Designing appliances for mobile commerce and retailtainment

In the emerging world of the new consumer and the `anytime, anywhere' mobile commerce, appliances are located at the collision point of the retailer and consumer agendas. The consequence of this is twofold: on the one hand appliances that were previously considered plain and utilitarian become entertainment devices and on the other, for the effective design of consumer appliances it becomes paramount to employ multidisciplinary expertise. In this paper, we discuss consumer perceptions of a retailtainment commerce system developed in collaboration between interactivity designers, information systems engineers, hardware and application developers, marketing strategists, product development teams, social scientists and retail professionals. We discuss the approached employed for the design of the consumer experience and its implications for appliance design

How can Tourist Attractions profit from Augmented Reality?

The benefits, value and potential of Augmented Reality (AR) are widely researched. However, the value of AR is most commonly discussed in relation to enhancing the tourist experience, rather than generating revenue or economic returns. Although AR promises to add value to the visitor experience and generate associated benefits, the financial implications and revenue model for AR implementation remain uncertain and therefore too much of a financial risk for most tourist organisations, typically Small to Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) characterised by limited funding. Thus, using the case of UNESCO recognised Geevor Tin Mine Museum, in Cornwall, UK, this study identifies ways in which tourism organisations can profit from AR implementation. Fifty semi-structured interviews with Geevor stakeholders, analysed using content analysis reveal a number of ways AR can be introduced to increase revenue generation and profits, therefore filling a gap in research and minimising the risk for managers and practitioners considering AR implementation

Use of ‘Habit’ is not a habit in understanding individual technology adoption: A review of UTAUT2 based empirical studies

yes‘Habit’ was the most important theoretical addition into UTAUT2 to challenge the role of behavioural intention as a lone predictor of technology use. However, systematic review and meta-analysis of Price value the other UTAUT2 additional construct revealed major inconsistency of the model with just 41% UTAUT2 based studies including the construct in their research. Thus, the aim of this research is to understand the appropriateness of ‘habit’ construct usage among UTAUT2 based empirical studies and their reason for omission or inclusion. The findings from 66 empirical studies revealed only 23 studies a meagre (35%) utilised ‘habit’ construct and the remaining massive 43 studies (65%) excluded the construct from their research model. The major reason for studies not including “habit” construct was they were examining users of new technology at early stage of adoption where sufficient time hasn’t elapsed for users to form habit. Moreover this study caution the use of experience as an alternative for habit. Since experience can be gained under mandatory settings which is not sufficient enough to form habit that occurs more naturally under voluntary settings. This study also provided number of recommendations for theory and practice based on the findings

Developing consumer-friendly pervasive retail systems

Few researchers have explored consumer reactions to pervasive retail systems. The prototype implementation and study results discussed here have important implications for system developments

Measuring service quality from unstructured data: A topic modeling application on airline passengers' online reviews

Service quality is a multi-dimensional construct which is not accurately measured by aspects deriving from numerical ratings and their associated weights. Extant literature in the expert and intelligent systems examines this issue by relying mainly on such constrained information sets. In this study, we utilize online reviews to show the information gains from the consideration of factors identified from topic modeling of unstructured data which provide a flexible extension to numerical scores to understand customer satisfaction and subsequently service quality. When numerical and textual features are combined, the explained variation in overall satisfaction improves significantly. We further present how such information can be of value for firms for corporate strategy decision-making when incorporated in an expert system that acts as a tool to perform market analysis and assess their competitive performance. We apply our methodology on airline passengers’ online reviews using Structural Topic Models (STM), a recent probabilistic extension to Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) that allows the incorporation of document level covariates. This innovation allows us to capture dominant drivers of satisfaction along with their dynamics and interdependencies. Results unveil the orthogonality of the low-cost aspect of airline competition when all other service quality dimensions are considered, thus explaining the success of low-cost carriers in the airline market

The mediating role of Emotional State toward Pervasive IS adoption

Research in the field of adoption theories has been predominantly concerned with the work environment and cognitive factors affecting Behavioural Intention. However, the emerging class of Pervasive Information Systems develops within a much different context. The present study proposes a new approach for the examination of the individual user’s acceptance of technology, specifically for the class of Pervasive Information Systems. In particular, it examines the mediating role of Emotional State toward the individual acceptance of Pervasive Information Systems. The proposed research model was tested with data collected through an exploratory experiment (n=33) using a mobile Augmented Reality application. The results confirm the appropriateness of the developed instrument, the research model and that Performance Expectancy is the strongest predictor of user adoption, mediated through the user’s Emotional State as formed while interacting with the system

Adoption Behavior Differences for Mobile Data Services: M-Internet vs. M-Portals

This study attempts to investigate the potential differences among individual adoption patterns between mobile portal and mobile internet services usage. A theoretical model that reflects six unique predominant factors of IS usage is developed and is empirically tested using data collected from mobile data services (MDSs) users (116 mobile internet users and 178 mobile portal users). The results indicate that there are differences among the adoption behaviour of mobile portal users and mobile internet users. Specifically, mobile internet use is likely to be driven by utilitarian expectations and the perceived usefulness of accessing the web through this alternative medium. Conversely, mobile portals use is likely to be dependent on the users’ personal innovativeness and is not significantly affected by the utility of the mobile service itself. Moreover, we find indirect effects of performance expectancy, facilitating conditions and social influence to the behavioural intention to use mobile internet

Explaining the Adoption of Mobile Internet Applications

This study aims at investigating the adoption behavior of mobile Internet users in Greece. An integrated model comprising of seven factors was developed and tested through the execution of a national telephone survey (N=139). The results of the survey suggest that the emotional state of individuals while using mobile Internet, social influence from their peers, and their personal innovativeness comprise the predictive factors of adoption behavior. Moreover, the study reveals that performance expectancy is a strong predictor of mobile Internet adoption mediated through individuals’ emotional state. The paper concludes with a critical discussion of the results comparing the study findings with past mobile data services studies