The role of social capital in expanding retail platform ecosystems

In the past few years, the discussion on platform ecosystems has become pervasive in strategy and information system research. Previous studies underlie the transformational nature of digital infrastructure in expanding the ecosystem. In this paper, the authors focus on the retail sector, where online retail platform owners such as Amazon and Alibaba are contending for ecosystem members and expanding by making them more physical. As ecosystem members have traditionally coordinated their network activities and resources embedded in an enabling social context, this study aims to investigate the influence of preexisting social capital possessed by ecosystem members on expansion of retail platform ecosystems. This dimension has received little attention thus far. Based on some conceptual basis discussed by extant literature and some preliminary empirical findings through our case study on Alibaba Lingshoutong (LST), a growing retail platform ecosystem, we have proposed some future research directions. © Proceedings of the 24th Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems: Information Systems (IS) for the Future, PACIS 2020. All rights reserved

The role of social capital in expanding retail platform ecosystems

In the past few years, the discussion on platform ecosystems has become pervasive in strategy and information system research. Previous studies underlie the transformational nature of digital infrastructure in expanding the ecosystem. In this paper, the authors focus on the retail sector, where online retail platform owners such as Amazon and Alibaba are contending for ecosystem members and expanding by making them more physical. As ecosystem members have traditionally coordinated their network activities and resources embedded in an enabling social context, this study aims to investigate the influence of preexisting social capital possessed by ecosystem members on expansion of retail platform ecosystems. This dimension has received little attention thus far. Based on some conceptual basis discussed by extant literature and some preliminary empirical findings through our case study on Alibaba Lingshoutong (LST), a growing retail platform ecosystem, we have proposed some future research directions. © Proceedings of the 24th Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems: Information Systems (IS) for the Future, PACIS 2020. All rights reserved

Impact of Visual Merchandising, on Impulse Buying Behavior of Retail Customers

Visual merchandising has been over the years thought to be marketing tool in retail industries. The researchers embarked upon a study to find the impact of visual merchandising with reference to the retail sector. For this they have taken the reliance trends as a case and has done an in depth study using its sample customers to find the impact of their buying behavior. The research was of a descriptive in nature and helped to develop the concept to clearly establish priorities, to divulge adequate information which the researchers feel will help in decision making for the company. A structured questionnaire was used to obtain information and to assess the impact of visual merchandising, on impulse buying behavior of customers. A random sampling technique was used in the study and care was taken that the respondents were as diversified as possible. A sample size of 100 respondents was taken from Cochin and Kottayam. To draw conclusions easily, the data was converted into XY (Scatter) diagrams. Research findings suggest that impulse buying accounts for substantial sales across a broad range of product categories in the stores. Since impulse buying is a pervasive aspect of consumers’ behaviors and a focal point for strategic marketing plans, it is worthwhile for retailers to understand factors within the retail setting that trigger consumers’ impulsive reactions. Retailers can help customers to find the right products through focused merchandising, intelligent store design and layout, and other visual merchandising practices, such as product displays, packaging, and signage. It is has also been found that all the four visual merchandizing factors affect the impulse buying behavior, but the effect of Promotional offerings at the entrance is comparatively very high. A greater importance should be given for visual merchandizing factors by retailers for differentiating itself from the competitor

What do you think of the return of dungarees?: Social media interactions between retail locations and their customers

Social media presents new digital interaction opportunities and challenges to urban retail locations such as shopping malls, centres and streets. Platforms such as Facebook facilitate online communication with, and between, customers that is not possible through traditional media and marketing techniques. Using data gathered from the Facebook pages of six urban retail locations over 12 months, this paper considers the possible factors that shape online customer engagement and conversation. In particular, we present a thematic analysis of content in shared posts, and discuss how characteristics of a retail location and the structure of the consumer community shape these posts. Our findings are used to form suggestions to further investigate engagement between customers and retail locations via social media

Between social physics and phenomenology

In recent years, both phenomenology and social physics, which might be thought of asoccupying the humanistic and scientific poles of urban discourse, have taken an interestin space syntax as a means of furthering their academic aims. Here we suggest that thiscould presage a far deeper theoretical integration of the multi-disciplinary study of citiesthan either currently envisage

