Sarkar, Butler & Steinfield (1995) “Intermediaries and Cybermediaries” Revisited: A Review and Identification of Future Research Directions for Intermediaries in Electronic Markets

Intermediation in markets is a phenomenon that has been studied by many researchers from a variety of different theoretical angles. With the introduction and diffusion of the Internet in everyday life, broad predictions were made that called for disintermediation enabled by direct Internet linkages between suppliers and buyers and lower transaction costs. The often-cited paper by Sarkar, Butler and Steinfield (1995) challenges this prediction. By comparing Internet effects on transaction costs with the cost situation ex ante, the paper explains that both direct sales or cybermediated sales are possible outcomes. In this paper we confront key assumptions of the Sarkar et al. paper with recent developments in the tourism market. We find that in the tourism market a multitude of direct and indirect distribution channels exist next to each other. Multi-level distribution channels often including several cybermediaries have been built, resulting in a complex market topology. We also see a large variety of intermediary roles, resulting from highly specialized and highly integrated cybermediary business models. Furthermore the model of Sarkar et al. fails to deliver an explanation for the on-going dynamics in the tourism market in terms of shifts towards more or less intermediaries and the emergence of new intermediary-like business models. By taking these trends into account we are able to identify relevant future research directions in order to extend our understanding of the phenomenon of electronic intermediaries in markets

Mapping the scope of information technology enabled transformation: a multi-theoretical framework and review

Existing studies looking at transformation enabled by information technology (IT) span from the micro to the macro aspects, and their theoretical foundations range from the institutional emphasis on cognition and normative social structures within and across organizational boundaries, to the focus of economics on the structure and competition in electronic markets and industries. The inter-level dynamics of ITenabled transformation and the constant blurring of boundaries have as a consequence the growing significance of articulating both the social relations and economic-led interactions in the study of organizations, virtual inter-organizational business networks, electronic markets and industries. Studies, however, tend to adopt a single theoretical perspective and focus on a particular unit of analysis, preventing researchers and practitioners from gaining a comprehensive understanding of ITenabled transformation. As research continues to advance in each one of the disciplinary areas concerned with the socio-economic, strategic and organisational transformation enabled by information technology, it becomes increasingly important to consider areas of convergence and controversy across separate perspectives and across levels. The aim of this paper is to critically review selected studies focusing on IT-enabled transformation in organizations, virtual inter-organizational business networks, electronic markets and industries in this era of technological convergence, and to generate recommendations for theory building. In so doing, this paper develops a multi-theoretical framework drawing from established strategic management, institutional and socio-organizational perspectives, and at various levels of analysis. The theoretical framework draws from the management literature of organization science and strategic management, as well as the more specialised literature of information technology management

The First 25 Years of the Bled eConference: Themes and Impacts

The Bled eConference is the longest-running themed conference associated with the Information Systems discipline. The focus throughout its first quarter-century has been the application of electronic tools, migrating progressively from Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) via Inter-Organisational Systems (IOS) and eCommerce to encompass all aspects of the use of networking facilities in industry and government, and more recently by individuals, groups and society as a whole. This paper reports on an examination of the conference titles and of the titles and abstracts of the 773 refereed papers published in the Proceedings since 1995. This identified a long and strong focus on categories of electronic business and corporate perspectives, which has broadened in recent years to encompass the democratic, the social and the personal. The conference\u27s extend well beyond the papers and their thousands of citations and tens of thousands of downloads. Other impacts have included innovative forms of support for the development of large numbers of graduate students, and the many international research collaborations that have been conceived and developed in a beautiful lake-side setting in Slovenia

Sustainable Consumer Behavior and Food Marketing

In light of the considerable impact of global food supply chains on climate change, more sustainable ways of producing, distributing, and consuming food appear critical for sustainable development. With the aim of contributing to this topic, this Special Issue on sustainable food consumption and food marketing addresses various relevant issues related to food consumption, including innovative and sustainable forms of food production and consumption, animal welfare and meat consumption, price transmission, social media communication, alternative food production, and organic agriculture, among others. As such, this Special Issue sheds light on more sustainable and carbon-friendly food production and consumption systems from various angles. It delivers valuable scientific evidence for the transformation of current carbon-based food supply chains to more eco-friendly, fair, and future-oriented food supply chains

