The bright side of third-party marketplaces in retailing

A prevalent practice for retailers is to provide a marketplace for third-party sellers (3P sellers) to sell products directly to consumers, charging the sellers a commission fee. This study investigates the downstream retailer's optimal strategy to introduce a 3P seller who sells a substitutable product. We develop a game-theoretic model, through which our first result shows that the retailer introduces a 3P seller only when the marginal costs of the products are in a medium range. Second, the retailer's strategy of introducing a 3P seller may benefit the manufacturer, even though the introduction creates downstream competition that may reduce the sales of the manufacturer's product. This happens because the strategy of introducing a 3P seller can mitigate the double marginalization between the manufacturer and retailer. In contrast to the conventional wisdom that introducing a 3P seller always results in a “win–lose” outcome for the retailer and manufacturer, we derive evidence that introducing a 3P seller can lead to a “win-win” outcome for the retailer and manufacturer and thus improve the channel performance. Lastly, we find that the retailer's 3P seller introduction strategy can also improve the consumer surplus because this strategy increases competition.     

Gender differences in consumers’ perception of online consumer reviews

Since the early days of the Internet, gender gap has existed in using the Internet, and it is particularly evident for online shopping. Females perceive higher level of risk for online shopping, and as a result, they tend to hesitate to make purchase online. Online consumer reviews can effectively mitigate such perceived risk by females and thereby attract them to buy online. This study investigates the effect of online consumer reviews on consumer’s purchase intention. In particular, we examine whether there are gender differences in responding to online consumer reviews. The results show that the effect of online consumer reviews on purchase intention is stronger for females than males. The negativity effect, that consumers are influenced by a negative review more than by a positive review, is also found to be more evident for females. These findings have practical implications for online sellers to guide them to effectively use online consumer reviews to engage females in online shopping.     

An integrated application of Kano’s model and AHP to Korean online open market services

With the advancement in wireless and mobile technologies, online open markets decrease intermediate distribution margins and play the key intermediary role between sellers and consumers. While offline store sales remain stagnant, online open market sales have been growing steadily. We investigated the service quality of Korean online open market providers such as “Gmarket”, “Auction”, and “11st”, based on an integrated application of Kano’s model and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The contributions of this study are as follows: (1) We conducted acritical review of previous literature to develop each analysis method. (2) We categorized the service quality factors of the Korean open market using Kano’s model and identified the most important service quality factor by AHP analysis. (3) Then, we conducted a comparison between the results from the Kano model and AHP analysis. (4) Lastly, based on the results of the integrated application of both Kano model and AHP analysis, this study provided specific implications for improving the service quality of the online open market in Korea.     

卖场环境下的服装商品陈列色彩设计

服装商品陈列色彩设计是服装色彩在卖场环境下的二次设计,它以明确、规划的色彩配置产生不同的色彩印象,表现设计师对服装色彩的选择和应用。同时,它也能突出品牌形象,强化品牌认知度,体现品牌服装的特点,唤起消费者购买欲望,最终推动销售额的增长。服装商品陈列色彩设计具有强大的功能性,既便于增强服装卖场秩序,方便选购,方便货品整理,也便以因换季或不同陈列主题而进行设计调整。     

Learning Agents in an Artificial Power Exchange: Tacit Collusion, Market Power and Efficiency of Two Double-auction Mechanisms

This paper investigates the relative efficiency of two double-auction mechanisms for power exchanges, using agent-based modeling. Two standard pricing rules are considered and compared (i.e., “discriminatory” and “uniform”) and computational experiments, characterized by different inelastic demand level, explore oligopolistic competitions on both quantity and price between learning sellers/producers. Two reinforcement learning algorithms are considered as well—“Marimon and McGrattan” and “Q-learning”—in an attempt to simulate different behavioral types. In particular, greedy sellers (optimizing their instantaneous rewards on a tick-by-tick basis) and inter-temporal optimizing sellers are simulated. Results are interpreted relative to game-theoretical solutions and performance metrics. Nash equilibria in pure strategies and sellers’ joint profit maximization are employed to analyze the convergence behavior of the learning algorithms. Furthermore, the difference between payments to suppliers and total generation costs are estimated so as to measure the degree of market inefficiency. Results point out that collusive behaviors are penalized by the discriminatory auction mechanism in low demand scenarios, whereas in a high demand scenario the difference appears to be negligible.     

