bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A Managerial Perspective on E-Commerce
Authors: Le Thuong T. , Rao S. Subba , Truong Dothang
Published: May 2011

From a trading perspective, Internet-based e-commerce (electronic commerce), the most widely known form of e-commerce, refers to the exchange of products and services via electronic networks that may include value-added networks (VANs), the Internet, corporate intranets and extranets. E-commerce can be described and discussed from a strategic perspective using the ICDT framework (information exchange (I), communication (C), distribution (D) and transaction (T)) as well as the Four Layer framework. This chapter aims to discuss the issues of adoption and diffusion of e-commerce at the macro level in relation to the Four Layer and the ICDT frameworks. The influences of cultural differences among countries on diffusion and success of e-commerce are briefly discussed in relation to organisational models of national cultures. Future areas of research are pointed out at the end.
Strategic Information Systems
Authors: Petros Theodorou
Published: May 2011

Certain contingencies of business environment raise the importance of alignment in the explanation of tactics with strategic implications. Alignment is an important aspect that has to be examined in all multivariate and normative models. In this paper, the Information Technology (IT) alignment is examined along with business strategy and structure, while taking into account environmental contingencies. The concept of alignment raises the strategic role of information technology through the integration of business and IT strategy. Most of the firms nowadays cannot capture the strategic role of IT and underestimating its value as persisting only on financial valuation. In this work, an attempt has been made to fill out this lack of strategic estimation by the use of the alignment model. A taxonomy of strategic information technology applications is presented and an integration of IT with business strategy and structure is attempted in order to create competitive advantage.
Web Mining to Create a Domain Specific Web Portal Database
Authors: Scime Anthony
Published: May 2011

The dynamic nature of the World Wide Web is causing an evolution of both information access and format. The use of a Web portal to access information about a domain relieves the searcher of the responsibility to know about, access and retrieve domain documents. In a properly constructed portal, a Web mining process has already sifted through pages found on the Web to select domain facts. This Web-generated knowledge is added to domain expert knowledge in an organized database. This chapter details the design and construction of a domain specific Web portal through the combination of domain expertise and Web-based domain facts.
Database-Driven Product Catalog System
Authors: Rahayu Johanna Wenny , Flahive Andrew , Taniar David
Published: May 2011

A Web-based Product Catalog is an online product database that requires easy access from anywhere in the world and uses the most efficient method for information retrieval. The database should support all products no matter what attributes the products have. Many large businesses have been unsuccessful in their attempts to create a product database that enables fast, efficient access across the Web. As there are many complex issues involved with the storage of product information, many companies settle for poorly designed databases as a tradeoff to becoming Web compatible faster. This chapter explores database-driven E-Commerce product catalogs and the issues that inhibit its creation. A Web-based Product Catalog System has been put forward in this chapter that allows for storage of all product specific information. Storage and retrieval of attributes that have no structure, like media objects (pictures, video clips, audio samples) have also been implemented in this system. Media objects are becoming an important feature to product catalogs, especially those intended for deployment on the Internet. Another important feature supported by the system is the ability switch between languages. This multi-language feature allows all of the product information to be understood right around the world, broadening the potential users of the system.
Ubiquitous Access to Web Databases
Authors: Bouguettaya Athman , Medjahed Brahim , Ouzzani Mouorad , Meng Yao
Published: May 2011

With the emergence of the Web, there is a need to provide across-the-board transparency for accessing and manipulating data irrespective of platforms, locations, and systems. The challenge is to build an infrastructure to support flexible tools for information space organization, communication facilities, information discovery, content description, and assembly of data from heterogeneous sources. In this chapter, we describe the WebFINDIT system. WebFINDIT builds a scalable and uniform infrastructure for locating and accessing heterogeneous and autonomous databases in large and dynamic environments. One key feature of WebFINDIT is the clustering of Web databases into distributed ontologies. The main advantage of this ontological organization is filtering interactions and reducing the overhead of locating information. Another important feature is the large spectrum of heterogeneity being supported. Heterogeneity appears at different levels, including hardware (Sun and NT), operating system (UNIX and NT), database (Oracle, Informix, DB2, ObjectStore), and communication middleware (CORBA, DCOM, EJB, and RMI).
Knowledge Economy
Authors: Ceric Vlatko
Published: May 2011

