3D avatar seller's effect on online consumer's purchasing behavior: a trust transference perspective

The emerging 3D virtual worlds attract more and more people to participate in the virtual environment, creating a new market for business to sell their products. In 3D virtual worlds, members mainly interact with each other through avatars. The selling process is fulfilled through the shop avatars. How businesses sell their products successfully to the potential customers and eventually persuade the customer to purchase the product is an essential question. Trust played a key role in the selling process. In the general selling process, trust was established through the sales person. In the virtual world environment, could the trust be established between the sales avatars and customer avatars This paper aims at answering this question by examining the trust transference process in the 3D virtual world environment. An experiment was conducted to categorize the avatars into attractive and expert ones. The research result first suggest that trust formed in a 3D avatar seller could be transferred to a selling company and a product but for an expert 3D avatar seller, trust transferred to the company and product results in intent to purchase. Trust in a 3D avatar seller is transferred to trust in a product and a company and furthermore, an expert avatar can affect a consumer's intent to purchase. In the case of an attractive 3D avatar, although trust is transferred, it is only to the point of intent to purchase

Korea's nuclear past, present, and future

노트 : As the chairman of KEPIC, the Korea Electric Power Industry Code Committee, for the past 15 years, C.K. Lee has mobilized and managed 350 engineering professors and professional engineers dispatched from six engineering-related academic societies. KEPIC’s 2005 edition consists of five parts contained in 83 volumes or some 27,000 pages, about 3.2 meters thick. Dr. Lee is also a former Commissioner on the Atomic Energy Commission of South Korea, and a former chairman of the International Nuclear Societies Council. This article is adapted from Dr. Lee’s book-length presentation at the Summer Institute of the World Nuclear University, held in Korea in August 2007. A previous article, “A Nuclear Perspective from Asia,” appeared in the Winter 2002-2003 21st Century. The author can be reached at [email protected]

An Agent Based Market Design Methodology for Combinatorial Auctions

Auction mechanisms have attracted a great deal of interest and have been used in diverse e-marketplaces. In particular, combinatorial auctions have the potential to play an important role in electronic transactions. Therefore, diverse combinatorial auction market types have been proposed to satisfy market needs. These combinatorial auction types have diverse market characteristics, which require an effective market design approach. This study proposes a comprehensive and systematic market design methodology for combinatorial auctions based on three phases: market architecture design, auction rule design, and winner determination design. A market architecture design is for designing market architecture types by Backward Chain Reasoning. Auction rules design is to design transaction rules for auctions. The specific auction process type is identified by the Backward Chain Reasoning process. Winner determination design is about determining the decision model for selecting optimal bids and auctioneers. Optimization models are identified by Forward Chain Reasoning. Also, we propose an agent based combinatorial auction market design system using Backward and Forward Chain Reasoning. Then we illustrate a design process for the general n-bilateral combinatorial auction market. This study serves as a guideline for practical implementation of combinatorial auction markets design.Combinatorial Auction, Market Design Methodology, Market Architecture Design, Auction Rule Design, Winner Determination Design, Agent-Based System

Behavior Participation in Virtual Worlds: A Triandis Model Perspective

Emerging virtual technology suggests that we are moving into a new age of technology, Web 3.0, in which social networks and 3D virtual environments are prominent. Many new business opportunities present themselves in this context. However, business success in the new virtual world requires an understanding of how people behave in virtual worlds so that they can be effectively and efficiently managed. This paper examines how people behave in virtual worlds by using a Triandis interpersonal behavior model. The data were collected in Cyworld, and the results were tested by Lisrel 8.70. We examined two types of behaviors, giving information and obtaining information. We show that although behavioral intention plays a role in shaping virtual world behavior, habit plays a major role in determining whether people will give information and obtain information. What is more interesting is that behavior related to obtaining information is a strong antecedent of behavior related to giving information in virtual worlds. The conclusion provides several implications for both researchers and virtual world developers

Appreciating the Performance of Neuroscience Mining in NeuroIS research: A Case Study on Consumer's Product Perceptions in the Two UI Modes—Dark UI vs. Light UI

The goal of the current study was to provide information on the potential of neuroscience mining (NSM) for comprehending NeuroIS paradigms. NSM is an interdisciplinary field that combines neuroscience and business mining, which is the application of big data analytics, computational social science, and other fields to business problems. Therefore, NSM makes it possible to apply predictive models to NeuroIS datasets, such as machine learning and deep learning, to find intricate patterns that are hidden by conventional regression-based analysis. We predicted 28 individual EEG power spectra separated brainwave data using a Random Forest (RF) model. Next, we used NSM to precisely predict how consumers would perceive a product online, depending on whether a light or dark user interface (UI) mode was being used. The model was then used to extract more precise results that could not be obtained using more conventional linear-based analytical models using sensitivity analysis. The benefits of using NSM in NeuroIS research are as follows: (1) it can relieve the burden of the three-horned dilemma described by Runkel and McGrath; (2) it can enable more temporal data to be directly analyzed on the target variables; and (3) sensitivity analysis can be performed on a condition/individual basis, strengthening the rigor of findings by reducing sample bias that can be lost in grand averaging of data when analyzed with methods like GLM

Digital Dark Nudge: An Exploration of When Digital Nudges Unethically Depart

Digital nudging in information systems has become widely prevalent to guide consumers during online decision-making. However, while nudging is about improving the decisions and behaviors in various domains, limited research has explored when digital nudges unethically depart from their intended purpose, whereby opt-in favors profit motives over the user’s best interests. In e-commerce, we defined this as a digital dark nudge (DDN) and explored its use in multiple scenarios against a typical shopping experience. Using an online experiment, we study the economic intentions and emotional perceptions of DDNs, while also accounting for impulsiveness as a moderating personality trait. This study first attempts to use priming and status quo bias as a theoretical lens, and empirical results show increasing evidence of the perverse effects of using DDNs in online e-commerce whereby consumers revert to their status quo, less likelihood of purchase. Our results provide further warning to practitioners about their use of ethical practices such as digital nudging

Agent based mobile negotiation for personalized pricing of last minute theatre tickets

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Expert Systems with Applications. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2012 Elsevier B.V.This paper proposes an agent based mobile negotiation framework for personalized pricing of last minutes theatre tickets whose values are dependent on the time remaining to the performance and the locations of potential customers. In particular, case based reasoning and fuzzy cognitive map techniques are adopted in the negotiation framework to identify the best initial offer zone and adopt multi criteria decision in the scoring function to evaluate offers. The proposed framework is tested via a computer simulation in which personalized pricing policy shows higher market performance than other policies therefore the validity of the proposed negotiation framework.The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (Korea

Disordered Fe vacancies and superconductivity in potassium-intercalated iron selenide (K2-xFe4+ySe5)

The parent compound of an unconventional superconductor must contain unusual correlated electronic and magnetic properties of its own. In the high-Tc potassium intercalated FeSe, there has been significant debate regarding what the exact parent compound is. Our studies unambiguously show that the Fe-vacancy ordered K2Fe4Se5 is the magnetic, Mott insulating parent compound of the superconducting state. Non-superconducting K2Fe4Se5 becomes a superconductor after high temperature annealing, and the overall picture indicates that superconductivity in K2-xFe4+ySe5 originates from the Fe-vacancy order to disorder transition. Thus, the long pending question whether magnetic and superconducting state are competing or cooperating for cuprate superconductors may also apply to the Fe-chalcogenide superconductors. It is believed that the iron selenides and related compounds will provide essential information to understand the origin of superconductivity in the iron-based superconductors, and possibly to the superconducting cuprates