The Role of SMS in Mobile Data Service Diffusion in China: A Longitudinal Case Study Based on Actor-Network Theory

While Japan’s I-mode failed to be adopted in other countries and WAP also did not succeed in promoting mobile data services, a rather simple technology of SMS made its way to facilitate the growth of mobile data services in China. In this paper, we conduct a case study based on actor- network theory in order to explain 1) how mobile data services are developed and adopted in China, 2) what is the role of SMS in facilitating the development of mobile data services, and 3) what technological and social factors attribute to the adoption process of mobile data services. Drawing upon actor-network theory (ANT), this paper investigates longitudinally the driving forces fueling the development of data services in the China market. By analyzing the network structures formed by the various actors such as mobile data service providers, government departments, technical artifacts, customers, etc., we can better understand the dynamics of the mobile data service development in China and provide valuable references for the rest of the world

Attentional Encoder Network for Targeted Sentiment Classification

Targeted sentiment classification aims at determining the sentimental tendency towards specific targets. Most of the previous approaches model context and target words with RNN and attention. However, RNNs are difficult to parallelize and truncated backpropagation through time brings difficulty in remembering long-term patterns. To address this issue, this paper proposes an Attentional Encoder Network (AEN) which eschews recurrence and employs attention based encoders for the modeling between context and target. We raise the label unreliability issue and introduce label smoothing regularization. We also apply pre-trained BERT to this task and obtain new state-of-the-art results. Experiments and analysis demonstrate the effectiveness and lightweight of our model.Comment: 7 page

Relative Advantage and Perceived Usefulness: The Adoption of Competing ICTs

Relative advantage and perceived usefulness are often used interchangeably in the literature. We argue that this limits the understanding of the adoption of ICTs, especially when there are multiple alternatives. To address this issue, we reexamine relative advantage in relation to perceived usefulness by illustrating the conceptual differences between these two constructs, providing a re-specification of relative advantage stressing explicit comparison between ICTs, and then empirically testing a model that explores the roles of these constructs in explaining and predicting the adoption of a new technology in the presence of an existing ICT. The results demonstrate that perceived usefulness and relative advantage are indeed related but distinct constructs - relative advantage is a function of the perceived usefulness of new and existing technologies. While the perceived usefulness of a technology does explain the adoption of it to some extent, its relative advantage allows us to incorporate the influence of other technologies that would be otherwise ignored

How do IT Competence, Organizational Agility and Entrepreneurial Actions Coevolve: The Case of Entrepreneurial Etailers on Ecommerce Platforms

Internet and IT have re-shaped the strategy logic of contemporary organizations. The new logic emphasizes business opportunity leveraging through constantly evolving entrepreneurial actions. The required business capabilities underlying such strategic logic, including organizational agility and IT competence, have also to be built and co-evolved. Based on Sambamurthy et al. [1] conceptual framework and ten case studies of Small and Medium sized etailers on third party platform, this research explains what are entrepreneurial actions, enablers of organizational capabilities and IT competence (including IT capability and digital options) for SME etailers, as well as their evolution path and coevolution mechanisms. This research advances the literature by providing empirical evidence of the new strategic logic of internet firms as suggested by Sambamurthy et al.[1], and systematically addresses the adaptive co-evolutionary mechanisms through real options and adaptive learning perspectives

A Novel Adaptive Search Range Algorithm for Motion Estimation Based on H.264

Motion estimation (ME) is very vital to video compression. Due to the adoption of the high precision of motion vector (MV) in H.264 encoder, the computational cost increases rapidly, and ME takes about 60% of the whole encoding time. In order to accommodate the new variable block size motion estimation strategy adopted in H.264, this paper proposes a novel adaptive search range(ASR) algorithm as a optimized part based on UMHexagonS. Not only we utilize the median_MVP and interframe information in our ASR algorithm but also a penalty function is included. Experimental results indicate that our proposed method reduces the computational complexity in a certain degree and enhances encoding efficiency but has few changes in the reconstructed image quality and bit rate

The Value of Live Chat on Online Purchase

In this paper, we empirically investigate the value of live chatting tools on purchase. We use a clickstream data from a leading online marketplace where live chats between e-tailers and customers are documented. We follow the classic two-stage choice model proposed by Moe (2006), and incorporate the choice of chatting as a new stage. In our model, consumers make a sequence of three stages of choices. In the first stage, they choose a product to view; In the second stage, they decide on whether to initiate a live chat; In the third stage, they decide on whether to purchase. This process iterate until consumers decide to stop. We find that consumers choose products with low price and high reputation in the first stage. They request live chat when e-tellers\u27 reputation is low and the price is low. Finally, live chat has positive impact over purchase, especially for low-reputation e-tailers

Web Aesthetics: How Does it Influence the Sales Performance in Online Marketplaces

Web aesthetics is advocated as one of the key factors influencing consumers’ attitude and behavior in the websites they visited. However, its real effects on the sales performance of websites remain largely unknown. This study is one of the first empirical studies to evaluate web aesthetics quantitatively and directly measure its effects on sales performance by using real-life transaction data. In this study, we identify the representative factors of three primary determinants of web aesthetics (unity, complexity, and intensity) in online marketplaces. Drawing on cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias theory, we further investigate how the influence of web aesthetics on sales performance is contingent on different levels of the seller’s reputation. A set of interaction relationships are proposed and will be tested using real-life transaction data collected from Taobao.com (the largest online marketplace in China). Potential theoretical implications are discussed and potential practical implications are offered for practitioners

Explaining E-Tailers’ Source of Competitiveness: An Integrative Framework

E-tailers refer to small and medium size enterprises or individual entrepreneurs primarily conducting businesses on online shopping platforms. Although many works on e-marketplaces have been done, theory-driven studies that explain e-tailers’ source of competitiveness are relatively scarce. The current work developed an integrative theoretical model in which online social capital, structural assurance, and online word-of-month are proposed to affect e-tailers’ business performance. The current study offers implications on: 1) what are the unique sources of competitiveness for businesses operating in pure online environment; 2) how can the resource-scare e-tailers survive in their rivalry with large offline retailers