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Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

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Articles 91 - 120 of 151

Full-Text Articles in E-Commerce

Vertical Differentiation And A Comparison Of Online Advertising Models, Mei Lin, Xuqing Ke, Andrew B. Whinston Jun 2012

Vertical Differentiation And A Comparison Of Online Advertising Models, Mei Lin, Xuqing Ke, Andrew B. Whinston

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Designing business models that take into consideration the role of advertising support is critical to the success of online services. In this paper, we address the challenges of these business model strategies and compare different ad revenue models. We use game theory to model vertical differentiation in both monopoly and duopoly settings, in which online service providers may offer an ad-free service, an ad-supported service, or a combination of these services. Offering both ad-free and ad-supported services is the optimal strategy for a monopolist because ad revenues compensate for the cannibalistic effect of vertical differentiation. In a duopoly equilibrium, exactly …


Manipulation Of Online Reviews: An Analysis Of Ratings, Readability, And Sentiments, Nan Hu, Indranil Bose, Noi Sian Koh, Ling Liu Feb 2012

Manipulation Of Online Reviews: An Analysis Of Ratings, Readability, And Sentiments, Nan Hu, Indranil Bose, Noi Sian Koh, Ling Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

As consumers become increasingly reliant on online reviews to make purchase decisions, the sales of the product becomes dependent on the word of mouth (WOM) that it generates. As a result, there can be attempts by firms to manipulate online reviews of products to increase their sales. Despite the suspicion on the existence of such manipulation, the amount of such manipulation is unknown, and deciding which reviews to believe in is largely based on the reader's discretion and intuition. Therefore, the success of the manipulation of reviews by firms in generating sales of products is unknown. In this paper, we …


Optimal Decision Making For Online Referral Marketing, Zhiling Guo Jan 2012

Optimal Decision Making For Online Referral Marketing, Zhiling Guo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Widely available web 2.0 technologies not only bring rich and interactive user experiences, but also easily help users advertise products or services on their own blogs and social network webpages. Online referral marketing, for example, is a business practice that rewards customers who successfully refer other customers to a website or upon completion of a sale usually via their own social contacts. The referral rewards come in different forms such as shopping vouchers, redeemable points, discounts, prizes, cash payments, etc. We develop an analytical model to evaluate the business potential of incorporating an online referral marketing program into the firm's …


Predicting Item Adoption Using Social Correlation, Freddy Chong-Tat Chua, Hady W. Lauw, Ee Peng Lim Apr 2011

Predicting Item Adoption Using Social Correlation, Freddy Chong-Tat Chua, Hady W. Lauw, Ee Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Users face a dazzling array of choices on the Web when it comes to choosing which product to buy, which video to watch, etc. The trend of social information processing means users increasingly rely not only on their own preferences, but also on friends when making various adoption decisions. In this paper, we investigate the effects of social correlation on users’ adoption of items. Given a user-user social graph and an item-user adoption graph, we seek to answer the following questions: 1) whether the items adopted by a user correlate to items adopted by her friends, and 2) how to …


Manipulation In Digital Word-Of-Mouth: A Reality Check For Book Reviews, Nan Hu, Indranil Bose, Yunjun Gao, Ling Liu Feb 2011

Manipulation In Digital Word-Of-Mouth: A Reality Check For Book Reviews, Nan Hu, Indranil Bose, Yunjun Gao, Ling Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Built upon the discretionary accrual-based earnings management framework, our paper develops a discretionary manipulation proxy to study the management of online reviews. We reveal that fraudulent review manipulation is a serious problem for 1) non-bestseller books; 2) books whose reviews are classified as not very helpful; 3) books that experience greater variability in the helpfulness of their online reviews; and 4) popular books as well as high-priced books. We also show that review management decreases with the passage of time. Just like fraudulent earnings management, manipulated online reviews reflect inauthentic information from which consumers might derive wrong valuation especially for …


Fraud Detection In Online Consumer Reviews, Nan Hu, Ling Liu, Vallabh Sambamurthy Feb 2011

