College Students and Smartphone Ownership: Symbolic meanings and Smartphone Consumption among Nigerian Students

The article aims to understand conception of Smartphones ownership among a sample of 65 Nigerian undergraduates aged 17-27years; and whether their construction of Smartphone ownership influences them to buy/carry one. A qualitative approach to data collection was adopted to elicit information among students of two federal (public) tertiary institutions in southwest region of Nigeria. The results show that Smartphone is not simply a technology for communication but, to a large extent, a social symbolic object for its carriers. Symbolic meanings are constructed and attached with Smartphone ownership beyond mere functional attributes. For my participants, carrying a Smartphone implies high-taste associated with ‘being cool’, trendy, wealthy. Many seem to believe only those with expensive taste could own Smartphones. This feeling was so strong that many would rather make friends with other Smartphone owners than be seen with students carrying regular phones. One of the themes that also emerged from participants’ narratives is pressure to fitting-in into groups that own Smartphone; which they say influence their purchase decision

M-learning and Augmented Reality: A Review of the Scientific Literature on the WoS Repository

La realidad aumentada surge como un útil sobre el que se precisa examinar su real implementación educativa. Esta investigación hace un análisis bibliométrico sobre documentos del repositorio Web of Science. Este servicio ofrece en Internet la producción científica de más de 7.000 instituciones de todo el mundo. Se toma como base un universo de 12.000 revistas indexadas y 148.000 actas de conferencias y se selecciona una muestra centrada en los términos «m-learning» y «augmented reality» como descriptores o componentes de títulos en trabajos científicos. El análisis sobre revistas n=741 y actas n=913 en los dos últimos años muestra una perspectiva diferenciada por áreas. La investigación se complementa con un análisis cualitativo de 67 producciones científicas sobre estos descriptores en ese periodo de tiempo. En el estudio sobresalen cinco temáticas: la conceptualización del fenómeno, el desarrollo de nuevas metodologías, la motivación generada, su deslocalización espacial y las materias objeto de implementación. Las investigaciones destacan cambios lógicos, como un mayor y diferente acceso a la información, junto a innovaciones trascendentes, como el incremento de actividades informales y lúdicas, la inserción en ambientes virtuales icónicos, la pertenencia a grupos específicos, y redes de interacción amistosa dentro de nuevas escalas de valores. Todo ello hace que estos instrumentos pasen a ser partes fundamentales en las metodologías. La educación parece subsidiaria a estos avances técnicos y a sus requisitos, imponiéndose un drástico cambio metodológico en nuevos escenarios formativosAugmented reality emerges as a tool, on which it is necessary to examine its real educational value. This paper shows the results of a bibliometric analysis performed on documents collected from the Web of Science repository, an Internet service that concentrates bibliographic information from more than 7,000 institutions. Our analysis included an overall universe of 12,000 indexed journals and 148,000 conference proceedings. From those, we selected a sample targeting the terms “mobile-learning” or “m-learning” and “augmented reality” as descriptors or components of titles of scientific works. The analysis on journals (n=741) and in conference proceedings (n=913) reveals a differentiated perspective in each area in the last two years. A qualitative analysis of 67 scientific productions addressing these subjects complements the research. This highlights five themes: conceptualization of the phenomenon, development of new methodologies, motivation, spatial delocalization, and implementation in subject-matter areas. The research highlights logical changes, such as greater and differentiated access to information; transcendent innovations, such as increasing informal and ludic activities, insertion into virtual environments, membership of specific groups, and networks of friendly interaction, along creation of new scales of values. These elements are now beginning to constitute fundamental parts of teaching methodologies. Education appears to be subsidiary to technical advances, thus imposing a drastic methodological chang

Factors Influencing Purchase Intention of Cellular Phones Among the University Students in Bangladesh

Uses of cellular phone among the university students are increasing in Bangladesh. To capture this growing market segment and meeting their diverse demand, it is important for the manufacturers and marketers of cellular phone to know about the factors that these young truly judge. This study is undertaken to find out the factors that affect young Bangladeshi university students’ intention to purchase cellular phone. Through using a structured questionnaire, completed responses of 350 respondents were collected by applying convenience sampling technique. To test the reliability of the collected data, Cronbach’s alpha was measured. Besides this, Regression and ANOVA is used to explain the relationship between the factors affecting university students’ cell phone purchase intention and test the proposed hypotheses. Statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS) version 21.0 was used to perform the statistical tests. This study found significant influence of cell phone price, cell phone feature, brand name and social influence on university students’ cellular phone purchase intention. Findings of the study will help the cellular phone manufacturers and marketers to design their youth centric marketing strategies. Moreover, managerial implications along with the directions for future research have also been discussed. Keywords: Cellular Phone, Purchase Intention, Product Price, Product Features, Brand Name, Social Influence, Ease of Use, Promotion of the Brand. DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/11-2-1