The dramatic development of information and communications technology, the increased speed of scientific and technological progress, and the increased global competition led to the growing importance of knowledge and technology for economy. Modern economy, therefore, increasingly includes features of knowledge economy, an economy based on production, distribution and use of knowledge. Also, more and more the growth of companies depends on innovation, and innovation is based on knowledge. This chapter presents an overview of knowledge economy. It describes the categorisation and a characteristic of knowledge, analyses features of knowledge assets, describes the reasons for the importance of information and communications technology for knowledge economy, and the economic aspects of knowledge assets. Finally, it describes the production, transmission and dissemination of knowledge, as well as the measurement of knowledge required for providing adequate economic indicators for the new economy.
Intelligent Agents for Knowledge Management in E-Commerce
Authors: Pouloudi Athanasia , Hlupic Vlatka , Rzevski George
Published: May 2011

E-commerce has become a key aspect of the global business environment, causing fundamental changes in markets and organisational structures. This chapter considers how knowledge management, the latest management approach aimed at improving business performance, can create new business opportunities in the new business environment that is defined by electronic commerce. Knowledge management deals with the systematic generation, codification and transfer of knowledge and can be supported by a number of technologies, known as knowledge management tools. It has been argued that intelligent systems can offer additional capabilities and advantages in comparison with more traditional information technologies. This chapter investigates the potential of intelligent agent-based software for more effective knowledge management in the context of e-commerce, adopting the perspective of an SME involved in development of intelligent agents-based knowledge management software. The chapter concludes with a research agenda for knowledge management research in e-commerce.
Bridging the Gap from the General to the Specific by Linking Knowledge Management to Business Processes
Authors: Edwards John S. , Kidd John B.
Published: May 2011

A phenomenon common to almost all fields is that there is a gap between theory and practical implementation. However, this is a particular problem in knowledge management, where much of the literature consists of general principles written in the context of a ‘knowledge world’ that has few, if any, references to how to carry out knowledge management in organisations. In this chapter, we put forward the view that the best way to bridge this gap between general principles and the specific issues facing a given organisation is to link knowledge management to the organisation’s business processes. After briefly reviewing, and rejecting alternative ways in which this gap might be bridged, the chapter goes on to explain the justification for, and the potential benefits and snags of, linking knowledge management to business processes. Successful and unsuccessful examples are presented. We concentrate especially on the issues of establishing what knowledge is relevant to an organisation at present, the need for organisational learning to cope with the inevitable change, and the additional problems posed by the growing internationalisation of operations. We conclude that linking knowledge management in terms of business processes is the best route for organisations to follow, but that it is not the answer to all knowledge management problems, especially where different cultures and/or cultural change are involved.
Designing Neural Network Ensembles by Minimizing Mutual Information
Authors: Liu Yong , Yao Xin , Higuchi Tetsuya
Published: May 2011

This chapter describes negative correlation learning for designing neural network ensembles. Negative correlation learning has been firstly analysed in terms of minimising mutual information on a regression task. By minimising the mutual information between variables extracted by two neural networks, they are forced to convey different information about some features of their input. Based on the decision boundaries and correct response sets, negative correlation learning has been further studied on two pattern classification problems. The purpose of examining the decision boundaries and the correct response sets is not only to illustrate the learning behavior of negative correlation learning, but also to cast light on how to design more effective neural network ensembles. The experimental results showed the decision boundary of the trained neural network ensemble by negative correlation learning is almost as good as the optimum decision boundary.
Evolutionary Learning of a Box-Pushing Controller
Authors: Spronck Pieter , Sprinkhuizen-Kuyper Ida , Postma Eric , Kortmann Rens
Published: May 2011

In our research we use evolutionary algorithms to evolve robot controllers for executing elementary behaviours. This chapter focuses on the behaviour of pushing a box between two walls. The main research question addressed in this chapter is: how can a neural network learn to control the box-pushing task using evolutionary-computation techniques? In answering this question we study the following three characteristics by means of simulation experiments: (1) the fitness function, (2) the neural network topology and (3) the parameters of the evolutionary algorithm. We find that appropriate choices for these characteristics are: (1) a global external fitness function, (2) a recurrent neural network, and (3) a regular evolutionary algorithm augmented with the doping technique in which the initial population is supplied with a solution to a hard task instance. We conclude by stating that our findings on the relatively simple box-pushing behaviour form a good starting point for the evolutionary learning of more complex behaviours.
Simulation Model for the Control of Olive Fly Bactrocera Oleae Using Artificial Life Technique
Authors: Gong Hongfei , Claudio da Rosa A.=gostinho
Published: May 2011

