Status Updates Over Unreliable Multiaccess Channels

Applications like environmental sensing, and health and activity sensing, are supported by networks of devices (nodes) that send periodic packet transmissions over the wireless channel to a sink node. We look at simple abstractions that capture the following commonalities of such networks (a) the nodes send periodically sensed information that is temporal and must be delivered in a timely manner, (b) they share a multiple access channel and (c) channels between the nodes and the sink are unreliable (packets may be received in error) and differ in quality. We consider scheduled access and slotted ALOHA-like random access. Under scheduled access, nodes take turns and get feedback on whether a transmitted packet was received successfully by the sink. During its turn, a node may transmit more than once to counter channel uncertainty. For slotted ALOHA-like access, each node attempts transmission in every slot with a certain probability. For these access mechanisms we derive the age of information (AoI), which is a timeliness metric, and arrive at conditions that optimize AoI at the sink. We also analyze the case of symmetric updating, in which updates from different nodes must have the same AoI. We show that ALOHA-like access, while simple, leads to AoI that is worse by a factor of about 2e, in comparison to scheduled access

FACTORS AFFECTING COSUMERS’ ATTITUDE TOWARDS ONLINE RESERVATION: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS

With the rapid penetration of Internet in India and the increasing usage of the Internet for commercial purposes makes it imperative to understand and identify the factors which affects the attitude of consumers towards the adoption of Internet as an alternate channel for online reservations in case of Indian online travel industry. In this study we have identified perceived usefulness and playfulness as the significant predictors of consumers’ attitude towards using the Internet as an alternate channel for online reservation. We also found that novelty seeking and anxiety are not the significant predictors of attitude. These findings have implications for the online travel agents primarily because research has shown that a positive attitude leads to behavioural intention and hence behavioural action i.e. purchases (online transactions)

EXAMINING THE EFFECTS OF THE CUSTOMER LOYALTY STATES ON THE WORD OF MOUTH

This study empirically examines the Influence of the Cognitive, Affective, Conative and Action Loyalty states as conceptualized by Oliver (1999) on the Word-of-mouth behavior about retail websites from the customers of the sites. Structural equation model is used to estimate the path coefficients between the loyalty states and the Word- of- Mouth- behavior. Data collected from 511 under graduate and graduate students from a business university suggest the existence of significant paths from the Affective, Conative and Action loyalty states to site-customer’ s word of mouth about the website. Results of the study, managerial implications and directions for future research are discussed