Business Commons^™

Mobility And Markets: Emerging Outlines Of M-Commerce, Ruby Roy Dholakia, Nikhilesh Dholakia

College of Business Faculty Publications

Mobile commerce—or m-commerce—is characterized by the emerging class of location-based commercial services delivered by a variety of handheld terminals such as mobile phones and palmtop devices. At the Conference on Telecommunications and Information Markets (COTIM)-2001, an international conference held in Karlsruhe, Germany, academic researchers and business practitioners shared their experiences and frameworks about m-commerce. Selected papers based on COTIM-2001 presentations are included in this Special Issue. This paper introduces the preconditions that led to the emergence of m-commerce, the main dimensions of m-commerce that distinguish it from e-commerce, and the key arguments from the contributions on m-commerce in this Special …

Consumer Subjectivity In The Age Of Internet: The Radical Concept Of Marketing Control Through Customer Relationship Management, Detlev Zwick, Nikhilesh Dholakia

College of Business Faculty Publications

In this paper, we present a poststructuralist analysis of customer database technology. This approach allows us to regard customer databases as configurations of language that produce new and significant discursive effects. In particular, we focus on the role of databases and related technologies such as customer relationship management (CRM) in the discursive construction of both customers and customer relationships. First, we argue that organizations become the authors of customer identities, using the language of the database to configure customer representation. From this perspective, we can see the radical innovation that the customer database brings to the organizational construction of its …

Cultural Contradictions Of The Anytime, Anywhere Economy: Reframing Communication Technology, Nikhilesh Dholakia, Detlev Zwick

College of Business Faculty Publications

Technology-aided ubiquity and instantaneity have emerged as major goals of most information technology providers and of certain classes of users such as “road warriors”. New mobile technologies promise genie-in-a-bottle type near-magical qualities with anytime, anywhere access to information and services. While the complex science, systems, and economics of such technologies receive considerable attention from industry executives and researchers, the social and cultural aspects of these technologies attract less attention. This paper explores the oft-contradictory promises and pitfalls of anytime, anywhere technologies from a cultural standpoint. It makes suggestions for reinterpreting these technologies for greater human good.

Online Qualitative Research In The Age Of E-Commerce: Data Sources And Approaches, Nikhilesh Dholakia, Dong Zhang

College of Business Faculty Publications

With the boom in E-commerce, practitioners and researchers are increasingly generating marketing and strategic insights by employing the Internet as an effective new tool for conducting well-established forms of qualitative research (TISCHLER 2004). The potential of Internet as a rich data source and an attractive arena for qualitative research in e-commerce settings—in other words cyberspace as a "field," in the ethnographic sense—has not received adequate attention. This paper explores qualitative research prospects in e-commerce arenas.

URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0402299

Source Of Value Online For Recreational Travellers: Customer Information Needs In The Buying Process And Internet Capability, Robert Grant

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The information needs of buyers of high involvement recreational travel products are potentially a source of customer value in their decision making process. The internet's ability to provide large amounts of information in real time with high levels of customer convenience are compounded by the ability to deliver information from multiple sources. In theory then, the internet seems able to largely replace the value delivered by retail travel intermediaries in the physical world. This critical review suggests however that the physical world intermediaries and online information sources are more likely to be complementary rather than competitive resources for shoppers for …

Internet Retailing: Back To The Future, Julie E. Francis, Lesley White

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This is an exciting era where academics are well positioned to cut through the hype and get down to the business of establishing Internet retailing as a distinct, credible and productive domain. Arguably, a critical step in advancing involves pausing to reflect on the emergence of other domains and capitalising on the power of hindsight to pre-emptively address undesirable patterns that risk being repeated. Towards this end, the conditions under which services marketing emerged as a domain in its own right are considered relative to the current state of Internet retailing. This highlights that just as services were once considered …

Intranet Concept For Small Business, Allen Gregg Lenaburg

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of this project is to build a working intranet containing core applications that create the framework for a small business intranet. Small businesses may benefit from an intranet because of its ability to effectively streamline the processes for retrieving and distributing information. Intranets are internal networks using TCP/IP protocols, Web server software, and browser client software to share information created in HTML within an organization, and to access company databases.

