bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Measurment of End-User Computing Satisfaction
Authors: Reynolds R.
Published: May 2011

Doll and Tofkzadeh (1988) developed their measure of End-User Computing Satisfaction because ‘decision analysis’ (examination of specific uses of computer applications in decision making) is “generally not feasible” (p. 259) but that satisfaction is a reasonable surrogate for assessing use. Doll and Tofkzadeh claim evidence from other studies support an expectation that satisfaction leads to use (as opposed to use leading to satisfaction. The Doll and Tofkzadeh study focused more on broad notions of systems and applications (Mini or mainframes, Micro-computer applications, Analysis, and Monitor applications). The End-User Computing Satisfaction scale is multidimensional instrument. Doll and Tofkzadeh (1988) started with 40 items and reduced those first to 18 items and then reduced the scale further to a final set of 12 items. The dimensions of the End-User Satisfaction scale are Content, Accuracy, Format, Ease of use, and Timeliness.
Organizational Culture Profile
Authors: Marmenout K.
Published: May 2011

The Organizational Culture Profile (OCP) is an instrument initially developed by O’Reilly, Chatman and Caldwell (1991) to assess person-organization fit. The tool can be useful as well in assessing organizations in need of culture change, distinguishing subcultures and evaluating potential fit in mergers and acquisitions. Person-organization fit is a useful predictor of job satisfaction and organizational commitment, which in turn affect performance. The OCP is considered an important instrument to measure the fit between individual’s preferences and organizational cultures. Traditional measures of person-situation fit used a limited set of descriptions and situations, thus failing to take into account idiosyncratic differences between individuals and situations, depending on salience and relevance. An additional advantage of the profile is that it allows the assessment of individuals and situation using a common language.
Measuring Online Flow
Authors: Aiken D.
Published: May 2011

Examination of the flow construct began almost twenty years ago. Csikszentmihalyi has written extensively on this notion loosely described as attaining an intrinsically enjoyable “optimal experience” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1977, 1990, 1997). Flow requires people to be completely and totally immersed in an activity. Time will stand still and nothing else will seem to matter (Mannell, et al., 1988). Flow is important because it has a relatively clear set of antecedents and consequences that have significant implications for web commerce. While flow has been studied in a broad range of contexts including sports, work, shopping, games, and computer use, researchers are only now beginning to study flow during consumer web navigations. Hoffman and Novak (1996) have ascribed the flow experience to web behavior, measuring the loss of self-consciousness in an essentially blissful encounter. In this situation, flow is defined as the state occurring during web navigations characterized by: (1) a seamless sequence of responses facilitated by interactivity, (2) an intrinsically enjoyable experience, (3) accompanied by a loss of self-consciousness that is (4) self-reinforcing (Hoffman and Novak, 1997). Web consumers who achieve the flow experience are so acutely involved in the act of online navigation that thoughts and perceptions not relevant to navigation are filtered out completely – the consumer is immersed in the computer-mediated interaction. Self-consciousness disappears, the consumer’s sense of time becomes distorted, and they achieve an internalized sense of gratification (Novak, et al., 2000).
Reactance Proneness Assessment
Authors: Shen L. , Dillard J.
Published: May 2011

The theory of psychological reactance (Brehm, 1966; Brehm & Brehm, 1981; Wicklund, 1974) has often been called upon to explain the failure of persuasive attempts, and/or the “boomerang effect” in persuasion (Buller, Borland, & Burgoon, 1998; Burgoon, Alvaro, Grandpre, & Voulodakis, 2002; Grandpre, Alvaro, Burgoon, Miller, & Hall, 2003; Ringold, 2002). The theory contends that any persuasive message may arouse a motivation to reject the advocacy. That motivation is called reactance. Reactance may be considered to be an aversive motivational state that functions to reinstate an individual’s perceptions of autonomy. Although initially investigated as a state phenomenon, it has become evident that individuals are likely to vary in their trait propensity to experience reactance. Individual differences in reactance proneness offer a useful means of segmenting target audiences, especially in the context of health communication, because individuals most at risk for various health threats are also the individuals most likely to experience reactance when exposed to persuasive messages about that health risk (e.g., Bensley & Wu, 1991).
Willingness to Communicate
Authors: Berry S. , Woods R.
Published: May 2011

