Business Commons^™

Financial Institutions Continue To Adopt Crypto Despite Industry Turmoil, Andre Beganski

Capstones

Even though this calamitous year has raised doubts about crypto's future, not a single large financial institution has backed away from their forays into digital assets. And despite a period of turmoil that’s seen the market value of all cryptocurrencies crater to under $880 billion from over $3 trillion, many sizable firms continue to view crypto as an emerging sector of finance and technology that’s rife with opportunity.

While financial firms have the potential to foster a widespread perception of cryptocurrencies as a legitimate asset class, their involvement runs counter to the intent of those who pioneered blockchain technology for …

Scamazon?: Antitrust Concerns In An Incorporated E-Commerce Marketplace, Aidan Macsweeney

Honors Projects in Accounting

The purpose of this Honors Thesis is to develop an understanding of how Amazon Inc. operates and competes in its own e-commerce marketplace. The paper seeks to answer the research question: Is the relationship between Amazon seller type and list price consistent with regulator antitrust concerns? The goal is to analyze Amazon listings in 27 product categories and how their price/sales effects vary by seller type: Amazon, Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA), and Fulfilled by Merchant (FBM). Special attention will be given to identifying price trends by category, the impact of the "Buy Box", and competing offers on the same listings. …

Fedex Ground Strategic Audit, Samantha Gates

Honors Theses

FedEx Ground is an operating segment of the parcel carrier giant FedEx Inc. The company, known for shipping products via delivery truck, has remained one of the largest parcel carriers in the country, despite drastic changes in its environment. This report seeks to understand the changing operating environment of FedEx Ground, its competitive advantages, and the future challenges it may face. The analysis uses PESTEL and Porter's Five Forces analyses to evaluate the changing external environment and industry FedEx Ground operates in. Additionally, challenges and recommendations are offered to navigate the future of this company.

Organizing Digital Platforms And Customer Needs For Digital Service Innovation, Gamel O. Wiredu

The African Journal of Information Systems

Digital organizations have become highly dependent on digital platforms and customer needs as key resources for digital service innovation. These resources in the competitive environment are making and shaping innovation of digital services because, though external, they remain central to digital organizations’ strategic innovation and competitiveness. Yet, how and why organizing these resources influences digital service innovation is under-explained in the literature. This paper, based on an empirical study and grounded theory methodology, addresses this limitation. It explains that digital service innovation occurs through two complementary types of organizing, namely: foundational knowledge organizing by combining digital platforms and customer needs, …

Brides And Bridal Stores: Online Or Brick-And-Mortar, Libby C. Jones, Ismet Anitsal, Melek Meral Anitsal

Atlantic Marketing Journal

This paper explores the growing global bridal industry and the different trends, traditions, and aspects of specific countries' bridal industries. It outlines western and eastern traditions and how globalization contributes to their spread. A deeper focus is dedicated to the United States' bridal industry and the issues brick-and-mortar bridal boutiques face as more brides have started shopping at online bridal stores. The relationship between brick-and-mortar and online bridal stores is explored based on various propositions about the bridal industry's emerging challenges. These propositions include trust issues in the retail environment, convenience, selection of bridal gowns in different retail formats, incorporating …

Governance And Design Of Digital Platforms: A Review And Future Research Directions On A Meta-Organization, Liang Chen, Tony W. Tong, Shaoqin Tang, Nianchen Han

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The burgeoning digital-platforms literature across multiple business disciplines has primarily characterized the platform as a market or network. Although the organizing role of platform owners is well recognized, the literature lacks a coherent approach to understanding organizational governance in the platform context. Drawing on classic organizational governance theories, this paper views digital platforms as a distinct organizational form where the mechanisms of incentive and control routinely take center stage. We systematically review research on digital platforms, categorize specific governance mechanisms related to incentive and control, and map a multitude of idiosyncratic design features studied in prior research onto these mechanisms. …

