Anssi Öörni

Health Behavior Change Support Systems as a research discipline; a viewpoint

As research on Health Behavior Change Support Systems (HBCSS) proliferates, meaningful management of the different findings is becoming a challenge. We argue that for the field to evolve, it is important to establish the study of HBCSSs as an independent research area, which means that instead of only applying theories from related disciplines to HBCSSs, we need to significantly extend and adapt these theories, or develop new theories, to explain the phenomena that are encountered. Current research in HBCSSs is carried out in different disciplines, with a different approach in each of these disciplines. However, both the CeHRes roadmap and the Persuasive System Design Model show that HBCSSs are complex and the development and evaluation of these systems need to deal with this complexity to be successful. Therefore, an integrative approach is needed to study the combination of content, system, and context. Although research into the separate areas has yielded important findings that are discussed in this paper, we argue that an integrated approach of HBCSSs is useful. We discuss two examples to show how a truly integrative approach can be utilized to enhance the field involving tailoring, personalization, and support. In conclusion we present three practical and relatively easy-to-implement recommendations for researchers who want to contribute to this discipline: Avoid the black box, be specific about the terms used, and look past the borders of ones own discipline.

Looking Past Planned and Habitual IT Use

Information technology is often used as means to some more fundamental ends. Such use is often adaptive rather than planned or habitual and, therefore, alien to the dominant IT use models. In this paper, we argue that the role, which IT plays, should be taken into account when trying to predict IT use. We re-evaluate previously reported data on mobile ticket use and demonstrate that, when IT use is not an end in and of itself, IT use intention can be used, rather counter-intuitively, to predict more accurately adaptive IT use than planned IT use. Our findings also suggest that IT habit should not be used as the default explanation for IT use, when IT intention -- IT use relation fails to materialize, unless there is further supporting evidence for habit formation.

Factors Affecting Consumer Satisfaction of Online Purchase

Consumers frequently engage in pre-purchase search to extract up-to-date information for their purchase decisions. Search is an essential part of online comparison-shopping and decision-making process as it reduces purchase related uncertainty and increases the likelihood of purchase satisfaction. In this paper, we study how determinants of pre-purchase search, purchase related uncertainty and the type of the search process, influence consumers perceived satisfaction with the online purchase. Our analysis of 351 consumers show that the classic determinants such as product class knowledge, time availability, attitudes toward shopping, and search effort do not significantly affect perceived purchase satisfaction. Instead, we find that involvement and purchase related uncertainties have stronger effect on satisfaction. However, the type of the search process turned out to be the most important factor behind perceived purchase satisfaction.

Nordic Contributions in IS Research

Software is increasingly developed, adopted and deployed in the form of customizable and configurable products. This has repercussions for the design, development and implementation of a configured or customized piece of software in the end-user organization. The design decisions done at the product provider influence the local ICT infrastructure. On the one hand, methods for local participatory design need to take the ripple effects in the local infrastructure into account, as it might effect not only the local implementation but also future possibilities for participatory design and end user development. On the other hand, software providers need feedback and design input. Participation can be expected to change character from preparing implementation here and now to a sustained co-development of the common tool. The keynote is based on a series of research projects with software product providers and around evolution of organizational infrastructures and outlines a number of challenges for Partici-