Fraud Detection In Online Consumer Reviews, Nan Hu, Ling Liu, Vallabh Sambamurthy

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Increasingly, consumers depend on social information channels, such as user-posted online reviews, to make purchase decisions. These reviews are assumed to be unbiased reflections of other consumers' experiences with the products or services. While extensively assumed, the literature has not tested the existence or non-existence of review manipulation. By using data from Amazon and Barnes & Noble, our study investigates if vendors, publishers, and writers consistently manipulate online consumer reviews. We document the existence of online review manipulation and show that the manipulation strategy of firms seems to be a monotonically decreasing function of the product's true quality or the …


Editorial: Special Issue On Ubiquitous Electronic Commerce Systems, Robert H. Deng, Jari Veijalainen, Shiguo Lian, Dimitris Kanellopoulos Jan 2011

Editorial: Special Issue On Ubiquitous Electronic Commerce Systems, Robert H. Deng, Jari Veijalainen, Shiguo Lian, Dimitris Kanellopoulos

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Ubiquitous computing is a post-desktop model of human-computer interaction in which information processing has been thoroughly integrated into everyday objects and activities. Emerging ubiquitous electronic commerce systems (UECS) are expected to be available anytime, anywhere, and using different official or personal computing devices. Systems and services such as digital libraries, on-line business transactions, mobile office and mobile TV are widely deployed. Users will be able to access these services anytime, anywhere, while using any computing device in a pervasive way.


Business Network-Based Value Creation In Electronic Commerce, Robert John Kauffman, Ting Li, Eric Van Heck Oct 2010

Business Network-Based Value Creation In Electronic Commerce, Robert John Kauffman, Ting Li, Eric Van Heck

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Information technologies (IT) have affected economic activities within and beyond the boundaries of the firm, changing the face of e-commerce. This article explores the circumstances under which value is created in business networks made possible by IT. Business networks combine the capabilities of multiple firms to produce and deliver products and services that none of them could more economically produce on its own and for which there is demand in the market. We call this business network-based value creation. We apply economic theory to explain the conditions under which business networks will exist and are able to sustain their value-producing …


Do Online Reviews Reflect A Product’S True Perceived Quality? An Investigation Of Online Movie Reviews Across Cultures, Noi Sian Koh, Nan Hu, Eric K. Clemons Sep 2010

Do Online Reviews Reflect A Product’S True Perceived Quality? An Investigation Of Online Movie Reviews Across Cultures, Noi Sian Koh, Nan Hu, Eric K. Clemons

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper investigates when the reported average of online ratings matches the perceived average assessment of the population as a whole, including the average assessments of both raters and non-raters. We apply behavioral theory to capture intentions in rating online movie reviews in two dissimilar countries – China and the United States. We argue that consumers’ rating behaviors are affected by cultural influences and that they are influenced in predictable ways. Based on data collected from IMDB.com and Douban.com, we found significant differences across raters from these two different cultures. Additionally, we examined how cultural elements influence rating behavior for …


A Hybrid Method To Detect Deflation Fraud In Cost-Per-Action Online Advertising, Xuhua Ding Jun 2010

A Hybrid Method To Detect Deflation Fraud In Cost-Per-Action Online Advertising, Xuhua Ding

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Web advertisers prefer the cost-per-action (CPA) advertisement model whereby an advertiser pays a web publisher according to the actual amount of transactions, rather than the volume of advertisement clicks. The main obstacle for a wide deployment of this model is the deflation fraud. Namely, a dishonest advertiser under-reports the transaction count in order to discharge less. In this paper, we present a mechanism to detect such a fraud using a hybrid of cryptography and probability tools. With the assistance from a small number of users, the publisher can detect deflation fraud with a success probability growing exponentially with the fraud …


Information Search Patterns In E-Commerce Product Comparison Services, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, Weiyin Hong, Liqiang Chen, Hong-Hee Lee Apr 2010

Information Search Patterns In E-Commerce Product Comparison Services, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, Weiyin Hong, Liqiang Chen, Hong-Hee Lee

