60 Building Relationships Between Consumers and Online Vendors: Empirical Findings from Austria

Customer Relationship Management has become one of the major topics in Information Systems. While IS researchers concentrate on the influence of computer-supported systems to strengthen the ties between customers and organizations, the underlying theoretical base has mainly been built and developed by the marketing discipline named relationship marketing. Interestingly, the central definition of what exactly constitutes a relationship remains unclear in both research fields. This paper takes an interdisciplinary approach and shows how relationships are defined in scholarly literature. Since the results remain unsatisfying, an empirical survey is conducted to let online consumers define what they perceive to be the crucial attributes of a relationship in general and with an (online) organization. The results indicate that the notion of relationship has to be redefined at least for online communication and interaction and offer practical implications for designing the interaction process with online users

Privacy Revisited: The Impact of Blockchain Technology on the Disclosure of Personal Data

Internet users tend to lack awareness when it comes to the amount of personal data they regularly disclose online. This causes discrepancies between their reported privacy attitudes and their actual privacy behavior, a phenomenon which has been labeled “privacy paradox”. They also calculate the subjective benefits and risks of disclosing personal data. In this context, blockchain technology acts as a double-edged sword when it comes to ensuring privacy. On the one hand, it allows storing data in an immutable way and creating systems which evoke Orwellian visions of intrusive governments overseeing and monitoring their most private decisions. On the other hand, blockchain technology holds the potential of giving privacy back into the hands of users. It allows them to determine which personal information they want to share and offers encryption technology to conceal the origin of data. The complexity of blockchain technology and its implications on privacy are hard to grasp for the average user. In the proposed research project, we therefore investigate how internet users, more specifically consumers, perceive the privacy impact of blockchain technology and how their attitudes and behaviors are shaped by the technology’s objective features as well as their subjective perceptions. We also scrutinize the role of media and peers in shaping disclosure attitude and behavior

Usage of Hedonic Web Instruments

In the World Wide Web companies can design Web sites which appeal to both utilitarian and hedonic customers. Other than traditional media, which require a trade-off between informative and entertaining content, the Internet allows for the combination of multimedia tools in order to produce a holistic online experience. Companies therefore incorporate hedonic elements into their site in order to improve its overall effectiveness and efficiency. In this exploratory study we show the results of a longitudinal survey, in which we monitored the usage of four different communication instruments (sweepstakes, online games, wallpapers/screensavers, e-cards) on commercial websites. We differentiate between sites offering high and low involvement products and use log-linear models to visualize our results and to find the combinations of instruments which turned out to be stable over time. Our results show that companies in general have reduced the usage of hedonic instruments (e.g. e-cards) during the period of investigation and that some combinations of hedonic instruments are more frequently used than others

Web Site Analysis: A Review and Assessment of Previous Research

The emergence of the World Wide Web as a major communication and transaction channel stresses the preeminent importance of a company\u27s Web site for representing the organization, interacting with customers and conducting transactions. In comparison to other channels, the opportunities for targeting specific market segments are somehow limited, due to the Internet\u27s worldwide reach and predominantly anonymous users. Additionally, an ever-increasing number of customers are going online, which prevents the fine tuning of a site for specific user groups. Therefore, it seems essential that organizations possessing Web presence should be well aware of their site\u27s general functionality and how it is perceived by Internet users. For many years the analysis of Web sites has been one of the major topics for both scholars and practitioners, which led to a huge number of different techniques being used for the evaluation of sites. Furthermore, a variety of different theories and models have been developed which include the effects of Web sites as dependent or independent variables. In this paper, I compare different approaches to Web site analysis and present a classification framework. Numerous examples will be given to illustrate the various dimensions of the framework. Furthermore, benefits and drawbacks of the respective methods will be discussed where applicable. The results provide important insights into the current state of the art of Web analysis and will be supportive for anyone planning to conduct a Web analysis as well as for someone who is interested in getting an overview of the research field

UNDERSTANDING THE BLOCKCHAIN THROUGH A GAMIFIED EXPERIENCE: A CASE STUDY FROM AUSTRIA

The Blockchain has evoked the interests of researchers and practitioners alike. Market studies predict that it has huge potential to disrupt existing economic structures and business processes, yet the complex technology behind it makes it hard for many people to grasp the basic functionality. Lacking are easy-to-use interfaces and playful applications which would allow for a simple Blockchain exploration. The project Play4Privacy (P4P) used the ancient Chinese board game Go to increase public understanding of the Blockchain. Individuals could join teams to jointly determine the moves of the stones, and tokens could be mined while playing the game. The respective moves of the stones were displayed on the wall of a public building. In this case study we use six qualitative interviews to summarize the anticipated and unanticipated findings of the project, which was not only intended to increase public awareness concerning Blockchain technology, but also toward privacy on the Internet. The results of this research project reveal several important managerial and behavioral obstacles that have to be overcome in order for Blockchain technology to reach widespread adoption

