Consumer perceptions of internet retail service quality

Service quality is increasingly recognized as an important aspect of electronic commerce (e-commerce).Because the online comparison of the technical features of products is essentially costless, feasible and easier than comparisons of products through traditional channels, service quality is the key determinant for successful e-commerce.The purpose of this study is to explore consumers’ perceptions of Internet retail service quality.A number of dimensions have been described in the literatures, however six dimensions that are important to consumers in their assessment of the quality of Internet retailers were identified.These are reliability (how well an online retailer does in terms of meeting expectations regarding order fulfilment), access (Internet retailer’s ability to provide communication access and a variety of products from anywhere in the world), security (relating to perceptions of trust in the online retailer’s integrity regarding financial and privacy issues), efficiency (refers to the speed of search and downloading and prompt reply to enquiries), ease of use (how easy the Internet retailer’s website is for consumers to conduct, search and navigate) and information (quantity and credibility of information provider by the online retailer).Other objective is to highlight how online retailers can use the information from this study to enhance their service quality.Findings from the study could be used as the basis for the development of e-service quality for Internet retailing

Prospect of E-Commerce for Cut Flowers in Malaysia: Consumers' Perspectives

E-commerce is not well established in Malaysia despite its overwhelming invasion in the marketing of products and services worldwide and the potential benefits it offers. The study examines the prospect of Internet marketing of flowers in Malaysia from the consumers' perspectives. The research objectives are: to determine the pattern of flowers consumption and marketing; to assess the socio-economic profile of the flower's consumer in Malaysia; to assess Malaysian consumers' perception and attitude towards e-commerce; and to identify the factors that determine the adoption of electronic market for flowers. An online survey was conducted through www.bluehyppo.com and www.jaring.my to solicit consumer profile as well as their behavioral dimensions with regards to flower consumption and marketing behavior. A total of 357 respondents participated in the survey. The findings show that currently, the usage of Internet as a medium of transaction is still minimal. Generally, Malaysian consumers exhibit positive perception toward e- marketing for flowers. The pertinent factors underlying the consumers' decision framework are: delivery quality, speed of information; secure payment, sensory perception, quality of access and privacy. However, the study indicates that the relationship between the decisions to adopt e-commerce is positively related to delivery quality and payment security, whereas the relationship is negative with regards to privacy. Moreover, the study also found that socio-economics factors such as gender, marital status and monthly income are significantly related to e-commerce adoption decision. On the basis of these findings, an integrated approach to research in Internet shopping is highly recommended

Authentication System using Secret Sharing

Security using Authentication system is an important concern in the field of information technology. It is an important thing as per as concern to the ruling of internet over people today. The growth in the usage of internet has increased the demand for fast and accurate user identification and authentication. This New threats, risks and vulnerabilities emphasize the need of a strong authentication system. The cryptography is a secret sharing scheme where a secret data gets divided into number of pieces called shares and not a single share discloses any information about secret data. There are some automated methods to identify and verify the user based on the physiological characteristics. To deal with such methods, there is a technology called biometrics which measures and statistically analyses the biological data. The biometric samples which are stored in the database as a secret are unique for each user so that no one can predict those samples. A biometric authentication system provides automatic authentication of an individual on the basis of unique features or characteristics possessed by an individual. A cover image is fused with secret image; fused image is divided into n shares. k possible shares able to construct secret image. PSNR parameter are used for image quality The authentication system can be stronger using multiple factors for authentication process. The application like Aadhar Card uses more than one factor for authentication. There is some difficulty with authentication systems such as user privacy considerations in case of multiple biometric features, huge size databases and centralized database which may create security threats. To address such tribulations, the Authentication System using Secret Sharing is proposed, Secret sharing splits the centralized database across the different locations. This helps in reducing the database size and removal of threats in centralized database. Also user privacy is maintained due to the decentralized database

Internet of Things Architectures, Technologies, Applications, Challenges, and Future Directions for Enhanced Living Environments and Healthcare Systems: A Review

Internet of Things (IoT) is an evolution of the Internet and has been gaining increased attention from researchers in both academic and industrial environments. Successive technological enhancements make the development of intelligent systems with a high capacity for communication and data collection possible, providing several opportunities for numerous IoT applications, particularly healthcare systems. Despite all the advantages, there are still several open issues that represent the main challenges for IoT, e.g., accessibility, portability, interoperability, information security, and privacy. IoT provides important characteristics to healthcare systems, such as availability, mobility, and scalability, that o er an architectural basis for numerous high technological healthcare applications, such as real-time patient monitoring, environmental and indoor quality monitoring, and ubiquitous and pervasive information access that benefits health professionals and patients. The constant scientific innovations make it possible to develop IoT devices through countless services for sensing, data fusing, and logging capabilities that lead to several advancements for enhanced living environments (ELEs). This paper reviews the current state of the art on IoT architectures for ELEs and healthcare systems, with a focus on the technologies, applications, challenges, opportunities, open-source platforms, and operating systems. Furthermore, this document synthesizes the existing body of knowledge and identifies common threads and gaps that open up new significant and challenging future research directions.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

