Managing uncertainty in service production with mobile systems - Case waste management company

Consumers’ product evaluation, choice, and use are driven by both utilitarian and hedonic considerations. Digital games, that are typically considered to be a homogenous product category, are often claimed to be high on hedonic value. However, there is a multitude of digital games genres available. Differences in their appeal, gameplay, and purpose in practice indicate that digital games vary significantly in their proposed outcome. In this research paper, we present results from an observational survey study in which digital games were investigated at subcategory level. We found differences in weights consumers place on hedonic and utilitarian value at the product subcategory level, and also observed differences between evaluations of experienced and inexperienced consumers. The results indicate that subcategories act as a more assuring source of information than the general product category of digital games. Furthermore, higher gaming experience may lead to more optimistic evaluation on subcategories. Rather than grouping digital games into one category and treating them all as hedonic products, they should be discussed at their specific subcategory level, by researchers and practitioners, alike

The hedonic and utilitarian value of digital games at product category level

The diffusion of ICT applications in virtual worlds as Second Life (SL), Forterra, There and Multiverse created many interesting research opportunities, particularly in knowledge management and e-learning. Virtual worlds are strongly immersive and produce entrepreneurial and social initiatives in which personal, professional and business relationships move quickly and could be transferred into the real environment. Enterprises, Municipalities, Universities and Chambers of Commerce are increasing the use of SL enforcing the methodological relevance of networking, a new approach that bases its impact, for the development of business, on the creation and maintenance of net links. This paper will consider the case of Perting Ltd, the simulated enterprise created in 2001 by Forlì Faculty of Economics, that established in February 2008 its premises in SL and started managing businesses in different sectors. The main subject of this analysis is the use of virtual reality in management not only for business but also in research and didactics. In managerial theories the research would be an opportunity for a new perspective to know the symmetries among ICT business platforms and to understand, in a better way, how the learning process could support organizations in their approach to the market of internet relationships

The Role of Gender in the Hedonic and Utilitarian Value of Digital Games

Consumers’ product evaluation, choice, and use are driven by both hedonic (HED) and utilitarian (UT) considerations. Digital games that are typically considered a homogenous product category are often conceived as masculine information systems the use of which is dominated by the men. In this research paper, we present results from a survey study where the impact of gender was investigated at the game subcategory level. The results indicate that gender role models are still strongly involved in the perceived value of digital games except that they differ based on the game subcategories. In conclusion, the greatest differences between genders can be found on masculine games where men emphasize these games’ HED/UT value. The differences can be explained by men’s higher relevant experience rather than by gameplay elements

Impact of online consumer ratings on mobile app demand

People can now freely interact online in order to gather and share information about products and services. Consequently, it becomes very important for firms to understand how these developments shape demand. Online consumer ratings are an evaluative, numerical form of eWOM that reduces the information asymmetry for current and potential customers on the Internet and is thus expected to impact sales. Because of this, several studies have investigated their effect on demand since it is still not clear the extent to which their valence, volume and/or dispersion affect product sales. This dissertation studies the impact of online consumer ratings on demand by determining the effects of valence and volume of mobile apps ratings on sales at two online stores, in the last trimester of 2015. Additionally, it also investigates the potentially moderating effects of apps characteristics, namely perceived hedonicity, thereby making a novel contribution to the topic. Consequently, 360 surveys were collected to assess numerically the apps’ perceived hedonicity. Furthermore, ratings and publicly available data of 250 apps was collected from Google Play and Amazon App Store to be evaluated in a regression analysis. The results show that the volume is what matter on apps’ demand since the average rating was not significant in the regressions. Therefore, firms should focus on increasing the number of ratings regardless of the valence. Still, the hedonic/utilitarian concept is a moderator for the average rating and the volume, thus the more hedonic the app the fewer will be impact of both variables on sales.As pessoas agora podem interagir livremente na Internet, a fim de reunir e compartilhar informações sobre produtos e serviços. Consequentemente, é muito importante para que as empresas entender como estes desenvolvimentos afetam a demanda. Online consumer ratings são uma avaliativa numérica do eWOM que reduz a assimetria de informação para os clientes na Internet e, portanto, se espera que impactem as vendas. Devido a isso, vários estudos têm investigado o seu efeito, pois ainda não está claro em que medida a sua valência, volume e / ou dispersão afeta as vendas. Esta dissertação estuda o impacto dos online consumer ratings sobre a demanda das aplicações móveis em duas lojas on-line no último trimestre de 2015. Além disso, também investiga os efeitos de moderação potenciais, do grado hedônico percebido, adicionando assim uma nova contribuição para o tópico. Consequentemente, 360 questionários foram coletados para avaliar numericamente o grado hedônico das aplicações. Além disso, os ratings e os dados publicamente disponíveis de 250 aplicativos foram coletados no Google Play e Amazon App Store para ser avaliados em uma análise de regressão. Os resultados mostram que o volume é o que importa na demanda dos aplicativos por quanto a valência não foi significativa nas regressões. Portanto, as empresas devem se concentrar em aumentar o número de ratings, independentemente da valência. Ainda assim, o conceito hedônico /utilitário é um moderador para a valência e o volume, assim, o mais hedônico o aplicativo o menor impacto das duas variáveis sobre as vendas

