Proposed E-Commerce Platform for Unredeemed Pawned Items

Purpose: This work proposes an online platform so called ePawnMart, which is designed specially for trading unredeemed pawned items to allows both the buyers and sellers to meet for accelerate the selling time, fair price of the pawned items for both side of customer and the shop owner. Research design, data and methodology: This study reviews available unredeemed pawned items selling methods, discusses main concerned areas to focus in building new e-commerce, and compare ePawnMart with the other existing platforms. The proposed system starts with the phase of system architecture, system requirements, use cases with use cases diagram, and main business flows with activity diagram. Results: Main features of the proposed platforms are discussed in detail both for buyers and sellers. Moreover, this study also proposes the user interface for both mobile app and websites of the proposed platform. This study does not include the real implementation of the proposed platform, which is recommended to be developed further in the future work. Conclusions: The proposed e-commerce platform would accelerate the growth of pawn shop industry by acting as a middleman who can help both the pawn shops (sellers) and buyers to solve their problems and get benefits

Disequilibrium and divinity salience as invariant structures in the halal executives’ experience of eudaimonia / Jalilah Ahmad, Rosmimah Mohd. Roslin and Mohd. Ali Bahari Abdul Kadir.

The global Halal industry is large and continues to grow as the global Muslim population increases in size and dispersion. There are 1.84 billion Muslims today spread over 200 countries and is expected to increase to 2.2 billion by 2030. The industry will be worth USD6.4 trillion by the end of 2018 with more non-traditional players and emergent markets. The stakes are high with pressures to generate novel and sustainable practices. This goes beyond systems and hard skills as it needs to cut into the self – the person of virtues in virtuous acts, not because they “have to” but because it is the purpose of humankind or his telos - to be “living well” and “acting well” or eudaimonia. This study seek to explore Halal executives’ lived experience of “eudaimonia.”. Using Giorgi’s descriptive psychological phenomenological method for data analysis, the study elicits two distinct invariant structures – ‘disequilibrium in status quo’ and ‘divinity salience’

Searching, navigating, and recommending movies through emotions: A scoping review

Movies offer viewers a broad range of emotional experiences, providing entertainment, and meaning. Following the PRISMA-ScR guidelines, we reviewed the literature on digital systems designed to help users search and browse movie libraries and offer recommendations based on emotional content. Our search yielded 83 eligible documents (published between 2000 and 2021). We identified 22 case studies, 34 empirical studies, 26 proof of concept, and one theoretical paper. User transactions (e.g., ratings, tags) were the preferred source of information. The documents examined approached emotions from both categorical (n=35) and dimensional (n=18) perspectives, and nine documents offer a combination of both approaches. Although there are several authors mentioned, the references used are frequently dated, and 12 documents do not mention the author or the model used. We identified 61 words related to emotion or affect. Documents presented on average 1.36 positive terms and 2.64 negative terms. Sentiment analysis () is frequently used for emotion identification, followed by subjective evaluations (n= 15), movie low-level audio and visual features (n = 11), and face recognition technologies (n = 8). We discuss limitations and offer a brief review of current emotion models and research.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

International Market Segmentation across Consumption and Communication Categories: Identity, Demographics, and Consumer Decisions and Online Habits

In this chapter we will discuss the different approaches to market segmentation and selection and explore how the selection process influences the company’s culture, its brand positioning, and how it is impacted upon by the overall marketing and communication strategy and vice versa. Some questions this chapter considers and discusses are: Which segments should firms’ international marketing activities (including financial, human resources, and the firm’s capabilities) focus on? How do multinationals decide if segmentation efforts are effective? Finally, we will explore how organizations1 can monitor and control the various activities and outcomes, in order to ensure sustainable competitive advantage(s) in a highly competitive marketplace and online marketspace

Curiosity driven search experiences

Casual-Leisure Search describes any behaviour that allows people to express and satisfy hedonistic needs rather than information needs as part of the information-seeking process. For example, individuals who search their social media universe for hours after a long day at work may do so out of curiosity, to relax or for fun (e.g. exploring for the experience). Studies have shown that classical information seeking (IS) and interactive information retrieval models (IIR) have failed to represent them because they were created observing people in work related scenarios, and assuming that search is always a rational decision making process and with an extrinsic utilitarian value. The research described in this PhD work investigates IIR from the perspective of the psychological curiosity and leisure information seeking behaviour. Traditional search engines focus the user experience on satisfying users with topically relevant information (i.e. quick lookup search and then moving on), but they are limited supporting the discovery of unknown information because they fail to entice and engage users exploration as proxy to seek enjoyment both in leisure and work scenarios. The research described increases understanding of the role that curiosity plays in IIR and investigates the merits of incorporating the characteristics and function of human curiosity in the design of IIR systems. The research is grounded by the theoretical understanding of how human curiosity works. A review of appropriate psychological curiosity literature offers a means to critique existing IIR tools and a basis from which to start designing novel curiosity driven search tools. In the first experimental work, this research compared IIR behaviour between a standard query response paradigm and a curiosity driven search map prototype using social media content, and attempts to learn lessons from the behaviour that people show in everyday casual-leisure search scenarios. In the second experiment, this research contrast IIR behaviour between standard query-response paradigm and a curious adaptation of query-response paradigm using search notifications or recommendations for news reading in a social media leisure search scenario. The tools are evaluated to determine the usefulness of incorporating curiosity in the design of IIR systems, to learn about the effect in user engagement, how users exploration is increase when motivated by a hedonistic need, and then elaborate a set of design recommendations to enhance the search experience in leisure scenarios

