线上零售商主导下供应链结构选择及演化

围绕线上零售商的特点,立足产品类型与物流外包两个维度,设计了四种类型供应链结构,研究了线上零售商主导下不同供应链结构的最优决策及选择策略;进而分析了制造商边际生产成本变化对供应链结构选择的影响。研究显示：承接物流二次外包的物流服务提供商不应作为线上零售商主导下供应链结构的主要参与主体;期初,线上零售商会面向功能型产品构建由零售商与物流服务集成商组成的供应链结构;后期,随着制造商边际生产成本的下降,其会优先选择创新型产品,构建由制造商、零售商以及物流服务集成商组成的供应链结构。在此基础上,为实现整个供应链效益及客户价值的最大化,线上零售商会逐步整合物流服务集成商,有效集成零售及物流资源,形成由制造商与零售商组成的供应链结构。通过数值分析验证了主要的研究结论。     

Eyeing the web interface: the influence of price,product, and personal involvement

Although Internet retailing has become part of mainstream commerce, there is still lack of research related to web interface design as a function of product price, product complexity, and personal involvement of consumer with the product. Different types of products require different aspects of information and environment as demanded by consumers; thus, it is imperative for retailers to appropriately tailor their online presentation of products. Drawing from the elaboration likelihood model and media richness theory, we investigate the effectiveness of peripheral cue-dominated interfaces, balanced cue-dominated interfaces, and central cue-dominated interfaces on consumer purchase intention. Nearly 1000 subjects participated in this study over a period of 2 years. Our analyses provide support for the contention that the role of website cues (peripheral and central) on the consumer varies by the type of product. Our findings have implications for research and practice.     

The effect of behavioral tracking practices on consumers’ shopping evaluations and repurchase intention toward trusted online retailers

The study applies the Stimulus–Organism–Response (SOR) model and Social Contract Theory to investigate the effect of behavioral practices scenarios (stimulus) on consumers’ evaluations of their online shopping experiences (internal organism) and repurchase intention toward online retailers (external response). The findings suggest there is a disconnect between online shoppers and their trusted online retailers regarding the information collected from online shoppers since, currently, sharing of information collected from customers within affiliates or even with third-party companies such as networking advertising associations for secondary uses (e.g. targeted advertising) is a fairly common practice in the marketing field. Left unresolved, this disconnect may undermine consumers’ repurchase intention toward the retailers and potentially injure the social contract between retailers and their customers. These findings are significant for the online retailing industry, consumers and public policy makers.     

Applying social bookmarking to collective information searching (CIS): An analysis of behavioral pattern and peer interaction for co-exploring quality online resources

With the advancement of Web 2.0 applications, this study aims to advocate that social bookmarking (SB) applications could support mutual exchange of finding information in a manner of collective information searching (CIS). A social bookmarking system, namely ‘WeShare,’ was developed, and conducted with 127 junior high school students for performing the given assignment in this study. The participants’ activities of collecting and reviewing relevant information were traced by log data for later analysis. To initially unveil the participants’ behaviors in the use of social bookmarking for co-exploring the Internet resources, this study proposed some quantitative indicators to represent students’ personal contributions (‘Bookmarks from the Internet,’ ‘Bookmarks from WeShare,’ ‘Annotations on personal bookmarks,’ ‘Comments on others’ bookmarks’) and peer feedback (‘The number of bookmarks collected by peers,’ ‘The number of bookmarks commented on by peers,’ ‘The number of comments from peers’). By the method of cluster analysis, some behavioral patterns regarding how participants collectively search the Internet by use of WeShare were identified. Furthermore, the findings suggest that personal contributions to citing and commenting on peers’ bookmarks are important to the advancement of collective information searching activities for finding quality information on the Internet.     

A data mining approach to product assortment and shelf space allocation

In retailing, a variety of products compete to be displayed in the limited shelf space since it has a significant effect on demands. To affect customers’ purchasing decisions, retailers properly make decisions about which products to display (product assortment) and how much shelf space to allocate the stocked products (shelf space allocation). In the previous studies, researchers usually employed the space elasticity to optimize product assortment and space allocation models. The space elasticity is usually used to construct the relationship between shelf space and product demand. However, the large number of parameters requiring to estimate and the he non-linear nature of space elasticity can reduce the efficacy of the space elasticity based models. This paper utilizes a popular data mining approach, association rule mining, instead of space elasticity to resolve the product assortment and allocation problems in retailing. In this paper, the multi-level association rule mining is applied to explore the relationships between products as well as between product categories. Because association rules are obtained by directly analyzing the transaction database, they can generate more reliable information to shelf space management.     