What Should Streamers Communicate In Livestream E-Commerce? The Effects Of Social Interactions On Live Streaming Performance, Danyang Song, Xi Chen, Zhiling Guo, Xiao Liu Liu, Ruijin. Jin

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Compared with traditional e-commerce, livestreaming e-commerce is characterized by direct and intimate communication between streamers and consumers that stimulates instant social interactions. This study focuses on streamers’ three types of information exchange (i.e., product information, social conversation, and social solicitation) and examines their roles in driving both short-term and long-term livestreaming performance (i.e., sales and customer base growth). We find that the informational role of product information (nonpromotional and promotional) is beneficial not only to sales performance, but also to the growth of the customer base. We also find that social conversation has a relationship-building effect that positively impacts both …

Should Cryptocurrencies Be Used In Booking Hotel Rooms? An Analysis Of Consumer Intention, Stephanie Bae

Journal of Hospitality Financial Management

The purpose of the study was to research factors influencing consumers’ intentions to use cryptocurrencies when booking hotel rooms. An online survey was developed based on the previous literature and TAM. Data was collected from U.S. residents who owned cryptocurrencies. A total of 381 surveys were collected and used for data analysis. The results of this research showed that perceived credibility, perceived usefulness, subjective norm, and perceived ease of use affected consumer acceptance. These findings indicate that hotel managers who plan to accept cryptocurrency in the long term should focus on improving credibility, functionality, and usability. There is no extant …

Factors Influencing Foreign Products Purchase Intention Of Mongolian Consumers, Urandelger Gantulga, Munkhbayasgalan Ganbold

Asia Marketing Journal

The current study examines how ethnocentrism influences the relationship between country image, product image, quality, and purchase intention for foreign goods. It is necessary to explore and analyze the connection between consumer ethnocentrism and purchase intention to develop marketing strategies that influence consumers' purchasing decisions. Accordingly, this article develops the research model to determine the impact of specific product determinants on consumer purchase intention towards foreign products. An online survey was carried out to reach the research objective. Four hundred effective questionnaires were analyzed using SPSS 23 and Smart PLS 3.3. The results showed that foreign product quality and image …

Modelling Online Advertising Design Quality Influences On Millennial Consumer Attitudes In South Africa, Rodney G. Duffett Dr, Natassha V. Miller Ms

The African Journal of Information Systems

Millennials’ advanced knowledge and exposure to product experiences, and irrelevant placement of online advertising has led to an increase of online advertising avoidance. However, effective online advertising design may assist in establishing more positive sentiments towards digital forms of marketing communication. The study used the visual rhetoric theory as the theoretical basis to examine millennial consumer attitudes. The main research aims were to propose an online advertising design quality model, and to ascertain the influence of online advertising design quality on millennial consumer attitudes. The study employed a quantitative research design via an empirical online survey. Online advertising design quality …

What Is The Role Of T.E.A Concept Between Positive Recommendation And Behavioural Intention To Purchase In Social Media?, Phyo Min Tun

The South East Asian Journal of Management

Research Aims: This study explores the antecedents of customers’ behavioural intention to purchase on the social media platform. In addition, the T.E.A concept, the group of consequences of positive recommendation (PR), is developed by amalgamating trust (T), easiness (E), and amusement (A).

Design/Methodology/Approach: The data was collected from 260 random social media users from Myanmar. Both exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were employed to examine the observed variables, and structural equation modelling (SEM) techniques were used to estimate the hypotheses in AMOS software.

Research Findings: The results disclose that the T.E.A concept is …

Empirical Study On The Acceptance Of Mobility As A Service (Maas) Based On The Utaut2 Model, Masaki Toyama

Asia Marketing Journal

To achieve the widespread use of Mobility as a Service (MaaS), a novel transportation platform, it is important to increase consumers’ intention to use MaaS. Therefore, this study clarifies the determinants of consumers’ intention to use MaaS based on the UTAUT2 model. The research model is tested using structural equation modeling based on data from a web-based questionnaire survey of Japanese consumers. The results show that performance expectancy, social influence, hedonic motivation, and price value have significant effects on the intention to use MaaS. Moreover, the relationship between the intention to use MaaS and independent variables is moderated by old …

