Different Prices for Identical Products? Market Efficiency and the Virtual Location in B2C E-Commerce

This paper analyses market efficiency and the role of the virtual location in digital markets using a data set containing more than 23,000 price observations from the online market for contact lenses as well as detailed information about online retailer and product characteristics. The data allow to implement and test the concept of virtual location. The empirical results reveal evidence for lower prices and less price dispersion among e-retailers in comparison to hybrid retailers, which supports the hypothesis of enhanced market efficiency in electronic markets. Furthermore, the results show that an online shop?s virtual location influences its prices and that differences in prices are partially driven by differentiation in retailer service. A decomposition of the price differential reveals that there may indeed be a competition effect. --electronic markets,efficiency,virtual location,pricing

Physical Layer Service Integration in 5G: Potentials and Challenges

High transmission rate and secure communication have been identified as the key targets that need to be effectively addressed by fifth generation (5G) wireless systems. In this context, the concept of physical-layer security becomes attractive, as it can establish perfect security using only the characteristics of wireless medium. Nonetheless, to further increase the spectral efficiency, an emerging concept, termed physical-layer service integration (PHY-SI), has been recognized as an effective means. Its basic idea is to combine multiple coexisting services, i.e., multicast/broadcast service and confidential service, into one integral service for one-time transmission at the transmitter side. This article first provides a tutorial on typical PHY-SI models. Furthermore, we propose some state-of-the-art solutions to improve the overall performance of PHY-SI in certain important communication scenarios. In particular, we highlight the extension of several concepts borrowed from conventional single-service communications, such as artificial noise (AN), eigenmode transmission etc., to the scenario of PHY-SI. These techniques are shown to be effective in the design of reliable and robust PHY-SI schemes. Finally, several potential research directions are identified for future work.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figure

Exploratory study to explore the role of ICT in the process of knowledge management in an Indian business environment

In the 21st century and the emergence of a digital economy, knowledge and the knowledge base economy are rapidly growing. To effectively be able to understand the processes involved in the creating, managing and sharing of knowledge management in the business environment is critical to the success of an organization. This study builds on the previous research of the authors on the enablers of knowledge management by identifying the relationship between the enablers of knowledge management and the role played by information communication technologies (ICT) and ICT infrastructure in a business setting. This paper provides the findings of a survey collected from the four major Indian cities (Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai and Villupuram) regarding their views and opinions about the enablers of knowledge management in business setting. A total of 80 organizations participated in the study with 100 participants in each city. The results show that ICT and ICT infrastructure can play a critical role in the creating, managing and sharing of knowledge in an Indian business environment

Hybrid-Vehfog: A Robust Approach for Reliable Dissemination of Critical Messages in Connected Vehicles

Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANET) enable efficient communication between vehicles with the aim of improving road safety. However, the growing number of vehicles in dense regions and obstacle shadowing regions like Manhattan and other downtown areas leads to frequent disconnection problems resulting in disrupted radio wave propagation between vehicles. To address this issue and to transmit critical messages between vehicles and drones deployed from service vehicles to overcome road incidents and obstacles, we proposed a hybrid technique based on fog computing called Hybrid-Vehfog to disseminate messages in obstacle shadowing regions, and multi-hop technique to disseminate messages in non-obstacle shadowing regions. Our proposed algorithm dynamically adapts to changes in an environment and benefits in efficiency with robust drone deployment capability as needed. Performance of Hybrid-Vehfog is carried out in Network Simulator (NS-2) and Simulation of Urban Mobility (SUMO) simulators. The results showed that Hybrid-Vehfog outperformed Cloud-assisted Message Downlink Dissemination Scheme (CMDS), Cross-Layer Broadcast Protocol (CLBP), PEer-to-Peer protocol for Allocated REsource (PrEPARE), Fog-Named Data Networking (NDN) with mobility, and flooding schemes at all vehicle densities and simulation times

Demonstrating the feasibility of standardized application program interfaces that will allow mobile/portable terminals to receive services combining UMTS and DVB-T

Crucial to the commercial exploitation of any service combining UMTS and DVB-T is the availability of standardized API’s adapted to the hybrid UMTS and DVB-T network and to the technical limitations of mobile/portable terminals. This paper describes work carried out in the European Commission Framework Program 5 (FP5) project CONFLUENT to demonstrate the feasibility of such Application Program Interfaces (API’s) by enabling the reception of a Multimedia Home Platform (MHP) based application transmitted over DVB-T on five different terminals with parts of the service running on a mobile phone

Wireless Communications in the Era of Big Data

The rapidly growing wave of wireless data service is pushing against the boundary of our communication network's processing power. The pervasive and exponentially increasing data traffic present imminent challenges to all the aspects of the wireless system design, such as spectrum efficiency, computing capabilities and fronthaul/backhaul link capacity. In this article, we discuss the challenges and opportunities in the design of scalable wireless systems to embrace such a "bigdata" era. On one hand, we review the state-of-the-art networking architectures and signal processing techniques adaptable for managing the bigdata traffic in wireless networks. On the other hand, instead of viewing mobile bigdata as a unwanted burden, we introduce methods to capitalize from the vast data traffic, for building a bigdata-aware wireless network with better wireless service quality and new mobile applications. We highlight several promising future research directions for wireless communications in the mobile bigdata era.Comment: This article is accepted and to appear in IEEE Communications Magazin