An Empirical Study of the Adoption and Diffusion of Electronic Commerce in the Car Industry in Western Australia

This paper reports on qualitative case study research into the effects and impacts, and hence the adoption and diffusion of e-commerce in the car industry in Western Australia. To date, care dealers are typically not particularly internet savvy, and thus the advent of internet-based business is offering opportunities to them, but is also causing some anxiety. Aggregators who, by pooling dealer content onto one web site, offer a relatively simple, relatively low cost way of getting onto the internet are helping many of the car dealers to develop an active presence on the web. But generally speaking, internal business processes are not being changed to accommodate the new way of doing business, and there is great uncertainty as to how significant the impact of the internet will be on their business into the future. Few dealers were willing not to be involved on the internet because of their fear of being left behind. However, at present, relatively few are seeing an appreciable impact on their business because of their web presence

Engendering Trust in Internet Business using Elements of Corporate Branding

In this article we discuss the role of trust as a crucial factor for success in meeting the challenges faced by companies selling goods to consumers on the internet. Corporate branding is proposed as the key vehicle by which the necessary trust-signals for reducing risk as perceived by consumers may be transmitted, based upon a theoretical definition of trust, the trust-signals important to engender trust, and the main elements of corporate brand building

Transaction Streams: Definition and Implications for Trust in Internet-Based Electronic Commerce.

In this paper we analyze how transactions related to the exchange of goods and services are being performed on the Internet. The adoption of electronic markets in an industry has a disintermediation potential because it can create a direct link between the producer and the consumer (without the need for the intermediation role of distributors). Electronic markets lower the search cost, allowing customers to choose among more providers (which ultimately reduces both the costs for the customer and the profits for the producer). In this paper we contend that electronic markets on the Internet have the opposite effect, resulting in our increase in the number of intermediators. We introduce transaction streams, which model how transactions are being conducted and help explain the types of new intermediators that are appearing on the Internet. We also describe mechanisms by which companies are exploring ways of extending transaction streams. To illustrate the model and validate our findings, we analyze transaction streams in the insurance industry and review associated concepts such as trust and brands.transactions; electronic markets;

Characteristics of Australian B2B imarketplaces

Existing research on B2B iMarketplaces (and intermediaries operating them) focuses primarily on viewing US iMarketplace web sites or conducting case studies. This paper extends this work by presenting survey findings of the total identifiable population of Australian B2B iMarketplace intermediaries to describe the iMarketplace characteristics and to determine if the findings provide more generalisable support for the literature.<br /

Pre-paid Petrol Refill Smart Card for Petronas Stations

This document represents the final dissertation for the Final Year Project. The purpose of the dissertation is to present the documentation ofthe project. The title in question is Prepaid Petrol Refill Smartcard for Petronas Stations. The title itselfexplains the general idea behind the project is to provide an advanced stored value of money in electronic card for paying petrol refilling at Petronas stations. It is also to promote a cashless environment at all Petronas stations. In the problem statement section, discussion will be concerning problem identification and the significance of the project, which is to provide a more efficient and reliable payment system for petrol refilling. The scope of study will focus on smartcard technologies and its realization into a prepaid system. With that in hand it is hopeful that a workable prototype will be able to be produced to demonstrate its usefulness in a real world environment. Methodology will be based on the Waterfall model which consists of five steps which are planning, analysis, design, and implementation and testing. Findings and its relevancy to the objectives of the project will conclude the report based on the discussions mentioned above. Also, additional information will be included where seemed appropriate. In Results and Discussion, topics will be about the critical segments of a smartcard technology implementation and some of the issues in using smartcard in today's electronic commerce. i