The Willingness to Communicate (WTC) Scale (McCroskey & Richmond, 1985) measures a respondent’s tendency to approach or avoid initiating communication. The scale is based from Burgoon’s (1976) Unwillingness to Communicate Scale, except the construct is worded in positive terms and assumes the respondent is self aware of his/her own approach/avoidance tendencies. The WTC scale is a 20-item probability-estimate scale (McCroskey, 1992). Eight of the items are fillers and the remaining 12 are scored to yield a total score and three subscores based on types of receivers (strangers, acquaintances, friends) and four subscores based on communication context (public, meeting, group, dyad). Users indicate the percentage of times they would choose to communicate in each type of situation, from 0 (never) to 100 (always). A representative sample of receiver/context items is key to establishing a meaningful norm because people may be more willing to communicate with some kinds of receivers and within some kinds of contexts than others. Reliability and Validity
Branding on the Internet
Authors: Roberts Mary Lou , Schwaab Eric
Published: May 2011

Marketers have regarded the Internet as the consummate direct-response medium. The ability to interact one-on-one with customers and the ability to track their every move allowed precision targeting never before possible. More recently it has become clear that the Internet can also be used in branding efforts. The ability to blend direct-response and branding efforts is the Internet’s greatest benefit and its ultimate challenge to marketers. This article reviews evidence for the branding impact of online marketing activities. It also looks at the key concepts of interactivity and consumer experience online. It then presents a construct we call interactive brand experience and describes the Internet-specific techniques that can be used to orchestrate brand experience on the Web. It concludes by summarizing the implications of using the Internet for brand development and discussing the way in which branding on the Internet is evolving.
Computer Security in E-Learning
Authors: Weippl Edgar R.
Published: May 2011

Although the roots of e-learning date back to 19th century’s correspondence-based learning, e-learning currently receives an unprecedented impetus by the fact that industry and universities alike strive to streamline the teaching process. Just-in-time (JIT) principles have already been adopted by many corporate training programs; some even advocate the term “just-enough” to consider the specific needs of individual learners in a corporate setting. Considering the enormous costs involved in creating and maintaining courses, it is surprising that security and dependability are not yet considered an important issue by most people involved including teachers and students. Unlike traditional security research, which has largely been driven by military requirements to enforce secrecy, in e-learning it is not the information itself that has to be protected but the way it is presented. Moreover, the privacy of communication between teachers and students. For a long time students and faculty had few concerns about security, mainly because users in academic areas tended not to be malicious. Today, however, campus IT-security is vital. Nearly all institutions install firewalls and anti-virus software to protect campus resources. Even the most common security safeguards have drawbacks that people often fail to see. In Stanford the residential computing office selected an anti-virus program. However, the program can be set to collect data that possibly violates students’ privacy expectations; therefore many students declined using it (Herbert, 2004). Whenever servers that store personal data are not well protected, they are a tempting target for hackers. Social security numbers and credit card information are valuable assets used in identity theft. Such attacks were successful, for instance, at the University of Colorado (Crecente, 2004). A similar incident happened at the University of Texas; the student who committed the crime was later indicted in hacking (Associated Press, 2004). The etymological roots of secure can be found in se which means “without”, or “apart from”, and cura, that is, “to care for”, or “to be concerned about” (Landwehr, 2001). Consequently, secure in our context means that in a secure teaching environment users need not be concerned about threats specific to e-learning platforms and to electronic communication in general. A secure learning platform should incorporate all aspects of security and dependability and make most technical details transparent to the teacher and student. However, rendering a system “totally secure” is too ambitious a goal since no system can ever be totally secure and still remain usable at the same time. The contribution of this chapter is to • Define and identify relevant security and dependability issues. • Provide an overview of assets, threats, risks, and counter measures that are relevant to e-learning. • Point to publications that address the issues in greater detail.
Consumer Trust in E-Commerce
Authors: Jeanson Benoit , Ingham John
Published: May 2011

The lack of trust toward different elements of e-commerce has been recognized as one of the main causes of the collapse of a large number of dot-com companies. The concept of consumer trust has since been the object of many studies in the field of e-commerce. These studies permitted a better understanding of the role of trust in e-commerce, but an examination of the literature reveals that our understanding is limited due to important gaps in the ontological aspects of the trust concept, among which are (a) a lack of consensus concerning its definition, (b) a unidimensional as opposed to a multidimensional conceptualization of the construct, and (c) a confusion between trustworthiness and trust. The goal of this article is to identify these gaps and present ways of reducing their size and impacts.
Dynamic Planning Models for E-Business Strategy
Authors: Burn Janice M. , Ash Colin G.
Published: May 2011

