David P. Cook

The Role of Third-Party Seals in Building Trust Online

Third-party seal programs, such as BBBOnLine, have emerged as a thriving e-service for building consumer trust on the Internet. Given the impersonal nature of electronic commerce, third-party seals are well positioned to act as the intermediary between competitive online vendors and nervous online consumers. This article surveys the current landscape of existing third- party seal programs, examines their role in building trust between vendors and consumers, and discusses the challenges that lie ahead.

Review: Using company web sites to e-recruit qualified applicants: A job marketing based review of theory-based research

In their rapidly expanding attempts to use company web sites to e-recruit job applicants in a world-wide labor market, employers have often found their hiring systems to be unexpectedly overwhelmed by large numbers of applications from poorly qualified individuals. To both limit and understand this phenomenon, this article employs a job marketing perspective to organize and review contemporary theory-based studies of the effects of web site recruiting sources on job seeker attitudes and employment application behaviors. To accomplish this task, recruiting research based on theoretical elements of Realistic Job Previews (RJPs), Person-Organization (P-O) Fit, the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) and signaling theory is examined in terms of its implications for the ability of companies to e-recruit high quality job applicants. Overall, results of this analysis reveal that each of these theoretical areas offer useful insights but that considerably more theory-based research is needed to assess the effect of e-recruiting sources on the attitudes and decisions of highly qualified job seekers actively engaged in the job search process.

Stockout propagation and amplification in supply chain inventory systems

We investigate the existence and magnitude of stockout propagation and stockout amplification in the context of supply chain inventory systems. Stockout amplification is a stage-to-stage increase in overall stockout rates. Stockout propagation is the tendency for stockout at one node to instigate a stockout at a neighbouring node and is conceptually related to the idea of cascading failures in physical systems, such as electrical power grids. We study these concepts in both upstream (‘supply side’) and downstream (‘demand side’) directions in the context of normal operating conditions for an adaptive R, S (periodic, order-up-to) inventory policy. We build a simulation model of a 5-stage serial supply chain that experiences normally distributed customer demands and gamma distributed lead times. We find that stockout propagation exists, but contrary to conventional wisdom, it occurs in the upstream direction. There is little indication that stockout propagation is occurring to any significant degree in the downstream direction. We also find stockout amplification occurring in the upstream direction in scenarios where more aggressively adaptive inventory parameter updating is performed. We discuss implications of this work in the areas of supply chain inventory modelling, ordering decisions, safety stock determination, and the use of adaptive inventory policies.

Quality drivers for e-pharmaceuticals system management: a theoretical framework

Approximately 41 million US adults currently use the internet for healthcare, and approximately 4.6 million have used the internet to make an e-pharmaceuticals or health and beauty product category purchase. Increased data access, to the general public, has given rise to a class of sophisticated medical goods and services consumers. Exposure to e-commerce has supplanted the novelty of purchasing online with a desire for a quality purchasing experience comparable with, or superior to, offline healthcare encounters. With experienced and sophisticated consumers, quality is essential for e-marketplace success. This paper examines the components of service quality to provide a framework for guiding e-pharmacy development and evaluation.

Structural elements of online service product quality

The Internet is at the centre of a whirlwind of economic hype and activity with more and more adults going online both at home and work. An increasing proportion of retail sales is being conducted online, and is expected to continue to increase for the foreseeable future. The combination of the proliferation of online retail sales and the recent shakeout of internet firms, is a clear indicator that significant opportunities exist online; but not without lurking dangers. What differentiates the successful internet player from the also ran? This article posits that one differentiating factor is the ability to successfully deliver high quality service products. A service quality stack is developed that demonstrates the interplay between the service product delivery system, service quality judgment criteria, and an underlying infrastructure based on the following empirically identified elements: methods standardisation, customer contact, and customer involvement.