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

To facilitate product selection and purchase decisions on e-commerce Web sites, the presentation of product information is very important. In this research, the authors study how disposition styles influence users’ search patterns in product comparison services of e-commerce Web sites. The results show that people use relatively more feature paths and less product paths in vertical disposition style than horizontal disposition style. The findings also indicate that there are relatively more feature paths and less product paths in the first half than second half of the information search paths. This is consistent with Gensch’s two-stage choice model which suggests that …


Do Online Reviews Reflect A Product's True Perceived Quality? An Investigation Of Online Movie Reviews Across Cultures, Noi Sian Koh, Nan Hu, Eric K. Clemons Jan 2010

Do Online Reviews Reflect A Product's True Perceived Quality? An Investigation Of Online Movie Reviews Across Cultures, Noi Sian Koh, Nan Hu, Eric K. Clemons

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

When does the reported average of online ratings match perceived average assessment? We apply behavioral theory to capture intentions in rating online movie reviews in two dissimilar countries - China and the United States. We argue that consumers' rating behaviors are affected by cultural influences. Based on data collected from imdb.com and douban.com, we found significant differences across raters from these two different cultures. Additionally, we examined how cultural elements influence rating behavior for a hybrid culture - Singapore. Under-reporting bias occurs when consumers with extreme opinions are more likely to report their opinions than consumers with moderate reviews, resulting …


The Monetary Value Of Virtual Goods: An Exploratory Study In Mmorpgs, Qiu-Hong Wang, Viktor Mayer-Schonberger Jan 2010

The Monetary Value Of Virtual Goods: An Exploratory Study In Mmorpgs, Qiu-Hong Wang, Viktor Mayer-Schonberger

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This study investigates the monetary value of time spent in virtual worlds in the context of 24 most popular MMORPGs Building on classic economic theory, we approach this issue through a combination of theoretical modeling, experiment, and cross-sectional time series data analysis. Our findings suggest that intensive social networking and flatter social hierarchy structures are associated with lower monetary value of time spent in-game. Further, two opposite network effects on the monetary value of in-game time spent were observed. One is the positive network effect from the active user base, the other is the negative network effect from the intensity …


Sharing Mobile Multimedia Annotations To Support Inquiry-Based Learning Using Mobitop, Khasfariyati Razikin, Dion Hoe-Lian Goh, Yin-Leng Theng, Quang Minh Nguyen, Thi Nhu Quynh Kim, Ee Peng Lim, Chew-Hung Chang, Kalyani Chatterjea, Aixin Sun Oct 2009

Sharing Mobile Multimedia Annotations To Support Inquiry-Based Learning Using Mobitop, Khasfariyati Razikin, Dion Hoe-Lian Goh, Yin-Leng Theng, Quang Minh Nguyen, Thi Nhu Quynh Kim, Ee Peng Lim, Chew-Hung Chang, Kalyani Chatterjea, Aixin Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Mobile devices used in educational settings are usually employed within a collaborative learning activity in which learning takes place in the form of social interactions between team members while performing a shared task. We introduce MobiTOP (Mobile Tagging of Objects and People), a geospatial digital library system which allows users to contribute and share multimedia annotations via mobile devices. A key feature of MobiTOP that is well suited for collaborative learning is that annotations are hierarchical, allowing annotations to be annotated by other users to an arbitrary depth. A group of student-teachers involved in an inquiry-based learning activity in geography …


A Hybrid Firm's Pricing Strategy In Electronic Commerce Under Channel Migration, Robert John Kauffman, Dongwon Lee, Jung Lee, Byungjoon Yoo Sep 2009

A Hybrid Firm's Pricing Strategy In Electronic Commerce Under Channel Migration, Robert John Kauffman, Dongwon Lee, Jung Lee, Byungjoon Yoo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Achieving an effective business design across the Internet and the off-line channel is a critical concern for a hybrid firm's choice of pricing strategy. Two pricing models are proposed to examine how consumer channel migration (one-way channel interaction from the traditional sales channel to the Internet) affects pricing strategy. One model has no interaction between the Internet and off-line channels. The other includes the possibility of one-way migration to the Internet channel and incorporates consumers' channel-switching costs and loyalty to the firm. The two models offer interesting results for understanding traditional and Internet-based selling. A high level of channel migration …


