A cross cultural study of gender differences in omnichannel retailing contexts

This research examines gender difference in omnichannel experience in modern shopping malls, combining personal, physical and virtual encounters. It proposes a new theoretical model: the gender-based shopping mall omnichannel experience model. Data was collected using 1139 questionnaires completed by millennial shoppers in the United Kingdom and United Arab Emirates. Data was analysed using partial least squares. The results showed a shift in males shopping behaviour as they pay more attention to peer interaction on social platforms, service excellence, convenience, diversity and personalisation in shopping malls than female shoppers, while aesthetics and privacy are more important for female shoppers

23rd Recent Advances in Retailing & Services Science Conference, July 11-14, 2016, Edinburgh, Scotland:book of abstracts

This book includes the (edited) abstracts of the papers that will be presented at the 23rd Recent Advancesin Retailing and Services Science Conference, at the Carlton/Hilton hotel, Edinburgh, Scotland, July 11-16, 2016.The aim of the conference is to bring together an international and multidisciplinary audience working ondifferent topics in retailing and consumer behavior research. Both completed work and work in progresswill be presented. This is reflected in the kind of papers that have been accepted for presentation

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

Intelligent techniques for context-aware systems

Nowadays, with advances in communication technologies, researches are focused in the fields of designing new devices with increasing capabilities, implanting software frameworks or middleware to make these devices interoperable. Building better human interfaces is a challenging task and the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques to the process help associating semantic meaning to devices which makes possible the gesture recognition and voice recognition. This thesis is mainly concerned with the open problem in context-aware systems: the evaluation of these systems in Ambient Intelligence (AmI) environments. With regard to this issue, we argue that due to highly dynamic properties of the AmI environments, it should exist a methodology for evaluating these systems taking into account the type of scenarios. However in order to support with a solid ground for that discussion, some elements are to be discussed as well. In particular, we: • use a commercial platform that allows us to design and manage the contextual information of context- aware systems by means of a context manager included in the architecture; • analyze the formal representation of this contextual information by means of a knowledge based system (KBS); • discuss the possible methodologies to be used for modelling knowledge in KBS and our approach; • give reasons why intelligent agents is a valid technique to be applied to systems in AmI environments; • propose a generic multi-agent system (MAS) architecture that can be applied to a large class of envisaged AmI applications; • propose a multimodal user interface and its integration with our MAS; • propose an evaluation methodology for context-aware systems in AmI scenarios. The formulation of the above mentioned elements became necessary as this thesis was developed. The lack of an evaluation methodology for context-aware systems in AmI environments, where so many issues to be covered, took us to the main objective of this thesis. In this regard: • we provide an updated and exhaustive state-of-the-art of this matter; • examine the properties and characteristics of AmI scenarios; • put forward an evaluation methodology and experimentally test our methodology in AmI scenarios. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------La Inteligencia Ambiental y los entornos inteligentes hacen hincapié en una mayor facilidad de uso, soporte de servicios más eficientes, el apoderamiento de los usuarios, y el apoyo a las interacciones humanas. En esta visión, las personas estarán rodeadas de interfaces inteligentes e intuitivas incrustados en objetos cotidianos que nos rodean y los sistemas desarrollados para este ambiente deberán reconocer y responder a la presencia de individuos de una manera invisible y transparente a ellos. Esta tesis se centra principalmente en el problema abierto en los sistemas sensibles al contexto: la evaluación de estos sistemas en los entornos de Inteligencia Ambiental. Con respecto a este tema, se argumenta que debido a las propiedades altamente dinámica de los entornos de inteligencia ambiental, debería existir una metodología para la evaluación de estos sistemas, teniendo en cuenta el tipo de escenarios. Sin embargo, con el fin de apoyar con una base sólida para la discusión, algunos elementos deben ser discutidos también. En particular, nosotros: • Usamos una plataforma comercial que nos permite diseñar y gestionar la información contextual de los sistemas sensibles al contexto a través de un gestor de contexto incluido en la arquitectura; • Analizamos la representación formal de esta información contextual a través de un sistema basado en el conocimiento (SBC); • Discutimos las posibles metodologías que se utilizarán para el modelado del conocimiento en SBC y nuestra aproximación y propuesta; • Discutimos las razones del por qué los agentes inteligentes son una técnica válida para ser aplicada a los sistemas en entornos inteligencia ambiental; • Proponemos un sistema multi-agente (SMA), con una arquitectura genérica que se puede aplicar a una gran clase de aplicaciones de inteligencia ambiental; • Proponemos una interfaz de usuario multimodales y su integración con nuestro SMA; • Proponemos una metodología de evaluación de los sistemas sensibles al contexto en los escenarios de inteligencia ambiental. La formulación de los elementos antes mencionados se hizo necesaria en la medida que esta tesis se ha desarrollado. La falta de una metodología de evaluación de los sistemas sensibles al contexto en entornos de inteligencia ambiental, donde existen tantos temas a tratar, nos llevó al objetivo principal de esta tesis. En este sentido, en esta tesis: • Proporcionamos un estado del arte actualizado y exhaustivo de este asunto; • Examinamos las propiedades y características de los escenarios de inteligencia ambiental; • Proponemos una metodología de evaluación para este tipo de sistemas y experimentalmente probamos nuestra metodología en diversos escenarios de inteligencia ambiental

