Product type and consumers’ perception of online consumer reviews

Consumers hesitate to buy experience products online because it is hard to get enough information about experience products via the Internet. Online consumer reviews may change that, as they offer consumers indirect experiences about dominant attributes of experience products, transforming them into search products. When consumers are exposed to an online consumer review, it should be noted that there are different kinds of review sources. This study investigates the effects of review source and product type on consumers’ perception of a review. The result of the online experiment suggests that product type can moderate consumers’ perceived credibility of a review from different review sources, and the major findings are: (1) consumers are more influenced by a review for an experience product than for a search product when the review comes from consumer-developed review sites, and (2) a review from an online community is perceived to be the most credible for consumers seeking information about an experience product. The findings provide managerial implications for marketers as to how they can better manage online consumer reviews.     

The Market for Video on Demand

In spite of predictions to the contrary, video on demand service has yet to become a significant channel for distribution of audiovisual entertainment to consumers’ homes. In this paper, we examine the market for video on demand service under the assumption that quality of service is a threshold factor that consumers take into consideration when making their purchasing decision. Given this characteristic of consumer behavior, we model the joint demand for video on demand service and broadband network access. We then proceed to characterize the optimal solution to monopolist and duopolist content providers’ price and quantity decisions in this market. The comparative statics results are extended in a two-period game theoretic framework that addresses the timing issue of service adoption.     

A user centric service-oriented modeling approach

With rapid development of service-oriented architecture and cloud computing, web services have been widely employed on the Internet. Quality of Service (QoS) is a very important criterion for service consumers to measure and select services. The selection of web services with respect to non-functional QoS criteria can be considered as a Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) problem when multiple consumers need to share a number of services. This paper describes a new user centric service-oriented modeling approach which is featured by integrating fuzzy Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and Service Component Architecture (SCA) to facilitate web service selection and composition and to effectively satisfy a group of service consumers’ subjective requirements and preferences in the dynamic environment. The main contribution of this method is able to translate a group of users’ fuzzy requirements to services as well as model different levels of hardware and software as services to meet the requirements. We also design a simulated environment that includes 8*8 LED matrix on a circuit board that corresponds to an office with different appliances to demonstrate the dynamic service selection and binding. The simulation is used to assess the computational efficiency of the fuzzy TOPSIS method and the effectiveness of the proposed system.     

From self-service to super-service: a resource mapping framework for co-creating value by shifting the boundary between provider and customer

Improved understanding of how interactions between service providers and customers create value, along with advances in technology, can expand and redefine the roles of both provider and customer in the service delivery process. The traditional boundary between provider and customer can shift toward self service, with the customer performing many of the tasks previously done by the provider, as in self-service check-in at the airport or self-serve salad bars in restaurants. Alternatively, the boundary can shift in the opposite direction—toward what we define as super service—with the provider performing many tasks previously done by the customer, such as a car rental company that delivers vehicles to customers or automatic bill paying services provided by banks. Why do providers shift this boundary in one direction or the other? Increased competition, changing customer attitudes, and new technologies all contribute to the development of new self-service and new super-service delivery configurations. But these new configurations are only effective when they can create additional value for both provider and customer. In this paper, we introduce a resource mapping framework for shifting the service boundary effectively. This framework allows us to examine the continuum of options from self service to super service from a service systems perspective to identify conditions under which shifting the provider-customer boundary creates value.     

Examining the influence of service quality and secondary influence on the behavioural intention to change internet service provider

Although the broadband market has considerably matured, follow-up research on the continued adoption of broadband is yet to be conducted. The aim of this research was therefore to investigate empirically the influence of service quality and secondary influence on consumers’ behavioural intention to change from their existing internet service provider (ISP) to an alternative service provider. The investigation focuses upon broadband household consumers within the UK. The study was conducted using a postal survey; a self-administered questionnaire was sent to 1600 households and a total of 358 completed replies were obtained. The results suggest that both service quality and secondary influence were significantly correlated to consumers’ behavioural intentions to change ISP. The implications of these findings are presented, followed by a discussion of the limitations of this research and future research directions.     

