A business model approach towards the understanding of daily deals within Internet distribution systems

The business model approach is making a slow, but steady footprint in tourism research, and can offer a fresh perspective and a viable level-of-analysis for broader networks of internet distribution systems. Among those, the researchers have devoted limited attention to studying the daily deal providers and their position next to the online travel agencies. More importantly, the daily deal providers developed a unique business model whose characteristics, contrary to early predictions, enabled them to proliferate post-recession and maintain their position. The current study uses the business model approach to observe the original dimensions and business model elements, to identify distinct characteristics of generic and niche daily deal providers, and to benchmark them against the established online travel agencies. The business model approach enhances the understanding of the overlooked niche daily-deal providers in internet distribution systems. Further, the paper provides a comparison of the distinct business model characteristics in internet distribution systems to help facilitate the formulation of a unique value proposition for each of them. Ultimately, the authors acknowledge limited possibilities for cooperation between the providers and discuss substantive directions of daily deal and internet distribution systems business model transformations of the future

Designing Promotion Incentive to Embrace Social Sharing: Evidence from Field and Lab Experiments

Despite the increasing connectivity between customers enabled by digital technologies, there is an absence of research investigating how firms should redesign the promotion incentives to engage customers as both ‘purchaser’ and ‘sharer’ in this social media era. In this study, we conduct a large-scale field experiment and two lab experiments to test the effectiveness of different incentive designs (varied by shareability and quantity of promo codes) in driving social sharing senders’ purchase and referrals. Providing senders with one non-shareable code significantly increases their purchase likelihood. In comparison, the senders who receive one shareable code are less likely to purchase themselves, but are much more likely to make successful referrals. We further conduct two lab experiments, which replicate the field experiment findings and explore the underlying mechanisms. We find that the exclusivity perception and social motive triggered by various incentive designs mediate and explain their effect on sender’s purchase and referrals. Our study extends prior IS literature on social sharing that has focused on sharing information to the domain of sharing incentives, providing implications to firms on how to design promotional incentive that accommodates the dual role of customers as purchasers and sharers and sheds light on the motives underlying social sharing

Three Essays on Big Data Consumer Analytics in E-Commerce

Consumers are increasingly spending more time and money online. Business to consumer e-commerce is growing on average of 20 percent each year and has reached 1.5 trillion dollars globally in 2014. Given the scale and growth of consumer online purchase and usage data, firms\u27 ability to understand and utilize this data is becoming an essential competitive strategy. But, large-scale data analytics in e-commerce is still at its nascent stage and there is much to be learned in all aspects of e-commerce. Successful analytics on big data often require a combination of both data mining and econometrics: data mining to reduce or structure (from unstructured data such as text, photo, and video) large-scale data and econometric analyses to truly understand and assign causality to interesting patterns. In my dissertation, I study how firms can better utilize big data analytics and specific applications of machine learning techniques for improved e-commerce using theory-driven econometrical and experimental studies. I show that e-commerce managers can now formulate data-driven strategies for many aspect of business including cross-selling via recommenders on sales sites to increasing brand awareness and leads via social media content-engineered-marketing. These results are readily actionable with far-reaching economical consequences

To post or not to post: examining motivations of brand/product-related engagement types on social networking sites.

At present, consumers use social networking sites to engage with brands and brand related content, this study examines consumers’ motivations for brand/product- related engagement on social networking sites. This thesis develops three motivation frameworks to explain each brand/product-related engagement type: consuming, contributing and creating. The main objectives are: 1) to understand what motivates consumers to engage with different brand/product-related posts on social networking sites, and 2) to understand the relationship between brand/product-related engagement types and social networking sites usage. A mixed-methods approach is employed through establishing exploratory sequential research design. First, consumers’ motivations drawn from psychology and brand/product-related engagement literature are defined through using semi- structured interviews (N=12) in order to define the factors behind each brand/product-related engagement type on social networking sites. Then, the findings of semi-structured interview analysis lead to the development of web-based questionnaires. Web-based online questionnaires (N= 225) were conducted in order to examine motivations of each brand/product-related engagement type on social networking sites and the relationship between brand/product-related post engagement and social networking site usage. A survey of 225 respondents was conducted and analysed using quantitative method. The findings shed light on the reasons behind consumers’ brand/product-related engagement types (e.g. consuming contributing, creating) on social networking sites, and the relationship between consumers’ social media site usage and brand/product- related engagement behaviour. A key contribution of this thesis is to construct five models: 1) a motivation framework for consuming brand/product-related posts from brands which aims to explain what motivates consumers to consume (e.g. read, view) brand/product-related posts from brands; 2) a motivation framework for consuming brand/product-related posts from other people; 3) a motivation framework for contributing brand/product-related posts from brands and other people that examines factors behind consumers’ contribution behaviour to brand/product- related posts through sharing, commenting, liking, favouriting, tagging, etc; 4) a motivation framework examining the motives of consumers for creating positive brand/product-related posts on social networking sites; and 5) a motivation framework defining the motives of consumers to create negative brand/product-related posts on social networking sites. The findings also define brand/product-related engagement types and social networking site usage. The relationship between social networking site usage and brand/product-related engagement is only found for two engagement types: consuming and contributing

Transforming Digital Traces of Consumer Behaviors Into Communicative Content in Product Design

The widespread digitization of consumers’ daily lives creates a plethora of digital traces of consumers’ product-related behaviors. These traces have the potential to be turned into meaningful communicative and observable content by the services that possess them. For example, Spotify displays what users’ friends are listening to; Hotels.com shows how many other users are currently viewing a particular hotel; and crowdfunding platform Gofundme.com exhibits the names of recent backers for a given cause. As such, digitization has profoundly increased the potential observability of consumers’ product-related behaviors. Researchers from both the Information Systems and the Marketing disciplines have taken an interest in investigating the impact of such digitally observable behaviors, and nascent research has found them to have a significant impact on the choices of those exposed to it. However, this dissertation demonstrates that the phenomenon is undertheorized and lacks empirical insights to inform the future design of digital products and services with behavior-based information

Enabling experiences - The role of tour operators and tour leaders in creating and managing package tourism experiences

siirretty Doriast

The Role of Knowledge Share, Satisfaction, Social Commerce Usage Experience on Smart Mobile Device User’s Purchase Intentions: Evidence from South Korean Consumers

This thesis analyses the factors that contribute to consumers’ intention to make online purchases via smart mobile devices. To examine consumers’ purchase intentions, frameworks described in the marketing and information system literatures were integrated, and a theoretical framework was then proposed. In total, 498 Korean consumers were recruited to participate in the study, and structural equation modelling was used to examine the proposed model. The results confirm that (1) consumers’ mobile commerce usage experience positively influences their usage experience with social commerce sites, their satisfaction toward social commerce sites, and their intentions to share knowledge; (2) usage experience with social commerce sites has a significant impact on consumers’ intention to purchase; (3) satisfaction toward social commerce sites has a positive influence on consumers’ intention to purchase; and (4) consumers’ intention to share knowledge positively influences their intention to purchase. Implications are drawn for both academics and practitioners, providing directions for future research