Are Online Auction Markets Efficient? An Empirical Study Of Market Liquidity And Abnormal Returns., Robert J. Kauffman, Trent J Spaulding, Charles A. Wood May 2009

Are Online Auction Markets Efficient? An Empirical Study Of Market Liquidity And Abnormal Returns., Robert J. Kauffman, Trent J Spaulding, Charles A. Wood

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Technological advances have facilitated investment in collectibles through online auction markets, where information regarding product characteristics, current and historical prices, and product availability is available to millions of market participants. However, market inefficiencies may still exist, where prices do not reflect market information and where savvy speculators can profit. Using unit root and variance ratio tests, we examine 8538 rare stamp and 56,997 rare coin auctions to evaluate the efficiency of online markets. In particular, we study market liquidity, abnormal returns and weak-form efficiency. We find an inverse relationship between market efficiency and liquidity. Bidder competition intrinsic to liquidity increases …


Ontology-Based Business Process Customization For Composite Web Services, Qianhui (Althea) Liang, Xindong Wu, E. K. Park, T. Khoshgoftaar, C. Chi Jan 2009

Ontology-Based Business Process Customization For Composite Web Services, Qianhui (Althea) Liang, Xindong Wu, E. K. Park, T. Khoshgoftaar, C. Chi

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

A key goal of the Semantic Web is to shift social interaction patterns from a producer-centric paradigm to a consumer-centric one. Treating customers as the most valuable assets and making the business models work better for them are at the core of building successful consumer-centric business models. It follows that customizing business processes constitutes a major concern in the realm of a knowledge-pull-based human semantic Web. This paper conceptualizes the customization of service-based business processes leveraging the existing knowledge of Web services and business processes. We represent this conceptualization as a new Extensible Markup Language (XML) markup language Web Ontology …


Do Online Reviews Affect Product Sales? The Role Of Reviewer Characteristics And Temporal Effects, Nan Hu, Ling Liu, Jennifer Zhang Sep 2008

Do Online Reviews Affect Product Sales? The Role Of Reviewer Characteristics And Temporal Effects, Nan Hu, Ling Liu, Jennifer Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Online product reviews provided by consumers who previously purchased products have become a major information source for consumers and marketers regarding product quality. This study extends previous research by conducting a more compelling test of the effect of online reviews on sales. In particular, we consider both quantitative and qualitative aspects of online reviews, such as reviewer quality, reviewer exposure, product coverage, and temporal effects. Using transaction cost economics and uncertainty reduction theories, this study adopts a portfolio approach to assess the effectiveness of the online review market. We show that consumers understand the value difference between favorable news and …


Tuning Into The Digital Channel: Evaluating Business Model Fit For Internet Firm Survival, Robert J. Kauffman, Bin Wang Sep 2008

Tuning Into The Digital Channel: Evaluating Business Model Fit For Internet Firm Survival, Robert J. Kauffman, Bin Wang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

More than 5,000 Internet firms have failed since the beginning of 2000. One common perception is that the downturn in the economy drove many firms out of business. But then, why have some firms survived? In this research, we provide an empirical analysis by examining how the business model characteristics of an Internet firm affect its survival. We analyze a panel data set of 130 public Internet firms using two different techniques: non-parametric survival analysis, and the semiparametric Cox proportional hazards model. We characterize the survival rates throughout the lifetimes of the public Internet firms in our sample. Our results …


Relationship Preserving Auction For Repeated E-Procurement, Park J., Lee J., Lau H. Aug 2008

Relationship Preserving Auction For Repeated E-Procurement, Park J., Lee J., Lau H.