Business engagement on Twitter: a path analysis

Social media services, such as Twitter, enable commercial businesses to participate actively in online word-of-mouth communication. In this project, we examined the potential influences of business engagement in online word-of-mouth communication on the level of consumers’ engagement and investigated the trajectories of a business’ online word-of-mouth message diffusion in the Twitter community. We used path analysis to examine 164,478 tweets from 96,725 individual Twitter users with regards to nine brands during a 5-week study period. We operationalized business engagement as the amount of online word-of-mouth messages from brand and the number of consumers the brand follows. We operationalized consumers’ engagement as the number of online word-of-mouth messages from consumers both connecting to the brand and having no connection with the brand as well as the number of consumers following the brand. We concluded that the business engagement on Twitter relates directly to consumers’ engagement with online word-of-mouth communication. In addition, retweeting, as an explicit way to show consumers’ response to business engagement, indicates that the influence only reaches consumers with a second-degree relationship to the brand and that the life cycle of a tweet is generally 1.5 to 4 hours at most. Our research has critical implications in terms of advancing the understanding of the business’s role in the online word-of-mouth communication and bringing insight to the analytics of social networks and online word-of-mouth message diffusion patterns.     

A study on factors that affect users’ behavioral intention to transfer usage from the offline to the online channel

Increasingly more service providers offer both offline and online services simultaneously, but consumers still seem to prefer using offline services rather than online ones. Our research focuses on factors that influence users’ intention to transfer their usage from the offline to the online channel that offer similar services. Drawing on the valence framework and prior research related to habit, innovativeness, and Internet experience, we propose a research model that incorporates motivators and inhibitors of usage transfer from both the offline and online channels. Using banking services in China as the research context, our study reveals that innovativeness in new technology and relative benefit have positive effects on users’ intention to transfer usage. Conversely, habits that consumers form in the offline channel have a negative effect on the intention to transfer usage. Moreover, our findings indicate that Internet experience moderates the relationship between relative benefit and consumers’ intention to transfer usage from offline to online services. These results provide a better understanding of consumers’ usage-transfer behavior and offer suggestions to providers in boosting their consumers’ use of online services.     

The perceptions towards mobile services: an empirical analysis of the role of use facilitators

The adoption patterns for new technology such as mobile services are essential to understand for developing them further. Hence, it is important to study how willing people are to try new mobile services and do variables, which facilitate the use of the services have an effect on the consumers’ perceptions of the services and their adoption readiness. This study analyses how the familiarity of mobile devices, the time the services are initially used and users’ technology skills affect the initial mobile service usage experience and the likelihood of continuous usage. The results show that the duration of the use does not effect consumers’ perceptions about mobile services, but familiarity of the device and user skills have an impact on the perceptions of the services.     

Household technology adoption in a global marketplace: Incorporating the role of espoused cultural values

This paper extends prior research in household technology adoption by incorporating the role of espoused cultural values. Specifically, we theorize that espoused cultural values–individualism/collectivism, masculinity/femininity, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and long-term orientation—play an important role in affecting consumers’ behaviors by altering consumers’ belief structures—attitudinal beliefs, normative beliefs, and control beliefs. Our theoretical model predicts that the impact of consumers’ belief structures on household technology adoption intention varies across consumers with different cultural values. Propositions are provided to explain how different cultural mechanisms moderate the relationships between consumers’ beliefs and household technology adoption intention. The paper concludes with theoretical implications, future research directions, and practical implications.

Benefits and challenges of new mobile service development in R&;D network

The competitive environment of organizations has changed remarkably in line with rapid technological development and globalization of markets. This has lead to a situation where the amount of resources and knowledge needed in the development of new offerings has become overwhelming for a single organization. Consequently, nowadays organizations—both commercial and non-commercial—are performing research and development activities in networks consisting of multiple types of actors. This is also the case in industries developing new services for consumers’ mobile handhelds. This paper introduces a network view to new mobile service development and argues that a thorough understanding of acting in the network environment is a pre-requisite for successful mobile service creation. This viewpoint is emphasized in an information-rich case study, which describes the formation and operations of a network, which created a new mobile service for a sports team. This paper was originally presented at the International Conference on Mobile Business, Sydney, Australia, 11–13 July 2005.     