Much has been written about e-business and how this concept will transform industries into virtual networks of customers and suppliers working together to create value-added processes (Fahey, Srivastava, Sharon, & Smith, 2001). Typically, successful organisations will have embraced enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to integrate e-business processes within the organisation and to underpin the creation of integrated interorganisational systems. This frequently results in new business processes, organisational structures, human resource skill requirements, management roles, and knowledge management systems (Robey et al., 2002). To be successful in this new climate, however, organisations have to learn new approaches to strategy and planning for collaborative systems and to manage e-business enabled cycles of innovation (Wheeler, 2002; Zahra & George, 2002). Few studies have explored the dynamics of e-business strategic planning and little information is available on how to implement new paradigms successfully and how to ensure more effective e-business performance as a result (Damanpour, 2001; Kallio, Saarinen, & Tannila, 2002). This article reports on the findings from multiple case studies of e-business projects in ERP-enabled organisations. Each organisation was investigated in a three stage study over 4 years, using three theoretical models of e-business implementations to assess success. The key findings from each case study were captured into a staged model for e-business transformation and related to a dynamic planning model that can be applied across all stages of growth of the extended enterprise.
E-Commerce Consumer and Product Characteristics
Authors: Scarpi Daniele , Dall’Olmo-Riley Francesca
Published: May 2011

Retailers having an online selling facility, or considering doing so, would benefit from a better understanding of the factors that influence consumers’ willingness to purchase online. This understanding would help them to plan their Internet strategies better, to design Web sites more effectively, to select the assortment of goods more likely to sell online, and to convert mere browsers into actual buyers. In fact, despite the worldwide diffusion and ever-increasing use of the Internet, e-commerce remains a limited phenomenon compared with the sales figures of traditional retailing: while an ever-increasing number of people use the Internet for gathering information, comparatively few buy online (Citrin, Stern, Spangenberg, & Clark, 2003; Dall’Olmo-Riley & Scarpi, 2005). This article aims at providing Internet marketing academics and practitioners with an account of the drivers and barriers to e-commerce, identified from a state-of-the-art literature review. The review is structured around the two main factors that appear to influence behavior on the Internet: consumer and product characteristics. Researchers agree that, although product characteristics play a role in e-commerce, the effects of attitudes, risk perception, and expertise are dominant. Hence, we first consider consumer characteristics.
E-Learning Concepts and Development
Authors: Ng Fung Fai
Published: May 2011

Our society is gradually changing from information-based to knowledge-based. The Internet is transforming our workplace and the ways we work and learn. Wallace (2004) calls it a netcentric workplace, and the netcentric technologies bring a host of new tools and capabilities to workers, especially in the areas of information access, communication, and collaboration. In recent years, we have seen an explosion of interest in e-learning, not only from the academic institutions but also from the commercial organizations. There are many activities, research, and development related to e-learning such as lifelong learning, self-directed learning, organizational learning, and virtual learning environment and virtual universities. The market for educational products and services is expanding rapidly especially in a global context. The aim of this article is to explain the various concepts associated with e-learning: the stakeholders involved, the technology and related standards, and the products and services provided. The issues, challenges, and trends will also be explored and discussed.
E-Questionnaire for Innovative Adaptive-Learning Scheme
Authors: Paraskevi Tzouveli , Kollias Stefanos
Published: May 2011

As broadband connectivity to the Internet becomes faster, Web-based learning systems have appeared and play an important role for self-learning, especially for working people. Most of the systems are not adapting to the learner, so the learner has to spend a lot of time before reaching the learning goal that is suitable for him or her (Solomos & Avouris, 1999). This procedure may discourage the learner from continuing his or her studies (Bixler & Spotts, 2000; Fitzelle & Trochim, 2000). To overcome these difficulties, we have to design an e-learning system that will be adapted to the learner’s ICT level and knowledge. In our proposal, we introduce an e-learning schema that has these characteristics. Specifically, we consider the IEEE reference model (WG) of the Learning Technology Standards Committee and use it to model the architecture of an e-learning system. Our approach is based on the usage of electronic questionnaires (e-questionnaires) that are designed by experts and aim to detect the learner’s ICT level and learning preferences prior to the learning experience as well as after its completion. Through the analysis of learner responses to questionnaires, learners may be assigned to their corresponding learner profiles so that they are served with learning material that best matches their needs. The structure of the article is the following. In the first section “Description of the E-Technology Application,” we briefly present the generic structure of the e-learning system, as specified in the IEEE reference model (WG) of the Learning Technology Standards Committee, and then we present our approach to this model. Continuing, we outline the profile adaptation method that is used in our schema. Finally, in the section “Impact of the E-Technology Application,” we refer to the SPERO project, in the framework in which the proposed system is being applied, and finally we list our concluding remarks.
E-Shoppers' Perception of Web-Based Decision Aid
Authors: Wang Fen
Published: May 2011

