimental, moderate and heavy). The information technology (IT) business value literature and a resource based view informed the development of our research propositions and the conceptual framework that illuminated the relationships between BDA capability and organizational readiness and design. Our findings indicate that BDA capability (in terms of data sourcing, access, integration, and delivery, analytical capabilities, and people’s expertise) along with organizational readiness and design factors (such as BDA strategy, top management support, financial resources, and employee engagement) facilitated better utilization of BDA in manufacturing decision making, and thus enhanced high value business performance. Our results also highlight important managerial implications related to the impact of BDA on empowerment of employees, and how BDA can be integrated into organizations to augment rather than replace management capabilities. Our research will be of benefit to academics and practitioners in further aiding our understanding of BDA utilization in transforming operations and production management. It adds to the body of limited empirically based knowledge by highlighting the real business value resulting from applying BDA in manufacturing firms and thus encouraging beneficial economic societal changes.     

Economic incentives in security information sharing: the effects of market structures

The past few years have witnessed numerous information security incidents throughout the world, which unfortunately become increasingly tough to be completely addressed just by technology solutions such as advanced firewalls and intrusion detection systems. In addition to technology components, Internet environment can be viewed as a complex economic system consisting of firms, hackers, government sectors and other participants, whose economic incentives should be taken into account carefully when security solutions are formulated. In order to better protect information assets, information security economics as an emerging and thriving research branch emerges aiming at attempting to solve the problems of distorted incentives of such stakeholders by means of economic approaches. However, how these participants’ economic incentives for information security improvement change when they evolve between different market structures has remained unknown yet. Using game theory, we develop an analytical framework to investigate the effects of market structures on security investments, information sharing, attack investments, expected profits, expected consumer surplus and expected social welfare. We demonstrate that the levels of security investments, information sharing, attack investments, and expected profits are higher while expected consumer surplus and expected social welfare are lower under Cournot competition than under Bertrand competition. In particular, we surprisingly find that under either type of competition, the demand switch ratio caused by security breaches may benefit firms, consumers, government sectors and harm hackers. Our results provide some relevant managerial insights into formulating the strategies of security investments and information sharing for the firms transforming from one type of competition to the other.     

Scudware Mobile:支持可穿戴设备协同的移动中间件

最近几年可穿戴设备发展迅速,各种样式和用途的可穿戴设备大量出现。然而这些可穿戴设备大多都是独立工作的,设备与设备之间鲜有联系。为此提出了一个以智能手机为中心的、支持个人范围的和人与人之间的设备的协同模型。基于该模型设计并实现了Scudware Mobile移动中间件,该中间件运行于智能手机上,可以汇聚智能手机和可穿戴设备的数据和服务,且以开放授权机制开放给用户,实现了数据和服务的协同。在Scudware Mobile移动中间件的基础上实现了MobileTrace足迹记录器应用,验证了Scudware Mobile移动中间件的可用性。     

The effects of ubiquitous healthcare service on the south Korean Economy: using input–output analysis

Due to the rapid market penetration of smartphones and the development of context-aware ubiquitous healthcare services, the demand for ubiquitous healthcare service—to monitor patients’ longitudinal health data continuously and cope with emergency situations—has rapidly increased. Recent developments have suggested that researchers need to provide policy-makers with accessible and reliable information regarding the role of ubiquitous healthcare services. The objective of this study is to investigate the impact of ubiquitous healthcare services on the South Korean economy, using a static input–output approach. We address topics relating to the input–output model, such as the demand-driven model and inter-linkage effects, and the components inherent in an unconventional input–output model, such as the supply-driven model and the Leontief price model. The results indicate that the ubiquitous healthcare industry as a final primary production sector has strong production-inducing effects, weak price ripple effects, and marginal backward and forward linkage effects. It is also found that the industry is closely related to the electric and electronic device sector and the precision machinery sector. This is largely attributable to the convergence characteristics of industries that use wireless telecommunications, as well as those of the medical and measurement device and medical service sectors.     