When Do We Want to Work and Play? The Influence of Hedonic and Utilitarian Capabilities on the Evaluation of Convergent Goods and Services

abstract: Convergent products are products that offer multiple capabilities from different product categories. For example, a smartphone acts as an internet browser, personal assistant, and telephone. Marketers are constantly considering the value of adding new functionalities to these convergent products. This work examines convergent products in terms of the hedonic and utilitarian value they provide along with whether the addition is related to the base product, revealing complex and nuanced interactions. This work contributes to marketing theory by advancing knowledge in the convergent products and product design literatures, specifically by showing how hedonic and utilitarian value and addition relatedness interact to impact the evaluation of convergent goods and services. Looking at a greater complexity of convergent product types also helps to resolve prior conflicting findings in the convergent products and hedonic and utilitarian value literatures. Additionally, this work examines the role of justification in convergent products, showing how different additions can help consumers to justify the evaluation of a convergent product. A three-item measure for justification was developed for this research, and can be used by future researchers to better understand the effects of justification in consumption. This work is also the first to explicitly compare effects between convergent goods and convergent services. Across two experiments, it is found that these two products types (convergent goods versus convergent services) are evaluated differently. For convergent goods, consumers evaluate additions based on anticipated practicality/productivity and on how easily they are justified. For convergent services, consumers evaluate additions based on perceptions of performance risk associated with the convergent service, which stems from the intangibility of these services. The insights gleaned from the research allow specific recommendations to be made to managers regarding convergent offerings. This research also examines the applicability of hedonic and utilitarian value to a special type of advertising appeal: reward appeals. Reward appeals are appeals that focus on peripheral benefits from purchasing or using a product, such as time or money savings, and make suggestions on how to use these savings. This work examines potential interactions between reward appeals and other common advertising elements: social norms information and role clarity messaging.Dissertation/ThesisPh.D. Business Administration 201

Hedonic Information Systems: What We Know and What We Don\u27t Know

Users spend an increasing amount of time with pleasure-oriented technologies, such as video games or digital entertainment services, and these systems are of growing relevance as a business segment. In the light of this development, the information systems (IS) discipline has been criticized for dedicating insufficient research effort to these types of system, which are referred to as hedonic IS. Therefore, we conducted a descriptive literature review within the top 40 IS journals to summarize past research on hedonic IS and to identify research gaps. To structure our analysis, we separated the studies in our sample between those taking a user and those taking a provider perspective, assigned them to the phases of two life cycle models, and categorized the studies according to the investigated system type. The results reveal that hedonic IS research mostly takes a user perspective, predominantly addresses the (continued) use phase of the user life cycle, and investigates five different system types. Based on our findings, we point out promising opportunities for future research. Thus, our review may help researchers to plan further studies on hedonic IS

Attitude towards branded mobile applications and reuse intention : the moderating effect of gender and prior brand involvement

Mobile applications (apps) have created a significant interest among advertisers and marketers, mostly because of their positive impact on user´s attitude and high level of engagement towards the brand. This study analyses the impact of gender-specific tendencies in the assessment of utilitarian and hedonic oriented branded mobile apps, highlighting that utilitarian content is favoured when intending to reuse mobile applications. The thesis strives to understand customer’s attitude towards branded mobile applications via pre-test and post-test survey focusing on four mobile branded applications- Google Map, Snapchat, Uber and Tinder. Pearson correlation and linear regression are used to understand the positive relationship between attitude and reuse intention and one-way Anova is used to understand gender preferences towards utilitarian and hedonic content of branded mobile apps. Results indicate that individual’s attitudes are strongly positively related with their reuse intention. Likewise, for Gender, men & women both have a higher tendency to reuse utilitarian apps, as contrary to the developed hypothesis that women mostly prefer hedonic app rather than utilitarian app. Additionally, the results conclude that the level of prior brand involvement may not necessarily moderate individual’s immediate response towards branded mobile application and reuse intention. Finally, implications associated with the findings are discussed with respect to clarifying possible outcomes obtained during result analysis and initiate solutions to improve further studies in this area.Este estudo analisa o impacto de tendências específicas de cada género na avaliação das marcas de aplicações móveis utilitaristas e hedónicas, realçando que a informação de conteúdo utilitarista é preferida no que toca à reutilização de aplicações. A tese procura compreender a atitude do cliente perante as marcas das aplicações através de questionário pré e pós-teste, focando-se em quatro aplicações: Google Map, Snapchat, Uber e Tinder. A correlação de Pearson e a regressão linear são usadas para entender a relação entre atitude e intenção de reutilização. Análise de variância é usada para perceber a preferência entre conteúdos das aplicações utilitaristas e hedónicas. Os resultados indicam que as atitudes individuais estão muito positivamente relacionadas com a intenção de reutilização. De igual modo, para género, homens e mulheres têm ambos uma grande tendência para reutilizar aplicações utilitaristas, contrariamente com a hipótese desenvolvida que as mulheres preferem aplicações hedónicas. Além disso, os resultados concluem que o nível de envolvimento anterior da marca pode não necessariamente moderar a resposta imediata do indivíduo em relação à aplicação móvel e à intenção de reutilização da marca. Finalmente, as implicações associadas com as conclusões são discutidas de forma a clarificar resultados possivelmente obtidos durante a análise dos dados e iniciar soluções para melhorar estudo adicionais nesta área