In this chapter we present a novel method for modelling of the development of olive fly—Bactrocera oleae (Gmelin)—based on artificial life technique. The fly’s artificial life model consists of a set of distinct agents, each representing one phase in the insect’s lifecycle. Each agent is defined mainly by two internal state variables: health and development. Simulation results have provided development times and mortality rates that closely resemble those observations in biological experiment. The model presented has proven to offer good results in replicating the insect’s behaviour under monitored climatic conditions. The model’s potential uses are discussed.
Information-Induced Strategic Alignment
Authors: Shams Ra’ed M. , Wheeler Frederick P.
Published: May 2011

The concept of strategic alignment between organizational policies for business and information systems (IS) has not been defined previously in informational terms. In this paper, we define informational aspects of organizational behavior in three semiological dimensions: pragmatics, semantics and syntactics. We also introduce dynamics as a fourth dimension to address time-related changes. We demonstrate the importance of these ideas in the analysis of strategic alignment by taking recent examples to show how informational attributes are often implicitly discussed in the literature. We believe that the precise definition of the informational aspects of alignment is a necessary prerequisite for the advancement of understanding in this important area.
The Moral and Business Value of Information Technology
Authors: Stahl Bernd C.
Published: May 2011

This chapter explores the question of the value of information technology from a wider angle than the usual financial perspective. The central thesis is that value is always more than just a financial notion, that it always includes a moral or ethical dimension. From this starting point, the paper investigates the different types of values that play a role in information technology. Due to the multitude of values that determine our dealing with information technology, it is clear that there can be conflicts between them. The paper, therefore, proceeds to introduce a framework that allows the conciliation of competing values by introducing values of a higher order, so-called option values and legacy values. It is then demonstrated that this framework can help solve the problem of value conflicts in IT.
Establishing the Business Value of Network Security Using Analytical Hierarchical Process
Authors: Chinburg Susan J. , Sharda Ramesh , Weiser Mark
Published: May 2011

Information technology (IT) has become a critical functionality for business today. Choosing the appropriate network security that will protect IT functions and meet business needs can be a bewildering but necessary process. The problem is deciding what and how much to do. The objective of this paper is to propose a new process that will facilitate the mapping of network security to the business’s priorities using well-known classification schemes and decision support systems. Establishing a relationship between such diverse functions requires that the two areas be described in terms that can be related. Network security is described in terms of services and mechanisms that provide the functionality using the Open System Interconnection (OSI) Security Architecture classification. Business value and activities are described using Michael Porter’s business value chain. First, the classification schemes for each area are subjectively related to establish an initial functionality/business value relationship. Second, a decision support tool called analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is used to establish an analytical and more objective relationship between the two classification schemes. The result of this work is a prioritized list of security services related to business needs instead of just being driven by technological criteria. An example that illustrates this concept is described in the paper. To the best of the authors knowledge, this is the first application of using AHP in the decision-making process of choosing network security in relationship to business needs.
An Optimization Model for Telecommunication Systems
Authors: Ghahramani Bahador
Published: May 2011

The Optimization Model for Telecommunication Systems (OMTS) is designed and developed to optimize System Designers and Developers (SD&D) efforts in the Telecommunication Industry (TI). Using the life-cycle process, OMTS continuously evaluates business value and utility of every activity in the systems design and development process. The primary objective of the OMTS is to increase business value of the TI system and improve their performance. Through OMTS, SD&D are able to answer such critical questions as “Do modern telecommunication technologies pay off?” and “How can we best use modern technologies in the TI?” The OMTS is capable of facilitating higher business profitability and productivity by enhancing systems’ strategic goals such as product position, product quality, and customer service.
Technological Frames Recursive Construction Approach
Authors: Cano Jeimy J.
Published: May 2011

Information Technology, during the last few years, has turned into a determining factor of modern organization development. In this line, a lot of studies have been conducted aimed at explaining the possible relations to company’s productivity and competitiveness, which to some extent, leads to causal conclusions, casting structural individual relationships into a background in the organizational tasks. In this direction, social researchers have incorporated valuable elements to understand the individuals’ position in the construction of technological artifacts and the comprehension thereof in the organization scope. Such research led to the statement of the concept of so-called technological frames, which explicitly incorporate an individual’s social and cognitive distinctions around the technological context in a community. Subsequent studies, however, fail to delve into the way such frames are constructed or influenced in a significant extent by the companies’s tasks or technology incorporations. For such reasons, this paper, based on the assumption that Information Technology is the result of individuals’ social interaction, is intended to explore the benefits of individuals’ structural relations understanding in Information Technology incorporation to integrate the findings of causal research and systemic elements (the study of relations), focusing on information technology understanding in the organizational tasks.
Extending Checkland's Phenomenological Approach to Information Systems
Authors: Lopez-Garay Hernan
Published: May 2011

