Arnold Kamis

Influences on the corporate adoption of Web technology

Virtually every brick-and-mortar firm has a Web site today, but this has not always been the case. Some companies quickly established a Web presence with thousands of pages of information available on their sites and even early e-commerce features. Others started with a simple Web site establishing a “front window” on the Web. Some companies did not appear on the Web until much later when it became essential for all businesses to do so. This article explores the roles of senior management and firm resources in the early adoption of Web technology. We endeavor to determine what distinguished firms that embraced the Web and established an early Web presence from firms that did not consider the Web important. Although our data, collected during 1996–1997, is somewhat dated, the results of this study, particularly findings concerning management’s role in adoption, can be generalized to other IT innovations besides Web sites, including electronic commerce capabilities, enterprise software, and supply chain management systems, as well as future technologies yet to appear. Previous research suggests that predicting a firm’s response to new technology necessitates an examination of the leadership and strategic direction of senior management. A consistent finding in early research on system implementation is that management support is related to success [9]. A firm that emphasizes technology as a part of its strategy is likely to have recognized the potential importance of the Internet and to have established a site. A firm that has not created a site for the general public is unlikely to have established an intranet or an extranet. Also, firms with more resources are more likely to invest in a Web presence than firms with fewer resources. Knowledge is a major resource, and resource-rich firms are more likely to have personnel knowledgeable about technology and interested in innovation.

Reconciling top-down and bottom-up design approaches in RMM

The proliferation of intranets and extranets as well as the vast expansion of the World Wide Web (WWW) and electronic commerce indicate the need for a structured hypermedia design methodology that will guide the design, development, and maintenance of large multimedia and hypermedia information systems and collaborative systems. The Relationship Management Methodology (RMM) is a well-known hypermedia design methodology. In this paper we provide an extension to it that enhances the design process. We present an iterative process of application design that incorporates the design of the entire application as well as its components. The process includes the design of an application diagram in a top-down fashion, the design of the components or building blocks using the construct of an m-slice, and the regeneration of the application diagram in a bottom-up fashion. An iterative comparison and refinement of the two versions of the application diagram ensure a better final application.

Marketing in electronic commerce

Internet Marketing continues to be a hot topic in electronic commerce. With the demise of click-throughs, the impact of online advertising on brands has surfaced as critical. The proliferation of wireless web technologies points out the need for better study of marketing and promotions over the wireless medium. Our minitrack continues in its second year to highlight some of the most interesting studies done in this area.The paper titled ?A Two-Level Approach to Establishing a Marketing Strategy in the Electronic Marketplace? by Hsiu-Yuan Tsao and Koong H.-C. Lin attempts to identify appropriate marketing strategies for different types of products in e- commerce. By considering two main factors regarding consumer disposition towards online shopping, namely purchase involvement and product information exposure, the authors develop four product categories and two levels of online marketing strategy.The second paper is titled ?The Relevance of Brands in Electronic Commerce? and Ralf E. Strauss, Detlef Schoder, and Judith Gebauer author it. It is an interesting study from Europe that examines the impact of electronic commerce on the importance of brands and consumer behavior online. Brand awareness seems to be more important online than it is offline and a new group of consumers is described, called the ?information seekers.??Corporate Branding in Electronic Markets ? A framework for Business-to-Business Ventures? by Ulrike Geissler and Markus Will focuses on entrepreneurs in electronic commerce. After a discussion of the basic concepts in B2B commerce and the main challenges for success in the e-business world, the authors present a five-dimensional plan for brand building for entrepreneurs in electronic commerce.In their paper ?Developmental Trajectories of Individual WWW Usage: Implications for Electronic Commerce?, the authors Mario Christ, Ramayya Krishnan, Daniel Nagin, Robert Kraut, and Oliver Guenther present a unique clustering method for tracking web usage by individual users. They use longitudinal data from 4 years of web usage they discover the saturation level of web usage and web user profiles.?Modeling Consumer Visit Frequency on the Internet? by Sukekyu Lee, Fred Zufryden, and Xavier Dreze answers two important questions: 1) How to characterize distribution patterns of repeat visits to a web site and 2) How can user demographics and Internet usage affect their number of web site visits. Various models are presented and tested using panel data for over 1000 different web sites.Finally, in ?Predicting Online Purchasing Behavior: Replications and Tests of Competing Models,? Hans van der Heijden, Tibert Verhagen, and Marcel Creemers juxtapose two different models to explain online purchasing intention: a trust oriented model and a web site oriented model. Replicating some earlier studies, the researchers find that a trust-based model appears to explain online purchasing behavior better than the web site oriented model.