Cross-Supplier Bundling of Tourist Products with Multi-Vendor Electronic Catalogs

Tourist services are one of the most popular products offered online. This has given rise to all service suppliers to offer their products over the Internet. Currently elementary services as hotels, flights or rental cars and travel packages can be booked online. Despite the high interdependence of tourist products there is no possibility for easy and user friendly online bundling of tourist products. In this paper a solution for online bundling of products will be presented based on multi-vendor Electronic Product Catalogs developed with the Q-Technology

The First 25 Years of the Bled eConference: Themes and Impacts

The Bled eConference is the longest-running themed conference associated with the Information Systems discipline. The focus throughout its first quarter-century has been the application of electronic tools, migrating progressively from Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) via Inter-Organisational Systems (IOS) and eCommerce to encompass all aspects of the use of networking facilities in industry and government, and more recently by individuals, groups and society as a whole. This paper reports on an examination of the conference titles and of the titles and abstracts of the 773 refereed papers published in the Proceedings since 1995. This identified a long and strong focus on categories of electronic business and corporate perspectives, which has broadened in recent years to encompass the democratic, the social and the personal. The conference\u27s extend well beyond the papers and their thousands of citations and tens of thousands of downloads. Other impacts have included innovative forms of support for the development of large numbers of graduate students, and the many international research collaborations that have been conceived and developed in a beautiful lake-side setting in Slovenia

Determinants of online leisure travel planning decision processes :a segmented approach

D.B.A. ThesisThere is an abundance of information sources on the Internet that consumers use to plan and book their travel. This information reflects the fact that travel comprises a significant part of the business conducted through the web. Consumers are sometimes faced with a complex task of making purchasing decisions in the dynamic and fast-paced medium of the Internet. In spite of the importance of travel and the intricacies of the decision process, an integrated framework that identifies the various determinants of the online leisure travel planning decision process and how they interact, is largely absent in travel literature. This study aims to make a contribution by extracting from relevant literature useful elements that could comprise such a framework. It also uses several phases of qualitative research to refine the framework, and then a quantitative assessment of data collected from an online questionnaire completed by 1,198 respondents to test specific components of the framework that deal with online travel booking intention. In the final model building stage, three logistic regression models were compared. The first is a parsimonious one containing key determinants that lead to online travel booking intention. These determinants emerged from theoretical frameworks of the theory of reasoned action and innovation adoption theory. The second Model used strictly involvement, motivation, and knowledge variables that are thought to influence online booking intention. The third Model included a combination of relevant predictor variables from the other two Models. The relationship between various demographics and online travel booking intention was investigated yielding some interesting insights. Consequently, this study recommends these demographic variables be considered in segmenting travelers to find those more likely to book online. The determinants of online leisure travel booking decision processes could be used in conjunction with demographic variables to more accurately predict leisure travel website usage

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

Cultural Capital: Challenges to New York State’s Competitive Advantages in the Arts and Entertainment Industry

This is a report on the findings of the Cornell University ILR planning process conducted with support of a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to investigate trends in the arts and entertainment industry in New York State and assess industry stakeholders’ needs and demand for industry studies and applied research. Building on a track record of research and technical assistance to arts and entertainment organizations, Cornell ILR moved toward a long-term goal of establishing an arts and entertainment research center by forging alliances with faculty from other schools and departments in the university and by establishing an advisory committee of key players in the industry. The outcome of this planning process is a research agenda designed to serve the priority needs and interests of the arts and entertainment industry in New York State

Analyzing suitable revenue model of digital music platforms in China based on the assumption of paid-music

Objectives of the study: As changes in the distribution channels of music, the online platforms become the most popular and most important channel around audiences all over the world. But in the meanwhile, pirated music on the Internet is a great threat for the licensed digital music services. Especially in China, due to the audience's lower willingness-to-pay and the rampant pirated music, music platforms are looking forward to some practical solutions. This research aims at exploring feasible revenue models with applicable features for Chinese digital music platforms. Academic background and methodology: At first, literature reviews contributed to build the research framework of this study, which included business model, revenue models used in digital music platforms, web 2.0, and the value-adding strategy. The empirical research was divided into two parts - business model evaluation of leading international music platforms and the China market study. The business model evaluation of selected case companies was based on the modified business model. And the case companies were selected following the four different types of revenue models. The second part of China market study was comprised of a SWOT analysis of local digital music industry and the consuming behavior of Chinese audience. Furthermore, the business model evaluation was regarded as benchmarking to highlight specific features that the foreign music platforms are using. The China market study was the ground of analyzing and reflecting beneficial characters for the local digital music platforms. Findings and conclusions: The essential finding of this research is that the artist-to-consumer model is the most suitable model for Chinese digital music platforms. Moreover, a three-sided platform should be developed to leverage the power of audience, advertiser, and celebrities and stars. Application of big data is helpful for music platforms not only at attracting more advertisers and music listeners, but also at encouraging the conversion rate. The value-adding services could combine online features and offline activities through fully leveraging celebrity effects

Food safety behaviour of household food preparers in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria

Food borne illnesses still remain a public health challenge in developing countries. This study examines the Food safety behaviour, here conceptualised simply as a wholistic measure of food safety knowledge and practices, of household food preparers in AkwaIbom State, Nigeria. Cross-sectional data was collected, using a structured questionnaire, based on a multistage sampling procedure resulting in a total of 457 respondents. Specifically, the study estimated the prevalence, margin and intensity of food safety behaviour of household food preparers. As a precursor to measuring prevalence, margin and intensity, twenty nine (29) food safety knowledge items and twenty two (22) food safety practices, a total of 41 items were used as the basis for obtaining a food safety behaviour index, fsbi. This food safety behaviour index is, summarily, a measure of a household food preparers’ food safety knowledge and practices expressed as a proportion of all the food safety knowledge and practice items. The mean fsbi, 0.64, was used to dichotomize household food preparers into well behaved and poorly behaved. The margin and intensity measures are based on the proportion of the household food preparers that are poorly behaved. Additionally, a fractional probitregression was estimated to determine the factors affecting the food safety behaviour of household food preparers in the study area. The results, of the percentage prevalence, show that, given the mean fsbi as critical index, 52% of household food preparers are poorly behaved. A disaggregated mean, another measure of prevalence, reveals that the mean fsbifor poorly behaved and well behaved household food preparers is 0.32 and 0.65 respectively. The mean margins, 0.07 and 0.04, are the figures by which the fsbi of household food preparers that are poorly behaved and all households respectively could be increased to ensure household food preparers are all well behaved. The intensity values, 0.02 and 0.01 indicate that the gap between the poorly behaved and well behaved is wider when the mean proportionate margin is expressed as a function of the total number of households that poorly behaved than the total number of households. Output from the fractional regression reveal that a household food preparer who is educated and confident in safety labels is 0.8% and 6% times more likely to be well behaved than one who is not. It can be concluded based on results that even though the margin between well behaved and poorly behaved is not so intense, much is still left to be desired as regards the overall prevalence of food safety knowledge and practices of households in the study. Keywords: Food Safety, Prevalence, Margin, Intensity, Fractional Probit Regression

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IN ROMANIA

The purpose of this paper is to identify the main opportunities and limitations of corporate social responsibility (CSR). The survey was defined with the aim to involve the highest possible number of relevant CSR topics and give the issue a more wholesome perspective. It provides a basis for further comprehension and deeper analyses of specific CSR areas. The conditions determining the success of CSR in Romania have been defined in the paper on the basis of the previously cumulative knowledge as well as the results of various researches. This paper provides knowledge which may be useful in the programs promoting CSR.Corporate social responsibility, Supportive policies, Romania