СИНТЕЗ МОДЕЛІ СОЦІАЛЬНИХ САНКЦІЙ ДЛЯ ЗАБЕЗПЕЧЕННЯ СТІЙКОСТІ ВІРТУАЛЬНИХ СПІЛЬНОТ У СОЦІАЛЬНИХ МЕРЕЖАХ В УМОВАХ АНТАГОНІСТИЧНОГО СЕРЕДОВИЩА

The rapid integration of virtual communications into social life actualizes the need to create a safe and comfortable environment for the communication of virtual community users. The purpose of the study is to increase the level of information security of social virtual groups by substantiating and formalizing the features of using social control tools to manage the dynamics of the virtual community in the information space. The process of the virtual community evolution in the conditions of an antagonistic environment, as well as the functionality of management and ensuring the stability of the virtual community in social Internet services were formalized on the basis of Mono model and population dynamics model. The impact of the share of destructive publications that pose a threat to information security of the social community; the depth of communication between the actors of the studied community and the participants of the antagonistic community; content quality indicators were determined as the parameters of the author’s model. The components of social control in social Internet services and the classification of violators of information security were further developed.Швидка інтеграція віртуальних комунікацій у суспільне життя актуалізує потребу у створенні безпечного й комфортного середовища для комунікації користувачів віртуальних спільнот. Метою дослідження є підвищення рівня інформаційної безпеки соціальних віртуальних груп шляхом обґрунтування та формалізації особливостей застосування інструментів соціального контролю для управління динамікою віртуальної спільноти в інформаційному просторі. На основі моделей Моно та популяційної динаміки формалізовано процес еволюції віртуальної спільноти в умовах антагоністичного середовища, а також функціонал управління та забезпечення стійкістю віртуальної спільноти в соціальних інтернет-сервісах. Параметрами моделі визначено вплив частки деструктивних публікацій, які становлять загрозу інформаційній безпеці соціальній спільноті; глибина комунікації акторів досліджуваної спільноти з учасниками антагоністичної спільноти; показники якості контенту. У дослідженні набули подальшого розвитку компоненти соціального контролю в соціальних інтернет-сервісах та класифікація порушників інформаційної безпеки

Australian digital inclusion index: discussion paper

One in five Australians, around 4 million people, are not online and not able to take advantage of the education, health and social benefits of being connected. Lack of digital connectivity has negative consequences for people’s social and economic participation, as well as their access to services and information. In a digital age, digital inclusion of the populace is also important to our nation’s economic and social performance. Digital inclusion is a complex and challenging problem for policy-makers, practitioners, and researchers. While the digital divide has narrowed, it has deepened, and as the internet increasingly becomes the default medium for communicating, informing and interacting, the disadvantages of being offline increase. Digital inclusion is not just about computers, the internet or even technology. It is about using online and mobile technologies as channels to improve skills, to enhance quality of life, to drive education and to promote economic wellbeing across all elements of society. Digital inclusion is fundamentally about social and economic participation. Access and affordability can present barriers to digital inclusion. However, an individual’s digital engagement is also affected by digital literacy (skills and ability), whether a person can see potential benefits of engagement and motivation and attitude, including concerns about safety and security. The Australian Digital Inclusion Index will be used to measure the extent of digital inclusion in Australia. • Telstra, the Swinburne Institute for Social Research and the Centre for Social Impact have joined forces to develop a new national measure of digital inclusion – the Australian Digital Inclusion Index. This discussion paper sets out our general approach to developing the Index, its objectives and key themes and provides examples of indicators that may form the basis of the index. The paper aims to encourage potential users of the index to provide feedback and suggestions to guide the development of the index to make it as robust and useful as possible

A framework for development of android mobile electronic prescription transfer applications in compliance with security requirements mandated by the Australian healthcare industry