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

While e-procurement auction has helped firms to achieve lower procurement costs, auction mechanisms that prevail at present in procurement markets need to address an important issue that concerns the ability to maintain long term relationships with the partners, especially in repeated e-procurement settings. In this paper, we propose a Relationship Preserving Auction (RPA) mechanism that augments the conventional auction mechanism with a bidder relationship scoring model. Our proposed mechanism gives increased chances of winning to the bidders who have bidden at relatively competitive price but had comparatively less wins so far. Keeping these bidders in the auction over time will …


A Growth-Theoretic Empirical Analysis Of Simultaneity In Cross-National E-Commerce Development, Shu-Chun Ho, Robert J. Kauffman, Ting-Peng Liang Jan 2008

A Growth-Theoretic Empirical Analysis Of Simultaneity In Cross-National E-Commerce Development, Shu-Chun Ho, Robert J. Kauffman, Ting-Peng Liang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The emergence of information and communication technologies infrastructure has transformed the global economy. The development of information technology infrastructure is limited to some developed countries though. This research explores the role of information technology infrastructure in B2C e-commerce growth at the country-level from the perspective of growth theory in economics. We propose a hybrid exogenous and endogenous growth model to explain e-commerce growth. We estimate a panel data model that incorporates the direct effects of e-commerce infrastructure and other key explanatory variables. We further specify a simultaneous effects model that permits the analysis of reverse causality in the association between …


Competitive Equilibrium In E-Commerce: Pricing And Outsourcing, Parijat Dube, Zhen Liu, Laura Wynter, Cathy Xia Dec 2007

Competitive Equilibrium In E-Commerce: Pricing And Outsourcing, Parijat Dube, Zhen Liu, Laura Wynter, Cathy Xia

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The success of firms engaged in e-commerce depends on their ability to understand and exploit the dynamics of the market. One component of this is the ability to extract maximum profit and minimize costs in the face of the harsh competition that the internet provides. We present a general framework for modeling the competitive equilibrium across two firms, or across a firm and the market as a whole. Within this framework, we study pricing choices and analyze the decision to outsource IT capability. Our framework is novel in that it allows for any number of distributions on usage levels, price–QoS …


Analyzing Service Usage Patterns: Methodology And Simulation, Qianhui (Althea) Liang, Jen-Yao Chung Oct 2007

Analyzing Service Usage Patterns: Methodology And Simulation, Qianhui (Althea) Liang, Jen-Yao Chung

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper proposes that service mining technology will power the construction of new business services via both intra- and inter-enterprise service assembly within the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) framework. We investigate the methodologies of service mining at the component level of service usage. We also demonstrate how mining of service usage patterns is intended to be used to improve different aspects of service composition. Simulation experiments conducted for mining at the component level are analyzed. The processing details within a general service mining deployment are demonstrated.


Follow The Leader? Price Change Timing In Internet-Based Selling, R. J. Kauffman, Charles A. Wood Oct 2007

Follow The Leader? Price Change Timing In Internet-Based Selling, R. J. Kauffman, Charles A. Wood

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Internet technologies should lessen information asymmetry, prompting competitive price reactions, but this does not seem to be happening in Internet-based selling. We study empirical regularities of price change timing for music CD vendors and booksellers to assess several theoretical explanations. Our sample includes 123, 680 daily prices for 169 products and 53 firms. Bertrand competition is insufficient to explain our observation that sellers do not shift prices this way. Tacitly collusive responses to competitors' price changes are observed rather than price changes solely in response to demand or cost shifts as would be expected with Bertrand competition. We find evidence …


An Examination Of Online Product Comparison Service: Fit Between Product Type And Disposition Style, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, W. Hong, L. Chen, H. Lee Jul 2007

An Examination Of Online Product Comparison Service: Fit Between Product Type And Disposition Style, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, W. Hong, L. Chen, H. Lee

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Horizontal and vertical disposition styles are two main formats used in product comparison service on e-commerce websites. In this research, we hypothesize that there is a fit between product type (‘think’ vs. ‘feel’ product) and disposition style (horizontal vs. vertical style), where horizontal disposition style is more appropriate for ‘feel’ products and vertical disposition style is a better fit for ‘think’ products. An experiment will be carried out to test the hypotheses.