Recent developments in systems thinking (Fuenmayor & López Garay, 1991; Fuenmayor, 1991a,b,c; Fuenmayor, 1997; López-Garay & Suárez, 1999) linked to the phenomenological perspective, are changing our understanding of systems, and organizations. In this chapter, we will introduce a new image of organizations as holistic practices —an image based on these developments— and examine how this image may enrich Checkland’s phenomenological design of information systems The application of a phenomenological approach to information systems design (ISD) is not a new idea. Boland (1985) and Checkland & Scholes (1990), among others, brought the attention of information systems designers to this fruitful approach years ago. To phenomenology, reality is socially constructed, the product of continuous social interaction. Sense-making becomes then the focus of the systems designer, rather than the positivistic search for the “true” organization and the “true” requirements of the system to be designed (usually the main concern of the classical systems expert in every study). In the phenomenological perspective, organizations are socially constructed. Such systems can be described in relation to different particular world views of the members of the organization (Checkland & Scholes, 1990) and their interpretations. Therefore, information is the meaning that results from an engagement with the different perspectives a human organization handles. In this connection, information systems have to be designed as systems to support the organization’s central meaning-creation processes, and hence, their social construction of organizational reality (Boland 1987).
Addressing Organizational and Societal Concerns
Authors: Cordoba Rodrigo , Midgley Gerald
Published: May 2011

Most current information systems (IS) planning methodologies are focused on achieving ‘successful’ plans, i.e., plans that provide competitive advantage, can be implemented in a given period of time, and that solve the problems of information needs by taking advantage of the latest technologies available. Concerns are technology and business driven and focus on how to get the maximum profit for organisations from investing in information systems. However, this relatively narrow focus can be problematic, especially in developing countries, where the social contexts of IS implementation may require a different primary focus. This chapter presents a methodology for IS planning based on critical systems thinking—an approach that encourages the critical analysis of stakeholder understandings of social contexts prior to the selection and/or design of planning methods. The methodology presented in this chapter uses a combination of the systems theories of autopoiesis and boundary critique, which deepen our understanding of what it means to reflect on participation, values, and social concerns during IS planning. In the course of applying the methodology in a project in Colombia, an issue arose of the ethics of the practitioner. To address this issue, following completion of the project, we sought to enhance critical systems thinking with Foucault’s notions of power and ethics, which offer interesting alternatives for practitioner self-reflection. Implications for IS planning are derived from this perspective on ethics and power.
An Approach to Web-Based Application Integration Using Java Adapters and XML
Authors: Karakostas Bill , Christofi Stelios
Published: May 2011

This chapter is concerned with Application-to-Application (A2A) integration, in dynamic heterogeneous environments, where applications are not aware of each other in advance and must therefore exchange data in a peer to peer (P2P) fashion. This is achieved via dynamic discovery of application services and integration through XML message exchange using Java adapters.
Flexible Digital Library Search
Authors: Windhouwer Menzo , Schmidt Albrecht , van Zwol Roelof , Petkovic Milan , Blok Henk E.
Published: May 2011

In this chapter the development of a specialised search engine for a digital library is described.  The proposed system architecture consists of three levels: the conceptual, the logical and the physical level.  The conceptual level schema enables by its exposure of a domain specific schema semantically rich conceptual search.  The logical level provides a description language to achieve a high degree of flexibility for multimedia retrieval.  The physical level takes care of scalable and efficient persistent data storage.  The role, played by each level, changes during the various stages of a search engine’s lifecycle: (1) modeling the index, (2) populating and maintaining the index and (3) querying the index.  The integration of all this functionality allows the combination of both conceptual and content-based querying in the query stage.  A search engine for the Australian Open tennis tournament website is used as a running example, which shows the power of the complete architecture and its various components.
Using a GIS and the American Community Survey to Address Community Health Problems
Authors: McCall J.ane L. , Pasini Amy K. , Wait Richard B.
Published: May 2011

