Social support, social capital and online community e-loyalty: an empirical study

Online communities, as an essential manifestation of online social relationships, sociality factors (including social support factors and social relationship factors, etc.) ought to facilitate the formation of community trust and community satisfaction. However, although the existing literature has explored the underlying mechanisms of online community trust and satisfaction formation, few studies implemented research from the integrated sociality perspectives. In this thesis, we integrate social capital theory and social support theory to consider social capital and social support as important antecedent social factors in forming community trust and community satisfaction, which influence users' trust and satisfaction in online communities. Community trust and satisfaction further promote community loyalty. Specifically, this thesis scrutinizes the influence of three levels of social support factors such as information support, emotional support, and human-computer network management support and three kinds of social capital such as structure, cognition, and relationship to online community trust and satisfaction. Based on the proposed research model, 430 online community users' survey data were collected through an empirical questionnaire and the research model was tested through the partial least squares structural equation model method. The results of the thesis suggest that social support factors, including information support, emotional support, and interpersonal network interaction support, and social capital factors including structural capital, relational capital, and cognitive capital significantly affect community users' loyalty not only directly but also indirectly through enhancing community users' trust and satisfaction. Thus, users' trust and satisfaction with the community are significant mediating variables.Nas comunidades online, como uma importante manifestação das relações sociais online, os fatores de socialidade (incluindo fatores de apoio social e fatores de relacionamento social) devem facilitar a formação de confiança e satisfação da comunidade. No entanto, embora a literatura existente tenha explorado os mecanismos subjacentes à formação da confiança e da satisfação da comunidade online, poucos estudos consideraram a perspectiva social de forma integrada. Nesta tese, integramos a teoria do capital social e a teoria do suporte social para considerar o capital social e o suporte social como importantes fatores sociais antecedentes na formação da confiança e satisfação da comunidade, que influenciam a confiança e a satisfação dos utilizadores em comunidades online. A confiança e a satisfação da comunidade promovem ainda mais a lealdade da comunidade. Especificamente, esta tese estuda a influência de três níveis de fatores de suporte social - suporte de informação, suporte emocional e suporte de gestão da relação homen-computador - e três tipos de capital social - estrutura, cognição e relacionamento - na confiança e satisfação da comunidade online. Com base no modelo de pesquisa proposto, 430 observações de utilizadores de comunidades online foram recolhidos através de um questionário. O modelo de pesquisa foi testado através de métodos de equação estruturais. Os resultados da tese relevam que fatores de suporte social, incluindo suporte de informação, suporte emocional e suporte de interação de rede interpessoal, e fatores de capital social, incluindo capital estrutural, capital relacional e capital cognitivo, afetam significativamente a lealdade dos utilizadores da comunidade, não apenas diretamente mas também indiretamente, aumentando a confiança e a satisfação dos utilizadores da comunidade; a confiança e a satisfação dos usuários com a comunidade são variáveis mediadoras importantes

Achieving a designed customer experience across multiple delivery platforms: A telco perspective

'Customer experience' is a term that covers a wide range of activities that take place between suppliers and users of products and services. LaSalle and Britton define it as 'a holistic experience which involves a person - as opposed to a customer - as a whole at different levels and in every interaction between such person and a company' (2003). This research considers a key aspect of such an holistic experience: that which is embodied in the product or service under consideration. In the context of increasing mobile technology convergence, the paper considers new approaches that focus on developing the necessary underlying enablers and common interaction flows that are required to deliver a designed experience, taking into account the increasing number of mobile operating systems and service delivery platforms. Ultimately these models move towards allowing users to 'co-create their own unique experiences' (Pralahad and Ramswamy, 2004). The convergence between IT and telecommunications domains presents a unique challenge to product and service designers. Services are increasingly accessible via multiple delivery devices and delivery networks. This trend has been seen most recently in the advent of Internet based services being delivered via mobile phones where 'mobile service delivery and technologies have become the glue between previously secluded 'telecom' and "IT' domains' (Karrberg and Liebenau, 2006). At the same time network operators are trying to tighten their relationship with their customers by offering 'sticky' services aimed at raising the barriers to customer mobility. These two trends lead to a new design challenge: how to design a recognisably consistent and compelling product customer experience that applies over all delivery services, operating systems and networks. Solutions to this problem have to date been either technology led, focussing on integrated delivery platforms, or reliant on rule-based design. Crucial to this analysis is the 'role Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item

An environment for protecting the privacy of e-shoppers

Privacy, an everyday topic with weekly media coverage of loss of personal records, faces its bigger risk during the uncontrolled, involuntary or inadvertent disclosure and collection of personal and sensitive information. Preserving one's privacy while e-shopping, especially when personalisation is involved, is a big challenge. Current initiatives only offer customers opt-out options. This research proposes a `privacy-preserved' shopping environment (PPSE) which empowers customers to disclose information safely by facilitating a personalised e- shopping experience that protects their privacy. Evaluation delivered positive results which suggest that such a product would indeed have a market in a world where customers are increasingly concerned about their privacy

The Next Paradigm Shift in the Mobile Ecosystem: Mobile Social Computing and the Increasing Relevance of Users

Social computing has become the paradigm for the increasingly relevant role of users in the Internet world. In this paper, it is argued that mobile social computing will eventually cause an even bigger impact in the mobile ecosystem. We are already at the beginning of the "transference" of a significant part of Internet social computing usage to the mobile domain, where users are no longer passive consumers of content andapplications, but co-creators and even innovators of them. However, mobile social computing will go one step further in the contribution to the development of the mobile ecosystem, since it will put the many situations of users' daily activities at the centre stage. To prove this case, this paper gathers available data and evidence on the patterns of mobile social computing usage and discusses user innovation and user empowerment in the framework of the current mobile ecosystem.Mobile social computing, user innovation, mobile ecosystem.