Measuring Online Students' Ability To Apply Programming Theory: Are Web Courses Really Working?, Kathryn A. Marold, Wayne Haga

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

As a response to troubling doubts about the success of Web-delivered courses that include problem solving and critical thinking skills, the authors gathered data from two online sections of the CIS Application Programming with Visual Basic course at Metropolitan State College of Denver over two semesters and compared it with the data from classroom sections. T-tests showed a significant difference in the means of student projects and tests that required application of theory learned. All sections of the course used the same syllabus and assignments and were taught by the same instructor. Internet students scored significantly lower in theory portions …

Building Relationships That Last: Integrating Public Relations Into Web Design, Richard V. Mccarthy, Jay E. Aronson, Robert Petrausch

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

This paper explores the relationship between web site design, public relations strategy, and a consumer’s intention to return to a web site. This relationship is defined through a model that explores the influence of information satisfaction, particularly when the web site design is congruent with the consumer’s expectations. The public relations dimension extends the consumer web site design model by interjecting a long-term focus on relationship building that organizations will need to make electronic commerce a viable investment in information technology resources. This is significant because it recognizes the importance of developing loyalty and trust online.

Web-Services – The Next Evolutionary Stage Of E-Business, Santosh S. Venkatraman

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Web-Services are a set of new technologies that promise to take “service-oriented” distributed computing to a whole new level, and eventually take e-business to the next evolutionary stage. Web-Services, in a nutshell, let organizations bridge communication gaps among their information systems, and build new software applications by “stitching” together existing ones. It is capable of integrating applications written in different programming languages, developed by different vendors, and running on different servers with dissimilar operating systems. Web- Services would enable companies to seamlessly connect their information systems and business processes with those of their partners and customers – thus ushering in …

A Study Of The Relationship Between Internet Diffusion And Culture, Ravi Nath, N.R. Vasudeva Murthy

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

The unevenness in the diffusion rates of the Internet across nations is commonly referred to as the “digital divide.” Technological, economic and political factors are often mentioned as the primary contributing factors to this digital gap. However, there is sufficient evidence in support of the proposition that a nation’s culture also plays a role in how citizens adopt and use technology innovations. This paper examines the relationship between the cultural dimensions proposed by Hofstede and the Internet adoption rate of nations. Data from sixty-two countries are used to establish a regression model and the empirical results show that cultural traits …

Fee -Based Online Services : Exploring Consumers’ Willingness To Pay, L. Richard Ye, Yue Zhang, Dat-Dao Nguyen, James Chiu

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Many online service businesses are beginning to charge fees for services that they used to provide for free. It is unclear whether consumers are ready to embrace this practice. This study explores consumer attitudes toward fee-based online services. The results of the study indicate that consumers’ willingness to pay for online services is likely to be influenced by their perceived value of convenience these services provide, and by the extent to which they utilize these services. While consumers appear more willing to pay for services that are qualitatively better than free services, there is also indication that the belief remains …

A Conceptual Framework For E-Branding Strategies In The Non-Profit Sector, Horst Treiblmaier, Irene Pollach, Arne Floh

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

E-branding provides non-profit organizations (NPOs) with new opportunities to communicate their missions, which is of paramount importance in a market segment that competes for donations and voluntary labor. Since successful e-branding is determined by both internal and external communication strategies, we developed a framework which explains the interdependency of these two factors in NPOs. Our findings are based on qualitative interview data and a website analysis of eleven Austrian NPOs. The NPOs' internal and external e-communication strategies are categorized into three successive levels each and combined in a two-dimensional grid, which shows how NPOs integrate their communication strategies.

An Investigation Of Internet Auction Markets: Evidence From Ebay, Kevin Bracker, Ken Smith

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

The purpose of this paper was to examine a market with different characteristics than a typical “financial” market using high frequency continuous transactions data. The market selected for this purpose was an Internet auction market for collectibles, specifically Ty Glory BearsTM sold on the eBay, Inc. web site. This market was chosen for its relatively high activity and homogeneity. The results indicated evidence of signaling related to seller’s reputation and product information, seasonality based on day-of-the-week, and limited market dept h.