The WWW, for better or worse, has forever changed the way retailers do business nowadays. E-shoppers, who become more sophisticated and mature nowadays, are demanding increased flexibility and intelligent aids in accessing product information, making purchasing decisions, and obtaining e-services (Anupam, Hull, & Kumar, 2001; Chen, Gillenson, & Sherrell, 2004). The Internet facilitates interactive selling approaches, whereby product offerings can be tailored to individual preferences. It allows e-shoppers to easily gather, retrieve, and analyze product information. Ultimately, the Web offers the ideal vehicle for delivering intelligent online support tools directly to customers (Grenci & Todd, 2002). Unfortunately, most e-commerce sites are rarely aware of taking advantage of such Internet-driven customer aid. Rapid advancements in Internet technology have offered a solution of Web-based customer decision support system (WCDSS) that can improve transactional efficiency by providing tailored merchandising information, offering sales support and consultation, facilitating sales promotion and advertising, and enhancing the consistency, availability and quality of online support to e-shoppers (O’Keefe & Mceachern, 1998). As the WCDSS aims to empower e-shoppers by enabling them to make informed decisions online, the question of how they would perceive such support arises. In this article, we aim to establish a theory-founded framework to understand and explain e-shoppers’ perceptions of the proposed WCDSS functions. We look at the key features of WCDSS functions that may have impact on e-shopper’s perceptions, and how to scale and analyze e-shoppers’ perceptions regarding specific functions. The specific objectives are threefold. We aim (a) to verify the role WCDSS can play in facilitating e-shoppers, (b) to identify the key issues that impact e-shoppers’ perceptions of WCDSS, and (c) to suggest ways in designing and improving WCDSS functions and interfaces.
Evolution of Marketing to E-Marketing
Authors: Singh Anesh Maniraj
Published: May 2011

The Internet was initially developed for military purposes but soon grew into an academic tool intended to disseminate research from one institution to another. In the 1990s, the Internet was introduced into the business arena and has steadily grown into a very important business tool that has helped businesses to achieve and improve on their strategic goals. The Internet has created new revenue streams; it has broken geographic boundaries to new markets and has ushered in a new level of convenience. The Internet has not only impacted on the overall organisation, but it has also impacted on functional areas such as finance, production, human resources, and marketing. This article examines the extent to which marketing has changed as a result of the Internet.
M-Commerce Opportunities
Authors: Lei Pouwan
Published: May 2011

The mobile phone industry has experienced an explosive growth in recent years. Mobile phone subscriber numbers have passed the 1.6 billion mark at the end of 2004. The emerging markets such as China, India, and Brazil contribute this growth. In China, the number of mobile subscribers has already surpassed the number of fixed landline phone subscribers. In Korea, the number of mobile phone Internet subscribers is 34.53 million people or 72% of the population in June 2004 (APEC, 2005). Mobile e-commerce (m-commerce) makes business mobility a reality. Mobile users can access the Internet at anytime and anywhere with ubiquitous, inexpensive computing infrastructure. Mobile wireless services are ranging from mobile phone networks to wireless local area networks. The service provided by mobile phone systems has achieved huge success. Mobile phone users originate from all walks of life and include almost all age groups—from teenagers to retired people. It creates a new method of personal communication without location constraints. As telecommunication technologies are converging at fast speed. We will study mobile phone and personal digital assistant (PDA) related to mobile and wireless telecommunication. Hence, m-commerce is defined as electronic commerce carried out in handheld devices such as mobile phone and PDA through mobile and wireless telecommunication networks.
Mobile Commerce Applications and Adoption
Authors: Petrova Krassie
Published: May 2011