This thesis investigates mobile electronic transfer of prescription (ETP) in compliance with the security requirements mandated by the Australian healthcare industry and proposes a framework for the development of an Android mobile electronic prescription transfer application. Furthermore, and based upon the findings and knowledge from constructing this framework, another framework is also derived for assessing Android mobile ETP applications for their security compliance. The centralised exchange model-based ETP solution currently used in the Australian healthcare industry is an expensive solution for on-going use. With challenges such as an aging population and the rising burden of chronic disease, the cost of the current ETP solution’s operational infrastructure is certain to rise in the future. In an environment where it is increasingly beneficial for patients to engage in and manage their own information and subsequent care, this current solution fails to offer the patient direct access to their electronic prescription information. The current system also fails to incorporate certain features that would dramatically improve the quality of the patient’s care and safety, i.e. alerts for the patient’s drug allergies, harmful dosage and script expiration. Over a decade old, the current ETP solution was essentially designed and built to meet legislation and regulatory requirements, with change-averting its highest priority. With little, if any, provision for future growth and innovation, it was not designed to cater to the needs of the ETP process. This research identifies the gap within the current ETP implementation (i.e. dependency on infrastructure, significant on-going cost and limited availability of the patient’s medication history) and proposes a framework for building a secure mobile ETP solution on the Android mobile operating system platform which will address the identified gap. The literature review part of this thesis examined the significance of ETP for the nation’s larger initiative to provide an improved and better maintainable healthcare system. The literature review also revealed the stance of each jurisdiction, from legislative and regulatory perspectives, in transitioning to the use of a fully electronic ETP solution. It identified the regulatory mandates of each jurisdiction for ETP as well as the security standards by which the current ETP implementation is iii governed so as to conform to those regulatory mandates. The literature review part of the thesis essentially identified and established how the Australian healthcare industry’s various prescription-related legislations and regulations are constructed, and the complexity of this construction for eTP. The jurisdictional regulatory mandates identified in the literature review translate into a set of security requirements. These requirements establish the basis of the guiding framework for the development of a security-compliant Android mobile ETP application. A number of experimentations were conducted focusing on the native security features of the Android operating system, as well as wireless communication technologies such as NFC and Bluetooth, in order to propose an alternative mobile ETP solution with security assurance comparable to the current ETP implementation. The employment of a proof-of-concept prototype such as this alongside / coupled with a series of iterative experimentations strengthens the validity and practicality of the proposed framework. The first experiment successfully proved that the Android operating system has sufficient encryption capabilities, in compliance with the security mandates, to secure the electronic prescription information from the data at rest perspective. The second experiment indicated that the use of NFC technology to implement the alternative transfer mechanism for exchanging electronic prescription information between ETP participating devices is not practical. The next iteration of the experimentation using Bluetooth technology proved that it can be utilised as an alternative electronic prescription transfer mechanism to the current approach using the Internet. These experiment outcomes concluded the partial but sufficient proofof- concept prototype for this research. Extensive document analysis and iterative experimentations showed that the framework constructed by this research can guide the development of an alternative mobile ETP solution with both comparable security assurance to and better access to the patient’s medication history than the current solution. This alternative solution would present no operational dependence upon infrastructure and its associated, ongoing cost to the nation’s healthcare expenditure. In addition, use of this mobile ETP alternative has the potential to change the public’s perception (i.e. acceptance from regulatory and security perspectives) of mobile healthcare solutions, thereby paving the way for further innovation and future enhancements in eHealth

From Sensor to Observation Web with Environmental Enablers in the Future Internet

This paper outlines the grand challenges in global sustainability research and the objectives of the FP7 Future Internet PPP program within the Digital Agenda for Europe. Large user communities are generating significant amounts of valuable environmental observations at local and regional scales using the devices and services of the Future Internet. These communities’ environmental observations represent a wealth of information which is currently hardly used or used only in isolation and therefore in need of integration with other information sources. Indeed, this very integration will lead to a paradigm shift from a mere Sensor Web to an Observation Web with semantically enriched content emanating from sensors, environmental simulations and citizens. The paper also describes the research challenges to realize the Observation Web and the associated environmental enablers for the Future Internet. Such an environmental enabler could for instance be an electronic sensing device, a web-service application, or even a social networking group affording or facilitating the capability of the Future Internet applications to consume, produce, and use environmental observations in cross-domain applications. The term ?envirofied? Future Internet is coined to describe this overall target that forms a cornerstone of work in the Environmental Usage Area within the Future Internet PPP program. Relevant trends described in the paper are the usage of ubiquitous sensors (anywhere), the provision and generation of information by citizens, and the convergence of real and virtual realities to convey understanding of environmental observations. The paper addresses the technical challenges in the Environmental Usage Area and the need for designing multi-style service oriented architecture. Key topics are the mapping of requirements to capabilities, providing scalability and robustness with implementing context aware information retrieval. Another essential research topic is handling data fusion and model based computation, and the related propagation of information uncertainty. Approaches to security, standardization and harmonization, all essential for sustainable solutions, are summarized from the perspective of the Environmental Usage Area. The paper concludes with an overview of emerging, high impact applications in the environmental areas concerning land ecosystems (biodiversity), air quality (atmospheric conditions) and water ecosystems (marine asset management)