A Study Of E-Service Applications In E-Commerce Websites

E-Services use the internet as the main channel for business to interact and communicate with their consumers. The purpose of this paper is to study e-Service applications, for example, FAQs and text chat, which e-commerce consumers prefer to use when they want to acquire more information about products. We focus on four different types of questions consumers may ask which are (1) description question, (2) method question, (3) explanation question, and (4) comparison question. Also, in this study, we categorize products into two categories: (1) general or non-embarrassing products (such as shampoo) and (2) embarrassing products (such as condom). The data was collected from 400 respondents in Thailand

Improving the Trust of Users on Social Networking Sites via Self-Construal Traits

The ability to remove trust concerns for online users is crucial for sustainable online development, especially relating to social networking sites. This study examines independent self-construal and interdependent self-construal as pertinent factors to increase trust on social networking sites. The classification of trust broken down into calculation-, familiarity-, structural assurance-, and situational normality-based trust was adopted in this study. Data was collected from 398 members of the leading social network site: Facebook. Regression analysis was adopted to test the data against the casual relationship among the four trust constructs. Data analysis indicates that the constructs of interdependent self-construal and independent selfconstrual individually, and together, can account for the increase of trust on a social networking site; however interdependent self-construal has the largest explanatory power. These results suggest that social networking sites continuously increase the degree of interdependence of users and develop new applications to engage users to stay longer for each visit. As a result of these measures, social networking sites can sustain the trust of users

An Analysis of Technology Acceptance in Turkey using Fuzzy Logic and Structural Equation Modelling

Technology is in a constant progress in the way of satisfying increasing human needs. This fact will hold true for the years to come. However, the level of adaptation to technological advancements varies greatly across countries. The pace of adjustment is directly proportional to the importance attached to and the funds allocated for this purpose. Despite the abundance of technological investments in Turkey in recent years, there are only a few studies analyzing the current level of individual interest in technology. This study therefore aims to determine the technology acceptance of Turkish people by using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) developed by Davis (1989) and to demonstrate the reasons to accept or not accept technology departing from the links between dimensions. While accomplishing this aim, Structural Equation Model (SEM) that is a highly strong multivariable analysis technique that makes possible the evaluation of latent structures like psychosocial needs, and the Fuzzy Logic Theorem that provides strong and significant instruments for the measurement of ambiguities and provides the opportunity to meaningfully represent ambiguous concepts expressed in the natural language were used. According to the findings of this study, it was determined that the perceived ease of use is more influential in people’s acceptance of technology than the perceived usefulness is. It was also found that technology acceptance does not differ significantly at the statistical significance level of 0.05 with respect to the participants’ demographic characteristics (age, gender, education level, hometown etc.). In addition, analyses performed to define the relationships between the dimensions of the TAM yielded results that highly supported the TAM. In other words, the dimensions affect technology acceptance to positive and significant degree

Market Skimming Pricing: An Examination of Elements Supporting High Price for New Products in Pakistan

Market skimming is a very important pricing strategy for the companies making innovative and technology based products. Market skimming pricing can be best practiced when the company is highly reputable, providing great quality and innovative products and the customers give a great value to the introduced technology and readily adopt it. The objective of this paper is to find out the factors responsible for market skimming pricing. In this research, the individuals using personal computers are taken as the population whereas Product quality, Brand image, Innovation and Technology adoption are taken as the variables responsible for practicing Market Skimming Pricing. A questionnaire is designed and the survey is conducted. The results showed that all the four variables significantly and positively influence market skimming pricing. The practice of market skimming pricing is explained up to 27% by the independent variables considered. Keywords: market skimming pricing, product quality, brand image, innovation, technology adoption

Online purchase intention of beauty products among women in Perlis

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship of perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, beauty product variety, pricing, product guarantee and subjective norm towards online purchase intention of beauty products among women in Perlis. 384 sets of questionnaires were distributed using convenience sampling method. However, only 312 set of questionnaires were returned back. All questionnaires collected were usable with a response rate of 81.25%. The data collected were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 23.0. Then, reliability analysis, descriptive analysis and inferential analysis were conducted. Through the reliability analysis, all variables used in this study are reliable with the value of each variable exceeds 0.6 as suggested by previous researcher. Besides, this study found that all the independent variables significantly related to online purchase intention of beauty products among women in Perlis (p < 0.01). 57% of online purchase intention of beauty products among women in Perlis was influenced to all the independent variables. Online purchase intention of beauty products among women in Perlis mostly by beauty product variety. Next, the influence factors to online purchase intention of beauty products among women in Perlis were followed by perceived usefulness, product guarantee, pricing, perceived ease of use and lastly subjective norm. In order to further improve this research, future research may conduct a qualitative research and added a number of appropriate variables. Knowledge of the factors influencing the intention to buy online among women is useful for organizations to prioritize their resources such as investment and time with the most efficient and effective manner