This chapter describes two case studies that demonstrate how the technology of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can be combined with community data to address healthcare problems. The purpose is to present a model that can be replicated by other hospitals or those with an interest in promoting the public health.
The Application of Spatial Analysis to the Public Health Understanding of Alcohol and Alcohol-Related Problems
Authors: Lipton Robert , Gorman D. M. , Gruenewald Paul
Published: May 2011

This chapter describes research that uses spatial modeling to address pressing issues related to a public health understanding of alcohol problems and violence. First, we introduce the language of spatial analysis used in prevention work and discuss the details of spatial research that result in useful public health information, particularly in regard to alcohol-related problems. Issues such as geo-mapping, variable selection, and area definition are discussed in regard to community level occurrence of such problems. We then discuss the general context for understanding the geographic relationship between alcohol outlet density and violent crime. Finally, we give a specific example of an analysis focusing on alcohol outlets and violence. This work is related to the major goal of studying the community geography of alcohol problems by mapping the alcohol environment, relating these features of the environment to the spatial distribution of problem events, and analyzing the statistical associations between these measures and drinking behaviors.
Mapping Accessibility to General Practitioners
Authors: Brabyn Lars , Gower Paul
Published: May 2011

Accessibility to general practitioners (GPs) is an important health issue that has financial, cultural and geographical dimensions. This chapter concentrates on a Geographical Information System method for assessing geographical accessibility using network analysis but begins with an overall review of health accessibility literature, followed by a more detailed review of GIS solutions to assessing geographical accessibility. A procedure based on ArcInfo software is described and demonstrated using cost path analysis to determine the minimum travel time and distance to the closest GP via a road network. This analysis is applied to approximately 36,000 census centroids in New Zealand and this enables travel time and distance to be linked to the population distribution. Statistics can be generated on what is the average time spent traveling or the average distance traveled if everybody visited a GP once. These statistics can be generated for different management areas and enables comparisons to be made between regions. This accessibility model is intended for decision support for health planners assessing the distribution of GP services. It can also be easily adapted for other services such as access to hospitals and cancer screening centers.
E-Commerce and Executive Information Systems
Authors: Erwin Geoff , Averweg Udo
Published: May 2011

The rapid spread of connectivity via the World Wide Web has dramatically altered the ways in which organizations deal with customers and the methods that executives adopt to be informed about business operations. This chapter reviews Executive Information Systems (EIS) and the way in which EIS interacts with e-commerce applications.
SMEs in South Africa
Authors: Cloete Eric
Published: May 2011

The chapter reports on research that was done in information systems at the University of Cape Town on the benefits of Internet utilisation and the barriers to its adoption amongst small businesses in South Africa. It addresses how these small businesses in a developing country perceive the potential benefits of e-commerce and look at their consequent adoption of e-commerce activities in their own organizations. Comparisons are made between studies conducted in first world countries, particularly regarding the role of government initiatives. A secondary aim of this research was to determine the current level of e-commerce adoption by small businesses in South Africa. This was achieved by circulating a questionnaire to test the perception of e-commerce benefits and e-commerce adoption levels amongst small businesses from various sectors in South Africa. If the global usage of the Internet for electronic commerce by small businesses is compared to the South African situation, this research clearly indicates that the available technologies are not adopted to the extent that is necessary for survival in a rapidly changing environment.
M-Commerce in the Automotive Industry
Authors: Schrauben Mark , Solak Rick , Tanniru Mohan
Published: May 2011

The telematics technology, intended to streamline the information processing requirements of consumers driving a vehicle, has brought to surface the need for integrating the information technology architectures of various service providers with the manufacturing technologies of various automotive firms. While system integration has always been an issue when multiple vendors are involved in providing enterprise-wide solutions in business, this issue takes on greater prominence when it can impact the privacy and security of the driving public as a whole. This article briefly looks at various opportunities telematics can provide to satisfy the “mobile” society, and discusses the organizational behavior required to operationalize the technological capability and inter-company behavior to enable flexible business models. It will also discuss the role multiple business and government leaders have to play to ensure that these opportunities do not come at a significant social cost.
Case Study
Authors: Pura Minna
Published: May 2011

