Carina Ihlström

E-business adoption by SMEs : prerequisites and attitudes of SMEs in a Swedish network

To support the purchasing process in the B2B EC platform, we analyzed various architectures of buyer-carts. The desired features in buyer-carts are collection, recording, trashing, tracking, identification, ordering, payment, purchasing decision support, and transmission of records to e-procurement systems. A buyer-cart can be categorized as s-cart, i-cart, and b-cart depending upon its residing sites: seller, intermediary, and buyer. To design the architectures of B2B e-marketplaces considering the role of buyer-carts, we analyzed the feasible combinations of marketplace operators, pricing mechanisms, and types of buyer-carts. Seventeen elementary types of B2B EC architectures turned out meaningful in this regard, thus their pros and cons are evaluated. Based on this framework, we designed a composite architecture MyCart, which allows the buyer to use b-cart along with s-cart and i-cart. By using the b-cart, a buyer can visit multiple sites collecting information in his or her own cart. This will allow t...The context for this research is the transformation process of small and medium-sized enterprises from traditional businesses toward e-businesses and the accompanying development of the knowledge a ...Internet technology has been increasingly used to enhance the global competitiveness of various business applications through the widespread electronic commerce (EC) functions. Many Internet-based systems have been designed and developed for supply chain management (SCM) in various areas such as computer, garment, and publishing industries, which mainly center on communication infrastructure, coordination between production and distribution, and procurement functions with security mechanisms. However, EC is not a panacea. On many occasions, participants (including buyers, sellers, and enablers) face various risks and overhead during the deployment of a new technology. In this article, we present the impact of EC on procurement processes in supply chains, highlighting the issues of buyers, sellers, and the transaction processes involved. The procurement processes are classified into preprocurement (sourcing), procurement (quotation, negotiation, order placement, and transaction), and postprocurement (deliv...

Online newspapers in Scandinavia: A longitudinal study of genre change and interdependency

Purpose – To examine the evolution of the online newspaper genre in Scandinavia. To provide an understanding of the institutional context in which online newspapers initially were produced and modified over time. Design/methodology/approach – A longitudinal study of three different types of newspapers in three Scandinavian countries. The study is based on interviews with newspaper representatives conducted during recurring visits in 1996, 1999 and 2002, and web page analysis of their online newspapers. Findings – The study illustrates how online newspapers have established a number of communicative practices significant for recognizing them as a distinct digital genre, and it outlines a set of institutional factors shaping the ongoing change of these newspapers. In addition, the study demonstrates the emergence of sequential interdependencies between online and printed news. Originality/value – The focus on Scandinavian newspapers in this paper complements studies conducted in other parts of the world regarding online newspaper genre evolution.

Revenues for Online Newspapers: Owner and User Perceptions

The newspaper industry faces hard questions about business models and economic success for their online newspaper ventures. Managers, editors-in-chief and designers at nine local newspapers in Sweden were interviewed. In addition, semi-structured interviews with 153 users/readers of the news services of these nine newspapers were also conducted. The analysis reveals differences in digital news product content and revenue generation. The paper suggests a new business model for digital news products that includes content-based revenue generation through personalization, archiving and versioning, approaches to advertising that involve more highly targeted market intermediation, and non-news activities covering advertisers and information brokerage. Results suggest that management and users agree on the importance of archives, personalized and deep news content, and a role for the newspaper as intermediary. However, users are not willing to pay for increased multimedia or an e-commerce site sponsored by the news site.

The online news genre through the user perspective

Online newspapers, having existed on the Internet for a couple of years, are now having similar form and content, starting to shape what could be called a genre. We have analyzed the news sites of nine Swedish local newspapers using a repertoire of genre elements consisting of navigation elements, landmarks, news streams, headlines, search/archives and advertisements. We have also interviewed 153 end users at these newspapers. The objective of this paper is to describe the users perspective of the online news genre described in terms of the repertoire of genre elements. The results indicate what elements seems to be the better design choice through the user perspective. Due to remaining similarities with the printed edition, the online newspaper genre is still a variant genre.

Minitrack: Genres of Digital Documents

There has recently been an upsurge of interest in document genres - the fusion of form and function that makes a document instantly recognizable to its community of users. The utility of genre identification is now accepted as a premise, but many interesting and challenging questions remain. The papers assembled here create a truly interdisciplinary body of work, drawing on literary and communication theories, library and information science, natural language processing, writing, and machine learning, among others. One of the most challenging aspects of research in genre is to create a rigorous yet flexible way of representing document genres that will reflect their form and properties, as well as their communicative role as embedded in a particular community of discourse.