Factors Influencing Customer Satisfaction towards E-shopping in Malaysia

Online shopping or e-shopping has changed the world of business and quite a few people have decided to work with these features. What their primary concerns precisely and the responses from the globalisation are the competency of incorporation while doing their businesses. E-shopping has also increased substantially in Malaysia in recent years. The rapid increase in the e-commerce industry in Malaysia has created the demand to emphasize on how to increase customer satisfaction while operating in the e-retailing environment. It is very important that customers are satisfied with the website, or else, they would not return. Therefore, a crucial fact to look into is that companies must ensure that their customers are satisfied with their purchases that are really essential from the ecommerce’s point of view. With is in mind, this study aimed at investigating customer satisfaction towards e-shopping in Malaysia. A total of 400 questionnaires were distributed among students randomly selected from various public and private universities located within Klang valley area. Total 369 questionnaires were returned, out of which 341 questionnaires were found usable for further analysis. Finally, SEM was employed to test the hypotheses. This study found that customer satisfaction towards e-shopping in Malaysia is to a great extent influenced by ease of use, trust, design of the website, online security and e-service quality. Finally, recommendations and future study direction is provided. Keywords: E-shopping, Customer satisfaction, Trust, Online security, E-service quality, Malaysia

The adoption of web based marketing in the travel and tourism industry: an empirical investigation in Egypt

The main objective of this research is to increase academic understanding as well as provide managerial implications in relation to the determinants of the levels of web adoption for marketing purposes by small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in Egypt. Web adoption is specifically defined in this research as the ownership of a website to communicate and/or deliver travel services to a target market. Providing facilities for inquiry, reservation, communication and booking are examples of adoption of the web to provide travel services. This research is thus interested in how the web is being used to interact with customers. Additionally, the levels of adoption represent the different levels that SMEs go through in their adoption process starting with not owning a website to being a simple adopter to being a sophisticated adopter. Non-adopters do not own a web site. Simple adopters own web pages that have facilities for information provision and communication whereas sophisticated adopters own web pages that have facilities for online booking and completing a full transaction online. It is worth noting that the levels of adoption are interrelated and are not static but are part of a process of eEvolution. This research provides an empirical contribution by studying the tourism sector as an example of a service industry and investigating the relative importance of the factors that determine the different levels of web adoption by SMEs in the context of a developing country. In order to achieve this objective, the research integrates existing theories in order to develop a conceptual framework for the determinants of Web adoption in the tourism sector. Besides Roger’s model of innovation adoption, the Resource-based view of the firm, a theory that deals specifically with firm resources and capabilities, is used to provide valuable information about the firm-specific factors that are thought to have an influence on innovation adoption. The model developed in this research is based purely on existing research and it integrates different theoretical perspectives. In addition, the researcher empirically tests this framework using both qualitative and quantitative data from travel agents in Egypt. This research is divided into three main parts. The first part (chs. 2 &3) introduces the literature where the concept of Internet marketing is presented and the key themes of research on Internet marketing are discussed. A literature review on Internet adoption by firms is then presented and the gaps in literature highlighted. The key literature includes defining the web as an innovation and organizational adoption of innovation. The different ways in which innovation adoption has been studied are discussed and a classification of the different factors influencing innovation adoption is made. A review of the existing research on the factors influencing technological innovation adoption by organizations is then provided. Finally, Internet adoption including the web by SMEs is discussed. The main gaps identified are lack of research on SMEs adoption of the web from a level perspective (i.e. distinguishing between use for communication versus use for transactions), lack of research on innovation adoption in developing countries, too much focus on consumer adoption in comparison to organizational adoption of innovations, shortage of research on innovation adoption from a level perspective and a need to identify the critical factors that affect each level of adoption. A conceptual framework (ch.4) is then presented, based on integrating existing theories and literature, and a series of hypotheses derived. The second part starts by discussing the tourism sector in Egypt (ch.5) which is selected to be the research context and then outlines the methodology (ch.6). This research relies on triangulation with a mixed methods research approach which combines both qualitative and quantitative analysis. The qualitative work provides depth to the analysis. It is used to compare with the proposed model in an attempt to provide a more complete picture of the investigated phenomenon. The quantitative work tests the hypotheses and indicates generalizability of the results. It consists of descriptive analysis, factor analysis and regression analysis. Both logistic and multiple regression were conducted in this research. The third part of the research is concerned with the analysis of empirical results presented in four chapters. Chapter 7 deals with a small scale content analysis on travel agents’ websites to measure the evolution of services provided on these sites over a period of two years. Chapter 8 includes details of the qualitative work conducted in this research which consisted of 12 in-depth interviews with travel agents in Egypt and provided a basis for triangulating the findings from the quantitative analysis. Chapter 9 includes the descriptive analysis of the data as well as the reliability and validity tests on the measurement instrument. Chapter 10 presents the findings and the interpretations of the hypotheses testing. The contribution of this research is a synthesis of Roger’s innovation adoption model with the Resource-based View of the firm (RBV) to produce a revised conceptualisation for the adoption of innovations which is empirically tested for developing country SMEs in the context of tourism in Egypt. The key findings of this research are that management factors are important for the initial adoption decision by firms whereas marketing capabilities are important for more sophisticated adoption. As for perceived innovation attributes, relative advantage and complexity were found important for the initial adoption decision whereas perceived risk was found important for more sophisticated adoptions. This suggests that different factors affect the different levels of adoption. The main contributions of this research to theory are: first,-innovation attributes are not the whole story when studying firms’ adoption of the web, firm resources also affect firms’ adoption decision. Second,-different factors affect different levels of adoption thus when studying innovation adoption by firms, it is important to consider the adoption process as a continuous process that consists of different levels rather than a dichotomous process of adopt vs. non-adopt. The main contribution at the context level is that this is the first research to be conducted in Egypt which represents an important extension to the Web adoption studies that focused largely on developed countries. Additionally, the results of this research can be transferable to countries that share similarities with Egypt and may also be of relevance to SMEs in other sectors in Egypt as will be explained later