Building a brand in the fragmenting media environment is a challenging task. Advertising should be integrated and personalized, it should utilize different channels, and reach the customer at the right place, at the right time, through the right channel, and in the appropriate context. Mobile advertising should be used as a means of creating value to the customers and serving the customers better. This paper gives an insight into the practical possibilities and pitfalls of mobile advertising as a brand building and customer relationship management tool. The case study describes how mobile advertising can be used to get the youth target group to give information about themselves to the company, and how this information can be utilized for future customer relationship management. The effectiveness of mobile advertising in a cross media context is analyzed through conversion and loyalty measures.
Categorizing Decision Support Systems
Authors: Power D. J.
Published: May 2011

This chapter summarizes a multidimensional approach to categorizing specific decision support systems (DSS) developed in Power (2002) and related works. The suggested approach or expanded framework emphases evaluates DSS in terms of one primary dimension and three secondary dimensions. Managers and analysts need to examine what drives the DSS and provides the dominant functionality of the system. Then a DSS can be further categorized in terms of targeted users, purpose of the system and primary deployment technology. The framework can improve discussions about DSS and assist in organizing our current knowledge about DSS.
DSS for Rescheduling of Railway Services under Unplanned Events
Authors: Adenso-Diaz B. , Tuya J. , Suarez Cabal M. J. , Goitia Fuertes M.
Published: May 2011

In the daily activity of railway transport, the need to make decisions when faced with unforeseen incidents is a common event. Quality of service my be affected by decisions that are made by delays or cancellations. In this multi-objective scenario, there is a need to combine affecting the majority of passengers as little as possible with the minimization of costs. Therefore it is necessary to design planning algorithms taking into account factors such as the availability of engines and the quality of service. This chapter presents the design and implementation experience of a practical case developed for the Spanish Railway Company. With this tool, a DSS was put into service that guides the person in charge as to which measures to adopt with respect to the events that have arisen. The information employed is obtained by means of heuristic search algorithms based on backtracking for the exploration of the solutions space.
Using Decision Support Systems to Help Policy Makers Cope with Urban Transport Problems
Authors: Rinaldi Francesco M. , Bain Donald , Bain Rinaldo
Published: May 2011

More than 70% of Europe’s population lives in urban areas. Transport pollution contributes significantly to severe health problems in many European cities. The impacts of air pollutants are particularly severe in busy city centres, where congestion creates long queues of stationary traffic pumping fumes onto streets crowded with pedestrians. Although improvements in vehicle technologies have led to steady reductions in pollutant emissions, the decrease has been slower than expected due to the ever-increasing transport demand. Getting urban transport “right” is a challenging task for decision-makers given the number of policy areas affected, the large range of stakeholders and the high political sensitivity of almost any option adopted (including “do nothing”). Ultimately any decision must rest with the skills and informed judgement of the decision-maker or decision college. It remains difficult. The work presented shows the development of a DSS called Navigate Utopia. It is a web-style tool based on Multicriteria Analysis which has been developed to allow policy-makers to explore and evaluate the numerous new transport technology options already available or on the point of entering the market. Navigate Utopia draws on practical experience derived from previous case studies in Europe, giving guidance on how these can best be applied to specific urban situations and providing tools to understand what the effects might be. It considers also the wide range of new and improved propulsion systems currently coming on stream and draws together findings from a wide range of disciplines to address the complex issue of how to ensure successful market entry of new transport technologies.
Customer Relationship Management at Harrah's Entertainment
Authors: Watson Hugh J. , Volonino Linda
Published: May 2011

Data warehousing has significantly changed how decision making is supported in organizations. A leading application of data warehousing is customer relationship management (CRM). The power of CRM is illustrated by the experiences at Harrah’s Entertainment, which has assumed a leadership role in the gaming industry through a business strategy that focuses on knowing their customers well, giving them great service, and rewarding their loyalty so that they seek out a Harrah’s casino whenever and wherever they play. In 1993, changing gaming laws allowed Harrah’s to expand into new markets through the building of new properties and the acquisition of other casinos. As management thought about how it could create the greatest value for its shareholders, it was decided that a brand approach should be taken. With this approach, the various casinos would operate in an integrated manner rather than as separate properties. Critical to their strategy was the need to understand and manage relationships with their customers. Harrah’s had to understand where their customers gamed, how often and what games they played, how much they gambled, their profitability, and what offers would entice them to visit a Harrah’s casino. Armed with this information, Harrah’s could better identify specific target customer segments, respond to customers’ preferences, and maximize profitability across the various casinos.
Machine Learning for Agents and Multi-Agent Systems
Authors: Kudenko Daniel , Kazakov Dimitar , Alonso Eduardo
Published: May 2011