The potential advantages of mobile commerce applications have been discussed extensively in the recent literature, with many industries offering mobile services. Examples from the financial sector include instant funds transfer (mobile banking) and share trading (mobile brokerage). Commuter services such as sending schedule change alerts or using a mobile phone to pay for parking have become widespread. Applications based on the location of the user (e.g., offering mobile coupons to customers in the vicinity of a shop or a restaurant) are also being trialled (Barnes, 2002; Siau, Lim, & Shen, 2001; Varshney, Vetter, & Kalakota, 2000). Despite the potential benefits (for example, improved customer service) mobile commerce applications have not been widely adopted across business sectors. Mobile banking illustrates the point: initially, seen as the “killer application” of mobile commerce (Kannan, Chang, & Whinston, 2001), it has now been termed a “dead end” (Semrau & Kraiss, 2001). It has also been classified as an application which has not yet matured (Mallat, Rooi, & Tuunainen, 2004). However, innovative applications continue to emerge, for example, breaking news alerts (CNN, n.d.), and a mobile tutoring service (Butte, 2004). It has become important therefore to identify the determinants of mobile commerce adoption and the emerging adoption patterns. A significant number of results in this area have been reported in the literature. Recent examples include studies of mobile services adoption in areas characterized by relatively high penetration of mobile devices—such as Denmark (Constantiou, Damsgaard, & Knutsen, 2004), Singapore (Samtani, Leow, Lim, & Goh, 2004), and Finland (Carlsson, Hyvonen, Repo, & Walden, 2005). The identified drivers and inhibitors of mobile commerce adoption can be broadly classified as factors related to mobile infrastructure access, and factors relating to perceived consumer value. This article proposes a mobile commerce reference model which incorporates both infrastructure access and customer value and can be used to formulate research questions related to mobile commerce adoption. The remainder of the article is organized as follows: first, mobile commerce is defined and compared to electronic commerce. The next section introduces a mobile commerce reference model and discusses mobile commerce adoption. The article continues with a review of future trends and a brief conclusion.
Mobile Commerce Multimedia Messaging Peer
Authors: Yow Kin Choong , Mittal Nitin
Published: May 2011

In a mobile-commerce world, shops could provide product brochures, cards, sounds, songs and so forth in the form of multimedia messaging presentations, which could be used by a customer to send to friends. Shopping malls will have information kiosks equipped with wireless access capabilities, and could perform searches across the mall’s network to update its multimedia message repository. Customers can download and distribute to their friends such multimedia content via mobile messaging, leading to increased revenue for the shops. Over the years, mobile messaging has become an essential means of communication, and it is going to be even more so with the merging of the Internet and Mobile Networks. The ability to message from a phone to a computer on the Internet and vice versa is making messaging a powerful means of communication (Yeo, Hui, Soon, & Lau, 2001). This article discusses the development of a multimedia messaging client for a personal digital assistant (PDA) and a Kiosk providing multimedia messages composition, search, share and send capabilities. Various messaging technologies, enabling wireless technologies and the peer-to-peer model, are also discussed and evaluated in this article. We substantiate the ideas discussed in this article with a description of an MMS PDA client application using JXTA with specific references to a shopping mall scenario.
Negative Effects of Advertising Techniques in Electronic Commerce
Authors: Gao Yuan , Koufaris Marios , Ducoffe Robert H.
Published: May 2011

Companies who engage in online commerce find themselves dwelling at the intersection of the real and the virtual, and facing a task that is more complex than delivering an attractive Web site (Mitra, 2003). Practitioners and scholars have paid attention to techniques used in site and product promotion, which include the overall structure of the online retailing interface and individual features like banners, animation, sound, video, interstitials, and pop-up ads (Rodgers & Thorson, 2000; Westland & Au, 1998). Banner size, image maps, audio, and Web site interactivity have been found to enhance site appeal (Coyle & Thorson, 2001; Li & Bukovac, 1999;). Banner ads effectiveness was also found to be affected by incentive offerings contained in the ads, as well as the emotional appeal imbedded in the ad (Xie, Donthu, Lohtia, & Osmonbekow, 2004). Nonetheless, the use of such promotional techniques also comes with its negative effects that could influence consumers’ perceptions of and attitude toward a site.
Online Advertising Fraud
Authors: Owen Robert S.
Published: May 2011

This article discusses illegitimate activities associated with online promotion activities, specifically those related to click-through fraud. Whether one is starting a new brick-and-mortar restaurant, managing a charity organization, or building an online information portal, prospective customers, donors, or users must be informed, persuaded, and reminded of the features and benefits that are offered by the business. Online promotion has some unique and advantageous characteristics over traditional promotion media, but those characteristics create a potential for abuse. Click-through fraud, more commonly termed click fraud, is a relatively recent and evolving problem that currently has few deterrents. This article outlines why and how click fraud is done, and suggests some measures that can be taken to at least recognize the potential for click fraud. The interactive nature of the Web would seem to make it an ideal advertising medium with a potential to completely eliminate advertising waste. Newspaper ads for, say, a pet store reach many people who do not have pets: the number of people in this category is termed as waste. With online advertising, it is possible—in an ideal world—to place an ad and to pay for the ad space only when a prospective customer shows interest by clicking on a linked advertisement that transports him/her to the advertiser’s online place of business. This pay-per-click (PPC) pricing model would seem to completely eliminate advertising waste. Unfortunately, advertisers, ad hosts, and fraudsters are discovering that the PPC model is open to abuse. Those who click on an online advertisement could include: • Prospective customers who actually have an interest in the product • Competitors who want to generate high advertising costs for the advertiser • Ad hosts who earn a commission from displaying pay-per-click advertising The latter two categories consist of entities that have absolutely no interest in the advertiser’s offerings and absolutely no intention of ever performing any target actions such as purchasing a product. These fraudulent click-throughs or debiting clicks could turn an ad campaign from one that has almost no waste into one that has almost 100% waste. In a survey of advertisers, the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization found that a quarter of respondents have tracked fraud as a problem (SEMPO, 2004).
Open Content Distribution Management in Virtual Organizations
Authors: Hassan Amir , Hietnen Herkko
Published: May 2011

