Who will lead and who will follow: Identifying Influential Users in Online Social Networks - A Critical Review and Future Research Directions

Along with the explosive growth of the phenomenon Online Social Networks (OSN), identifying influential users in OSN has received a great deal of attention in recent years. However, the development of practical approaches for identifying them is still in its infancy. By means of a structured literature review, the authors analyze and synthesize the publications particularly from two perspectives. From a research perspective, they find that existing approaches mostly build on users’ connectivity and activity but hardly consider further characteristics of influential users. Moreover, they outline two major research streams. It becomes apparent that most marketing-oriented articles draw on real-world data of OSN, while more technology-oriented papers rather have a theoretical approach and mostly evaluate their artifacts by means of formal proofs. The authors find that a stronger collaboration between the scientific Business and Information Systems Engineering (BISE) and Marketing communities could be mutually beneficial. With respect to a practitioner’s perspective, they compile advice on the practical application of approaches for the identification of influential users. It is hoped that the results can stimulate and guide future research

Just Digital or Multi-Channel? The Preferences of E-Government Service Adoption by Citizens and Business Users

The digital world has entered governments and public sector institutions. In that context, public e-services have been gaining increasing importance in recent years. However, will everything end up being digital in the future? This article investigates the preferences of citizens and business users to adopt different public services electronically and via further offline channels. Data of 500 citizens and 500 companies were collected together with the German Federal Employment Agency. Our findings indicate that citizens as well as business users ask for a multi-channel offering. They prefer to deliberately choose subjective suitable channels for different services. We furthermore observed a difference between companies from different industries as well as between small and medium-to-large companies, such as the latter ones having a stronger preference for online channels than small companies

Viabilidade econômica de estudo sanitário e ambiental da malacocultura conforme recomendações internacionais

bstract: The mollusk farming is a fast growing activity in Brazil, especially in Santa Catarina Sate that has the largest production on the Santa Catarina Island bays. Brazilian government, through rules and recommendations has established a monitoring and controlling program of production areas focusing on quality of food originated from mollusk farming. The international market demanded various studies to ensure the sanitary quality of producing areas to enable the meat exportation. In this sense an environmental study was applied in Santa Catarina Island Bays (SCIB) based on, but not limited to, the European requirements from the Centre for Environment, Fisheries & Aquaculture Science (CEFAS). This work encompassed a pricing survey and economic feasibility evaluation to the development of an environmental and sanitary study to support the definition of adequate areas for mollusk production. The total cost was R 910,968.95 and this work shows that the implementation of environmental studies in similar areas in the North and South  bays are economic feasible.Resumo: A malacocultura é uma atividade em crescimento no Brasil, especialmente em Santa Catarina, com a maior produção de moluscos ocorrendo nas baías da Ilha de Santa Catarina. O governo brasileiro, através de recomendações e normas, estabeleceu um programa de monitoramento e controle das áreas de produção, focando a qualidade dos alimentos provenientes da malacocultura. Para que seja viabilizada a exportação da carne, o mercado internacional exige uma série de estudos que garanta a qualidade sanitária da região produtora. Nesse sentido, um estudo sanitário ambiental foi aplicado na região das Baías da Ilha de Santa Catarina (BISC), tendo por base, mas não limitado a, a exigência europeia do Centre for Environment, Fisheries & Aquaculture Science (Cefas). Este trabalho visou levantar os custos e avaliar a viabilidade econômica do desenvolvimento de estudo sanitário ambiental para apoio na definição de áreas apropriadas para o cultivo comercial de moluscos. O  custo total do estudo foi de R 910.968,95, e o resultado do trabalho mostra que a implementação de estudo sanitário ambiental em áreas similares às baías  Norte e Sul são economicamente viáveis

The Role of Corporate Sustainability and Digitalization in Customer Relationship Management

In recent years, companies have been confronted with stagnating markets, an increasing competitive pressure, dwindling resources, new technological developments, and steadily growing customer expectations. In order to meet the challenges and benefit from possibilities that arise with these trends of our ever-changing environment, companies need to take care of several aspects. First, the rise of ethical consumerism along with dwindling resources force companies to increasingly integrate sustainability issues in their business strategy, processes and products. Second, digitalization enables and demands the use of new ways of business interactions to manage customer relationships. The main objective of this doctoral thesis is to contribute to the field of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) with a particular focus on business transformation towards sustainability and the challenges of a digitalized world for the management of customer relationships. The first three research papers thereby focus on different aspects of business transformation towards sustainability. Research paper 1 focuses on the interface of customers and the underlying business model, investigating the relationship of customer communication about sustainability and respective investment decisions. Research paper 2 focuses on the business model and its underlying business processes, analyzing how companies can transform towards sustainability and how this can happen in line with economic principles. Research paper 3 concentrates on the transformation itself, deriving key requirements for a successful project management, respective key performance indicators, and suitable tool support for steering transformation projects towards sustainability. Research Papers 4 and 5 deal with the aspects of a sustainable CRM in a digitalized world, focusing on the new possibilities for managing customer relations that arise with digitalization. Thereby, research paper 4 focuses on the demands and preferences of customers in a digitalized world, finding that channel preferences vary with the respective context or complexity of a service. Research paper 5 focuses on the management of customers in the online social network channel and especially on the identification of the most influential users. Finally, the key findings are summarized and starting points for future research are highlighted

The Role of Corporate Sustainability and Digitalization in Customer Relationship Management

In recent years, companies have been confronted with stagnating markets, an increasing competitive pressure, dwindling resources, new technological developments, and steadily growing customer expectations. In order to meet the challenges and benefit from possibilities that arise with these trends of our ever-changing environment, companies need to take care of several aspects. First, the rise of ethical consumerism along with dwindling resources force companies to increasingly integrate sustainability issues in their business strategy, processes and products. Second, digitalization enables and demands the use of new ways of business interactions to manage customer relationships. The main objective of this doctoral thesis is to contribute to the field of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) with a particular focus on business transformation towards sustainability and the challenges of a digitalized world for the management of customer relationships. The first three research papers thereby focus on different aspects of business transformation towards sustainability. Research paper 1 focuses on the interface of customers and the underlying business model, investigating the relationship of customer communication about sustainability and respective investment decisions. Research paper 2 focuses on the business model and its underlying business processes, analyzing how companies can transform towards sustainability and how this can happen in line with economic principles. Research paper 3 concentrates on the transformation itself, deriving key requirements for a successful project management, respective key performance indicators, and suitable tool support for steering transformation projects towards sustainability. Research Papers 4 and 5 deal with the aspects of a sustainable CRM in a digitalized world, focusing on the new possibilities for managing customer relations that arise with digitalization. Thereby, research paper 4 focuses on the demands and preferences of customers in a digitalized world, finding that channel preferences vary with the respective context or complexity of a service. Research paper 5 focuses on the management of customers in the online social network channel and especially on the identification of the most influential users. Finally, the key findings are summarized and starting points for future research are highlighted

The Business Alignment of Social Media Analytics

Many companies have realized the immense potential of Social Media (SM) insights and have started to use concepts of Social Media Analytics (SMA) to reveal them. However, despite the importance of SMA, executives frequently hand off the topic to IT departments, instead of being actively involved in the business alignment of SMA. While existing SMA literature frequently identifies this need, it only addresses individual steps of the business alignment rather than suggesting comprehensive approaches. In order to contribute to the scientific discussion, we adapt a framework from the requirements \ engineering field to structure the field of action and enable decision-makers to define the SM insights beneficial to their individual goals. To help practitioners with the application of our work, we show a practical example of how to use the framework, and present possible SMA concepts based on current literature that can be used to collect the required SM insights.