Towards Sustainable Production and Consumption: Preparedness for Product Service System Concept

Eco-efficiency strategies and policies, which have resulted in environmental gains that translate into increased resource efficiency and lower levels of emissions, in particular CO2 emissions along the life cycle of products and services, might be offset by rising levels of consumption on the demand side. Hence, both sides of the coin i.e. the system of production and consumption systems need to be assessed if more sustainable patterns are to be achieved. Establishing sustainable production and consumption systems can be possible via functional thinking practices. Functional thinking takes the focus from provision of resource intensive product to satisfaction of needs and wants through service systems, where material products are treated as capital assets rather than consumables. An application of functional thinking is the Product Service System (PSS) concept. Providers of PSS applications aim to generate profit not from selling as many material products as possible, but from providing a function of the product or service. Potential environmental benefits of PSS applications stemming from decreased use of virgin materials in production and lessened resource consumption at the use phase are being recognized. Applications of PSS can be seen in many sectors such as Information and Communication Technology (ICT), energy, transportation, food and in many forms such as remanufacturing, demand side management, chemical management services, car sharing schemes, functional designs, etc. However, supply and use of such applications might need considerable assessment of business practices and consumer behaviour. For business, designing and implementing PSS applications might require a new set of internal conditions such as shifting the business vision and adjusting the corporate culture to provision of functions. On the other hand, understanding of individual and social factors guiding the consumers' acceptance of PSS applications is required.This paper is an extract from a study, which is conducted with the aim of provision of a direction enhancing business ability to offer new or improved PSS applications with increased consumer acceptance and in turn enhanced resource efficiency. Applications in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector are chosen as the focus of the paper. Although it is debated that this fast developing sector can potentially contribute to dematerialisation of systems, limitations within the sector still remain unclear. Here, it is aimed to suggest an overview of the aspects for business preparedness and consumer acceptance of PSS applications providing particular functions in the ICT sector. The focus is on the company level dynamics, despite it is recognized that factors of macro level preparedness such as infrastructure availability, economic and social conditions, public support, etc. are essential to consider for system preparedness

Linking consumer trust perception in constructing an e-commerce trust model

Trust issues is still considered as a main obstacle in the implementation of eCommerce Due to the increasing numbers of cyber crimes committed today, consumers are faced with doubt to engage in online shopping. As a safety precaution, consumers will take certain measures to protect their information by evaluating and assessing these websites trustworthiness before an actual purchase occurs. This paper describes a model that examines the elements related to online consumer behavior and to investigate this behavior towards building and increasing trust. The applicability of the model was tested in attempt to view consumers' acceptance towards the model and its component. The fmdings indicate the respondents are aware of the trust issue surrounding e-Commerce implementation as they accept and agreed with the model and its components

Alter ego, state of the art on user profiling: an overview of the most relevant organisational and behavioural aspects regarding User Profiling.

This report gives an overview of the most relevant organisational and\ud behavioural aspects regarding user profiling. It discusses not only the\ud most important aims of user profiling from both an organisation’s as\ud well as a user’s perspective, it will also discuss organisational motives\ud and barriers for user profiling and the most important conditions for\ud the success of user profiling. Finally recommendations are made and\ud suggestions for further research are given

e-Consumer Behaviour

Purpose – The primary purpose of this article is to bring together apparently disparate and yet interconnected strands of research and present an integrated model of e-consumer behaviour. It has a secondary objective of stimulating more research in areas identified as still being underexplored. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is discursive, based on analysis and synthesis of econsumer literature. Findings – Despite a broad spectrum of disciplines that investigate e-consumer behaviour and despite this special issue in the area of marketing, there are still areas open for research into econsumer behaviour in marketing, for example the role of image, trust and e-interactivity. The paper develops a model to explain e-consumer behaviour. Research limitations/implications – As a conceptual paper, this study is limited to literature and prior empirical research. It offers the benefit of new research directions for e-retailers in understanding and satisfying e-consumers. The paper provides researchers with a proposed integrated model of e-consumer behaviour. Originality/value – The value of the paper lies in linking a significant body of literature within a unifying theoretical framework and the identification of under-researched areas of e-consumer behaviour in a marketing context