Future scenarios of organizations envision companies that are organized around a central knowledge base in the form of a network. It is assumed that each company contributes its own expertise and intellectual capital to the network’s knowledge base. This article discusses the use of open content distribution management systems (OCDMSs) in knowledge-intensive fields, such as content production and software development, in order to ensure seamless and open collaboration between the firms in the organization. OCDMSs offer participants several advantages. For instance, such systems can be seen as a way of enhancing the competitiveness of small and micro-sized knowledge-based firms by ensuring that each firm receives fair compensation for the content it develops. OCDMSs are revolutionary in the sense that they allow participants to contribute content to a common resource pool and add all the required metadata to the content. A common information pool where information is shared with well-defined rules lowers transaction costs between participating organizations. This article looks at one open content distribution management system that was developed in a university-industry research project and is being further developed by a company that is a spin-off company from the project.
Personalization Techniques and Their Application
Authors: Anke Juergen , Sundaram David
Published: May 2011

Personalization is an approach to increase the usability of complex information systems and present the user with a comprehensible interface that is tailored to his or her needs and interests. In this article, we examine general techniques that are employed to achieve the personalization of Web sites. This is followed by a presentation of real-world examples. It will be shown how different levels of personalization can be achieved by employing the discussed techniques. This leads finally to a summary of the current state in personalization technologies and the issues connected with them. The article closes with some ideas on further research and development, and a conclusion. In general, the concept of personalization refers to the ability of tailoring standardized items to the needs of individual people. It is originally derived from the ideas of Pine (1993) who proposed that companies should move from the paradigms of standardized products and homogeneous markets to customizable products that meet the requirements of many different customers. The principle of mass customization applies to a certain degree to most car manufacturers and some computer manufacturers, for example, Dell. In the digital world of the World Wide Web, the degree of customization can be much higher than in the physical world. Currently, a number of online portals and e-commerce shops make use of personalization to provide a better user experience. Although Web sites may be the most popular examples of personalization, the concept is not limited to the Web. Every information system that deals with large amounts of data and/or has a heterogeneous group of users can benefit from it. Examples include e-learning environments, electronic books, computer-operated voice and telephony services, and tourist guides. Personalization is also very useful for mobile devices like personal digital assistants (PDAs) or mobile phones (cf, Mulvenna, Anand, & Buchner, 2000). Technologies like mobile Internet access, WAP (Wireless Application Protocol), and future multimedia applications based on high-capacity wireless technologies require the designers of services for these devices to deal with limited input capabilities and small display sizes. For that reason, every method that assists the user in navigating and finding information easily adds real value to applications for such devices.
Product Configuration Systems
Authors: Blecker Thorsten
Published: May 2011

Product configuration systems are considered to be important enablers of the mass-customization strategy. They are the most successful applications of e-technologies and artificial intelligence in e-business, particularly in customer interaction. Product configuration systems support the acquisition of the customers’ requirements while automating the order-taking process, and they allow customers to configure their products by specifying their technical requirements. In this article, the state of the art is explained and the different product configuration systems are classified in a morphological box. The analysis of the criteria according to which configurators are designed thus far reveals a neglect of the front-end perspective. Therefore, necessary enhancements and development directions toward a comprehensive tool for customer interaction in mass customization are analyzed.
Secure Agent for E-Commerce Applications
Authors: Guan Sheng-Uei
Published: May 2011

