Designing appliances for mobile commerce and retailtainment

In the emerging world of the new consumer and the `anytime, anywhere' mobile commerce, appliances are located at the collision point of the retailer and consumer agendas. The consequence of this is twofold: on the one hand appliances that were previously considered plain and utilitarian become entertainment devices and on the other, for the effective design of consumer appliances it becomes paramount to employ multidisciplinary expertise. In this paper, we discuss consumer perceptions of a retailtainment commerce system developed in collaboration between interactivity designers, information systems engineers, hardware and application developers, marketing strategists, product development teams, social scientists and retail professionals. We discuss the approached employed for the design of the consumer experience and its implications for appliance design

Exploration of location-based services adoption

As mobile technologies become more ubiquitous in the general population, it is reasonable to assume that individuals will consume services and software to enhance their aspirations and entertainment desires. This paper discusses a controlled experiment to explore aspects of user perceptions of their use of location-based services. This study examines a location-based service prototype experiment and analysis based on the UTAUT model. The results show significant indicators that suggest behavior patterns of early adopters of location-based services are being observed. We discuss these influences and attempt to explain their significance. Moreover, more curiously we discuss why some of our model was unsupported and postulate why

Psychological principles of successful aging technologies: A mini-review

Based on resource-oriented conceptions of successful life-span development, we propose three principles for evaluating assistive technology: (a) net resource release; (b) person specificity, and (c) proximal versus distal frames of evaluation. We discuss how these general principles can aid the design and evaluation of assistive technology in adulthood and old age, and propose two technological strategies, one targeting sensorimotor and the other cognitive functioning. The sensorimotor strategy aims at releasing cognitive resources such as attention and working memory by reducing the cognitive demands of sensory or sensorimotor aspects of performance. The cognitive strategy attempts to provide adaptive and individualized cuing structures orienting the individual in time and space by providing prompts that connect properties of the environment to the individual's action goals. We argue that intelligent assistive technology continuously adjusts the balance between `environmental support' and `self-initiated processing' in person-specific and aging-sensitive ways, leading to enhanced allocation of cognitive resources. Furthermore, intelligent assistive technology may foster the generation of formerly latent cognitive resources by activating developmental reserves (plasticity). We conclude that `lifespan technology', if co-constructed by behavioral scientists, engineers, and aging individuals, offers great promise for improving both the transition from middle adulthood to old age and the degree of autonomy in old age in present and future generations. Copyright (C) 2008 S. Karger AG, Basel

LOCATION-BASED MARKETING: CONCEPTS, TECHNOLOGIES AND SERVICES

siirretty Doriast

eFRIEND: an ethical framework for intelligent environments development

Intelligent environments aim to provide context-sensitive services to humans in the physical spaces in which they work and live. While the ethical dimensions of these systems have been considered, this is an aspect which requires further analysis. A literature review shows that these approaches are disconnected from each other, and that they are making little impact on real systems being built. This article provides a solution to both of these problems. It synthesises the ethical issues addressed by previous work and highlights other important concerns which have been overlooked so far. Furthermore, it proposes an alternative, more holistic approach that can be used to guide the development of intelligent environments. The validity of the framework is demonstrated by its integration into an actual project

Buy Now

How Amazon combined branding and relationship marketing with massive distribution infrastructure to become the ultimate service brand in the digital economy. Amazon is ubiquitous in our daily lives—we stream movies and television on Amazon Prime Video, converse with Alexa, receive messages on our smartphone about the progress of our latest orders. In Buy Now, Emily West examines Amazon's consumer-facing services to investigate how Amazon as a brand grew so quickly and inserted itself into so many aspects of our lives even as it faded into the background, becoming a sort of infrastructure that can be taken for granted. Amazon promotes the comfort and care of its customers (but not its workers) to become the ultimate service brand in the digital economy. West shows how Amazon has cultivated personalized, intimate relationships with consumers that normalize its outsized influence on our selves and our communities. She describes the brand's focus on speedy and seamless ecommerce delivery, represented in the materiality of the branded brown box; the positioning of its book retailing, media streaming, and smart speakers as services rather than sales; and the brand's image control strategies. West considers why pushback against Amazon's ubiquity and market power has come mainly from among Amazon's workers rather than its customers or competitors, arguing that Amazon's brand logic fragments consumers as a political bloc. West's innovative account, the first to examine Amazon from a critical media studies perspective, offers a cautionary cultural study of bigness in today's economy