When Adoption Brings Addiction: A Use-Diffusion Model for Social Information Systems

Recently there has been a dramatic proliferation on the usage of social networking websites, blogs and other information systems that have a social orientation. However, there is limited research on what drives individual to use such information systems and moreover what are the outcomes of their usage. This paper develops and empirically tests a model of user acceptance of social information systems. Taking into account the particular characteristics of these systems, the proposed model has several features that extend technology acceptance literature. Firstly, instead of the behavioral intention as the key dependent variable, the rate and the variety of use are used in order to model technology acceptance based on the use-diffusion theory. Secondly, exploiting a relational perspective of user-technology interaction the concept of user stickiness with an information system is investigated as usage outcome. Finally, the concept of addiction tendency is proposed to be another outcome modeling the excessive and intensive use of social information systems. In order to empirically test the proposed model a survey with the participation of 456 facebook users is conducted. Results, analyzed with structural equation modeling, confirm study’s hypotheses and show that social information systems could be a new field for theorizing about human behavior and technology

Factors Affecting Perceived Impact of Electronic Marketplaces

Although B2B e-commerce represents today an important business activity with stable growth, it has not grown according to initial expectations, partly due to the difficulty in measuring its performance. Recent academic literature tries to explain the motivations and behavior of companies participating in electronic markets as well as the benefits deriving from this participation. Following this stream of research, the purpose of this paper is to present the preliminary results of a field survey studing e-marketplace participation across two dimensions: The first one examines the attitude of user companies towards e-marketplace participation (motivations, goals, expectations, fears etc.). The second dimension examines the perceptions of e-marketplace participants about the impact and benefits they derive from their participation as well as the factors affecting the perceived impact. The survey was conducted using a questionnaire, among participants of five e-marketplaces (a total of 62 companies participated), allowing for comparisons both between buyers and sellers and between different types of emarketplaces. The statistical analysis of the quantitative results renders interesting findings that come to confirm or compliment existing literature and indicate concrete directions for further research. The results indicate a generic transaction-based orientation of the e-marketplace participants towards the exchange, the negative effect of external pressure on benefits perception and the importance of participating years and company size to the impact of e-marketplaces

Consumer Acceptance of Technology Contact: Extending Web-Based eCommerce to Technology-Based Services

This paper theoretically defines the concept of technology contact, as a specific service characteristic, that is referred to the level of customer-technology interaction the service requires. Moreover, it defines technology contact of a service as a construct with three dimensions: time of interaction with technology, medium sophistication and task complexity. Then, we develop a conceptual model for consumer acceptance of technology-based services that includes the notion of service technology contact. It is hypothesized that technology contact, as a unique service characteristic, affects performance expectancy, ease of use and behavioral intentions, but these relationships are moderated by individual’s anxiety with technology and the type of shopping trip. The scenario of technology-based dynamic product information service in supermarket stores is used in order to empirically test our model. The technology contact of the service is manipulated at three levels using service scenarios with different supporting technologies (electronic shelf labels, electronic kiosk and PDA) that are presented to 575 grocery store shoppers. Results confirm the hypotheses and the paper concludes that the level of technology contact is an important service characteristic that should be taken into account when designing and evaluating technology-based services

APPROACHES TO COMPUTERIZATION IN SMALL BUSINESSES IN GREECE

It is widely recognized that IT has made considerable inroads into large organizations, such that the majority now rely on IT for their day-to-day operations. The position regarding small businesses is less clear as they face somewhat different opportunities and constraints. In particular, the approach to computerization in small firms in less developed national IT environments has received little attention in the literature. This paper reports on the results of a survey of the approaches adopted by small firms in Greece. The findings are analyzed in terms of previous experience with computers, factors influencing the decision to adopt IT, advice received, staff involvement in IS development, training, and problems encountered and the solutions adopted. The results are compared with an earlier study performed five years ago in order to identify recent trends

RFID-enabled Supply Chain Collaboration Services in a Networked Retail Business Environment