In order to be truly autonomous, agents need the ability to learn from and adapt to the environment and other agents. This chapter introduces key concepts of machine learning and how they apply to agent and multi-agent systems. Rather than present a comprehensive survey, we discuss a number of issues that we believe are important in the design of learning agents and multi-agent systems. Specifically, we focus on the challenges involved in adapting (originally disembodied) machine learning techniques to situated agents, the relationship between learning and communication, learning to collaborate and compete, learning of roles, evolution and natural selection, and distributed learning. In the second part of the chapter, we focus on some practicalities and present two case studies.
Sales Orientation versus Marketing Orientation in Providing Technical Service
Authors: Higgins Lexis F.
Published: May 2011

All organizations must adopt some method and philosophy of doing business. While a large number of firms worldwide are attempting to adopt a market-driven orientation to operating their business, still others operate from a philosophical basis of a sales-driven orientation. For each of these orientations, providing technical service is a growing challenge. A sales-driven orientation treats technical service as an opportunity to cross-sell. A market-driven orientation allows the organization to establish strong relationships with customers, apply customer relationship management (CRM) principles and continuously gather market intelligence. Enhancing the creativity of those who provide technical services can improve the quality that customers receive. The creativity of technical service providers can be improved through creativity training and adjustments to the work climate. Such training represents an opportunity for improving the quality of technical service that customers receive and may also increase profitability. Market-driven organizations see providing technical service as an opportunity to improve customer loyalty and establish strategic competitive advantage.
A Service Marketing Approach to High Technology Innovations Management
Authors: Brannback Malin , Carsrud Alan
Published: May 2011

This chapter reviews the different approaches of innovations management, often treated as synonymous to R&D, which is seen as a component of the product development and manufacturing processes. It is argued that customer needs and expectations are not considered sufficiently through these approaches, which ultimately leads to business failure. Understanding customer needs and expectations is a fundamental source to business success and also a basic element of service marketing. Therefore this chapter explores the possibility of applying a service marketing approach—more specifically, relationship marketing as presented by the Nordic school of thought—to the management of high technology innovations management. The arguments are illustrated with insights from high technology sectors: information technology (IT) and biotech.
Combining Local and Global Expertise in Technical Services
Authors: Parnisto Juha , Salmela Hannu
Published: May 2011

Information and communication technologies enable new means to provide services for customers. The establishment of eServices, call centers and service centers challenges the role of traditional regional offices. This chapter investigates factors that need to be considered when moving service production from regional offices to service centers. The empirical part of the study comprises a longitudinal analysis of the ways Fujitsu Invia, a European IS company within Fujitsu Group, has transformed its service organization. The company has moved a long way from local, site-specific service units to national service centers and ultimately to few global service centers that provide services to thousands of computer users worldwide. In retrospect it can be said that the decision to centralize service production turned out to be very successful. However, the reasons why Fujitsu Invia decided to return part of the end user support closer to customer sites illustrates the complexities associated with centralizing services that were previously produced locally. The chapter provides a simple framework for analyzing a company’s service mix, in order to define the type of service organization needed. Such a framework assists managers in identifying services where production can be centralized and those that need to be produced locally. Perhaps most importantly, the framework and the experiences in the Fujitsu Invia case emphasize that some services require both local presence and global expertise.
Characterizing Web Systems
Authors: Lowe David , Henderson-Sellers Brian
Published: May 2011

Expenditure on Web-based initiatives has grown rapidly over the last five years, with a growing trend towards integrating these systems into the core business of many organisations. The architecture of these systems, however, tends to be quite complex – merging both a complex information architecture with a sophisticated technical architecture, with both being contextualised within new business models. An important key in achieving more effective Web system development within this rapidly changing environment will be a design approach that facilitates the creation of architectures that actively encompass both functional and informational elements, and which links both to the business model in a way that creates strong cohesion. This, in turn, requires both an appropriate architectural modelling language (particularly one that links the technology to the business model) and a process for carrying out the architectural design. In this chapter, we discuss both these aspects, looking at a model of Web systems that emphasizes the links between the various architectural elements and process-level support for design activities.
An Agent-Based Architecture for Product Selection and Evaluation under E-Commerce
Authors: Sim Leng oon. , Guan Sheng-Uei
Published: May 2011