A Framework for Measuring People\u27s Intention to Donate Online

Despite the overall economic and social importance of nonprofit organizations and the plethora of scholarly literature written on online payments, few authors have combined these two issues to take a look at online donations. Accepting donations online helps nonprofits, which typically face budgetary constraints, to accomplish their tasks more effectively and efficiently and to put their resources to use where they are needed most. In this paper we first present a framework that illustrates several antecedents of online donations. We use the results of two surveys to test the scales we have developed and present the respective factor loadings. After discussing the descriptive results, we compare two user groups (members of nonprofits and students) regarding their attitudes toward online donations. The results suggest that most of the scales we present exhibit sufficient validity and that significant differences between the two groups exist. While the former is useful for researchers planning to conduct an empirical survey to assess the importance of online donations, the latter results demonstrate the applicability of our instrument to segment user groups according to their preferences. This can help nonprofits to address their (prospective) members with better target communication efforts

Drivers and Inhibitors of Online Donations to Nonprofit Organizations

Despite the overall economic and social importance of nonprofit organizations and the plethora of schol- arly literature on electronic commerce, few authors have combined these two fields to tackle the issue of online donations to nonprofit organizations. In this paper we first present a framework that illustrates several antecedents of online donations. After discussing the descriptive results from two surveys, we compare different user groups regarding their attitudes toward online donations. The results suggest that our scales exhibit sufficient reliability and validity and that the two groups differ significantly. Further- more, we conduct a regression analysis with the cause, trust in the organization, trust in the Internet, and privacy as independent variables and the people\u27s intention to donate online as the dependent variable. Trust in the Internet turns out to be by far the most important influencing factor, exhibiting a significant influence on people\u27s attitude toward donating to nonprofit organizations online

Content and Design Metrics for Web Sites: Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Results

Given the vital importance of the Internet as a communication and transaction channel, the evaluation of Web sites has become a central issue for both information systems researchers and practitioners. In contrast to traditional distribution and communication channels, which are usually adapted to different target groups, a company’s Web site needs to appeal to a multitude of mostly anonymous visitors. Many different metrics have been developed to evaluate a Web site’s quality as perceived by users. This paper explicitly focuses on users’ perceptions of the content and design of Web sites and shows how a Delphi study as well as an exploratory factor analysis can be used to generate and cluster attributes of Web sites. Furthermore, different user groups are identified and clustered according to their preferences into the categories “Entertainment and Design,” “Information,” and “Individualization.

The Importance of Previous Experience for the Trial of Mobile Self-Service Technologies

An increasing number of companies utilize mobile communication such as advertisements via Short Message Service (SMS) or mobile payment to facilitate interaction with their customers. Given the manifold potentials of mobile technologies, it is not surprising that a lot of innovative business models and services are emerging. In this paper we first discuss various theories of technology diffusion and trial of technology, which are frequently used in information systems and marketing research. Subsequently, we present a system which allows ordering products by simply photographing an advanced form of barcode, which can be placed on virtually any printed media, the product itself, or even be shown on television. We use a Structural Equation Modeling approach to measure the importance of various antecedents of trial, namely the ability to use a mobile technology, users’ role clarity, and both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Furthermore, the role of previous experience as a moderator of the antecedents of technology trial is explored. The results show that there is a significant difference between experienced and inexperienced users regarding the trial of this service innovation

Antecedents of Organizational Competency Development

One of the most important tasks of managing further education in an organizational setting is to make sure that the employees can apply the competencies developed in the business processes they are involved in. Based on qualitative interviews and a literature research we propose a number of factors which influence knowledge transfer within an organization. The influence factors are translated in an evaluation framework that is further applied in a preliminary study to assess the eligibility of the scales we used. We discuss related work in order to highlight the importance of quantifying the results of interorganizational further education and argue that the strength of our approach lies in the integrative view of competency management which takes a series of stakeholders into account. Although this paper is research in progress, the first results are promising and call for further in-depth research