Self-adaptable media service architecture for guaranteeing reliable multimedia services

The main objective of this paper is to design and develop a Self-Adaptable Media Service Architecture (SAMSA) for providing reliable dynamic composite multimedia service through policy-based actions. The multimedia services such as media retrieval, transcoding, scaling and display services are combined based on the preferences of the user to create a dynamic composite multimedia service called as Video-on-Demand service. Such distributed multimedia services deployed using Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) can be accessed in heterogeneous environments that are prone to changes during run-time. To provide reliable and adaptive multimedia services, a powerful self-adaptable architecture with dynamic compositions of multimedia services is necessary to adapt during run-time and react to the environment. The adaptability in this proposed architecture is achieved by enabling the service providers to Monitor, Analyze and Act on the defined policies that support customization of compositions of multimedia services and guarantee the Quality of Service (QoS) provisioning. The Media Service Monitor (MSM) observes the business and quality metrics associated with the multimedia services during run-time. The monitored results are analyzed by Monitored Results Analyzer (MRA) which identifies the type and location of the fault. The Adaptive Media Service Manager (AMSM) takes corrective actions based on the monitored results, through the policies defined as an extension of WS-Policy (Web Service—Policy framework). The effectiveness of the proposed Self-Adaptable Media Service Architecture (SAMSA) has been evaluated on Dynamic Composite Real-time Video-on-Demand Web Service (DCRVoDWS) for a maximum of 200 simultaneous client’s requests. The analysis of results shows that the proposed architecture provides better improvement on reliability, response time and user satisfaction.     

Exploring factors influencing consumers’ behavioral intention to adopt broadband in Malaysia

The purpose of this paper is to examine various normative, attitudinal and control factors influencing consumers’ intention to adopt broadband internet in a developing country such as Malaysia. This study is based on empirical data collected using a self-administered questionnaire relating to the normative, attitudinal and control variables. Structural equation modeling analysis is conducted to test the role of numerous variables on consumers’ behavioral intentions to adopt broadband internet in Malaysia. Results revealed that Primary Influences (PI), Relative Advantage (RA), Hedonic Outcomes (HO), Facilitating Conditions Resources (FCR), and Self-Efficacy (SE) are positively associated with consumers’ Behavioral Intention (BI) to adopt broadband in Malaysia. The significance of this research study is twofold. Practically, this research study provide some useful guidelines to industry players, be it the internet service providers (ISPs) or the policy makers, to understand which are the factors (primary influences, self-efficacy, relative advantage, hedonic outcomes and facilitating conditions resources) that can have an influence on consumers’ intention to adopt broadband technology. It was found that primary influences, self-efficacy and relative advantage are the key determinants that influences consumers’ broadband adoption. From here, practitioners could take into consideration our findings when revising and restructuring their marketing strategy. Theoretically, the research framework used in this study is an extension from the past research models used (i.e. TPB, DOI and MATH). With the newly integrated framework, a greater level of comprehension can be attained with regards to the broadband acceptance among the Malaysian consumers.     

Exploring agent support at the user interface in e-commerce applications

In this paper, we present some of the results from our ongoing research work in the area of ‘agent support’ for electronic commerce, particularly at the user interface level. Our goal is to provide intelligent agents to assist both the consumers and the vendors in an electronic shopping environment. Users with a wide variety of different needs are expected to use the electronic shopping application and their expectations about the interface could vary a lot. Traditional studies of user interface technology have shown the existence of a ‘gap’ between what the user interface actually lets the users do and the users’ expectations. Agent technology, in the form of personalized user interface agents, can help to narrow this gap. Such agents can be used to give a personalized service to the user by knowing the user’s preferences. By doing so, they can assist in the various stages of the users’ shopping process, provide tailored product recommendations by filtering information on behalf of their users and reduce the information overload. From a vendor’s perspective, a software sales agent could be used for price negotiation with the consumer. Such agents would give the flexibility offered by negotiation without the burden of having to provide human presence to an online store to handle such negotiations. Published online: 25 July 2001     

The impact of age and shopping experiences on the classification of search, experience, and credence goods in online shopping

This study explores how age and consumers’ Web shopping experience influence the search, experience, and credence (SEC) ratings of products and services in online shopping. Using the survey data collected from 549 consumers, we investigated how they perceived the uncertainty of product quality on six search, experience, and credence goods. The ANOVA results show that age and the Web consumers’ shopping experience are significant factors. A generation gap is identified for all but one experience good. Web shopping experience is not a significant factor for search goods but is for experience and credence goods. There is an interaction effect between age and Web shopping experience for one credence good. Implications of these results are discussed.     