Crowdsourcing business models : focusing on the crowd-labor industry and the implications for management and markets

Purpose: This thesis analyzes the Crowd-Labor phenomenon, a subset of the Crowdsourcing industry where users of the related online platforms post tasks/projects and other users work on those tasks, usually in exchange for a payment. This work documents the current status of the platforms operating in this industry, providing new information regarding the numbers and trends. Its second objective is to understand how those companies are organized, what features they possess and how those features are related across different types of platforms. Methodology: Data collection regarding seventy-seven (77) characteristics from fifty-one (51) platforms. The characteristics are about the platforms themselves, their operations and the features they offer to their users. That was followed by an analysis of the data, and a grouping of certain related characteristics (for example, the sum of the number of available languages on the platform) and a correlation analysis to understand which types of platforms exist and what kind of platforms obtain that best performance. Findings: The analysis revealed that there are clusters of platforms based on the type of tasks/projects available on those platforms. Industry characteristics related with performance were analyzed, namely the existence of a forum, APIs, open challenges, the possibility of login & register using Facebook, fix payment fees for contractors, a leaderboard, the existence of multiple languages, internal exams for contractors to get certifications, tracking quality mechanisms and the possibility of project owners only paying when satisfied. Automated features (APIs and internal exams/certifications) stood out as a new positive performance differentiator for this recent industry, which is an original literature contribution originated from this thesis. Practical use: This work presents the current state of the Crowd-Labor industry, its benchmarks or industry standards, users’ motivations and a fact based opinion regarding its future, creating new knowledge that could be particularly useful for researchers, academics, crowdsourcing initiative owners, crowd-Labor users, entrepreneurs and investors. Limitations: An important limitation is that some of the answers to the characteristics used to analyze the Crowd-Labor Platforms were not made public by the platform owners, which didn’t make possible to capture the full picture of some of these platforms. However by studying 51 platforms, the collected data offers statistical evidence in the form of correlations that are statistically significant, which support the conclusions drawn from the analysis

Impact Of Social Media Advertising On High Energy Drink Preferences And Consumption

Despite the surging appropriation of social media by marketers for communicative marketing of brands, what remains under-explored in literature is the capacity of social media platforms to influence student preferences for brands. This research gap is ironic given the growing literature on the potential of self-images shared on social media to influence consumers’ product preferences and purchase intentions. Drawing on Media Richness Theory, agency, extant literature and authors’ personal reflections on social media adoption for brand selection by students, this theoretical study examines how students navigate such platforms to make informed choices about energy drinks. The findings suggest while students exploited social media platforms intermittently to access energy drink brands, their brand preferences and choices were informed by personal agency (especially personal volition, peer influences, convenience and availability of brands) more than social media networks per se. The study contributes a conceptual model that integrate social media appropriation, consumer decision making, brand preferences and purchases. While the model is untested, its methodological strength lays in its reliance on extant literature, proven concepts, anecdotes of student consumption behavior and authors’ knowledge of social media, which are critical to deepening academics and policy makers’ understanding of social media-brand preference relations in real world contexts