Assessing Organizational Innovation Capability And Its Effect On E-Commerce Initiatives, Ann L. Fruhling, Keng Siau Jun 2007

Assessing Organizational Innovation Capability And Its Effect On E-Commerce Initiatives, Ann L. Fruhling, Keng Siau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This research uses a qualitative approach to study the innovative capability of two organizations and the effect of innovation on their E-Commerce initiatives, strategies, and outcomes. The Innovation Strategy Model is used in this research to analyze the innovative capability of two organizations. The case study research methodology was selected and two case studies are presented. The research results show that one organization is more innovative than the other in terms of its innovative capability. A post-study follow-up shows that the organization that was high on innovative capability was very successful in their E-Commerce initiative whereas the other organization was …


Usage-Based Versus Flat Pricing For E-Business Services With Differentiated Qos, Zhen Liu, Laura Wynter, Cathy Xia Jun 2007

Usage-Based Versus Flat Pricing For E-Business Services With Differentiated Qos, Zhen Liu, Laura Wynter, Cathy Xia

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Design of e-commerce services that are competitive, in such a quickly responding market, requires the analyses of prices and price structures. We present a general model of an e-commerce market that allows us to analyze optimal price structures, both flat and usage-based. Based on the price structure of a major web hosting provider, we consider both single-tier and two-tier (burst-rate) pricing, and our result suggests that the more complex two-tier structure may not be worth the marketing effort, as the firm?s equilibrium profits will not increase through the use of this structure. An essential feature of our approach is that …


Online Advertising By The Comparison Challenge Approach, Jae Wong Lee, Jae Kyu Lee Dec 2006

Online Advertising By The Comparison Challenge Approach, Jae Wong Lee, Jae Kyu Lee

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

To enhance the effectiveness of online comparisons from a manufacturer's point of view, we develop a framework for the comparison challenge approach. To develop the comparison challenge framework, we analyze 12 factors that determine the characteristics of comparison and propose models of valuable comparison challenges using the CompareMe and CompareThem strategies. We demonstrate the approaches with the example of PC selection. To help plan the comparison challenges, we formulate a mathematical programming model that maximizes the total value of comparison under the constraints of comparison opportunity and budgetary limitation. The model is applied to eight comparison scenarios, and its performance …


Service Pattern Discovery Of Web Service Mining In Web Service Registry-Repository, Qianhui Althea Liang, Jen-Yao Chung, Steven M. Miller, Yang Ouyang Oct 2006

Service Pattern Discovery Of Web Service Mining In Web Service Registry-Repository, Qianhui Althea Liang, Jen-Yao Chung, Steven M. Miller, Yang Ouyang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper presents and elaborates the concept of Web service usage patterns and pattern discovery through service mining. We define three different levels of service usage data: i) user request level, ii) template level and iii) instance level. At each level, we investigate patterns of service usage data and the discovery of these patterns. An algorithm for service pattern discovery at the template level is presented. We show the system architecture of a service-mining enabled service registry repository. Web service patterns, pattern discovery and pattern mining supports the discovery and composition of complex services, which in turn supports the application …


Can Online Reviews Reveal A Product's True Quality? Empirical Findings Analytical Modeling Of Online Word-Of-Mouth Communication, Nan Hu, Paul Pavlou, Jennifer Zhang Jun 2006

Can Online Reviews Reveal A Product's True Quality? Empirical Findings Analytical Modeling Of Online Word-Of-Mouth Communication, Nan Hu, Paul Pavlou, Jennifer Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

As a digital version of word-of-mouth, online review has become a major information source for consumers and has very important implications for a wide range of management activities. While some researchers focus their studies on the impact of online product review on sales, an important assumption remains unexamined, that is, can online product review reveal the true quality of the product? To test the validity of this key assumption, this paper first empirically tests the underlying distribution of online reviews with data from Amazon. The results show that 53% of the products have a bimodal and non-normal distribution. For these …