Pricing strategies for tied digital contents and devices

Media companies are increasingly offering digital content to consumers. Many of these companies are tying digital content with their proprietary digital devices. In this study, we develop a consumer demand model for digital device and digital content based on a constant elasticity demand function. In modeling consumer valuation of the digital device, we take consumer surplus on digital content into account. We further derive equilibrium prices for digital devices based on an oligopoly competition model with horizontal product differentiation. We analyze the equilibrium prices and how prices affect firm profits. We find product differentiation and the level of product substitutability affect prices. We also find that content price plays a significant role in affecting the price of the digital device. Content price can either increase or decrease the tied digital device price depending on the profit margin and demand elasticity of the digital content. We further analyze how content and device prices affect their respective profits and the overall profit of the firm. We extend our model to vertical product differentiation and find vertical product differentiation and the level of product quality affect prices.     

考虑绿色网络效应的再制造产品最优生产决策及产品之间的竞争

提出由两个再制造商组成的环保质量和价格竞争的双寡头博弈模型.在一个再制造市场中,同时考虑消费者环保意识以及包括污染税和回收补贴在内的政府财政政策的情况下,探讨绿色网络效应对生产决策的影响,以期使企业的利润最大化.数值实验表明:高质量(低质量)产品的绿色网络效应系数越高(低),可能会反常地减少(增加)两种产品的环保质量和价格,但会促进(削弱)高质量(低质量)产品的销售和利润,而产品产异性不受影响;此外,相比较没有外部网络性的情况,在绿色网络效应的影响下,回收补贴的增加使得高质量(低质量)产品的需求和利润都得到了一定改善(削弱).结果表明,在最优化条件下,监管者总是可以使企业利润和消费者剩余构成的"经济盈余"最大化,并使排放总量最小化.     

Big Data Analytics in Healthcare — A Systematic Literature Review and Roadmap for Practical Implementation

The advent of healthcare information management systems (HIMSs) continues to produce large volumes of healthcare data for patient care and compliance and regulatory requirements at a global scale. Analysis of this big data allows for boundless potential outcomes for discovering knowledge. Big data analytics (BDA) in healthcare can, for instance, help determine causes of diseases, generate effective diagnoses, enhance QoS guarantees by increasing efficiency of the healthcare delivery and effectiveness and viability of treatments, generate accurate predictions of readmissions, enhance clinical care, and pinpoint opportunities for cost savings. However, BDA implementations in any domain are generally complicated and resource-intensive with a high failure rate and no roadmap or success strategies to guide the practitioners. In this paper, we present a comprehensive roadmap to derive insights from BDA in the healthcare (patient care) domain, based on the results of a systematic literature review. We initially determine big data characteristics for healthcare and then review BDA applications to healthcare in academic research focusing particularly on NoSQL databases. We also identify the limitations and challenges of these applications and justify the potential of NoSQL databases to address these challenges and further enhance BDA healthcare research. We then propose and describe a state-of-the-art BDA architecture called Med-BDA for healthcare domain which solves all current BDA challenges and is based on the latest zeta big data paradigm. We also present success strategies to ensure the working of Med-BDA along with outlining the major benefits of BDA applications to healthcare. Finally, we compare our work with other related literature reviews across twelve hallmark features to justify the novelty and importance of our work. The aforementioned contributions of our work are collectively unique and clearly present a roadmap for clinical administrators, practitioners and professionals to successfully implement BDA initiatives in their organizations.      

Finding a person with a wearable acceleration sensor using a 3D position tracking system in daily environments

Person identification with accurate position information is essential for providing location-based services in real environments, such as a shopping mall. For this purpose, we propose a method that integrates 3D position information from environmental depth sensors and acceleration data from wearable devices to anonymously gather the trajectories of people who have wearable devices as well as others. Our proposed method identifies a person who has a wearable device by comparing two time series of acceleration data from device and position information. To do this, we extracted the behaviours of each axis using the changes of each bit of acceleration data at certain time periods. We evaluated our method with data collected at a shopping mall and a children’s playroom to investigate its effectiveness and robustness in different environments. Our evaluation results showed that it achieved an average identification of 85%, which is better than several alternative methods.     