Factors Influencing the Purchase Decision of Smartphone Users in Sultanate of Oman

Smartphones have become the daily necessity among people. People always look for the new model of smartphones, and the trend of changing smartphones is still very strong. The purpose of this research is to study the factors affecting the purchase intention of smartphones in Sultanate of Oman.  The study has chosen seven variables to study the relationship between brand name, price, product features, convenience, dependency, social influence and purchase intention. An online questionnaire was adopted to carry out the study. The content of the survey included demographic factors and questions based on each variable. A sample of 51 responses are collected. It is concluded that the purchase decision has no significant relation between gender and age. It is proved that purchase decision of smartphone by Omanis is influenced by price, product features and social influence. Brand name, convenience and dependency has no impact significant impact on the purchase decision. Keywords: Brand name, Price, Product features, Convenience, Dependency, Social influence, Purchase intention. DOI: 10.7176/JMCR/72-04 Publication date:October 31st 202

Consumer uptake of digital low-carbon innovations

Digitalisation is transforming the consumer landscape. Digitally-enabled mobility, food provision, domestic living, and energy supply can help reduce carbon emissions. We use stated preference data from a nationally-representative sample in the UK (n=3014) to understand consumer adoption of 13 digital low-carbon innovations across mobility, food, homes and energy domains. Using diffusion of innovations as our analytical framework, we test three main adoption drivers: adopter characteristics, social influence, and innovation attributes. We use blocks of variables measuring each adoption driver as predictors in logit models that distinguish adopters from non-adopters. We focus our analysis on adoption drivers that are significant and consistent predictors of digital innovation adoption across different contexts.Compared to non-adopters, we find that early adopters of digital low-carbon innovations are more likely to be younger, in employment, living in multi-person households, digitally skilful, environmentally active, and technologically active. We also find that early adopters are more exposed to inter-personal information flows (i.e., social influence), use social media more intensively, and perceive the innovations to offer higher relative advantage over current practices, be easy to use, be more compatible both with their values and their lifestyles. These drivers of adoption hold across mobility, food, homes and energy-related innovations, so can be translated into generalisable strategies, policies, and interventions for stimulating consumer uptake of digital low-carbon innovations. Although our data collection specifically characterises adopters and non-adopters in the UK, the innovations in our sample are increasingly available in markets worldwide so our findings have broad applicability

Ubiquitous Computing Capabilities and User-System Interaction Readiness: An Activity Perspective

Based on mobile computing technologies, ubiquitous systems enable people to access information anywhere and anytime. In addition to the capability of interactivity concerning inquiry processing based on user input through interfaces, ubiquitous systems may offer contextualization and personalization dealing with information filtering based on task contexts and user preferences, which help relieve user effort on the move. This study investigates how different combinations of these major ubiquitous computing capabilities affect user behavior. Using the unifying framework of Activity Theory, it conceptualizes user-system interaction as a tool-mediated activity, the different aspects of which are facilitated by interactivity, contextualization, and personalization. It is hypothesized that such capabilities shape user experiences including sense of control, motive fulfillment, and perceived understanding, which lead to how ready people are to interact with ubiquitous systems. The results from an experiment support the hypothesized relationships, and suggest that different capabilities are interdependent in their effects. The findings yield insights on how to take a systematic and balanced approach of ubiquitous system design to enhance user experiences

Exploring Personal Information Disclosure and Protective Behaviour of Research Scholars’ when Seeking Information from the Web.

The collection of personal information became the most prominent threat associated with information consumption from the web. Existing research has not explored the information disclosure and protective behaviour of PhD research scholars. This investigation aimed to address the following objectives: (1) To find the Information-Seeking Behaviours of research scholars (2) To explore the research scholars’ attitudes towards personal information disclosure (3) To explore the protective behaviours of research scholars’ towards personal information disclosure. The study aims to contribute to existing knowledge in information disclosure behaviour and protective behaviour. The empirical research consists of thirty (30) PhD research scholars from the Department of Library and Information Science; Economics and Commerce of North-Eastern Hill University. These scholars’ were selected using a convenient sampling technique to get a prompt response. Descriptive statistics were employed to analyse the data. The results showed that research scholar’s information need on research topic accounted to (60%) daily and used the Internet daily. The findings showed that most research scholars’ do not trust the website and consider their personal information as unsafe on the web. Most of them reported having refused to give their personal identifiable information while considerable percentages are unfamiliar with the privacy emerging technologies (Example: Tor browser, Remove malware/Spyware, cookies, anonymous browsing, etc.). This study provides guidelines for the research scholars’ to protect their personal information, thus, preventing scholars from privacy risks. The study contributes new knowledge concerning privacy concerns thus, broadened the context of personal disclosure in the online scenario