Contract representation for validation and run time monitoring

PhD ThesisOrganisations are increasingly using the Internet to offer their own services and to utilise the services of others. This naturally leads to resource sharing across organisational boundaries. Nevertheless, organisations will require their interactions with other organisations to be strictly controlled. In the paper-based world, business interactions, information exchange and sharing have been conducted under the control of contracts that the organisations sign. The world of electronic business needs to emulate electronic equivalents of the contract based business management practices. This thesis examines how a 'conventional' contract can be converted into its electronic equivalent and how it can be used for controlling business interactions taking place through computer messages. To implement a contract electronically, a conventional text contract needs to be described in a mathematically precise notation so that the description can be subjected to rigorous analysis and freed from the ambiguities that the original humanoriented text is likely to contain. Furthermore, a suitable run time infrastructure is required for monitoring the executable version of the contract. To address these issues, this thesis describes how standard conventional contracts can be converted into Finite State Machines (FSMs). It is illustrated how to map the rights and obligations extracted from the clauses of the contract into the states, transition and output functions, and input and output symbols of a FSM. The thesis then goes on to develop a list of correctness properties that a typical executable business contract should satisfy. A contract model should be validated against safety properties, which specify situations that the contract must not get into (such as deadlocks, unreachable states .... etc), and liveness properties, which detail qualities that would be desirable for the contract to contain (responsiveness, accessibility .... etc). The FSM description can then be subjected to model checking. This is demonstrated with the aid of examples using the Promela language and the Spin validator. Subsequently, the FSM representation can be used to ensure that the clauses stipulated in the contract are observed when the contract is executed. The requirements of a suitable run time infrastructure for monitoring contract compliance are discussed and a prototype middleware implementation is presented.UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)

Uncertainty in service provisioning relationships

Web services encapsulate some well-defined functionality such as data storage, computation or a business process. An organization can delegate responsibility for the provision of a Web service to another organization with the formation of a Service Provisioning Relationship (SPR). Such relationships enable organizations to specialize in the provision of those Web services for which they have a comparative advantage, and to outsource responsibility for any other functionality on which they are dependent to the Web services provided by other organizations. This specialization can lead to significant increases in organizational efficiency. The scale of such increases is determined by the extent to which the presence of uncertainty in the Quality of Service (QoS) can be addressed by the organizations in the SPR. The requester of a Web service can be uncertain of the willingness and ability of the provider to provision a Web service with a certain QoS. The provider of a Web service can be uncertain of his ability to provision a Web service to each requester with a certain QoS. These uncertainties can endanger the economic viability of such relationships, and mitigate any increases in organizational efficiency. This thesis provides a number of key contributions to address these uncertainties in order to retain the economic viability of these relationships for both organizations. The key contributions are: an institutional framework for trust in SPRs, a structured language for the representation of a Service Level Agreement (SLA) as a contingent contract, and a theoretical and practical methodology for the creation of SLAs which are optimal with regard to the objectives of an organization.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceEPSRCGBUnited Kingdo

Contract representation for validation and run time monitoring

Organisations are increasingly using the Internet to offer their own services and to utilise the services of others. This naturally leads to resource sharing across organisational boundaries. Nevertheless, organisations will require their interactions with other organisations to be strictly controlled. In the paper-based world, business interactions, information exchange and sharing have been conducted under the control of contracts that the organisations sign. The world of electronic business needs to emulate electronic equivalents of the contract based business management practices. This thesis examines how a 'conventional' contract can be converted into its electronic equivalent and how it can be used for controlling business interactions taking place through computer messages. To implement a contract electronically, a conventional text contract needs to be described in a mathematically precise notation so that the description can be subjected to rigorous analysis and freed from the ambiguities that the original humanoriented text is likely to contain. Furthermore, a suitable run time infrastructure is required for monitoring the executable version of the contract. To address these issues, this thesis describes how standard conventional contracts can be converted into Finite State Machines (FSMs). It is illustrated how to map the rights and obligations extracted from the clauses of the contract into the states, transition and output functions, and input and output symbols of a FSM. The thesis then goes on to develop a list of correctness properties that a typical executable business contract should satisfy. A contract model should be validated against safety properties, which specify situations that the contract must not get into (such as deadlocks, unreachable states ... etc), and liveness properties, which detail qualities that would be desirable for the contract to contain (responsiveness, accessibility ... etc). The FSM description can then be subjected to model checking. This is demonstrated with the aid of examples using the Promela language and the Spin validator. Subsequently, the FSM representation can be used to ensure that the clauses stipulated in the contract are observed when the contract is executed. The requirements of a suitable run time infrastructure for monitoring contract compliance are discussed and a prototype middleware implementation is presented.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceEngineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)GBUnited Kingdo