Mega and Consumer Trends – Towards Car-independent Mobile Applications

The car industry is confronted with fundamental changes in society, technology and economy and forced to rethink its concept of mobility. Through constant strategic foresight, trend management and a holistic mobility vision, car manufacturers must develop innovative strategies that reflect current and future trends, in order to meet customer needs, technological standards and economic imperatives. Therefore, car manufacturers are shifting their value chain more and more towards the aftermarket and information technology (IT). Used as a tool for image branding and innovation monitoring, a closer look reveals that car manufacturers are constantly increasing their investment activities in technology start-ups. This indicates that the car industry is in the middle of a transformation process, transforming from a car producer to a mobility provider. Based on an analysis of future driving factors in the car industry and in-depth interviews, we identified six crucial megatrends: peak oil and global warming, connectedness, safety regulations, sharing economy, urban mobility and aging society. Furthermore, four shaping consumer trends were revealed: ownerless, simplicity, eco-lifestyle and personalization. In summary, the most successful providers in the mobile market might be those who understand thoroughly the consumers’ needs and behaviour, in order to offer the mobility services they desire

Ambient Intelligence

Not availabl

Nachhaltige Einführung organisationsspezifischen Wissensmanagements

Das Knowledge Management Support System (KMSS) unterstützt die Projektverantwortlichen einer Organisation entscheidend bei der nachhaltigen Einführung eines ganzheitlichen Wissensmanagements. Ziel ist es insbesondere, die bei der Einführung von Wissensmanagement oft auftretenden Barrieren durch frühzeitige Kommunikation sowie durch Einbeziehung aller Beteiligten nach Möglichkeit gar nicht erst entstehen zu lassen. Dabei folgt das Knowledge Management Support System einem präventiven, problemorientierten Ansatz, wobei die Erfahrungen bisheriger Arbeiten und Einführungen aufgegriffen werden und die Entstehung potenzieller Barrieren frühzeitig unterbunden wird. Somit ist das Knowledge Management Support System kein (weiteres) informations- und/oder kommunikationstechnologisches Wissensmanagement-Werkzeug in herkömmlichem Sinn. Es ist vielmehr ein Informationssystem, um die Einführung eines ganzheitlichen Wissensmanagements in einer Organisation zu planen und zu unterstützen und im Weiteren den sinnvollen Gebrauch der mannigfaltigen Wissensmanagement-Instrumente zu koordinieren. Im Vordergrund steht die Unterstützung des organisationsindividuellen Weges hin zu einem organisationsspezifischen Wissensmanagement. Das Knowledge Management Support System bietet den Projektverantwortlichen die Möglichkeit, sich sukzessive in den komplexen Bereich Wissensmanagement einzuarbeiten und dabei auf vielfältige und umfassende sowie strukturierte Informationen zurückzugreifen. Die konsequente Nutzung des Knowledge Management Support Systems unterstützt insbesondere die Ableitung konkreter operativer Maßnahmen und Instrumente

The Impact of Social Networking Sites on the Employer-Employee Relationship

The effects that internet-based social networking sites (SNS) have on the labour market have yet to be investigated. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether and in what way SNS are changing the nature of the relationships between employers on the one hand, and employees and job applicants on the other. By means of an online survey, information was collected about attitudes towards data security, self-marketing and career development. This study suggests that employees who use social networking sites as self-marketing tools aim to build a positive reputation and thus redress the asymmetrical information relationship with employers. The survey also shows that data security plays an important role

Competencies Required for Entrepreneurs to Manoeuvre Successfully Through Digital Transformation

Digital transformation typically means both game-changing opportunities and risks (Nadkarni and Prügl 2021), forcing entrepreneurs to develop essential competencies to remain competitive in a changing environment (Murawski and Bick 2017). Very few existing academic studies have evaluated and developed competency-based frameworks designed for entrepreneurs (Hayton and Kelley 2006; Mitchelmore and Rowley 2010), or examined entrepreneurial opportunities and implications caused by digital transformation (Berman 2012; Sebastian et al. 2017). Aside from these examples, the domain of entrepreneurship is still relatively under-explored in this context, and so it can be concluded that the topics “competencies required for the digital age” and “entrepreneurs” are yet to be integrated to any great extent by the academic community, even though gaining an in-depth understanding would be benefcial for diferent stakeholders (e.g., entrepreneurs and business schools). To address this gap, we formulate the following research question (RQ): RQ: What are the required competencies an entrepreneur needs to master, in order to face the new challenges of digital transformation successfully? Based on insights taken from a literature review, which we used to prepare interview guidelines, semi-structured interviews were conducted in 2020 with six experts in the feld, who we selected through a convenience sampling approach. Our explorative study demonstrates that the development of basic technical skills and agility is an essential entrepreneurial requirement. Our results furthermore indicate that along with technological and soft competencies, social and emotional skills are crucial for entrepreneurs in the digital age. ... [Aus: Introduction

The Influence of Situation-Dependent Factors on Mobile Shopping Usage

Although situations influence the use of a technology, this field has been largely neglected in mobile shopping. Therefore, this paper aims to identify situational factors impacting on the intention to use a mobile device for actual purchase transactions, as actual purchases were found to be the least adapted shopping activity conducted via mobile devices. This study contributes to the field of mobile shopping behavior by being the first to simultaneously investigate the influence of various situational factors on the intention to shop mobile. Based on Belk’s five categories of situational factors, we perform a conjoint analysis to explore the relevance of different situational characteristics for low and high involvement products. The results indicate that particularly the product price, the internet connection, and the mobile shop layout determine mobile shopping behavior. Practical actions to strengthen the mobile channel and increase consumers’ intentions to purchase via mobile devices, can be derived from the findings

A Novel Design Science Approach for Integrating Chinese User-Generated Content in Non-Chinese Market Intelligence

Market research has long relied on reactive means of data gathering, such as questionnaires or focus groups. With the wide-spread use of social media, millions of comments about customer opinions and feedback regarding products and brands are available. However, before using this ‘wisdom of the crowd’ as a source for marketing research, several challenges have to be tackled: the sheer volume of posts, their unstructured format, and the dozens of different languages used on the internet. All of them make automated usage of this data challenging. In this paper, we draw on dashboard design principles and follow a design science research approach to develop a framework for search, integration, and analysis of cross-language user-generated content. With ‘MarketMiner’, we implement the framework in the automotive industry by analyzing Chinese auto forums. The results are promising in that MarketMiner can dramatically improve utilization of foreign-language social media content for market intelligence purposes

A Design Framework for Adaptive Gamification Applications

The application of gamification does not always achieve the expected results due to the shortcomings of the quite common one size fits all approach of standard gamification concepts. We therefore propose a design framework that can inform systematic development of adaptive gamification applications. The developed framework draws on the current body of gamification literature, focusing on the emerging research stream of adaptive gamification. It provides design paths and design principles that translate the individual elements into concrete guidelines to assist the design practice. The framework has been successfully applied to the design and implementation of a prototype application using gamification to incentivize knowledge exchange on an existing online platform for physicians in practical medical training. The evaluation in a case study indicated positive user acceptance and increased system usage after the introduction of the developed adaptive gamification solution