Epäilyksen varjossa - Sähköisen lääke-esittelyn hyödyntämisen haasteet

Abstrakti: Lääkealalla puhutaan jatkuvasti tarpeesta viedä lääkemarkkinointia asiakaslähtöisempään suuntaan. Samalla kiristyvä kilpailu lisää markkinoinnin kustannuspaineita. Perinteinen lääke-esittely ei enää yksinään riitä kustannustehokkaasti vastaamaan lääkemarkkinoinnin tarpeisiin. Perinteisen lääkemarkkinoinnin täydentäjinä nähdäänkin nyt vahvasti e-detailing eli sähköinen lääke-esittely. E-detailingin hyödyntämiseen liittyvä tutkimus käsittelee sähköistä lääkemarkkinointia lähinnä teknologian ja toisaalta sen avulla esiteltävien tuotteiden näkökulmista. Käyttäjänäkökulmasta kiinnostavaa aihetta on tutkittu varsin vähän. Tässä työssä pyritäänkin siten ottamaan tarkastelun kohteeksi käyttäjälähtöisyys. Lääkemarkkinointiin ja e-detailingiin suhtautumisen kautta hahmotetaan sitä, minkälaisia haasteita sähköisen lääke-esittelyn hyödyntämiseen liittyy. Kaikkiaan tutkimus koostuu kahdesta erillisestä tutkimuspaperista ja ne yhteen vetävästä johdanto-osiosta. Haastattelututkimuksessa selvitettiin sitä, miten lääkärit suhtautuvat yleisesti lääkemarkkinointiin. Kvantitatiivisen kyselytutkimuksen avulla puolestaan vastattiin siihen, miten lääkärit suhtautuvat e-detailingiin. Tämän tutkimuksen johdanto-osan tehtävänä on siten peilata tutkimuspapereiden tuloksia toisiinsa ja toisaalta teoreettisen keskustelun pohjalta kehitetty viitekehystä vasten. Analyysin tuloksena voidaan todeta, että e-detailingiä hyödyntäessä asiakkaat tulisi segmentoida laajemmin kuin pelkästään ilmeisimpien kriteerien kuten iän tai erikoisalan mukaan. Todettiin, että lääkemarkkinointiin suhtautumisella on merkittävä vaikutus myös e-detailingiin suhtautumiseen. Lisäksi havaittiin, että teoreettisen viitekehyksen pohjana käytettyjä, tietojärjestelmätieteisiin pohjautuvia TAM-malleja (Technology Acceptance Model) voidaan onnistuneesti käyttää myös markkinoinnin, ehkä hieman ihmisläheisempien ongelmien ratkaisemiseen, kun mukaan otetaan markkinoinnin kirjallisuuden peruskäsitteitä kuten asiakaslähtöisyys tai segmentointi. Tehdyllä tutkimuksella on selkeää uutuusarvoa, ensinnäkin siksi, että asiakkaiden suhtautumista lääkemarkkinointiin ja sähköiseen lääke-esittelyyn on harvoin tutkittu näin laajasti. Toiseksi, e-detailingin tutkimuksessa käyttäjälähtöisyyden nostaminen keskiöön haasteista puhuttaessa on verrattain uutta. Kolmanneksi TAM-malleja hyödynnettiin tässä tutkimuksessa uudella tavalla markkinoinnin tutkimusongelman ratkaisemiseksi

Interactive engagement through travel and tourism social media groups : a social facilitation theory perspective

This research investigates perceptions about online content attractiveness, interactive engagement and real time conversation capabilities through travel and tourism social media groups. The study hypothesizes that these factors affect the social media subscribers’ attitudes toward the destinations’ social media groups, their intentions to revisit them, and could even influence their social facilitation behaviors. The data was gathered from 923 Facebook (Meta) subscribers who were members of travel and tourism groups. A partial least squares (PLS) approach was used to reveal the validity and reliability of the chosen constructs. The findings suggest that Facebook subscribers were drawn to those groups that featured aesthetically pleasing content and to the ones that facilitated their engagement. This contribution implies that today's marketers ought to embrace digital transformation processes that are disrupting social network services (SNSs). Content curators are expected to continuously present appealing content in their social media posts, to interact with their followers in a timely manner, and to encourage positive social facilitation behaviors through online and offline channels.peer-reviewe

Utilitarian motivations to engage with travel websites : an interactive technology adoption model

Purpose: This study aims to investigate perceptions about interactive travel websites. The researchers hypothesize that engaging content, the quality of information and source credibility has a significant effect on the consumers’ utilitarian motivations to continue using them in the future.Design/methodology/approach: A structured survey questionnaire was used to gather data from 1,287 online users, who were members of two popular social media groups. The methodology relied on a partial least squares (PLS) approach to analyze the causal relationships within an extended information adoption model.Findings: The findings reveal that the research participants perceive the utility of interactive travel websites and are willing to continue using them, particularly the responsive ones. The research participants suggest that these sites are easy-to-use, capture their attention, and offer them useful information on various tourism services. The results also indicate that they appreciate their source credibility (in terms of their trustworthiness and expertise of their curators) as well as their quality content.Research limitations/Implications: This study integrates key measures from the information adoption model (IAM) with a perceived interactivity construct, to better understand the individuals’ acceptance and use of interactive websites.Practical implications: This research implies that service businesses ought to have engaging websites that respond to consumer queries, in a timely manner. Hence, they should offer a seamless experience to their visitors to encourage loyal behaviors and revisit intentions to their online domains.Originality: To the best of our knowledge, there are no other studies that incorporated an interactive engagement construct with key constructs from IAM and from the technology acceptance model (TAM). This contribution underlines the importance of measuring the individuals’ perceptions about the engagement capabilities of interactive media when investigating information and/or technology adoption.peer-reviewe