User experience and interactive technology in fashion stores

Many fashion brands have already incorporated interactive technology (IT) into their stores as a means to provide consumers with digital experiences. Interactive technology enables consumers, that is, store visitors, to explore the digital world of the brand interactively while being immersed with the physical store elements. Consumers can therefore have experiences in both physical and digital worlds. It can be argued that the integration of interactive technology in fashion stores can potentially heighten the overall consumer experience. The research purpose was to explore consumer experience with interactive technology in fashion stores. More specifically, it centres on the evaluation of consumers' interaction experience with the digital world while in parallel experiencing the physical world. Given that the underlying phenomenon concerns interaction between humans and interactive devices, a user experience design (UXD) approach was adopted for this research; as the lens for the literature review, the methodology and the analysis of data. The strategy for the primary research was rapid ethnography; combining three methods: protocol analysis, observation and interview. The data collection was undertaken for over eleven months, consisting of two main studies and eight data collection activities (DCAs). Fifty-one people participated in the studies and DCAs. All the data were analysed via five stages, in which one prominent UXD framework: the four threads of experience (4TE), was utilised for the analysis process. The findings are presented thematically; there are four main themes and nine subthemes. All of these embody Insights and narratives for responding to the research questions. The first core concept that can be taken from the findings is the notion of dynamic experience referring to a moment in which the users of interactive technology (IT) can experience the two world frames of digital and physical dynamically. Another core concept is channel harmonisation that refers to the implementation of a balanced channel. The research demonstrates the suitability of UXD as an interactive design theory or framework for fashion marketing research concerning experiences of technology. Implications for research and recommendations are provided

A heuristic evaluation checklist for mobile shopping applications

Studies on issues related to mobile shopping applications are numerous, however, there is inadequacy in implementing the heuristic evaluation approach to identifying and documenting definite kinds of issues as far as their classifications for mobile shopping applications. Recent studies have shown that there is a deficiency of proper evaluation methods and suitable heuristics and subheuristics needed in recognizing mobile-specific usability issues since existing checklists are either web-centered or developed for general mobile applications such as social media mobile applications and utility mobile applications, and not for mobile shopping applications. These existing checklists are incapable of identifying usability issues of mobile shopping applications; hence, this study aims to address these issues by developing a heuristic evaluation checklist for mobile shopping applications. The strategy employed in the evaluation comprises four phases: identifying problems and objectives, heuristic identification, heuristic evaluation checklist development, and heuristic checklist evaluation. Twelve domain experts verified the proposed heuristic evaluation checklist and data collected was analysed using the Fuzzy Delphi Method. The study successfully identified suitable heuristics and subheuristics that made up the proposed heuristic evaluation checklist. Subsequently, a heuristic evaluation was conducted by six domain experts comprising usability experts, software and mobile application developers, as well as mobile shopping application designers, and the results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed heuristic evaluation checklist in identifying significant usability issues in Shopee mobile shopping applications. Through the heuristic evaluation checklist, usability experts and analysts can direct a dynamically exact evaluation of online shopping applications. In the same method, software and mobile application developers as well as mobile shopping designers can logically design a usable interface following a set of usability standards that will meet users' satisfaction

Legal challenges to future information businesses

The thesis studies new legal challenges to future information businesses: it presents an applicable research method, lists central legal challenges, and discusses the implications of those challenges. I have developed a scenario-based method that produces lists of legal challenges and helps to analyze them. The method highlights information products and services from commercial entity's viewpoint: other business aspects are paid less attention. Also, some specific characteristics of particular companies cannot be considered in a general method like this. Therefore challenges in legal areas such as tax law or competition law do not appear although in practice they can be relevant. The method is still able to point out numerous relevant legal challenges. The study focuses on the future: the time span is about two to ten years from now. The focus is on the business-to-consumer (B2C) market. The emphasis is on strategic product and service development. I have listed, analyzed, and discussed the future legal challenges that the method has found. I conclude that the most important legal challenges to future information businesses are within the areas of privacy and data protection; intellectual property rights; and contracts. I have also discussed the major distinguishers of businesses implying legal challenges. They help to point out the specific legal challenges related to a certain information product or service. Legal rules can affect businesses in many ways. At their best, they enable businesses, but too often they also harm useful activities. I conclude business drivers and hurdles that are important from the legal point of view.reviewe

Will they buy?

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2012.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 127-137).The proliferation of inexpensive video recording hardware and enormous storage capacity has enabled the collection of retail customer behavior at an unprecedented scale. The vast majority of this data is used for theft prevention and never used to better understand the customer. In what ways can this huge corpus be leveraged to improve the experience of customer and the performance of the store? This thesis presents MIMIC, a system that processes video captured in a retail store into predictions about customer proclivity to purchase. MIMIC relies on the observation that aggregate patterns of all of a store's patrons-the gestalt-captures behavior indicative of an imminent transaction. Video is distilled into a homogenous feature vector that captures the activity distribution by first tracking the locations of customers, then discretizing their movements into a feature vector using a collection of functional locations-areas of the store relevant to the tasks of patrons and employees. A time series of these feature vectors can then be classified as predictive-of-transaction using a Hidden Markov Model. MIMIc is evaluated on a small operational retail store located in the Mall of America near Minneapolis, Minnesota. Its performance is characterized across a wide cross-section of the model's parameters. Through manipulation of the training data supplied to MiMic, the behavior of customers in the store can be examined at fine levels of detail without foregoing the potential afforded by big data. MIMIC enables a suite of valuable tools. For ethnographic researchers, it offers a technique for identifying key moments in hundreds or thousands of hours of raw video. Retail managers gain a fine-grained metric to evaluate the performance of their stores, and interior designers acquire a critical component in a store layout optimization framework.by Rony Daniel Kubat.Ph.D