Robotics: The Ponderings Of An Hospital Ceo In The Netherlands, Gerard Van Der Star, Arjen Van Klink Dr

Case Studies

A CEO of a Dutch public hospital contemplates about what he just read. This is disrupting news! It will have major consequences when this way of surgery becomes common good. It requires not only surgeons to rethink their profession but what is more important it requires a total new vision on healthcare in particular. The speed of development in the healthcare robot industry is impressive. How much longer does it take before developers find a way to transform robotic systems from being dependent to semi-autonomous to eventually, fully autonomous systems, like what he just read?

Two To Tango Is Not Enough: How To Build Ecosystems For Smart Service Innovation?, Jan-Philipp BüChler Prof. Dr.

Case Studies

Senior managers of two German mid-sized world market leaders in sensor electronics (ifm electronic) and mechanical engineering (GEA Group) discuss the opportunities and barriers of developing smart service innovations. The case study addresses different roles and patterns in ecosystems of multiple collaborating actors in different stages of development. The open-end discussion invites learners to evaluate the opportunities from different perspectives based on industry-specific experiences.

Iq-Pass: Accelerate And Upscale To The Next Level, Helen De Haan

Case Studies

European business environment has many specific market conditions due to the differences in terms of legislation, culture & language, business practices, etc. Many European companies are in the transition of combining digital transformation (apps, software and platform development) and their traditional industrial bases. Another trend in European business development is consolidation, i.e. merger and acquisitions. Small but very innovative companies can be easily taken over by larger companies. When such a small but innovative company becomes a business unit in of a large organisation after acquisition or take-over, maintaining innovation-based growth can be problematic. By understanding this dynamic and the …

Tesla Transformation And Hidden Champions: The Pace Of Innovation It The Only Thing That Matters In The Long Run., Jan-Philipp BüChler Prof. Dr.

Case Studies

After having internally invested significant amounts of time and resources into customer-specific development, the CEO of CoMaTec - family-owned and mid-sized world-market leader in the automotive industry - receives the contract for batch production from emerging electric automotive giant TESLA. However, the timing for the final development stage and start of production (SOP) deviates distinctly from all prior agreements. The tightened timing would put his company at tremendous risk. Should he accept the contract? Which mitigation strategies present an option for managing the emerging risks?

Entering The Next Level Of Value Generation: Servitization And Digitization For Industry 4.0 By Ifm Electronic, Robert Ciszewski, Jan-Philipp Büchler Prof Dr

Case Studies

Ifm electronic is a mid-sized wold market leader in sensor electronics for industry and automotive applications. The hidden champion shows an impressive growth trajectory in the last 20 years from around 200 mio. € to 1 bn. € in 2019. In this case study, the ambitious leaders of this company start to elaborate the strategy for achieving the next billion. Students are required to identify the drivers of growth in the past decades and evaluate the steadiness of this recipe for success in the context of major shifts and technological advances in key customer industries such as industry 4.0 and …

Gea Farm Technologies: Building Core Competencies Through Internal And External Growth, Jan-Philipp Büchler Prof Dr, Axel Faix Prof Dr, Gregor Brüggelambert Dr, Anna Weiland

Case Studies

GEA Farm Technologies is a mid-sized world market leader of mechanical equipment and service solutions for milk production and livestock farming. The so-called hidden champion developed a set of capabilities and core competencies to innovate the industry’s established business model through a two-fold strategy balancing internal and external growth. The case study invites students to explore the benefits and limits of this business model innovation and requires them to investigate further strategic options for growth.

