Technology-driven online marketing performance measurement: lessons from affiliate marketing

Although the measurement of offline and online marketing is extensively researched, the literature on online performance measurement still has a number of limitations such as slow theory advancement and predominance of technology- and practitioner-driven measurement approaches. By focusing on the widely employed but under-researched affiliate marketing channel, this study addresses these limitations and evaluates the effectiveness of practitioner-led online performance assessment. The paper offers a comprehensive review of extant performance measurement research across traditional, online and affiliate marketing and, employing grounded theory, presents a qualitative in-depth analysis of 72 online forum discussions and 37 semi-structured interviews with the major affiliate marketing stakeholders. As a result, the research identifies a growing need for change in the technology-pushed measurement approaches in affiliate marketing, and proposes actionable improvement recommendations for affiliate and online marketing managers

The Effect of Customer Service and Content Management on Online Retail Sales Performance: The Mediating Role of Customer Satisfaction

This paper analyzes the mediating role of customer satisfaction by studying the relationship between IT-enabled customer service and content management efforts and online sales performance. Using data on the top performing Web retailers in the U.S. based on their online annual sales, we show that the extent of retailers’ efforts in online customer service and content management is positively linked to customer satisfaction, which in turn is positively related to the retailers’ online sales performance. In addition to directly increasing the revenue, our results indicate that customer service and content management features can also indirectly improve the retailers’ financial performance. Specifically, customer service management impacts the sales performance via the average ticket amount, while content management affects the sales via the repeat visit

Методология Оценки Качества Веб-Сайта Универсальная Звезда: первая вершина – «Содержание»

The Internet continues to grow at a fast pace with over 1.5 billion websites in 2019 as compared with only one in 1991. The emergence of enormous websites of various complexities and types makes assessing the quality of these sites a vastly important, difficult and complicated task. With this concern, the current paper proposes a novel approach for website assessment by developing a new Website Quality Evaluation Methodology Universal Star (WQEMUS) with a theoretical and empirical basis. It became possible through the employment of the  grounded  theory  methodology  that  enables  relevant  concepts  to  emerge  from  data. To improve the reliability and validity of the findings, an extensive literature review, in-depth and qualitative interviews, and a user evaluation survey were conducted and associated together. In this way, the study presents the results of the selection and categorization of generic quality attributes for WQEMUS with a three-tier structure, consisting of top-level quality criteria, sub-criteria and indicators. These quality dimensions are grounded on a combination of subjective and objective indicators. Consequently, WQEMUS becomes capable of estimating a wide range of different websites irrespective of domain affiliation and services they provide, including Web 3.0 sites.Интернет продолжает расти быстрыми темпами, более чем 1,5 млрд веб-сайтов в2019 г. по сравнению только с одним в1991 г. Появление огромных веб-сайтов различной сложности и типов делает оценку качества этих сайтов чрезвычайно важной и трудной задачей. В связи с этим в статье представлен новый подход к оценке веб-сайтов путем разработки новой Методологии Оценки Качества Веб-Сайтов Универсальная Звезда (МОКВУЗ) на теоретической и эмпирической основе. Чтобы повысить надежность и достоверность результатов исследования, были приведены обширный обзор литературы, углубленные и качественные интервью и оценки пользователей. Таким образом, в статье представлены результаты отбора и  категоризации общих  атрибутов качества для МОКВУЗ с трехуровневой структурой, состоящей из критериев качества высшего уровня, субкритериев и показателей. Эти аспекты качества основаны на сочетании субъективных и объективных показателей. Следовательно, МОКВУЗ становится способной оценивать широкий спектр различных веб-сайтов независимо от принадлежности к домену и предоставляемых ими услуг, включая сайты Веб 3.0

Research Commentary: Setting a Definition, Context, and Theory-Based Research Agenda for the Gamification of Non-Gaming Applications

As a nascent area of study, gamification has attracted the interest of researchers in several fields, but such researchers have scarcely focused on creating a theoretical foundation for gamification research. Gamification involves using game-like features in non-game contexts to motivate users and improve performance outcomes. As a boundary-spanning subject by nature, gamification has drawn the interest of scholars from diverse communities, such as information systems, education, marketing, computer science, and business administration. To establish a theoretical foundation, we need to clearly define and explain gamification in comparison with similar concepts and areas of research. Likewise, we need to define the scope of the domain and develop a research agenda that explicitly considers theory’s important role. In this review paper, we set forth the pre-theoretical structures necessary for theory building in this area. Accordingly, we engaged an interdisciplinary group of discussants to evaluate and select the most relevant theories for gamification. Moreover, we developed exemplary research questions to help create a research agenda for gamification. We conclude that using a multi-theoretical perspective in creating a research agenda should help and encourage IS researchers to take a lead role in this promising and emerging area