Strategic channel alignment: an analysis of the configuration of physical and virtual marketing channels

Extensive integration of online and offline channels is often described as the most preferable strategy for multi channel retailing. However, empirical findings challenge this assumption by showing that retailers choose a variety of disparate multi channel strategies. Given this variety, we conjecture that there is no single best approach to multi channel retailing, but that, depending on the general marketing strategy, different multi channel strategies can be suitable for retailers. We develop a model of strategic channel alignment and identify four different paths of channel alignment, which we use to reconstruct and interpret multi channel strategies as an alignment of general marketing strategy and online strategy. An application of the model to four prominent and successful cases from the grocery retailing industry shows that although the companies pursue fundamentally different multi channel strategies, they can all be considered as examples of successful alignment and mature multi channel strategies.     

Quick response and omnichannel retail operations with the ship‐to‐store program

To better integrate online businesses with offline stores, fast‐fashion retailers roll out the “ship‐to‐store” (STS) initiative, which is an omnichannel fulfillment method that allows consumers to order online and have their parcels delivered to selected stores for pickup. To study the impact of STS on fast‐fashion operations, we consider four scenarios: multichannel retailing, multichannel retailing with quick response (QR), omnichannel retailing with STS, and omnichannel retailing with both STS and QR. Moreover, we investigate how STS influences the value of QR. The results show that although STS benefits firms in many situations, STS under a QR strategy can reduce a retailer's profits when inventory information disclosure due to STS dampens cross‐selling opportunities. Our findings also reveal that the implementation of STS may lower the value of QR when customers who encounter stockouts offline opt to purchase online directly rather than use STS.     

Surfing the web - Recreation or resource? Exploring how young people in the UK use the Internet as an advice portal for problems with a legal dimension

Internet use and access in the UK has increased rapidly in the last decade, with the concept of ‘information superhighway’ recognised as an axiom of Internet technology. Despite this, few studies have sought to investigate the incidence of use of the Internet as an advice resource outside of the health information arena. With an increasing impetus in the public sector towards the provision of online delivery mechanisms for civic orientated activities, including advice provision, it is timely to better understand the appropriateness of online advice seeking. Focusing on young people aged between 18 and 24 years, we investigated how much the Internet was used to obtain information about everyday problems with a legal dimension, who used it, how it was used and how successful respondents were in searching for information online. Data were extracted from a large-scale household survey of adults’ experience of problems with a legal dimension conducted across England and Wales (10,512 adult respondents). Results revealed significant growth in the use of the Internet to obtain information about such problems, rising from 4% in 2001 to around 18% in 2008. The responses of the 18-24 year olds to the survey illustrated that despite having comparatively high levels of Internet access, this age group utilised it to a lesser degree than similarly ‘connected’ age cohorts, and were less successful when doing so. This study highlights aspects of the second digital divide, going beyond access to explore use and outcomes of use. Implications for the future of the Internet in providing information and advice for young people, are discussed.     

Collaborative product innovation: integrating elements of CPI via PLM framework

Information technology has evolved over the last few decades at an extremely rapid pace. In the last few years, Internet technology has contributed towards how organizations mature, evolve their business, implement processes and chalk out business strategies for product development to meet customer requirements. Yet the true potential of technology lies in its ability to connect people, processes and information and for this to be realized the target user group for technology will have to be a captive audience. For organizations the world over this captive audience are its employees, suppliers and customers.This paper attempts at integrating three topics using a technology framework for capturing the benefits that can be harnessed by organizations, these are Collaboration, Product Development and Innovation, as the topic suggests, CPI, ‘Collaborative Product Innovation’.     

A five-year study of on-campus Internet use by undergraduate biomedical students

This paper reports on a five-year study (2005–2009) of biomedical students’ on-campus use of the Internet. Internet usage logs were used to investigate students’ sessional use of key websites and technologies. The most frequented sites and technologies included the university’s learning management system, Google, email and Facebook. Email was the primary method of electronic communication. However, its use declined over time, with a steep drop in use during 2006 and 2007 appearing to correspond with the rapid uptake of the social networking site Facebook. Both Google and Wikipedia gained in popularity over time while the use of other key information sources, including the library and biomedical portals, remained low throughout the study. With the notable exception of Facebook, most ‘Web 2.0’ technologies attracted little use. The ‘Net Generation’ students involved in this study were heavy users of generalist information retrieval tools and key online university services, and prefered to use externally hosted tools for online communication. These and other findings have important implications for the selection and provision of services by universities.     