Worlds apart: SMEs, e-business and policy initiatives.

This thesis draws together and reconciles three seemingly dichotomous "worlds"; small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), e-business and government policy making. A significant number of EU and UK government projects and policy initiatives have been introduced in recent years to motivate e-business adoption and implementation by SMEs, yet the relatively low take-up rate strongly indicates that these policies and initiatives are failing. Designed as a preliminary study, this research ascertains the practical impact of such policy initiatives on SMEs, based on the experiences of seven UK case studies, with a view to instruct constructive and feasible changes in policy making. The implication is that future policy initiatives may become more appropriate, coherent and accessible to SMEs, resulting in greater opportunities for them, a greater level of innovation adoption by them, and an economy that is - as a direct result - more dynamic. In this "problem situation," both the SMEs and the policy makers who aim to serve them are joint owners of the problem situation. There is a very real need to think about ways to bring these "actors" in disparate "worlds" together into a more collaborative arrangement, and to consider how government policies that are currently failing SMEs might have more relevance - it would seem that most SMEs are unaware of many of the services and initiatives provided by their government. Ascertaining what SMEs want and need, designing policies and services in light of this, and finding better ways of letting them know these services are available, would seem to be the key. Through a narrative research approach informed by Action Case Research (ACR) and Dialogical Action Research (Dialogical AR), in combination with Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) conceptual modelling, this doctoral research develops our understanding of SME policy initiatives in the UK and the EU. The thesis addresses the absence of well-structured multiple case study designs in the literature, and tests existing knowledge about SMEs and policy generation in an original way. The development of appropriate and complementary (ACR and Dialogical AR) analysis tools constitutes a methodological extension of the SSM conceptual modelling process for ISD, which focuses on social, political and cultural factors and the social construction of problems and solutions. The thesis is an exploration of complex and ill-structured problem situations with multiple owners that can be viewed from a variety of stances - this has rarely been featured in the literature. This research is also an extension of SSM theory development, in that SSM has not been widely used in the SME environment, and there are very few examples of iteration having taken place in the literature. The research is an interpretive approach to the study of a domain about which we know very little. As such, it provides a contribution to literature, theory and practice. A (1981) study by Galliers et al. is drawn upon. Although that study was originally applied in a very different context, it nonetheless parallels this doctoral research, in that both examine a complex and difficult real world system with a utilitarian approach, and in that both are soft systems studies that draw together anachronous worlds and suggest a way of pursuing a dialogue that is meaningful to all involved parties. The research concludes with a proposal to incentivise SME owner/managers to attend workshop(s), in order that an in-depth and meaningful dialogue between policy makers and SMEs can develop, and in order to draw out attitudes and issues previously unexpressed. Policy makers would thus be able to build on the findings in order to generate and advertise more appurtenant policies for SMEs, thereby bringing these "worlds" together