Opinion evolution of online consumer reviews in the e-commerce environment

Online consumer reviews play an important role in shaping potential customers’ purchase decisions in e-commerce. Previous studies have analyzed the influence of online consumer reviews on sales, mainly considering factors such as reviewers’ and viewers’ profiles, information provided, and product features. However, there are relatively few studies that discuss how online consumer reviews interact with each other and how consumers’ opinions evolve over time. This paper proposes an opinion evolution dynamics model that is applicable to online consumer reviews in the e-commerce environment by taking into account influencing factors such as viewer reading limits, review sorting and releasing strategies, convergence parameters, review posting possibilities, and confidence thresholds. Using multi-agent simulation based on the proposed opinion evolution dynamics model, the paper discusses how these factors affect viewers’ opinions, and the opinion evolution process itself. Finally, conclusions and managerial implications of the simulation results are discussed.     

Computational pricing in Internet era

Pricing plays a central rule to a company’s profitability, and therefore has been extensively studied in the literature of economics. When designing a pricing mechanism/ model, an important principle to consider is “price discrimination”, which refers to selling the same resources with different prices according to different values of buyers. To meet the “price discrimination” principle, especially when the number of buyers is large, computational methods, which act in a more accurate and principled way, are usually needed to determine the optimal allocation of sellers’ resources (^{whom to sell to}) and the optimal payment of buyers (^{what to charge}). Nowadays, in the Internet era in which quite a lot of buy and sell processes are conducted through Internet, the design of computational pricing models faces both new challenges and opportunities, considering that (i) nearly realtime interactions between people enable the buyers to reveal their needs and enable the sellers to expose their information in a more expressive manner, (ii) the large-scale interaction data require powerful methods for more efficient processing and enable the sellers to model different buyers in a more precise manner. In this paper, we review recent advances on the analysis and design of computational pricing models for representative Internet industries, e.g., online advertising and cloud computing. In particular, we introduce how computational approaches can be used to analyze buyer’s behaviors (i.e., equilibrium analysis), improve resource utilization (i.e., social welfare analysis), and boost seller’s profit (i.e., revenue analysis). We also discuss how machine learning techniques can be used to better understand buyer’s behaviors and design more effective pricing mechanisms, given the availability of large scale data. Moreover, we make discussions on future research directions on computational pricing, which hopefully can inspire more researchers to contribute to this important domain.     

The use of computer-generated bivariate charts in anthropometric design

The design of workspaces and consumer products using the bivariate approach is an important, but cumbersome process because of the general unavailability of the proper bivariate charts and the calculations required. This paper presents a simplified method for bivariate anthropometric design using computer generated charts. These charts are created based on the assumption that the appropriate anthropometric data can be adequately represented by the bivariate normal distribution. Four basic bivariate design types are chosen for the study and the ability to derive other types from them is detailed. This paper presents the necessary charts and tables for quick and easy reference in order to determine cutoffs based on the simplifying assumption that the bivariate target percentage will be met by using either equal or complementary univariate cutoff values for each variable as determined by the design problem. Examples show how to use the charts and tables for different design types.     

The determinants of helpfulness of online reviews

More and more people are gravitating to reading online product reviews prior to making purchasing decisions. Because a number of reviews that vary in usefulness are posted every day, much attention is being paid to measuring their helpfulness. The goal of this paper is to investigate the various determinants of the helpfulness of reviews, and it also intends to examine the moderating effect of product type, that is, the experience or search goods in relation to the helpfulness of online reviews. The study results show that reviewer reputation, the disclosure of reviewer identity, and review depth positively affect the helpfulness of an online review. The moderating effects of product type exist for these determinants on helpfulness. That is, the number of reviews for a product and the disclosure of reviewer identity have a greater influence on the helpfulness for experience goods, while reviewer reputation, review extremity, and review depth are more important for helpfulness in relation to search goods. The interaction effects exist for average review rating and average review depth for a product with review helpfulness on product sales. The results of the study will identify helpful online reviews and assist in designing review sites effectively.     