Since the early 1990s, there has been a growing understanding that supply chain management should be built around information sharing and collaboration among supply chain partners. The emergence of RFID technology is expected to revolutionize many of the collaborative supply chain processes and to empower new collaboration scenarios, such as anti-counterfeiting, product recall and reverse logistics, collaborative in-store promotion management and total inventory management. This paper proposes eight RFID-enabled supply chain collaboration services (e.g. dynamic pricing, smart recall, in-store promotion management, out-of-shelf response) in a networked retail business environment. The services are characterized, on a high-level, by the information shared between retailers and suppliers, the level of tagging (pallet/case/item level) and the location of the tag readers. Also, a scalable-distributed network architecture, building on the possibilities provided by web service orchestration and data stream management systems, is proposed to support these collaborative supply chain management processes. However, this paper introduces into a research-in-progress with the ultimate purpose to assess and categorize the RFID-enabled supply chain collaboration services according to four dimensions: the extent of collaboration required between retailers and suppliers, the RFID technology requirements, the transformation of existing (or the introduction of new) processes and the business performance impact of the RFID-enabled collaborative service. This research is partly funded by the European Commission (IST-2005, FP6) through the IST SMART research project with participating user companies being European grocery retailers and suppliers from the fast-moving consumer goods sector

Mobile Apps for Omnichannel Retailing: Revealing the Emerging Showroom Phenomenon

The transformation of the smartphone into a key integrating factor of the online & offline retailing environment has lead to the development of mobile applications that shape the omniretailing landscape. The present study provides evidence of the mobile retailing apps frequency of use inside physical stores and explores mobile retailing app assisted shoppers’ preferences of in-store omniretailing practices & technologies. Results reveal that price comparison that could lead to showrooming is of utmost important for consumers. In parallel, consumers that attach great importance to such practice significantly differ from the rest, in terms of the importance they attach to salespeople & omnichannel integration criteria, in order to purchase offline. In contrast, there weren’t found statistically significant differences in terms of the importance they attach to online & offline store atmosphere. Nevertheless, the importance attached to online store atmosphere is high among mobile retailing app assisted shoppers. Drawing on these results, the study provides feedback to retail entrepreneurs regarding the optimal design and features of the future physical retail store

Measuring the Business Value of Electronic Supply Chain Collaboration: The Case of Electronic Invoicing

In the last decade, supply chain management has changed its focus, centring now on value creation, by taking into consideration the recent trends of partners integration and implementation of internet technologies. Within this context, this paper presents measurable results regarding the business value of supply chain collaboration practices enabled by e-commerce technologies. The presented research addresses electronic supply chain collaboration by examining the case of electronic invoicing (the electronic exchange of invoice data between supply chain partners) as a type of collaborative message-based system. The paper presents the quantitative and qualitative results of a series of case studies from the grocery retail sector. The results indicate considerable cost savings, especially as the extent of collaboration increases. Additionally, qualitative results from the interviews are provided, supporting suggestions for future research

MODELING THE INFORMATION QUALITY OF OBJECT TRACKING SYSTEMS

Advances in information and communication technologies, such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), mobile and wireless mesh networks, bring us closer to the vision of “Internet of Things”, a global network of people, products or objects that can be easily readable, recognizable, locatable, and manageable over the world wide web. Such a network can provide ubiquitous and real-time information on movements of objects; and object tracking systems monitor the moving objects and register their on-going location in the context of higher-level applications, such as supply chain management, food traceability and retail, where monitoring of objects is required. This paper investigates information quality of object tracking systems and proposes an analytical model that measures the degree of information completeness of object tracking systems based on the scope and depth of their data capturing capabilities. We demonstrate that the information completeness of object tracking systems is influenced by the configuration of object tracking systems. The model may be used for both ex-ante and ex-post evaluations of object tracking systems, under the auspices of their information quality requirements, considering that their use is expected to blossom in the “Internet-of- Things” era