A novel fog-computing-assisted architecture of E-healthcare system for pregnant women

Recently, there is a tremendous rise and adoption of smart wearable devices in smart healthcare applications. Moreover, the advancement in sensors and communication technology empowers to detect and analyse physiological data of an individual from the wearable device. At present, the smart wearable device based on internet of things is assisting the pregnancy woman to continuously monitor their health status for avoiding the severity. The physiological data analysis of wearable device is processed with the assistance of fog computing due to limited computational and energy capability in the wearable device. Additionally, fog computing overcomes the excess latency that is created by cloud computing during physiological data analysis. In this article, a smart health monitoring IoT and fog-assisted framework are proposed for obtaining and processing the temperature, blood pressure, ECG, and pulse oximeter parameters of the pregnant woman. Based on real time series data, the rule-based algorithm logged in the wearable device with fog computing to analyse the critical health conditions of pregnant women. The proposed wearable device is validated and tested on 80 pregnant women in real time, and wearable device is delivering the 98.75% accuracy in providing health recommendations.

     

Ontology driven interactive healthcare with wearable sensors

Ubiquitous healthcare is the service that offers health-related information and contents to users without any limitations of time and space. Especially, to offer customized services to users, the technology of acquiring context information of users in real time is the most important consideration. In this paper, we researched wearable sensors. We proposed the ontology driven interactive healthcare with wearable sensors (OdIH_WS) to achieve customized healthcare service. For this purpose, wearable-sensor-based smart-wear and methods of data acquisition and processing are being developed. The proposed system has potential value in healthcare. A smart wear using wearable sensors is fabricated as a way of non-tight and comfortable style fitting for the curves of the human body based on clothes to wear in daily life. The design sample of the smart wear uses basic stretch materials and is designed to sustain its wearable property. To offer related information, it establishes an environment-information-based healthcare ontology model needed for inference, and it is composed of inside-outside context information models depending on the users’ context. The modeling of the proposed system involved combinations of information streams, focusing on service context information. With the proposed service inference rules, customized information and contents could be drawn by the inference engine. In the established OdIH_WS, real-time health information monitoring was achieved. The results of system performance and users’ satisfaction evaluations confirmed that the proposed system is superior to other existing systems.     

Sustainable competitive advantage of a system goods innovator in a market with network effects and entry threats

An innovator (a firm) introducing a technology for system goods into a market with network effects can adopt various licensing strategies. The innovator's strategy spectrum could include being a monopolist for an entire system using a proprietary technology, for only a set of components, or for one of the firms in a competitive market by licensing (opening) all of its technology to others firms. Regarding the choice of these strategic options, two conflicting schools of thought have emerged: network effects theory and leverage theory. Although the former encourages the innovator to completely reveal or open its technology in order to benefit from increased compatibility, the latter recommends the innovator to strictly withhold and protect its proprietary technology in order to avoid future competition. A few historical examples, such as the PC platform competition of IBM and Apple, suggest that neither of these extreme measures lead to business success. Therefore, a model has been developed in order to integrate these two perspectives. Our results suggest that while network effects encourage firms to open technology to a limited extent, they should strictly protect their “core” technological competency in order to minimize future competition.     

A Dynamic Network Oligopoly Model with Transportation Costs,Product Differentiation,and Quality Competition

This paper develops a new dynamic model of Cournot–Nash oligopolistic competition that includes production and transportation costs, product differentiation, and quality levels in a network framework. The production costs capture the total quality cost, which, in turn, can also represent the R&D cost. We first present the equilibrium version and derive alternative variational inequality formulations. We then construct the projected dynamical systems model, which provides a continuous-time evolution of the firms’ product shipments and product quality levels, and whose set of stationary points coincides with the set of solutions to the variational inequality problem. We establish stability analysis results using a monotonicity approach and construct a discrete-time version of the continuous-time adjustment process, which yields an algorithm, with closed form expressions at each iteration. The algorithm is then utilized to compute solutions to several numerical examples. The framework can serve as the foundation for the modeling and analysis of competition among firms in industries ranging from food to pharmaceuticals to durable goods and high tech products, as well as Internet services, where quality and product differentiation are seminal.     