Accessing Egypt: making myths and producing web sites in cyber-Cairo

From an anthropological viewpoint, “accessibility” is not so much a technological and design project as it is a cultural construction, a cognitive schema through which graphic designers and technologists imagine audiences and create appropriate graphic designs that will be “accessible” to that audience. The ethnographer's task is the specification of key actors, institutions and discourses active in the making and remaking of accessibility in a given context. In this article, we examine how Egyptian Web producers at the turn of millennium (1999–2001) sought to design Web portals that would allow the “typical” Egyptian to easily access the World Wide Web. We argue, first, that Egyptian Web producers are deeply influenced by national and international discourses that frame IT as a national mission for socioeconomic development. Second, we found that in the absence of clear definitions of the Web audience, Web producers imagined a “typical” Egyptian that contradicted their own experiences of users of the Web. Finally, we found that Egyptian Web producers largely borrowed pre-existing models, using design elements to “inflect” their sites with an Egyptian motif. However, the conceptual models of access and related design strategies created by Egyptian Web producers were out of touch with Egyptian social realities, contributing to a collapse of most Web portal projects.     

A MORF-Vision Method for Strategic Creation of IoT Solution Opportunities

With the rise of Internet of Things (IoT), companies are now facing new challenges such as diverse consumer demands and shorter lifecycle of products and services. Even in big companies, they may have to “extract” new products every six months or less. Nonetheless, shorter lifecycle is never a waiver for poor user satisfaction. Common to the companies that survived such disruptive changes is that they emphasized the user experience (UX) as one of the most important elements of their strategy. This explains why most product innovation processes such as user-centered design or design thinking emphasize so much on “empathizing.” Developing a new product or service from scratch, however, is challenging especially when the underlying technology is new to people. The aim of this study is to develop a systematic process for creating opportunities from the UX perspective. This study suggests opportunity-creation process by adopting an “abductive” design thinking approach: (1) future envisioning and (2) opportunity identification and analysis. A new method called MORF-Vision (Morphological Future Envisioning) was developed to generate prospective scenarios that can be used in phase (2) to identify potential opportunities. An experiment showed that the MORF-Vision method is helpful to create opportunities in various business domains.     

High-performance protocol architecture

The development of high-speed networking applications requires improvements to data communication protocols in order to efficiently provide the required services to the applications. In this survey paper, we will first give a rapid presentation of protocol optimization techniques and of some high-speed transport protocols developed for specific application needs.We will then present a new protocol architecture based on the “Application Level Framing” (ALF) and “Integrated Layer Processing” (ILP) concepts. ALF states that applications send data as a sequence of autonomous “frames”, which will be at the same time the unit of transmission, the unit of control and the unit of processing. This allows for efficient design of application specific protocols. It also enables ILP, i.e., the integration of multiple transmission control layers in a single loop, maximizing the efficiency of modern processors.We will present both the architectural design aspects and the corresponding implementation problems. Practical experimentations with ALF and ILP will also be described and their benefits and limitations assessed. We will also present a new approach to network architecture namely the active networks approach, and discuss its pros and cons.     

Value Creation in a Network: The Role of Pricing and Revenue Optimization and Enterprise Profit OptimizationTM

The Internet has created a virtual upheaval in the structural features of the supply and demand chains for most businesses. New agents and marketplaces have surfaced. The potential to create value and enhance profitable opportunities has attracted both buyers and sellers to the Internet. Yet, the Internet has proven to be more complex than originally thought. With information comes complexity: the more the information in real time, the greater the difficulty in interpretation and absorption. How can the value-creating potential of the Internet still be realized, its complexity notwithstanding? This paper argues that with the emergence of innovative tools, the expectations of the Internet as a medium for enhanced profit opportunities can still be realized. Creating value on a continuing basis is central to sustaining profitable opportunities. This paper provides an overview of the value creation process in electronic networks, the emergence of the Internet as a viable business communication and collaboration medium, the proclamation by many that the future of the Internet resides in “embedded intelligence”, and the perspectives of pragmatists who point out the other facet of the Internet—its complexity. The paper then reviews some recent new tools that have emerged to address this complexity. In particular, the promise of Pricing and Revenue Optimization (PRO) and Enterprise Profit Optimization^TM (EPO) tools is discussed. The paper suggests that as buyers and sellers adopt EPO, the market will see the emergence of a truly intelligent network—a virtual network—of private and semi-public profitable communities.     