How about integration: the impact of online activities on store satisfaction and loyalty

Although there has been widespread support for the concept of integrating the Internet with other channels, relatively little empirical research has been conducted in this area. This paper examines the effects of integrated online activities on customer perceptions, i.e., satisfaction and loyalty, as well as customer behavior, i.e., purchases. As this study focuses on a nontransaction site, the purchases only take place in the store. Through structural equation modeling, we test a model that determines the relationships between loyalty and satisfaction in two channels – the store and the web site –, as well as the antecedents of both store and site satisfaction. The results provide evidence for synergy effects between the store and the site. Site satisfaction and site loyalty are both positively and significantly related to their offline counterparts. Store loyalty and site loyalty are also positively and significantly related to each other, but the relationship between store satisfaction and site satisfaction is not significant. The online activities do not directly influence offline purchases, but there is an indirect effect via store loyalty. However, the magnitude of this effect is rather small.

Generating citizen trust in e-government using a trust verification agent: A research note

Generating Citizen Trust in e-Government using a Trust Verification AgentThis is an eGISE network paper. It is motivated by a concern about the extent to which trust issues inhibit a citizen’s take-up of online public sector services or engagement with public decision and policy making. A citizen’s decision to use online systems is influenced by their willingness to trust the environment and agency involved. This project addresses one aspect of individual “trust” decisions by providing support for citizens trying to evaluate the implications of the security infrastructure provided by the agency. Based on studies of the way both groups (citizens and agencies) express their concerns and concepts in the security area, the project will develop a software tool – a trust verification agent (TVA) - that can take an agency’s security statements (or security audit) and infer how effectively this meets the security concerns of a particular citizen. This will enable citizens to state their concerns and obtain an evaluation of the agency’s provision in appropriate “citizen friendly” language. Further, by employing rule-based expert systems techniques the TVA will also be able to explain its evaluation.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, UK (grant GR/T27020/01

Generating citizen trust in e-government using a trust verification agent: A research note

Generating Citizen Trust in e-Government using a Trust Verification AgentThis is an eGISE network paper. It is motivated by a concern about the extent to which trust issues inhibit a citizen’s take-up of online public sector services or engagement with public decision and policy making. A citizen’s decision to use online systems is influenced by their willingness to trust the environment and agency involved. This project addresses one aspect of individual “trust” decisions by providing support for citizens trying to evaluate the implications of the security infrastructure provided by the agency. Based on studies of the way both groups (citizens and agencies) express their concerns and concepts in the security area, the project will develop a software tool – a trust verification agent (TVA) - that can take an agency’s security statements (or security audit) and infer how effectively this meets the security concerns of a particular citizen. This will enable citizens to state their concerns and obtain an evaluation of the agency’s provision in appropriate “citizen friendly” language. Further, by employing rule-based expert systems techniques the TVA will also be able to explain its evaluation.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council-UK (grant GR/T27020/01

Smart technology for healthcare: Exploring the antecedents of adoption intention of healthcare wearable technology

© The Author(s), 2019. Technological advancement and personalized health information has led to an increase in people using and responding to wearable technology in the last decade. These changes are often perceived to be beneficial, providing greater information and insights about health for users, organizations and healthcare and government. However, to date, understanding the antecedents of its adoption is limited. Seeking to address this gap, this cross-sectional study examined what factors influence users’ adoption intention of healthcare wearable technology. We used self-administrated online survey to explore adoption intentions of healthcare wearable devices in 171 adults residing in Hong Kong. We analyzed the data by Partial least squares – structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). The results reveal that perceived convenience and perceived irreplaceability are key predictors of perceived useful ness, which in turn strengthens users’ adoption intention. Additionally, the results also reveal that health belief is one of the key predictors of adoption intention. This paper contributes to the extant literature by providing understanding of how to strengthen users’ intention to adopt healthcare wearable technology. This includes the strengthening of perceived convenience and perceived irreplaceability to enhance the perceived usefulness, incorporating the extensive communication in the area of healthcare messages, which is useful in strengthening consumers’ adoption intention in healthcare wearable technology

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse