Interactive product browsing and configuration using remote augmented reality sales services

Real-time remote sales assistance is an underdeveloped component of online sales services. Solutions involving web page text chat, telephony and video support prove problematic when seeking to remotely guide customers in their sales processes, especially with configurations of physically complex artefacts. Recently, there has been great interest in the application of virtual worlds and augmented reality to create synthetic environments for remote sales of physical artefacts. However, there is a lack of analysis and development of appropriate software services to support these processes. We extend our previous work with the detailed design of configuration context services to support the management of an interactive sales session using augmented reality. We detail the context and configuration services required, presenting a novel data service streaming configuration information to the vendor for business analytics. We expect that a fully implemented configuration management service, based on our design, will improve the remote sales experience for both customers and vendors alike via analysis of the streamed information

Using a Work System Metamodel and USDL to Build a Bridge between Business Service Systems and Service Computing

This paper explores the support for more comprehensive modeling of service systems than that possible through modeling methods developed through partial perspectives, with uncertainties about their wider suitability and need for integration with other methods in this domain. It responds to a Dual Call for Papers from INFORMS Service Science and IEEE Transactions on Service Computing requesting contributions that address the barely explored challenge of establishing links between business views of service systems and more technical views from service computing. Competing definitions of service reveal that most business views of service emphasize acts or outcomes produced for others, whereas a service computing view emphasizes encapsulated functionalities that can be discovered and launched by service consumers. This paper uses work system theory (WST) and a related work system metamodel to represent a business view of service systems. It uses the Unified Service Description Language (USDL 2.0) to represent a service computing view of service systems. Application of the business view to the previously defined EU-Rent example illustrates how successively more detailed business-oriented descriptions of a service situation reveal needs for functionality that are well described by USDL. In other words, business service system views and service computing views, as represented by WST and USDL respectively, serve complementary purposes. WST supports modeling and analysis of business situations, while USDL is the basis of detailed descriptions of services as encapsulated functionality

A Critical Analysis of Inter-Coder Reliability Methods in Information Systems Research

High failure rates appear to be a norm in introductory programming courses. Many solutions have been proposed to improve the high failure rates. Surprisingly, the solutions have not brought significant improvements to the performance of students in introductory programming courses. Instead, there appears to be a gap in understanding the relationship between self-efficacy, emotional engagement and the performance of students in introductory programming courses. Enjoyment, interest, and gratification were identified as three emotional engagement factors in introductory programming courses from prior literature and from focus groups. An online survey on 433 students in introductory programming courses showed that the students’ programming self-efficacy beliefs had a strong positive impact on enjoyment, while gratification and interest had a negative impact on programming performance. These findings have implications for course instructors who design and deliver introductory programming courses

Fog and Edge Oriented Embedded Enterprise Systems Patterns: Towards Distributed Enterprise Systems That Run on Edge and Fog Nodes

Enterprise software systems enable enterprises to enhance business and management reporting tasks in enterprise settings. Internet of Things (IoT) focuses on making interactions possible between a number of network-connected physical devices. Prominence of IoT sensors and multiple business drivers have created a contemporary need for enterprise software systems to interact with IoT devices. Business process implementations, business logic and microservices have traditionally been centralized in enterprise systems. Constraints like privacy, latency, bandwidth, connectivity and security have posed a new set of architectural challenges that can be resolved by designing enterprise systems differently so that parts of business logic and processes can run on fog and edge devices to improve privacy, minimize communication bandwidth and promote low-latency business process execution. This paper aims to propose a set of patterns for the expansion of previously-centralized enterprise systems to the edge of the network. Patterns are supported by a case study for contextualization and analysis

CO-CREATING VALUE FROM ELECTRIC VEHICLE DIGITAL SERVICES: EFFECT OF PERCEIVED ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE ON PERSONAL DATA SHARING

Electric vehicles (EVs) are considered a product rather than a mobility service. The expansion of EV services requires unlimited personal information. Due to privacy concerns, EV users may deactivate these services, leading to the discontinuance of EV services and value destruction. Service dominant logic is improving insight into the roles of resources (e.g., personal data) and institutions (e.g., concerns) in influencing individual behaviours in value co-creation (e.g., disclosing personal data). This logic is a metaperspective that needs to be integrated with mid-range theories (e.g., the enhanced antecedents–privacy concerns–outcomes) to investigate how resources, institutions and value co-creation are integrated and how to quantify this integration. This study conducted an online survey of EV users. The findings show that privacy awareness, environmental concerns and privacy concerns influence privacy calculus, but perceived environmental performance has more influence than privacy risks on intentions to continue disclosing personal data for EV services

BUSINESS MODELS DESIGN IN BUSINESS NETWORKS

Previous research in the area of business models has focused on their use in the context of an individual organization and has failed to incorporate considerations associated with a network of business partners in a candidate business model. Building on existing literature, this paper reports on an ongoing work which investigates the challenges associated with designing business models for wider business operation scenarios, commonly known as business networks, where there is a need to foresee and manage critical decision-making points. The research methodology combines literature review and interactive research including insights derived from participant discussions in a research workshop. The documented data captured during the workshop was used as an input for further refinement of the initial networked business model design constructs. The result is a conceptual framework that provides a set of interrelated design elements for business models in network environments. The design elements are the decision points for an organization where its networked operation has to be configured, operated, optimized and dynamically reconfigured. The framework was validated through a case study in the oil and gas industry with the aim of improving operational planning among business partners. This work is supported in part by ARC Linkage Grant LP140101062 (Transforming Banking Service Delivery Through Connected Communities) and ARC Discovery Grant DP140103788

Resource Integration in a Vehicle Ecosystem

Service-dominant logic has moved users from consumers to valued co-creators in transactional ecosystems. In service-dominant logic, privacy and trust are private resources. This logic is a metaperspective that needs to be integrated with mid-range theories to investigate how these resources are integrated, and what influence the integration. Thus, this study uses the enhanced antecedents–privacy concerns–outcomes model. This model includes different levels of cognitive effort that influence private resource integration. Then, we conducted interviews with Tesla owners in Australia. Tesla owners gave high-level cognitive responses and attitudes, including environmental concerns, altruism, attitudes towards electric vehicles, and privacy concerns. They also gave low-level cognitive responses or biases, such as implicit trust and positivity. Specifically, our findings indicate that users distrust vehicle manufacturers; environmental concerns lead to perceived benefits; altruism, implicit trust, and positivity mitigate privacy concerns; and privacy concerns increase the perceived privacy risks. These behavioral responses influence resource integration, feeding into our proposed model

Inequality in Emerging Countries

We review the theoretical and empirical economic literature upon income inequality in emerging countries. We firstly describe the main observed de velopments and show that these are rather diverse across countries and developing regions. We subsequently expose the main theoretical mechanisms. We make a distinction between the traditional approaches (Kuznets, Lewis, Stolper-Samuelson) and the new explanations. In the latter, globalization and globalization-driven technological changes are at the core of the analyses. Both approaches bring out several opposite mechanisms. Finally, the empirical estimates display rather conflicting results. Most cross-country studies find a weak impact of globalization on income inequality. In contrast, several longitudinal studies concerning countries taken separately or small groups of countries reveal a positive correlation between openness and the relative demand for skill and inequality. These apparently conflicting findings reflect the opposite mechanisms linked to globalisation and the differences in countries' experiences

TECHNOLOGICAL ENABLERS FOR PREVENTING SERVICE FAILURE WITH E-COMMERCE WEBSITES

Problems with digital services still occur at times, even for the most reliable services. Considering the consequences of these failures and their effects on the customer’s overall service quality perception and satisfaction, preventing these failures, and delivering reliable digital services, is a critical business competency. In addition, the fact that digital services are often co-produced by both service providers and their customers, shows the increasing role of both service providers and customers in preventing digital service failures (or service problems). In this study, we view the concept of digital service failure from the perspective of expectation-conformation theory, develop an Archimate architecture model and use it to design a typology of technological enablers (technologies and technological approaches) that can be used by businesses and their customers to prevent service failures at different stages of online purchase via e-commerce websites. The typology is relevant and useful for management information systems (MIS) academics and practitioners, particularly for information technology and digital service management researchers and the practitioner community

UNDERSTANDING ONLINE FINANCIAL COMMUNITIES: WHAT CONSTITUTES A VALUABLE INFORMATION EXCHANGE FOR USERS?

Financial service providers continually struggle to attract and maintain customer interest in their company-hosted virtual communities. These are expected to improve the low level of individual involvement and emotional attachment to financial products and services. Based on Bandura’s social cognitive theory, we argue that the content and type of user interaction associated with a created environment influences the level of user issue involvement, which in turn exemplifies the user’s interest in and valuation of the content associated with a virtual community. In particular we examine whether the range of topics, types of contribution and responsiveness of interactions are contributors to the overall level of interest of users in virtual financial communities. Our results, derived from an inductive content analysis based on 8,855 posts from 1,447 users across three virtual financial communities, show that specific topics discussed in a virtual community can have a significant positive influence on a user’s overall topic interest. Moreover, a significant positive relationship was found between the type of contribution (e.g., questions, statements or answers) and the extent of a user’s topic interest. Furthermore, our results reveal that the timeliness of responses influences a user’s topic interest in a positive way. However, the overall number of responses related to a specific topic does not play a significant role in any of the communities analysed. This research contributes to a better understanding of virtual communities in the service industry and provides evidence of the importance of content as key driver of user involvement