This chapter proposes the establishment of a trusted Trade Services entity within the electronic commerce agent framework. A Trade Services entity may be set up for each agent community. All products to be sold in the framework are to be registered with the Trade Services. The main objective of the Trade Services is to extend the current use of agents from product selection to include product evaluation in the purchase decision. To take advantage of the agent framework, the Trade Services can be a logical entity that is implemented by a community of expert agents. Each expert agent must be capable of learning about the product category it is designed to handle, as well as the ability to evaluate a specific product in the category. An approach that combines statistical analysis and fuzzy logic reasoning is proposed as one of the learning methodologies for determining the rules for product evaluation. Each feature of the registered product is statistically analyzed for any correlation with the price of the product. A regression model is then fitted to the observed data. The assumption of an intrinsically linear function for a non-linear regression model will simplify the efforts to obtain a suitable model to fit the data. The model is then used as the input membership function to indicate the desirability of the feature in the product evaluation, and the appropriate fuzzy reasoning techniques may be applied accordingly to the inputs thus obtained to arrive at a conclusion.
An Architecture for Authentication and Authorization of Mobile Agents in E-Commerce
Authors: Yeo Wee Chye , Guan Sheng-Uei , Zhu Fangming
Published: May 2011

Agent-based e-commerce is a new technology being researched extensively by many academic and industrial organizations. The mobility and autonomy properties of agents have offered a new approach of doing business online. To fully exploit the advantages of this new technology, a secure system to authenticate and authorize mobile agents must be in place. In this chapter, an architecture to ensure a proper authentication and authorization of agents has been proposed. The Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is used as the underlying cryptographic scheme. An agent is digitally signed by the Agent Factory and its signature is authenticated at hosts using the corresponding public key. Agents can also authenticate the hosts to make sure that they are not heading to a wrong place. When an agent visits a host, agent’s expiry date, host trace, and the factory’s trustworthiness are checked during the authentication process. According to the level of authentication that the incoming agent has passed, the agent will be categorized and associated with a relevant security policy during the authorization phase. The corresponding security policy will be enforced on the agent to restrict its operations at the host. The prototype has been implemented with Java.
Security and Trust of Online Auction Systems in E-Commerce
Authors: Lei P. W. , Lo L. K. , Chatwin C. R. , Young R. C.D. , Heywood M. I. , Zincir-Heywood N.
Published: May 2011

Internet trading is an irresistible business activity, which nevertheless is constrained by unresolved security issues. With e-tailers like amazon.com having a storefront for auction and the two largest traditional auction houses in the world, Christie’s and Sotheby’s, operating online auctions too; online auction systems are now playing an increasingly important role in e-commerce. However, online auction fraud has been reported in several high profile cases; this chapter offers some solutions for problems identified in online auction trading; which is largely unregulated and in which small auction sites have very little security. A secure architecture for online auction systems will greatly reduce the problems. The discussion herein is restricted to those factors that are deemed critical for ensuring that consumers gain the confidence required to participate in online auctions, and hence a broader spectrum of businesses are able to invest in integrating online auction systems into their commercial operations.
E-Commerce and Digital Libraries
Authors: Al-Hawamdeh Suliman , Foo Schubert
Published: May 2011

Until recently, digital libraries have provided free access to either limited resources owned by an organization or information available in the public domain. For digital libraries to provide access to copyrighted material, an access control and charging mechanism needs to be put in place. Electronic commerce provides digital libraries with the mechanism to provide access to copyrighted material in a way that will protect the interest of both the copyright owner and the digital library. In fact, many organizations, such as the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), have already started to make their collections available online. The subscription model seems to be the favourable option at this point of time. However, for many ad hoc users, the subscription model can be expensive and not an option. In order to cater to a wider range of users, digital libraries need to go beyond the subscription models and explore other possibilities, such as the use of micro payments, that appear to be an alternative logical solution. But, even before that can happen, digital libraries will need to foremost address a number of outstanding issues, among which including access control, content management, information organization, and so on. This chapter discusses these issues and challenges confronting digital libraries in their adoption of e-commerce, including e-commerce charging models.
Electronic Business over Wireless Device
Authors: Nayak Richi , Nayak Anurag
Published: May 2011

Research and practices in electronic businesses over wireless devices have recently seen an exponential growth. This chapter presents the basic concepts necessary to understand m-business applications and a case study of the voice driven airline-ticketing system that can be accessed at any time, anywhere by mobile phones. This application offers maximum functionality while still maintaining a high level of user convenience in terms of input and navigation.