A modified Lotka–Volterra model for competition forecasting in Taiwan’s retail industry

The retail industry is an important component of the supply chain of the goods and services that are consumed daily and competition has been increasing among retailers worldwide. Thus, forecasting the degree of retail competition has become an important issue. However, seasonal patterns and cycles in the level of retail activity dramatically reduce forecasting accuracy. This paper attempts to develop an improved forecasting methodology for retail industry competition subject to seasonal patterns and cycles. Using market share data and the moving average method, a modified Lotka–Volterra model with an additional constraint on the summation of market share is proposed. Furthermore, the mean absolute error is used to measure the forecasting accuracy of the market share. Real Taiwanese retail data from 1999 is used to validate the forecasting accuracy of our modified Lotka–Volterra model. Our methodology successfully mitigates errors from seasonal patterns and cycles and outperforms other benchmark models. These benchmarks include the Bass and Lotka–Volterra models for revenue or market share data, with or without using the moving average method. Our methodology assists the retail industry in the development of management strategies and the determination of investment timing. We also demonstrate how the Lotka–Volterra model can be used to forecast the degree of industry competition.     

Development of a wrist-worn calorie monitoring system using bluetooth

Methods and tools for monitoring real-time human body information in daily life are required for advanced healthcare. In this study, a method for estimating energy expenditure during health exercises was evaluated and a wrist-worn sensing system based on the method was developed. Pulse monitoring was used to calculate energy expenditure by estimating oxygen uptake from a correlation between heart rate and oxygen uptake. Bluetooth technology was utilized for sending data by wireless communication. By the newly developed system, energy expenditure during exercise can be estimated considering individual difference and distinguishing changes in grade or load. Our goal is to construct a miniaturized wearable system that monitors vital signs and has many applications for healthcare. The study suggests that a wearable pulse sensing system proposed could provide useful information for healthcare.     

Web服务动态组合中QoS计算方法研究

通过在Web服务动态组合中引入形式化的服务质量(QoS)描述、服务提供商因子、服务消费者因子,提出基于层次分析法的QoS计算方法。该方法根据服务消费者期望值选择QoS因子,利用QoS权重值计算Web服务的质量,在此基础上给出一个基于QoS计算的Web服务组合模型,并通过实例计算,证明利用该QoS计算方法可以得到更高质量的增值服务。     

Towards an understanding of the behavioral intention to use 3G mobile value-added services

As profit margins gradually decline, and market competition becomes increasingly intensive, 3G telecom operators must provide various mobile value-added services, as well as traditional voice services, to attract new subscribers and retain old ones. However, for many 3G mobile value-added services, whether ARPU (average revenue per user) can be effectively enhanced depends on the consumer behavioral intentions. Therefore, this study uses the Technology Acceptance Model as the foundation and incorporate personal innovativeness and perceived cost to further understand consumer’s behavioral intention to use 3G mobile value-added services. The following conclusions can be reached from the research findings: (1) consumer usage rate of current 3G value-added services remains low; (2) increased personal innovativeness will directly enhance the perceived ease of use of 3G mobile value-added services; (3) the perceived usefulness is enhanced when consumers perceive higher ease of use of value-added services; (4) perceived usefulness has the strongest effect on consumer attitude, followed by perceived ease of use and perceived cost, and (5) the most important factor in increasing consumer’s behavioral intention to use 3G mobile value-added services is attitude, followed by perceived ease of use, perceived cost and perceived usefulness. Results of this study provide a valuable reference for service providers to develop mobile value-added services.     

Historical Trajectories of Innovation and Competitiveness: Hong Kong Firms and their China Linkages

Hong Kong manufacturing firms have been competing in world markets since the 1950’s. Their success has been based on low cost and flexible production and an ability to meet very tight delivery schedules as many of their products are short run fashion items for which consumer demand can be fickle. The opening of China in 1978 has enabled Hong Kong firms to sustain their cost advantages in world markets for a further twenty years. However, the rapid economic development of South China in particular, to which Hong Kong is adjacent, and the competition from lower cost economies in Southeast Asia is leading to pressures on Hong Kong manufacturers to rethink their strategies. Ambitions to continue to compete among world class manufacturers has become a survival strategy. The focus of this paper is to identify and explain the historical development of innovation in the strategies of Hong Kong firms to enable them to continue to dominate niche markets in Europe and the USA and develop a presence in the China market.