A grounded theory of affiliate marketing performance measurement in the tourism and hospitality context

Although the measurement of offline and online marketing is extensively researched, the area of online performance measurement still presents a number of unaddressed gaps, such as fragmented research and predominance of practitioner-driven measurement approaches. With a focus on affiliate marketing in tourism and hospitality, this thesis addressed these gaps and evaluates the effectiveness of practitioner-led online performance assessment. More precisely, the study explores a potential shift in affiliate marketing measurement practices, and develops a theory of affiliate marketing performances measurement in tourism and hospitality. Relying on a grounded theory research strategy, the work undertakes qualitative analysis of 72 online forum discussions, 37 interviews and 40 questionnaires with the major affiliate marketing stakeholder groups from the tourism and hospitality industry - merchants, affiliates, affiliate networks and affiliate agencies. The findings of the thesis add value to both theory and practice. The theoretical contribution of the research is twofold. First, the work furthers the broader marketing theory and in particular the distribution and promotion literature by exploring an under-researched online marketing channel - affiliate marketing - that can be employed for both promotion and distribution purposes. The study provides a detailed description of an affiliate marketing ecosystem and defines the key affiliate marketing constructs. Second, the work contributes to the performance measurement research by developing a substantiative theory of affiliate marketing performance measurement in tourism and hospitality. From the practitioner perspective, the work brings value by proposing a change in existing performance measurement practices and offering a process-oriented model of performance measurement in affiliate marketing, which details the phases and steps that managers can undertake in assessing performance. To further the findings, future research can explore the applicability of the proposed model to other industry sectors and online channels, and can develop the proposed substantive theory to a formal theory by employing other research methods, for example case studies and action research

Web engineering for the evaluation of large complex web systems: methodologies in web metrics

Roaming the Internet, users sometimes encounter severe problems or feel dissatisfied using a particular site. E-government websites are the public gateways to access information and services but there is still no agreement on how to assess a government’s online presence. Failure of e-government projects in achieving their goals is common and there is uncertainty about how best to evaluate an e-government website. It has been argued that existing evaluation frameworks have some methodological limitations and they mostly neglected citizens. There is a lack of an engineering approach for building web systems and the literature on measuring the quality of website is limited. There is an uncertainty in the selection of evaluation methods and some risks of standardizing inadequate evaluation practices. Managing the complexity of web applications, Web Engineering is emerging as a new discipline for the development and evaluation of web systems to promote high-quality websites. But web quality is still a debatable issue and web metrics is considered a valuable area of ongoing research. Therefore this research focuses on the methodological issues underlying web metrics and how to develop an applicable set of measurement for designing websites. The main aim is to create new metrics for web engineering and develop a generalizable measurement framework for local e-government since research in this field is limited. This study adopted a positivist quantitative research and used triangulation web evaluation methods (heuristic evaluation, user testing, automatic link checkers, and Alexa) to test multiple-case study of Saudi city websites. The proposed E-City Usability Framework is unique in integrating 3-dimension measures (website usability, e-services, and the number and type of e-services), and in using multi-orientations to cover several aspects of e-government: output (information and services), outcomes (citizen-centricity indicators), model, and model-based assessments.Existing e-government models were criticized, and the findings employed in developing the proposed framework. The best web evaluation methods were heuristic evaluation and user testing, while link checkers and Alexa proved to be unreliable tools; nevertheless, they can be used as a useful complementary approach. Saudi city websites were ranked by website quality, e-services, and overall evaluation. Common usability problems in these websites were found to be: the sites were not citizen-centered, limited e-services and information, no e-transaction, no emergency alerts, no municipal budget, and no city council reports. They also suffered from broken links, an inactive city map, a poor eComplaint section, and a nonfunctioning search facility

Linking consumer satisfaction to consumer behavior and retailer revenues: an empirical analysis of e-commerce performance influencers

The aim of this research was to develop a validated set of actions that would lead to sustainable improvements in business performance and consumer attitudes for a production e-commerce website in the United States. In order to achieve the research objective a participatory action research methodology was utilized to generate quantitative and qualitative data and analysis through a mixed-methods approach. At completion, this effort was responsible for the development of new organizational knowledge and a series of managerial and business practice changes. The resulting business practice changes were credited with both short and longer-term business performance improvements. From an academic perspective, this research is one of the first to test a number of literature supported theories at real-world scale on a production e-commerce website. Of particular note are findings that extend the extant research into website consumer satisfaction measurement and the relationship between consumer feedback recency and issue identification. This thesis also highlights the importance of action research as a catalyst for organizational and individual meta-learning