Investment Evaluation Of RFID Technology Applications: A Real Options Perspective

The majority of previous studies on investment evaluation of RFID technology ignore the flexibility and the Real Options that this kind of investment can lead to. However, studies on the evaluation of other Information Systems have acknowledged the importance of these options as they create future business opportunities or give to managers the opportunity to take actions that could favorably influence the future direction of an investment in response to external or internal events. Drawing on literature from the Financial Field (Real Options theory) and Information Systems (IT investment evaluation), this paper has the aim to apply the Real Options approach to the RFID context through a case study example. This study shows how and why this approach is applicable to the case of RFID technology, underlining its necessity for the RFID investment evaluation

INFLUENCING FACTORS OF SHARING PRODUCT-RELATED ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION

During the last decades, firms have deployed environmental sustainability practices. While most of these practices incur internally within a firm’s boundaries, collaboration with supply chain partners and sharing of information related to the environmental impact of a firm’s products and processes, namely environmental information, has been identified by many firms as essential in order to achieve their environmental and economic goals. In our research, we focus on a specific type of environmental information, the product-related one. We explore the factors influencing the sharing of product-related information, including the role of environmental collaboration, IT Infrastructure capabilities, supply chain integration capabilities and product-related information availability. A questionnaire-based survey is used targeting European firms in the fast moving consumer goods industry. The testing of the research model and hypotheses is performed using the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) technique with Partial Least Squares (PLS). The results show that environmental collaboration, supply chain integration capability and product-related environmental information availability have a significant effect on sharing of product-related environmental information. However, IT integration capabilities appear not to be an important influencing factor

Factors Affecting The Adoption Of Service Oriented Architectures

Service-orientated architecture is a very popular approach for building large scale, modular and distributed systems as well as achieving integration in heterogeneous environments. Its acceptance in the world of business is growing over time, mainly in technologically advanced countries, but there are still research gaps regarding SOA adoption and diffusion process. Interesting research questions include which factors drive SOA adoption, e.g. whether it is related to specific attributes of organizations. In this research-in-progress paper, we present a research model for identifying and validating the factors affecting SOA adoption in business contexts. Our model takes into consideration both theoretical background regarding factors of impact on IT innovations adoption and factors closely related to specific SOA characteristics. Our research is at a preliminary stage and thus we also present, the research methodology we intend to follow, in order to come up with results and confirm hypotheses

Identifying Customer Satisfaction Patterns Via Data Mining: The Case Of Greek E-Shops

In an online marketplace reality in which customer satisfaction emerges as a key success factor for e- retailers, it becomes crucial to better understand whether the shoppers are satisfied and what factors affect their satisfaction experience. As we are in the Big Data era, Business Analytic techniques could assist us to better understand our customers and their respective satisfaction. To this end, this paper presents a data mining based approach to identify different satisfaction patterns/profiles from satisfaction survey responses. This approach was applied on data from over 120 Greek e-shops across 18 industries. Apart from its theoretical contribution, the proposed approach extracts hidden satisfaction patterns with a view to better understand the specific needs and preferences of customers. These insights may be used to support several decisions, ranging from marketing actions per customer satisfaction profile, to actionable decision making and customer-oriented strategie

GAMIFICATION IS ALL ABOUT FUN: THE ROLE OF INCENTIVE TYPE AND COMMUNITY COLLABORATION

As the transformation of various services into appealing game-like experiences is in its infancy, limited research exists in the area and in particular on the way each gamification design decision affects intended outcome. In the present study we investigate the impact of two game elements (incentive type and community collaboration) on user´s experienced fun during participation in a gamified service. Via an experiment (N=108), we examine the role of Incentive Type [Accomplish an achievement versus Receive discounted offer], as a motivator for participation, and Community Collaboration, as participation setting (individual pursuit of goals versus collaborative pursuit of goals), on experienced fun in the context of a gamified consumer service. The service is aimed at assisting consumers in their efforts to adopt an ecologically conscious consumer behaviour. Results indicate that the selection of community collaboration as a form of interaction presents significant difference in experienced fun during participation, whereas accomplishing an achievement opposed to receiving discounted price does not

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

Customer Visit Segmentation Using Market Basket Data

Basket analytics is a powerful tool in the retail context for acquiring knowledge about consumer shopping habits and preferences. In this paper, we propose a clustering-based artifact that mines customer visit segments from basket sales data. We characterize a customer visit by the purchased product categories in the basket and identify the shopping intention or mission behind the visit e.g. ‘breakfast’ visit to purchase cereal, milk, bread, cheese etc. We demonstrate the utility of the artifact by applying it to a real case of a major fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) retailer. Apart from its theoretical contribution, the proposed approach extracts knowledge that may support several decisions ranging from marketing campaigns per customer segment, redesign of a store’s layout to product recommendations

CLOUD ADOPTION: RELATIVE ADVANTAGE OR IT FASHION?

Cloud computing is a recent trend that has transformed the IS resource provisioning industry. However, the hype that cloud computing has received lately in combination with the ˜must-deploy´ imperative usually used by its promoters, makes it easy for decision makers to lose track of the reasons that make cloud computing valuable to business. At the same time, the IS research community has focused on addressing the factors that affect cloud adoption, paying little attention to the impact of external factors. Reviewing earlier work on diffusion of innovation theory and based on a preliminary qualitative research, we note that a main driver for cloud adoption is a set of factors that mark its relative advantage compared to earlier provisioning service models. Taking into account our interview data and fashion management theory, we extend earlier research work by introducing the tendency of organizations to follow IT fashion as a reason that also influnces cloud computing adoption. We therefore propose a research model that takes into account both relative advantage and fashion drivers for cloud adoption and we discuss further steps and control dimensions for empirically testing this model in future work