Priority scheduling service for E-commerce web servers

Service scheduling is one of the crucial issues in E-commerce environment. E-commerce web servers often get overloaded as they have to deal with a large number of customers’ requests—for example, browse, search, and pay, in order to make purchases or to get product information from E-commerce web sites. In this paper, we propose a new approach in order to effectively handle high traffic load and to improve web server’s performance. Our solution is to exploit networking techniques and to classify customers’ requests into different classes such that some requests are prioritised over others. We contend that such classification is financially beneficial to E-commerce services as in these services some requests are more valuable than others. For instance, the processing of “browse” request should get less priority than “payment” request as the latter is considered to be more valuable to the service provider. Our approach analyses the arrival process of distinct requests and employs a priority scheduling service at the network nodes that gives preferential treatment to high priority requests. The proposed approach is tested through various experiments which show significant decrease in the response time of high priority requests. This also reduces the probability of dropping high priority requests by a web server and thus enabling service providers to generate more revenue.     

Understanding the behavior of mobile data services consumers

Due to rapid advances in the Internet and wireless technologies, a ubiquitous computing world is becoming a reality in the form of mobile computing. At the center of this phenomenon is mobile data services which arise from the convergence of advanced mobile communication technologies with data services. Despite the rapid growth in mobile data services, research into consumers’ usage behavior is scarce. This study attempts to identify and empirically assess the factors that drive consumers’ acceptance of mobile data services. A research model based on the decomposed theory of planned behavior and incorporating factors that represent personal needs and motivations in using mobile data services is presented. The model is tested via an online survey of 811 consumers of four categories of mobile data services (i.e., communications, information content, entertainment, and commercial transactions) associated with different usage contexts. We found that attitude, social influence, media influence, perceived mobility, and perceived monetary value influence consumers’ intention to continue usage of mobile data services. In addition, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and perceived enjoyment influence attitude toward continued usage of mobile data services. Finally, separate analysis of the different categories of mobile data services highlights the influence of individual usage context on consumers’ behavior.

An empirical analysis of the determinants of 3G adoption in China

The main aim of this study is to examine the factors that affect Chinese consumers’ intention to adopt 3G. This study has extended the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) by incorporating the determinants of perceived usefulness, cost, trust, and demographic profiles of Chinese consumers. Data is collected from Chinese consumers via self-administered questionnaire. Structural equation modeling was applied to examine the research model proposed. Our result showed that social influence, service quality and perceived ease of use have a direct and significant relationship with perceived usefulness of 3G, and this in turn affects the consumers’ decision to adopt 3G. Contrary to existing TAM research, perceived ease of use was not found to have a direct and significant influence with Chinese consumers’ intention to adopt 3G. Our study also revealed that those with higher educational level are more likely to adopt 3G. Based on the findings, this research is able to propose several practical recommendations to 3G providers in China, such as enhancing the variety of services provided through collaborations with mobile software and content developers. Furthermore, 3G providers can focus on promoting 3G through services such as “Friends and Family” packages as Chinese consumers’ 3G adoption decisions is influenced by their social network. In terms of theoretical contributions, this study has answered many calls from past researchers to investigate the determinants of perceived usefulness. This research was also conducted in China, which is one of the largest telecommunication markets in the world.     

Simulating Sequential Search Models with Genetic Algorithms: Analysis of Price Ceilings,Taxes, Advertising and Welfare

This paper studies advertising, price ceilings and taxes in a sequential search model with bilateral heterogeneities in production and search costs. We simulate equilibria using a genetic algorithm (GA) applied to over 100 market scenarios, each differing based on the number of firms, number of consumers, existence of price ceilings or taxes, costs of production, costs of advertising, consumers’ susceptibility to advertising and consumers’ search costs. We study the interaction of advertising and search and analyze the welfare effects of advertising, price ceilings and sales taxes. Despite advertising being uninformative, we find that firms charging lower prices tend to advertise more intensely and that price ceilings and advertising can improve welfare if search costs are high.     

Optimizing customized services: efficient computation in large Service Value Networks

Many times, service innovation occurs when service consumers pose innovative requirements on service providers. The trend towards standardization, simplification and modularization in the service sector has fostered the raise of Service Value Networks where providers and consumers jointly co-create value in an innovative manner. With many different competing services available, the user experience, which is captured by the non-functional Quality-of-Service (QoS) attributes, is an important competitive factor. QoS computation for complex Web services, i.e. the aggregation of QoS factors from atomic services, is essential for an automated an optimized service selection process. However, the computational complexity has often been disregarded in the respective field of research, whereas computational efficiency is inevitable for the application in online scenarios. The threefold contribution of this paper consists of a model for describing the optimization process in Service Value Networks, an extensive elaboration on different optimization techniques that allow for a computational efficient service selection and a broad analytical and simulation-based evaluation of these techniques.