Does online interactivity matter? Exploring the role of interactivity strategies in consumer decision making

Given that the Internet does not afford an opportunity to inspect products before purchase, some customers hesitate to shop online. Online interactivity can supplement online decision-making with added product information. Based on the theories of impression management and deception, this study focuses on sellers’ online interactivity strategies (SOIS) and aims to explore the role of SOIS played in online purchase decision-making process. According to the stimulus–organism–response (S–O–R) paradigm, this study aims to understand how each component of SOIS affects transaction intention through consumer perceptions (perceived deception and perceived diagnosticity) and how this affect is moderated by product types (search goods and experience goods) in online marketplaces. Data collected from 475 respondents support most of our hypotheses. Product type positively moderates only the link between image creation and perceived deception. Implications for theory and practice are also discussed.     

In-store consumer behavior: How mobile recommendation agents influence usage intentions,product purchases,and store preferences

Product information given in purchase situations influences purchase behavior. In online purchase situations, the use of recommendation agents increases the value of product information as information becomes adaptive and thus more relevant to consumers’ information needs. Correspondingly, mobile recommendation agents (MRAs) may also increase the value of product information in bricks-and-mortar stores. In this sense, product information is not only adaptive but can also be requested at any place such as in front of products consumers are interested in. Because unprecedented, we investigate the use of a MRA that is virtually bound to a physical product via an RFID-enabled mobile device and provides product information. Based on Theory of Planned Behavior, Innovation Diffusion Theory, and Technology Acceptance Model, we develop a model to better understand the impact of MRAs on usage intentions, product purchases and store preferences of consumers. This model is then tested in a lab experiment (n = 47). Among high usability scores, results indicate that perceived usefulness of a MRA influences product purchases, predicts usage intentions and store preferences of consumers. Thus, new business models for retail stores can be considered in which MRAs satisfy both the information needs of consumers and the communication needs of retailers.     

Predict on-shelf product availability in grocery retailing with classification methods

Product availability is an important component to maintain consumer satisfaction and secure revenue streams for the retailer and the product supplier. Empirical research suggests that products missing from the shelf, also called ‘out-of-shelf’, is a frequent phenomenon. One of the challenges is to identify products missing from the shelf on a daily base without conducting physical store audit. Through empirical evaluation, this study compares various classification algorithms that can identify ‘out-of-shelf’ products, which is the minority class of product availability. Due to the class imbalance of product availability, an ensemble learning method is used to increase performance of the base classifiers used. The validation results indicate that it is possible to deliver accurate predictions regarding which products are ‘out-of-shelf’ for a selected retail store on a daily base. However, the predictions could not identify a significant number of the products missing from the shelf.     

Property-based collaborative filtering for health-aware recommender systems

Recommender systems aim at solving the problem of information overload by selecting items (commercial products, educational assets, TV programs, etc.) that match the consumers’ interests and preferences. Recently, there have been approaches to drive the recommendations by the information stored in electronic health records, for which the traditional strategies applied in online shopping, e-learning, entertainment and other areas have several pitfalls. This paper addresses those problems by introducing a new filtering strategy, centered on the properties that characterize the items and the users. Preliminary experiments with real users have proved that this approach outperforms previous ones in terms of consumers’ satisfaction with the recommended items. The benefits are especially apparent among people with specific health concerns.     

Web services: e-commerce partner integration

Online retailers have used a succession of technologies to showcase their products and services on the Web. That experience gives them a greater insight into what it is that the latest technology, Web services, can offer them. This article gives a brief survey of the evolution of evolving e-commerce technologies, explaining what each offered and could not offer to retailers. It then describes how Amazon's investment in its e-commerce services (ECS) gives Amazon partners access to common online retailing functionalities. These researchers also present the partner integration framework they developed to help retailers define what services they need in an online retail system.     

What did you learn from practice today? Exploring experiences from a Danish R&D effort in digital construction

The Architecture-Engineering-Construction (AEC) industry has been slow in turning the potential of Information and Communication Technologies into greater efficiency and productivity. This is a phenomenon which can be observed in many countries, and in Denmark this issue has been recognized as a major problem for the further development of the AEC industry. The public-private and nationally funded R&D program ‘Digital Construction’ was initiated in 2003 to establish a common platform for exchanging digital information and stimulating digital integration in the Danish AEC industry. This paper reports on the lessons learned from developing strategies, demands and guidelines in the ‘Digital Construction’ program and from adapting one of its ‘digital foundations’, the ‘3D Working Method’, to the design process of the large-scale building project ‘The Icelandic National Concert and Conference Centre’. The explorations are based on a process evaluation of the R&D program and a qualitative case study of the building project. The paper reports on identified factors enabling or hindering the adaptation, as well as on the benefits and challenges experienced from using and exchanging 3D object models according to the ‘3D Working Method’. The paper concludes that the adaptation has been successful due to the initial ambitions of the project actors. Nevertheless, there are still many challenges to be overcome. The findings indicate that the introduction of the ‘3D Working Method’ to the real-life project depended on the success of balancing an array of the factors identified across the R&D program and the different levels within the building project. Three especially crucial balancing acts are explored; first, the power of the ‘implementer’ versus the expected risk and benefits of implementation, second, the strategies and guidelines within the program versus the resources for learning and the organizational traditions for using digital tools, and third, the level of ambition versus the skills of the users and the potential of the technology to address real-life practice. Mastering these balancing acts requires a broad understanding of both the project and its context. The findings from qualitative and holistic studies as presented in this paper are valuable for building such understanding, and for further learning and improvement regarding strategies for integrating ICT in architectural and engineering practice.     