One hindrance to the widespread adoption of mobile agent technology (Johansen et al., 2002) is the lack of security. SAFER, or Secure Agent Fabrication, Evolution and Roaming, is a mobile agent framework that is specially designed for the purpose of electronic commerce (Guan & Yang, 2002, 2004; Yang & Guan, 2000; Zhu, Guan, Yang, & Ko, 2000). By building strong and efficient security mechanisms, SAFER aims to provide a trustworthy framework for mobile agents. Although such an agent transport protocol provides for the secure roaming of agents, there are other areas related to security to be addressed. Agent integrity is one such area crucial to the success of agent technology. The integrity protection for agent code is relatively straightforward. A more complex code integrity scheme to handle code-on-demand is also proposed in Wang, Guan, and Chan (2002). Agent data, however, is dynamic in nature and will change as the agent roams from host to host. Despite the various attempts in the literature (Chionh, Guan, & Yang, 2001), there is no satisfactory solution to the problem so far. Some of the common weaknesses of the current schemes are vulnerabilities to revisit attack and illegal modification (deletion/insertion) of agent data.
Software Metrics and Measurements
Authors: Xenos Michalis
Published: May 2011

In the past few years, a large number of e-government and e-commerce systems have been developed, thus resulting to a constantly increasing number of software developers involved in software development for such systems. To ensure the production of high quality e-government and e-commerce systems, it is important for developers to collect and analyze measurable data that guide estimation, decision making, and assessment. It is common sense that one can control and manage better what he is able to measure. Although there are major differences between e-commerce and e-government (e.g., access, structure and accountability; Jorgenson & Cable, 2002) there are no significant differences in terms of software metrics that can be applied to both. Metrics are used in e-government and e-commerce software development to measure various factors related to software quality and can be classified as product metrics, process metrics and recourse metrics. Product metrics are also called software metrics. These are metrics that are directly related to the product itself, such as code statements, delivered executables, manuals, and strive to measure product quality, or attributes of the product that can be related to product quality. Process metrics focus on the process of software development and measure process characteristics, aiming to detect problems or to push forward successful practices. Resource metrics are related to the resources required for software development and their performance. This article focuses on product metrics and on how such metrics can aid in design, prediction and assessment of the final product quality, provide data used for decision making, cost and effort estimation, fault prevention, testing time reduction, and, consequently, aid in producing better software for e-government and e-commerce sys
Straight-Thought Processing Adoption
Authors: Saha Pallab
Published: May 2011

Free trading has been instrumental in the enormous growth of the number and volume of cross-border trading transactions across all industries. In 2000, volume at the National Securities Clearing Corporation (NSCC) reached 18.1 million securities transactions, with actual daily share volumes regularly exceeding 5 billion shares in major financial markets (Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation [DTCC], 2000). Securities trading starts with either an individual or a business institution expressing desire to purchase securities. While the process is deceptively simple, approximately $1.8 trillion of securities trades remain unsettled and outstanding every business day (David & Kumar, 2000), which poses significant risks to all participants and players in the securities trading cycle. A shorter settlement cycle is seen as an approach to reduce both nonpayment and nondelivery risks to all stakeholders in the trading cycle (Toppen, Smits, & Ribbers, 1998). Compressing settlement cycles needs the redesign and management of securities business processes with significant IT support and involvement. Recent advances in information technology provide ample opportunities for various stakeholders to communicate seamlessly through electronic communication networks (ECNs), enabling both speedier and richer information exchange (Dale, 1996; Venkataraman & Zaheer, 1990). Currently, settlement times largely vary between 2 and 5 days. Constant push from governmental regulatory bodies is expected to reduce this to 1 or less than 1 day, popularly known as T+1/T+0 settlement times (Freund, 1991; Group of Thirty, 1993). While it is possible to achieve straight-through processing (STP) without targeting for T+1/T+0, it is almost impossible to attain T+1/T+0 without STP (Leman, 2003). There is a dearth of empirical research with emphasis on financial securities operations. This article attempts to address an existing void in this area. The first part of this article examines current securities trading operations and STP, and discusses the business drivers of STP. The second part of the article elaborates the factors influencing the adoption of STP by various participants. Finally, the article discusses areas that are amenable to future exploration and empirical research with the aim of ultimately increasing the adoption of STP globally
Structure and Components of E-Commerce Business Model
Authors: Lee Chung-Shing , Chen Yiche Grace , Fan Ya-Han
Published: May 2011

A successful e-commerce venture requires a viable business model and a long-term sustainable strategy. When planning and implementing e-commerce ventures, business executives must address several strategic questions, such as: What are the functions and components of a viable business model? How does one capture and capitalize on the unique features of the Internet and e-commerce to achieve sustainable competitive advantage and profits? How are values being created in the Digital Economy? How can network effects and scope economies change a company’s competitive position in e-commerce? How can cost, revenue, and growth models in e-commerce differ from the traditional businesses? This article extends Lee (2001) and Lee and Vonortas’ (2004) works on business model and strategy to discuss the structure, components, and key issues of a viable e-commerce business model.
Tailorable E-Government Information Systems
Authors: Lepouras George , Soriropoulou Anya , Theotokis Dimitrios , Vassilakis Costas
Published: May 2011