Is The Peak-Affect Important In Fast Processing Of Visual Images In Printed Ads? : A Comparative Study On The Affect Integration Theories, Kyunghee Bu, Luri Lee

Asia Marketing Journal

This study investigates how affects elicited by visual images in print ads are integrated to form a liking for the ads. Assuming a sequential rather than simultaneous processing of still-cut images, we adopt the ‘think-aloud’ method to capture consumers’ spontaneous responses to visual images. We hypothesize that not only would consumers show mixed affects toward a still-cut visual image but that they would also integrate their serial affects heuristically rather than simply averaging the affects as suggested by the compensatory hypothesis. By comparing the effects of two contradictory affect integration hypotheses (i.e., peak-affect and mood-maintenance) with compensatory integration, using a …

Determinants Of Knowledge Sharing: The Roles Of Learning Organization Culture, Empowering Leadership, And Learning Goal Orientation, Yangil Park, Baek-Kyoo Joo

International Journal of Applied Management and Technology

This study examined how knowledge sharing attitudes (KSAs) and knowledge sharing intentions (KSIs) are affected by perceived learning organization culture (LOC), empowering leadership (EL), and learning goal orientation (LGO). From the data collected, we discovered that KSA was a significant partial mediator between KSI and LGO. Furthermore, LOC and EL had moderating roles on the LGO and KSA relationship. Such moderation effects were insignificant for KSI, however. This study incorporated the knowledge sharing research fields of motivation research, leadership, and organizational culture. We comment that this study was centered on relatively highly educated management consultants, as human resource management and …

Role Of Personality Traits For Entrepreneurial Intentions Of Young Entrepreneurs: A Case Study Of Higher Education Institution, Yuanyuan Cao, Muhammad Mujtaba Asad, Lu Wang, Aisha Naz Ansari, Norah Almusharraf

Institute for Educational Development, Karachi

Pakistan being a young country is struggling to provide employment opportunities. However, entrepreneurship is a perceived strategy for reducing unemployment. The trend of entrepreneurship is also emerging among university students. Thus, the ratio of entrepreneurial intention and start-ups is also increasing among university students and graduates. Therefore, this study aims to examine the role of personality traits in the entrepreneurial intentions of young entrepreneurs. Considering this, qualitative methodology was employed with the case study as the research design. A single case of a university with three different departments was taken. In total, n = 9 entrepreneurs were purposely selected from …

The Geopolitics Of Infrastructuralized Platforms: The Case Of Alibaba, Hong Shen, Yujia He

Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce Faculty Publications

Contemporary digital platforms have become increasingly infrastructuralized, and started to raise geopolitical tensions with their global expansion. Amidst the heightened geopolitical competition between the US and China, the growing power of Chinese infrastructuralized platforms has made them the center of recent geopolitical dynamics. Drawing from an exploratory case study, this paper discusses Alibaba, one of the most prominent Chinese Internet giants, as an infrastructuralized platform, and highlights its geopolitical struggles. Often perceived as an e-commerce company, Alibaba has become ‘infrastructuralized’: its now-massive digital empire has moved beyond e-commerce, expanding into almost every aspect of China’s and global digital economy such …

The Disappearing Convenience Of Convenience Stores, Ramaswami, S.

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The article describes post-Covid challenges to the convenience store format in Singapore, and the ways in which some of these challenges can be mitigated.

Investigating Accessibility Challenges And Opportunities For Users With Low Vision Disabilities In Customer-To-Customer (C2c) Marketplaces, Bektur Ryskeldiev, Kotaro Hara, Mariko Kobayashi, Koki Kusano

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Inaccessible e-commerce websites and mobile applications exclude people with visual impairments (PVI) from online shopping. Customer-to-customer (C2C) marketplaces, a form of e-commerce where trading happens not between businesses and customers but between customers, could pose a unique set of challenges in the interactions that the platform brings about. Through online questionnaire and remote interviews, we investigate problems experienced by people with low vision disabilities in common C2C scenarios. Our study with low vision participants (N = 12) reveal both previously known general accessibility issues (e.g., web and mobile interface accessibility) and C2C specific accessibility issues (e.g., inability to confirm item …

Determinants Of Entrepreneurial Intention: A Study On Indonesian Students, Satriadi Satriadi, Abu Muna Almaududi Ausat, D. Yadi Heryadi, Warkianto Widjaja, Ade Risna Sari