An Investigation of the Applicability of the Uses and Gratifications Theory for Providing Insight into e-Tourists’ Use of Smartphones

Despite the previous smartphone research in the context of travel and tourism, there is limited research based on a strong theoretical background that seeks to understand how tourists are motivated and satisfied via smartphone use. This study extended previous studies by systematically investigating and quantitatively measuring how and to what extent tourists are gratified (satisfied) by the use of smartphones during their trips based on the Uses and Gratifications Theory. According to this theory, individuals choose a media platform with the anticipation that it will aid them in realizing a specific intention, the satisfaction of this need being referred to as gratification (Green 2014; Logan, 2017; Stacks & Salwen, 2009). This study investigated four constructs in terms of antecedents (i.e., motivations of using smartphones by tourists) and consequences (i.e., satisfaction with smartphones use by tourists, satisfaction referred to as gratifications). This study adopted the Uses and Gratifications Theory as a theoretical framework to explore the use of smartphones by tourists and to measure quantitatively their touristic satisfaction. U&G motivations (Social Interaction, Entertainment, Convenience, and Information) and hypotheses were developed. The respondents of the main study were tourists traveling in downtown Greenville, South Carolina, who have experiences using smartphones at the destination. To test the model for the study, a multilevel analysis (multilevel SEM) was employed to avoid statistical biases caused by common traits within group tourists and to measure potential group effects. This study also analyzed multilevel mediation in the structural equation model. It was hypothesized that the attitude construct mediates the relationship between motivations of using smartphones by tourists (independent variable or predictors) and satisfactions with smartphones use by tourists (dependent variable) in the structural model. Moreover, the relationships among constructs were tested and examined based on the theoretical background developed through a review of the literature. This study provides a classification of motivations of using smartphone use by tourists (U&G motivations) and a newly developed scale to measure satisfaction with smartphone use by tourists and their experiences, and thus it may enhance deeper our understanding of motivations of using smartphone by tourists, attitude toward the smartphone use by tourists and satisfactions with smartphone use by tourists. This study addressed specific aspects of tourism experiences. The results suggest that U&G motivations have a significant effect on tourists’ attitude toward smartphone use, which, in turn, significantly affects e-tourist satisfaction at the individual level. However, there was no group effect among U&G motivations, the attitude toward smartphone use and e-tourist satisfaction. Based on the results from this study, the most important reason that tourists used their smartphones was to obtain information during their trips to Greenville, SC. The results of this study provide practical and theoretical implications for e- tourism communication and tourism marketing

The MIREX Grand Challenge: A Framework of Holistic User-Experience Evaluation in Music Information Retrieval

Music Information Retrieval (MIR) evaluation has traditionally focused on system‐centered approaches where components of MIR systems are evaluated against predefined data sets and golden answers (i.e., ground truth). There are two major limitations of such system‐centered evaluation approaches: (a) The evaluation focuses on subtasks in music information retrieval, but not on entire systems and (b) users and their interactions with MIR systems are largely excluded. This article describes the first implementation of a holistic user‐experience evaluation in MIR, the MIREX Grand Challenge, where complete MIR systems are evaluated, with user experience being the single overarching goal. It is the first time that complete MIR systems have been evaluated with end users in a realistic scenario. We present the design of the evaluation task, the evaluation criteria and a novel evaluation interface, and the data‐collection platform. This is followed by an analysis of the results, reflection on the experience and lessons learned, and plans for future directions

The role of consumer-brand engagement in a digital marketing era

The purpose of this thesis is to understand the role of consumer-brand engagement in a digital marketing era. We explore the consumer-brand engagement construct in relation to consumers as the engagement subjects, and brands (i.e., brand/companies) as the engagement objects. Our intention is to contribute to advancing the theoretical knowledge of this subject and to provide useful insights that can be used by practitioners, particularly companies that use interactive platforms to create consumer-brand relationships.O objetivo desta tese é o de compreender o papel do compromisso entre o consumidor e a marca nesta nova era de marketing digital. Exploramos nesse sentido o constructo do compromisso entre o consumidor e a marca, sendo o consumidor o sujeito do compromisso e a marca (isto é, marcas ou empresas) o objeto desse compromisso. É nosso objetivo contribuir para o avanço teórico do conhecimento sobre esta área do saber, bem como fornecer novos conhecimentos que possam ser úteis e utilizados pelos gestores nas empresas, nomeadamente no que diz respeito a empresas que utilizem plataformas interativas para criar relacionamentos entre os consumidores e as marcas