Pervasive computing at tableside : a wireless web-based ordering system

Purpose &ndash; The purpose of this paper is to introduce a wireless web-based ordering system called iMenu in the restaurant industry. Design/methodology/approach &ndash; By using wireless devices such as personal digital assistants and WebPads, this system realizes the paradigm of pervasive computing at tableside. Detailed system requirements, design, implementation and evaluation of iMenu are presented.Findings &ndash; The evaluation of iMenu shows it explicitly increases productivity of restaurant staff. It also has other desirable features such as integration, interoperation and scalability. Compared to traditional restaurant ordering process, by using this system customers get faster and better services, restaurant staff cooperate more efficiently with less working mistakes, and enterprise owners thus receive more business profits. Originality/value &ndash; While many researchers have explored using wireless web-based information systems in different industries, this paper presents a system that employs wireless multi-tiered web-based architecture to build pervasive computing systems. Instead of discussing theoretical issues on pervasive computing, we focus on practical issues of developing a real system, such as choosing of web-based architecture, design of input methods in small screens, and response time in wireless web-based systems.<br /

Crude oil and gasoline prices: an asymmetric relationship?

Gasoline is the petroleum product whose price is most visible and, therefore, always under public scrutiny. Many claim there is an asymmetric relationship between gasoline and oil prices - specifically, gasoline price changes follow oil price changes more quickly when oil prices are rising than when they are falling. To explore this issue, Nathan Balke, Stephen Brown and Mine Yucel use several different model specifications to analyze the relationship between oil prices and the spot, wholesale, and retail prices of gasoline. They find asymmetry is sensitive to model specification but is pervasive with the most general model.Petroleum industry and trade ; Prices

Enabling pervasive computing with smart phones

The authors discuss their experience with a number of mobile telephony projects carried out in the context of the European Union Information Society Technologies research program, which aims to develop mobile information services. They identify areas where use of smart phones can enable pervasive computing and offer practical advice in terms of lessons learned. To this end, they first look at the mobile telephone as * the end point of a mobile information service,* the control device for ubiquitous systems management and configuration,* the networking hub for personal and body area networks, and* identification tokens.They conclude with a discussion of business and practical issues that play a significant role in deploying research systems in realistic situations

Big Data and the Internet of Things

Advances in sensing and computing capabilities are making it possible to embed increasing computing power in small devices. This has enabled the sensing devices not just to passively capture data at very high resolution but also to take sophisticated actions in response. Combined with advances in communication, this is resulting in an ecosystem of highly interconnected devices referred to as the Internet of Things - IoT. In conjunction, the advances in machine learning have allowed building models on this ever increasing amounts of data. Consequently, devices all the way from heavy assets such as aircraft engines to wearables such as health monitors can all now not only generate massive amounts of data but can draw back on aggregate analytics to "improve" their performance over time. Big data analytics has been identified as a key enabler for the IoT. In this chapter, we discuss various avenues of the IoT where big data analytics either is already making a significant impact or is on the cusp of doing so. We also discuss social implications and areas of concern.Comment: 33 pages. draft of upcoming book chapter in Japkowicz and Stefanowski (eds.) Big Data Analysis: New algorithms for a new society, Springer Series on Studies in Big Data, to appea

The urban screen as a socialising platform: exploring the role of place within the urban space

In this paper we explore shared encounters mediated by technologies in the urban space. We investigate aspects that influence the interactions between people and people and people and their surroundings when technology is introduced in the urban space. We highlight the importance of space and the role of place in providing temporal and spatial mechanisms facilitating different types of social interactions and shared encounters. An emperical experiment was condeucted with a prototype that was implemented in the form of a digital screen, embeded in the physical surrounding in selected locations with low, medium and high pedestrian flows in the heritage City of Bath, UK. The aim is to create a novel urban experience that triggers shared encounters among friends, observers or strangers. Using the body as an interaface, the screen acted as a non-traditional interface and a facilitator between people and people and people and their surrounding environment. Here we outline early findings from deploying the digital screen as a socialiasing platform in a city context. We describe the user experience and demonstrate how people move, congregate and socialize around the digital surface. We illustrate the impact of the spatial and syntactical properties on the type of shared interactions in and highlight related issues. The initial findings indicated that introducing a digital platform as a public interactive installation in the urban space may provide a stage for emergent social interactions among various people and motivate users to actively and collaboratively play with the media. However, situating the digital platform in various locations, and depending on the context, might generate diverse and unpredicted social behaviours designers might be unaware of. In this respect we believe that the final experience is shaped by interconnection of structural, social, cultural, temporal and perhaps personal elements. We conclude by mentioning briefly our on going work