BISNIS & BIROKRASI: Jurnal Ilmu Administrasi dan Organisasi

Finding jobs for university graduates is becoming more difficult as the number of job opportunities available is not proportional to the number of graduates. This situation is aggravated by the low interest of the Indonesian population in entrepreneurship, which is at roughly 3.1%. This study aims to investigate the effect of entrepreneurial self-efficacy, creativity, attitude toward entrepreneurship, social media, entrepreneurial culture, and motivation on student’s entrepreneurial intentions. Social media is warranted in the study as the respondents are in the group of millennials. A quantitative method was used. The data analysis employed Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) with Partial Least Squares …

Iq-Pass: Access To Growth, Arjen Van Klink Dr, Helen De Hann Dr

Case Studies

The market of (temporary) access control is one example of an industry that is impacted by digitization and internationalisation. New possibilities come up and ask for reaction from suppliers, but require the re-specification of needs from customers as well. It is also an illustration how new regulation, in this case especially related to privacy and migration, influences industrial dynamics. Related to new technological possibilities and legislative conditions, the industry is in a process of consolidation. This case focuses on a small but innovative company, IQ-Pass, developing its growth strategy in Europe within its constellation of being a subsidiary of the …

Dynamic Return Relationships In The Market For Cryptocurrency: A Var Approach, Julian Gouffray

James Madison Undergraduate Research Journal (JMURJ)

This paper examines how the Bitcoin-altcoin return relationship has evolved in periods between 2015 and 2020. To understand this relation, we observe data on the cryptocurrency Bitcoin and prominent altcoins Ethereum, Litecoin, Ripple, Stellar, and Monero, which collectively represent over 90% of the market throughout the observed period. We employ a vector autoregressive model (VAR) to produce forecast error variance decompositions, orthogonal impulse response functions, and Granger-causality tests. We find evidence that Bitcoin return variation has increasingly explained altcoin returns and that market inefficiency increased between 2017 and 2020, as shown by increased Granger causality between Bitcoin and altcoins. These …

The Effects Of Network Structure And Social Information On Contribution Performance On Crowdfunding Platforms: An Experimental Investigation, Yanni Hu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The long-term potentiality of online communities and activities depends critically on contribution behaviors of online individuals. In this dissertation, this study deepen and extend our understanding of contribution behavior by applying contributions to crowdfunding platforms, whereas social networks, social information, and social influence affect people’s contribution decisions, which in turn influences their contribution performances. Specifically, this study looked into how contribution behavior at crowdfunding platforms is shaped at a fundamental level of social interactions initiated by social and information technologies on contribution performance, using online and natural experiments as study methodologies.

Examining the effects brought by online social interactions on …

The Impact Of Mobile Banking Customer Experience On Loyalty Among Millennials In South Africa, Justice Ncube, Salah Kabanda

African Conference on Information Systems and Technology

Banks need to remain competitive in the ever-changing business environment. Millennials are one of the largest customer segments with a large digital and mobile appetite; as a result, they form a natural target for banks. To increase their customer base, banks need to ensure that their customer experience strategy caters for these young customers in accordance with their expectations. This study explores factors that influence customer experience in mobile banking and how this experience influences customer loyalty to their bank. This study used a mixed-methods strategy and collected data from 344 mobile banking users via an online survey questionnaire and …

A Psychological Profile Of The Digitized Economy: Who Buys Cryptocurrencies, Nfts, And Meme-Stocks (And Why)?, Nicole Wolfe

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

As the global digital economy continues to grow in interest and financial worth, it is imperative to harvest data to gain early information on this nuanced economy. Already, we have witnessed billions of dollars in losses and wins at the blink of an eye, encouragement to invest from well-known celebrities and politicians, and high anxiety from the newness, power consumption, and potential outcomes of this nuanced system. Stemming from the lack of solid evidence in this emerging field, we hope to gain more insight on the early players and variation within the digitized economy. Similarly, we hope to identify specific …