People, Technologies, and Organizations Interactions in a Social Commerce Era

Social commerce, a powerful combination of customer-oriented social computing technologies and new commercial features, is having an increasing impact on e-commerce, potentially generating substantial economic benefits. Drawing on socio-technical theory, this study establishes a research framework to help understand the social and technical factors affecting consumers’ intention to purchase on social commerce sites. Our results demonstrate that familiarity, user experience, learning & training, and social commerce constructs all have a positive effect on consumers’ perceptions of ease of use and usefulness, thereby enhancing their trust and intention to purchase. For systems designers and engineers, our results highlight the importance of social commerce features for building consumers’ trust of social commerce sites and supporting their intention to purchase

Review of natural fibre-reinforced hybrid composites

Natural fibre-reinforced hybrid composites which contain one or more types of natural reinforcement are gaining increasing research interest. This paper presents a review of natural fibre-reinforced hybrid composites. Both thermoplastic and thermoset composites reinforced by hybrid/synthetic fibres or hybrid/hybrid fibres are reviewed. The properties of natural fibres, the properties and processing of composites are summarised

Applying the reduce, reuse, and recycle principle in the hospitality sector: Its antecedents and performance implications

Although the literature on eco-friendly strategies followed by firms is abundant, the focus on the reduce, reuse, and recycle (3Rs) policies as the cornerstone of environmental sustainability is scarce. This study examines the 3Rs environmental strategy among 143 large organizations in the hospitality industry. We use the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm theory to test the strategy's determinants and its impact on business performance on a suggested conceptualization level. As hypothesized, green corporate governance and environmental management systems, along with slack financial resources, were found to positively influence the adoption of a 3Rs environmental strategy. In turn, the implementation of the latter leads to superior business performance, measured in terms of operating profits and Tobin's Q. The study has several implications on a theoretical, managerial, and public policy level where intriguing directions for future research are provided

Understanding market agility for new product success with big data analytics

The complexity that characterises the dynamic nature of the various environmental factors makes it very compelling for firms to be capable of addressing the changing customers' needs. The current study examines the role of big data in new product success. We develop a qualitative research with case study approach to look at this. Specifically, we look at multiple cases to get in-depth understanding of customer agility for new product success with big data analytics. The findings of the study provide insight into the role of customer agility in new product success. This study unpacks the interconnectedness of the effective use of data aggregation tools, the effectiveness of data analysis tools and customer agility. It also explores the link between all of these factors and new product success. The study is reasonably telling in that it shows that the effective use of data aggregation and data analysis tools results in customer agility which in itself explains how an organisation senses and responds speedily to opportunities for innovation in the competitive marketing environment. The current study provides significant theoretical contributions by providing evidence for the role of big data analytics, big data aggregation tools, customer agility, organisational slack and environmental turbulence in new product success

Towards an ethical and trustworthy social commerce community for brand value co-creation: A trust-commitment perspective

Firms have been increasingly using social commerce platforms to engage with customers and support their brand value co-creation. While social commerce is now bringing a variety of benefits to business, it has also challenged marketing ethics surrounding online consumer privacy. Drawing on the trust-commitment theory, we develop a model that aims to create an ethical and trustworthy social commerce community for brand value co-creation by examining the impacts of online consumer privacy concerns (namely privacy risk and privacy control) and social interaction constructs (namely consumer-peer interaction and collaborative norms) on consumers’ psychological reactions. Using an empirical study, we find that: (1) privacy risk, privacy control, and collaborative norms significantly influence consumers’ trust; (2) consumer-peer interaction and collaborative norms are positively related to relationship commitment; and (3) relationship commitment and trust positively affect consumers’ brand value co-creation in the context of social commerce. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed

Social Bots and the Spread of Disinformation in Social Media: The Challenges of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is creating a revolution in business and society at large as well as challenges for organisations. AI-powered social bots can sense, think, and act on social media platforms in ways similar to humans. The challenge is that social bots can perform many harmful actions, such as providing wrong information to people, escalating arguments, perpetrating scams, and exploiting the stock market. As such, an understanding of different kinds of social bots and their authors' intentions is vital from the management perspectives. Drawing from the actor-network theory (ANT), this study investigates human and non-human actors' role in social media, particularly Twitter. We use text mining and machine learning techniques, and after applying different pre-processing techniques, we applied the bag of words model to a dataset of 30,000 English-language tweets. The present research is among the few studies to use a theory-based focus to look, through experimental research, at the role of social bots and the spread of disinformation in social media. Firms can use our tool for the early detection of harmful social bots before they can spread misinformation on social media about their organisations