Real-world information, knowledge, and procedures after which information systems are modeled are generally of dynamic nature and subject to changes, due to the emergence of new requirements or revisions to initial specifications. E-government information systems (eGIS) present a higher degree of volatility in their environment, since requirement changes may stem from multiple sources, including legislation changes, organizational reforms, end-user needs, interoperability, and distribution concerns, etc. (Jansen, 2004; Prisma Project, 2002; Scholl, Klischewski, & Moon, 2005. To this end, the design and implementation of eGIS must adhere to paradigms and practices that facilitate the accommodation of changes to the eGIS as they occur in the real world. Object-oriented technologies have been extensively used to encapsulate reusable, tailorable software architectures as a collection of collaborating, extensible object classes; however the inherent conflict between software reuse and tailorability has inhibited the development of frameworks and models that would effectively support all requirements exposed by eGIS (Demeyer, Meijler, Nierstrasz, & Steyaert, 1997). The lack of such frameworks has lead to eGIS that cannot easily be adapted to the new requirements, mainly because only the predetermined specifications are taken into account and design decisions are fixed during the implementation phase (Stamoulis, Theotokis, Martakos, & Gyftodimos, 2003). A key issue to a viable solution eGIS modeling is the provision of the ability to multiple public authorities (PAs) to represent different aspects of the same real-world entity, while maintaining at the same time information consistency. Aspect representation is not only limited to data elements that describe the particular entity, but may extend to behavior alterations, when the entity is examined in different contexts. For example, an entity representing the citizen is expected to assume the behavior of beneficiary, when used in the context of the Ministry of Social Security, and the behavior of taxpayer, when accessed from the Ministry of Finance’s eGIS. Distinct behaviors may rely on different data representations and/or respond differently in requests. In this work we present a role-based modeling and implementation framework, which can be used for building eGIS and we argue that this model promotes the tailorability and maintainability of eGIS.
Trust in E-Technologies
Authors: Oermann Andrea , Dittmann Jana
Published: May 2011

When reflecting the term trust, there are two main hypotheses which can be found in most of the literature: First, trust is presented as an amorphous phenomenon, which is difficult to measure empirically (Endress, 2002). Second, the characteristic of trust is rather fragile. Trust as a mediator of social interactions cannot be quantified precisely, it has to be generated and recreated at any time varying with its social context. Volken summarizes this particular connection between trust and the context in which it is created: “Trust is a complex construct with multiple dimensions, and their relative effects on innovative actions may be highly dependent on their respective social context” (Volken, 2002). In the age of globalization trust is particularly important when one operates in the areas of e-commerce, e-government, and mobile commerce, or develops IT-systems which are touching the interface between technical innovation and its application by users. The latter live and work in a certain social context in which trust can be established in various ways. This necessarily has consequences for IT-solutions and IT-security which this article tries to explore. Giddens (1990) pointed out that “mechanised technologies of communication have dramatically influenced all aspects of globalization since the first introduction of mechanical printing into Europe [Johannes Gutenberg, 16th century]” (p.77). Without Johannes Gutenberg, there would have been no Reformation, without information technology, there would have been no global information age. Both historical developments, as different as they may be, took place in a certain social context, of which technical innovation became a part. At the same time every society depends on the key ingredient, which is a requirement for social interaction: Trust. As a reader of the Gutenberg Bible trusted that his book is complete and correct, any user of information technology trusts that the applied system functions properly and is reliable. The following questions arise: How does trust which basically is part of most social interactions fits within information technology using “0” and “1” to enable any sort of interaction? How is trust created, maintained and developed in the information age? Which forms of trust exist and are necessary to operate in an interconnected world? The article will explore these questions by describing current definitions and concepts of trust outside and inside a context of information technology. After exploring the link to concepts of trust in social science and culture a new concept of trust in e-technologies such as e-commerce, e-government, and mobile commerce will be developed. Important trust-building factors such as transparency or participation will be analyzed in order to conceptionally deal with the increasing importance of trust in a virtual world.
Using Failure to Develop a Successful Business
Authors: Craig Ron
Published: May 2011

Can failure play an important role in developing a successful e-comm, dot-com, or Internet-based venture? This chapter shows that testing the firm’s business model provides quick feedback concerning what works and what does not. Often the only way to test the assumptions of a business model is through implementation. Failure can (and should) be a learning experience, whereby a venture confirms or modifies components of its business model and moves forward. This article starts with a review of business model literature, considers a recent start-up, and concludes with lessons learned. References and a glossary of key terms follow.