Sophistication of Internet usage (SIU) and its attitudinal antecedents: An empirical study in Hong Kong

The measurement of Internet use in empirical studies has undergone a progression from uni-item measurement to multi-item measurement. Based on several operationalizations of Internet use in existing studies, the paper proposes a reflective measurement model, called ‘sophistication of Internet usage’ (SIU), with five indicators (online time, online activities, online skills, diversity of online method, and diversity of online places). With data from a longitudinal random survey conducted in Hong Kong from 2003 to 2005, a uni-dimension measurement model is established based on confirmatory factor analysis. Convergent and discriminant validity of the uni-dimension model is also established within multi-trait-multi-method (MTMM) paradigm by confirmatory factor analysis. The model shows that individuals’ positive life outcome expectation, expected ease of use, and perceived popularity of the Internet are significant antecedents of SIU with demographic characteristics controlled.     

Evaluating customer aid functions of online stores with agent-based models of customer behavior and evolution strategy

With competitive pressure growing in online markets, many Internet stores provide various customer aid functions such as personalized pages to help customers shop more effectively and efficiently. Evaluating such customer aid functions is usually costly because it requires full or partly-working systems and many human testers. In order to address this problem, this research presents a novel approach to evaluating customer aid functions with agent-based models of customer behavior and evolution strategies. Agent-based modeling is used to imitate users’ rational behavior at Internet stores with regard to browsing and collecting product information. It is assumed that users evolve their browsing skill and strategy over time, to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of their shopping, and hence, evolution strategy, an optimization method, is combined with the agent-based model to find the rational behavior of each user. The rational behavior is then used to simulate the virtual shopping of users and to evaluate the performances of target customer aid functions. Several experiments were performed to illustrate the use of the approach, where the personalized recommendation page of a virtual online DVD rental store is evaluated in comparison with more general functions such as listing most popular products or sorting categories. The results show that a personalized page might not always be the best customer aid function for all users compared to the simpler ones.     

Price competition in e-tailing under service and recognition differentiation

The Internet has significantly increased the bargaining power of consumers. Many online shopping search engines allow consumers to find most retailers that sell a specific product, compare product prices, and review detailed store ratings. With competition just a click away, online retailers have little control over where consumers would shop. Offering the lowest price alone does not always guarantee that consumers will come and buy at your site. Other non-price attributes, such as service quality and a merchant’s brand recognition, also play important roles in helping online retailers to build competitive advantages. In this paper, we present a model of price competition that assumes e-tailers can mainly differentiate themselves by providing different levels of service and by establishing a different online recognition. Closed-form equilibrium solutions are obtained for the different scenarios that may arise in this model. Based on such solutions, we give managerial insights on how e-tailers should position themselves when parameters such as service cost, service levels, and recognition are varied.     

Landsat urban mapping based on a combined spectral-spatial methodology

Urban mapping using Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) imagery presents numerous challenges. These include spectral mixing of diverse land cover components within pixels, spectral confusion with other land cover features such as fallow agricultural fields and the fact that urban classes of interest are of the land use and not the land cover category. A new methodology to address these issues is proposed. This approach involves, as a first step, the generation of two independent but rudimentary land cover products, one spectral-based at the pixel level and the other segment-based. These classifications are then merged through a rule-based approach to generate a final product with enhanced land use classes and accuracy. A comprehensive evaluation of derived products of Ottawa, Calgary and cities in southwestern Ontario is presented based on conventional ground reference data as well as inter-classification consistency analyses. Producer accuracies of 78% and 73% have been achieved for urban ‘residential’ and ‘commercial/industrial’ classes, respectively. The capability of Landsat TM to detect low density residential areas is assessed based on dwelling and population data derived from aerial photography and the 2001 Canadian census. For low population densities (i.e. below 3000 persons/km²), density is observed to be monotonically related to the fraction of pixels labeled ‘residential’. At higher densities, the fraction of pixels labeled ‘residential’ remains constant due to Landsat's inability to distinguish between high-rise apartment dwellings and commercial/industrial structures.