Will mobile video become the killer application for 3G? - an empirical model for media convergence

Mobile carriers have continually rolled out 3G mobile video applications to increase their revenue and profits. The presumption is that video is superior to the already successful SMS, ringtones, and pictures, and can create greater value to users. However, recent market surveys revealed contradicting results. Motivated by this discrepancy, we propose in this paper a parsimonious model for user acceptance of mobile entertainment as digital convergence. Integrating research on Information Systems, Flow, and Media Psychology, we take a unique approach to user acceptance of digital convergence - platform migration. Our key proposition is that the interaction between media types and the platform-specific constraints is the key determinant of user evaluation. Particularly, users' involvement in the media is determined by both the entertaining time span on the original platform and the attentional constraint of the new platform. The mismatch between the two spans can result in lower level involvement, which in turn cause no or even negative user emotional responses. The model was tested with empirical data. We discuss the theoretical contributions, strategic and design implications, and future research directions derived from this theoretical framewor

The Advertisement Value of Transformational & Informational Appeal on Company Facebook Pages

The advertisement value of Facebook is an under-developed area of social media research. Transformational and informational advertising appeal has yet to be studied as it relates to social media. This paper utilizes established classification and measurement scales from marketing literature to classify companies and their Facebook posts and measures the advertisement value of these posts. The study uses a sample of 100 companies from the 2015 Fortune 500 list. Results indicate that posts with transformational appeal are more engaging to the consumer than informational appeal; however, posts with informational appeal have greater advertisement value for the company. The results also indicate there is no relationship between type of company and type of appeal used by companies

Anthropomorphism Appeals: Influencing Consumer Attitudes and Memory through Humanlike Presentation

Advertisements in which a good or service is portrayed as humanlike in one or more ways (i.e., anthropomorphism appeals) are commonplace, yet scarecely investigated. In this state, managers using anthropomophism appeals are left to wager pomotional budgets without knowledge of the impact these appeals have on viewers or the factors most frequently influencing these appeals. The present study addresses this limitation by evaluating the advertising effectiveness of anthropomorphism appeals and the roles of contextual (product type and product category) and individual (loneliness and product knowledge) factors. Using an online panel service, three experiments evaluated the effectiveness of anthropomorphism appeals at enhancing consumer attitudes, intentions, and recall. MANOVA results suggest that the principal benefit of anthropomorphism appeals relates to enhancing recall of advertising information (np2 = .055, p \u3c.001). Spotlight analysis of the study\u27s moderators revealed this effect on recall was substantially enhanced when subjects were relatively lonely (ß = .706, p = .001) or had relatively low self-assessed product knowledge (ß = .690, p = .001). When the product being advertised was hedonic, anthropomorphism appeals had an additional influence on attitude toward the advertisement (np2 = .013, p = .002). When visual elements were included in the advertisement, the anthropomophism condition was associated directly with increased attitude toward the brand (np2 = .022, p = .047), directly with attitude toward the advertisement (np2 = .059, p = .001) and indirectly with purchase intentions. Critically, the positive attitudinal influence of anthropomorphism appeals on consumer attitudes were reversed when the subjects reported relatively high product knowledge. In total, the present study offers a broad, early evaluation of anthropomorphism appeals. Relevant to theorists is evidence of a bridge between psychology and marketing models of anthropomorphism. Of value to marketing practitioners is the early guidance these studies offer in managing anthropomorphism appeals with consideration for the design elements, contextual factors, and individual psychographic variables