BRAND INNOVATIVENESS AND CONSUMERS’ CHOICE FOR DECORATIVE PAINT IN THE SOUTH EAST, NIGERIA

The study investigated the influence of product innovation on consumer’s choice for decorative paint, in the South East, Nigeria. The major objective of the study was  to: ascertain the effect of brand innovativeness on consumer’s choice of decorative paints. The instrument for data collection was questionnaire.  The population was drawn from the contractors and painters operating in the three commercial cities in the three states chosen among the five states of the South East Nigeria. Due to the nature of the population, it could be described as being unknown and therefore a sample size of 384 was determined using Zigmund formula which is suitable for an unknown population.  The result of statistical analysis  revealed that brand innovativeness has a significant effect on consumer choice. It was concluded that the study has filled the gap in literature by providing the knowledge base that when brand innovativeness is improved for decorative paint; it increases consumer choice. It was therefore recommended among others that decorative paint companies should embark on product innovation initiatives in order to enlarge their loyal customer base

extending the expectation confirmation model

Tam, C., Santos, D., & Oliveira, T. (2018). Exploring the influential factors of continuance intention to use mobile Apps: extending the expectation confirmation model. Information Systems Frontiers, 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-018-9864-5The use of mobile applications (apps) has been growing in the world of technology, a phenomenon related to the increasing number of smartphone users. Even though the mobile apps market is huge, few studies have been made on what makes individuals continue to use a mobile app or stop using it. This study aims to uncover the factors that underlie the continuance intention to use mobile apps, addressing two theoretical models: Expectation confirmation model (ECM) and the extended unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT2). A total of 304 questionnaires were collected by survey to test the theoretical framework proposal, using structural equation modelling (SEM). Our findings indicate that the most important drivers of continuance intention of mobile apps are satisfaction, habit, performance expectancy, and effort expectancy.authorsversionpublishe

Mobile Campus adoption in Higher Education : factors that influence the adoption of Católica Lisbon School of Business and Economics’ mobile campus among students

A transaction from the traditional website platforms to mobile platforms is an opportunity for Católica Lisbon School of Business and Economics to create new values for students on their relationship with professors, staff and the various universities´ facilities, through the offering of improved educational services and organizational tools. Through MyCatolica, the mobile learning mobile system (LMS) of the University, new approaches on the learning processes can be implemented, tightening the distance between universities and students. Despite the advantages, students’ adoption still needs to be further developed. The current thesis builds its relevance on this gap, through investigating the factors that may influence the adoption of mobile campus by students. To develop the dissertation, the qualitative research method was undertaken. Ten students were interviewed and results revealed that the website platforms are still perceived essential, and more reliable. Meantime, MyCatolica is not supportive enough and is seen as an informational tool not decisive to the student’s life. Participants have positioned MyCatolica as an application which is not useful and does not allow students to actively interact with the Academic world. Even though, the non-users perceived the benefits of using the LMS, they do not adopt MyCatolica because of its poor relative advantages and low-leveled usefulness. Additionally, students were submitted to an exploration phase where new features were proposed in order to overcome the adoption barriers and to develop a superior MyCatolica. It was found that features as “Chat”, “Cloud” and “Note” could be helpful on overcoming the adoption barriers.A transição das plataformas web tradicionais para as aplicações móveis é uma importante oportunidade para a Católica Lisbon School of Business and Economics desenvolver novos valores para estudantes, e melhorar o seu relacionamento com professores, staff e entidade académicas, através da oferta melhorada de ferramentas organizacionais. Através da MyCatolica, o Sistema de gestão educativo móvel (LMS), poderão ser implementadas novas abordagens ao processo educativo, estreitando a relação entre os estudantes e a universidade. No entanto é necessário desenvolver a aceitação por partes do alunos para esta ferramenta. Esta tese torna se relevante pois pretende preencher esta lacuna, através da investigação de factores que possam influenciar a adopção do sistema móvel pelos estudantes. Através de uma pesquisa qualitativa dez estudantes foram entrevistados. Os resultados revelaram que as ferramentas web tradicionais ainda são encaradas como eficientes e mais fiáveis. Por seu lado, a plataforma móvel ainda é considerada pouco complacente. Mycatolica é visto como uma ferramenta informativa não fundamental para a vida do estudante. Os participantes do estudo descrevem o Mycatolica como uma aplicação pouco útil. Apesar de os não utilizadores terem uma percepção dos eventuais benefícios da utilização do LMS, não adoptaram o MyCatolica devido à sua diminuta utilidade. Adicionalmente, aos estudantes foram sugeridas novas características de modo a poder contornar os obstáculos à aceitação da aplicação. Novas funcionalidades tais como “Chat”, “Cloud” e “Notas” poderiam ser úteis para ultrapassar as barreiras de utilização uma vez que mostravam maiores benefícios no apoio à vida académica dos estudantes