Online double auction mechanism for perishable goods

One-sided auctions are used for market clearing in the spot markets for perishable goods because production cost in spot markets is already “sunk.” Moreover, the promptness and simplicity of one-sided auctions are beneficial for trading in perishable goods. However, sellers cannot participate in the price-making process in these auctions. A standard double auction market collects bids from traders and matches the higher bids of buyers and lower bids of sellers to find the most efficient allocation, assuming that the value of unsold items remains unchanged. Nevertheless, in the market for perishable goods, sellers suffer a loss when they fail to sell their goods, because their salvage values are lost when the goods perish. To solve this problem, we investigate the suitable design of an online double auction for perishable goods, where bids arrive dynamically with their time limits. Our market mechanism aims at improving the profitability of traders by reducing trade failures in the face of uncertainty of incoming/departing bids. We develop a heuristic market mechanism with an allocation policy that prioritizes bids of traders based on their time-criticality, and evaluate its performance experimentally using multi-agent simulation. We find out that our market mechanism realizes efficient and fair allocations among traders with approximately truthful behavior in different market situations.     

新时代高职院校“三全育人”与新媒体融合平台探索

随着信息技术和社会的进步,各式各样的思潮涌入到人们的日常生活,这给高职院校开展思想政治教育带来了新的挑战和发展机遇。高职院校需要根据自身的实际情况来革新现有的育人方法,实现全方位、全过程以及全员育人。文章主要探讨了在新时代背景下高职院校将新媒体与“三全育人”相融合﹐并在此基础上运用信息技术建设具有多项功能的“三全育人”平台。基于该平台可以打造全新的学习教育阵地,并提高“三全育人”的实效性。     

An investigation into the effects of product design on incremental and radical innovations from the perspective of consumer perceptions: Evidence from China

By integrating research on product design with ideas from marketing and consumer perceptions, this paper formulates a set of coherent hypotheses about the effects of tripartite design dimensions on consumer perceptions and responses. We conduct two surveys on incremental and radical technology innovations, respectively, and accordingly get two different samples to test the hypotheses. Empirical results reveal that the effects of aesthetic and functional dimensions on consumer purchase intention and word of mouth vary across two types of innovations. Specifically, for incrementally innovative products, aesthetic and functional dimensions influence consumer purchase intention and word of mouth, both directly and indirectly, through the mediation of consumer perceived quality. By contrast, for radically innovative products, the effects of aesthetic and functional dimensions on purchase intention and word of mouth are totally mediated by perceived quality. Additionally, the effects of symbolic dimension on consumer perceptions and responses achieve consistency across radical and incremental technology innovations. That is, the higher the level of symbolic dimension, the stronger purchase intention and the better word of mouth there will be, whereas the direct influence of symbolic dimension on perceived quality is not significant in either innovation category.     

Enabling the new economic actor: data protection,the digital economy,and the Databox

This paper offers a sociological perspective on data protection regulation and its relevance to design. From this perspective, proposed regulation in Europe and the USA seeks to create a new economic actor—the consumer as personal data trader—through new legal frameworks that shift the locus of agency and control in data processing towards the individual consumer or “data subject”. The sociological perspective on proposed data regulation recognises the reflexive relationship between law and the social order, and the commensurate needs to balance the demand for compliance with the design of computational tools that enable this new economic actor. We present the Databox model as a means of providing data protection and allowing the individual to exploit personal data to become an active player in the emerging data economy.     

Product category description for web-shopping in e-commerce

In this paper, we focus on the web-shopping activity and on ways to improve the quality of the information available to consumers. We describe a tool, called a product space map, for the presentation of information about a product category which can help consumers in making purchasing decisions. Using this tool we first provide a clustering or segmentation of a product line, that is, 27-inch televisions, into price categories such as low end, moderate and high end. Once having this partitioning we then use the idea of linguistic summaries to describe the properties of each category with respect to relevant features. An example of such a summary is “Most TV's in the high price category provide extremely high resolution.” With the aid of such information it becomes much easier for consumers to understand the product line, see what they are getting for their money, and more easily and confidently locate products that are of particular value for the money. Considerable use is made of fuzzy set technology to provide the ability to describe the information in a way, using linguistic expressions, that is particularly consumer friendly. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

基于提升实践能力的高职院校“微课”教学探究

高职类院校的学生普遍具有注意力不集中,集中学习时间短,对实践课程比理论课程更加感兴趣等的特点。 为了提高高职教育的教育质量及高职学生的听课效率,本文结合高职院校学生的学习特点及教学工作中对高职学生的观察, 综合“微课”资源设计的优势,结合仿真模拟软件进行形象的演示和操作,针对《计算机网络基础》这门课程提出基于提升实践 能力的“微课”设计的思想。