Sekcijas “Mārketings un loģistika” Ekonomikas un vadības fakultātē (1. februāris, 2016): Referātu tēzes

In recent years, there has been a significant increase of mobile devices usage (e.g. phones, tablets), consequently the demand of network capacity is higher than ever before. In large crowd events (such as football matches, concerts, accidents, etc), current content distribution is done in a host-centric manner where users have to retrieve content from external servers using the 3G-Uplink. This result in problems like Up-link congestion when there is an unexpected boost in data traffic. The prototype developed within this master thesis project, implements a new control layer in mobile devices, which can be used in events with large crowds as an alternative solution for optimizing content distribution. The usage of this solution decreases the amount of data sent over the 3G-uplink to retrieve similar contents, since they can be obtained from nearby peers using short range transport technologies. The alternative solution is based on information-centric networking paradigm. Using this approach in Large Crowd events, popular content could be cached in users’ devices creating new sources of content within the crowd. Afterwards, these copies could be shared between users using P2P-like communication over short range transport technologies available in nowadays’ mobile devices. In this new content distribution scheme, the more popular the content gets the more chances it could be retrieved from a cached copy within the crowd and, this could lead to a less amount of data transferred over the 3G uplin

Structural limitations of learning in a crowd: communication vulnerability and information diffusion in MOOCs

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) bring together a global crowd of thousands of learners for several weeks or months. In theory, the openness and scale of MOOCs can promote iterative dialogue that facilitates group cognition and knowledge construction. Using data from two successive instances of a popular business strategy MOOC, we filter observed communication patterns to arrive at the "significant" interaction networks between learners and use complex network analysis to explore the vulnerability and information diffusion potential of the discussion forums. We find that different discussion topics and pedagogical practices promote varying levels of 1) "significant" peer-to-peer engagement, 2) participant inclusiveness in dialogue, and ultimately, 3) modularity, which impacts information diffusion to prevent a truly "global" exchange of knowledge and learning. These results indicate the structural limitations of large-scale crowd-based learning and highlight the different ways that learners in MOOCs leverage, and learn within, social contexts. We conclude by exploring how these insights may inspire new developments in online education.Comment: Pre-print version. Published version available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep0644

CURRENT STATE MARKET INTERNET TECHNOLOGIES: DETERMINANTS OF MARKET DEVELOPMENT AND NEW APPROACHES TO MARKETING ACTIVITY

In the article there were presented and analysed the main determinants of the development of Internet commerce. The factors of the market were discovered, which include increasing the number of Internet users, increase in purchases by online shops and popularization of mobile devices to make purchases. It was considered the role of social networks in the process of online shopping. Found that social networks not only communicate in this environment, but also form new information space within communities, influencing purchasing behavior of consumers. It is shown that social networks have become from a channel of communication in the sales products channel. Also, it was analysed the development of network infrastructure, which includes payment systems and site-aggregators and their role in the process of online purchase. Phenomenon of sales omnichannels that formed in the modern network environment was researched. Based on the analysed determinants own approach to marketing activities, namely crowd marketing was proposed. It was created dual-circuit model of the network communication influence, which is the basis for the concept of crowd marketing

An Abstract Formal Basis for Digital Crowds

Crowdsourcing, together with its related approaches, has become very popular in recent years. All crowdsourcing processes involve the participation of a digital crowd, a large number of people that access a single Internet platform or shared service. In this paper we explore the possibility of applying formal methods, typically used for the verification of software and hardware systems, in analysing the behaviour of a digital crowd. More precisely, we provide a formal description language for specifying digital crowds. We represent digital crowds in which the agents do not directly communicate with each other. We further show how this specification can provide the basis for sophisticated formal methods, in particular formal verification.Comment: 32 pages, 4 figure

Social innovation practices: focus on success factors for crowdfunding

This article explores what are the success factor for interaction with platforms of crowdfunding in Italy. Through a Principal Component Analysis we outline three variables and through a multiple regression analysis we demonstrate that the interaction on crowdfunding is positive correlated with socio-economic propensity and cultural level. The analysis has been conducted on a sample of 316 of projects funded in the Crowdfunding platform Produzioni dal Basso, the first platform born in Italy. We draw on SD logic and relationship marketing to underscore the importance of networks of actors and integration to create a co-creation of value. This view emphasizes the social and economic factors that influence, and are influenced by, crowdfundin