Ewelina Lacka

The role of social media data in operations and production management

Social media data contain rich information in posts or comments written by customers. If those data can be extracted and analysed properly, companies can fully utilise this rich source of information. They can then convert the data to useful information or knowledge, which can help to formulate their business strategy. This cannot only facilitate marketing research in view of customer behaviour, but can also aid other management disciplines. Operations management (OM) research and practice with the objective to make decisions on product and process design is a fine example. Nevertheless, this line of thought is under-researched. In this connection, this paper explores the role of social media data in OM research. A structured approach is proposed, which involves the analysis of social media comments and a statistical cluster analysis to identify the interrelationships amongst important factors. A real-life example is employed to demonstrate the concept.

An ANN-based approach of interpreting user-generated comments from social media

Display Omitted Online comments are characterised in terms of attributes and lengths.The connectivity between attributes and lengths is examined.Key attributes of rich comments are addressed.Neural network-based methods are benchmarked with MLR-based methods.Neural network-based methods can generate more reliable explanatory information. The IT advancement facilitates growth of social media networks, which allow consumers to exchange information online. As a result, a vast amount of user-generated data is freely available via Internet. These data, in the raw format, are qualitative, unstructured and highly subjective thus they do not generate any direct value for the business. Given this potentially useful database it is beneficial to unlock knowledge it contains. This however is a challenge, which this study aims to address. This paper proposes an ANN-based approach to analyse user-generated comments from social media. The first mechanism of the approach is to map comments against predefined product attributes. The second mechanism is to generate input-output models which are used to statistically address the significant relationship between attributes and comment length. The last mechanism employs Artificial Neural Networks to formulate such a relationship, and determine the constitution of rich comments. The application of proposed approach is demonstrated with a case study, which reveals the effectiveness of the proposed approach for assessing product performance. Recommendations are provided and direction for future studies in social media data mining is marked.

Culture Dependent Benefits of E-commerce: A Consumer Perspective

The Internet has been identified as the world’s fastest growing marketplace (Adapa 2008), continuously increasing in customer volume while traditional brick and mortar shopping decreases (Li et al. 1999). It is suggested that such growth is because customers nowadays value convenience and freedom from time and location limitations. It is not a surprise therefore that many businesses want to take advantage of this form of trading to gain access to global e-markets. At the same time however, a significant discrepancy of frequency of online shopping is noticeable across countries, which means that not all e-businesses can benefit equally from online trading. This inconsistency across countries in online shopping appears to be due to misunderstandings related to different cultural requirements, which according to Tan et al. (2007) have been found to have a direct effect on whether or not online shopping is adopted. Their evidence is preceded by research from Anant (2002) who stated that ‘in the highly competitive area of e-business any cross cultural miscommunication in cyberspace may leave individuals or organisations cut off from one of the most important online markets in the world’. Cultural influence is therefore recognised as a key moderator of e-commerce adoption and is now the focus of researchers and practitioners who aim to understand its moderating effect on consumers’ willingness to online shopping. Understanding such effects however is increasingly difficult due to globalisation and mass migration. Out of this complexity, the phenomenon of acculturation has emerged, which brings into view the possibility of change through adopting the host country’s cultural behaviour. Thus it appears to be crucial to investigate whether online shopping customers who are encouraged to mingle and migrate from country to country can overcome their native culture determined requirements and adopt e-commerce strategy and if so assess how this change affects their perception of advantages and disadvantages deriving from e-commerce. This study therefore aims to explore the extent to which native culture (couture of the country in which consumers grew up and with which they identify themselves) and non-native culture (culture of the country of consumers’ temporal residence) affect consumers’ e-commerce adoption decision and the effect of those two cultures on consumers’ perception of advantages and disadvantages deriving from online shopping. Findings are then compared and contrasted to conclude whether consumers changing cultural environment are able to overcome their culture determined behaviour and fully accept e-commerce strategy.

The role of social media in enhancing guanxi and perceived effectiveness of E-commerce institutional mechanisms in online marketplace

Abstract This study extends literature on e-commerce trust and repurchase intentions by exploring the role of swift guanxi and the perceived effectiveness of institutional mechanisms (PEEIM) in the context of a Chinese e-marketplace – Taobao. We explore how Taobao’s social media technologies (online reviews and instant messenger) can improve swift guanxi and PEEIM by increasing online interactivity and presence. We find that buyers’ PEEIM negatively moderates trust in online sellers and repurchase intentions. We show that swift guanxi, created by social media’s interactivity and presence, enhances trust, which further increases repurchase intentions. Theoretical and managerial implications and future research directions are discussed.

ASSESSING THE EFFECT OF CULTURE ON SOCIAL ACCEPTABILITY OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN B2B CONTEXT: CHINESE CULTURE PERSPECTIVE

The literature suggests that the adoption and use of social media can derive a number of benefits to B2B firms (see Siamagka et al, 2015; Wang et al, 2016). Despite the benefits however, the adoption and use of social media in B2B setting is slow (Lacka and Chong, 2016), so is research examining social media adoption by B2B firms (Iankova et al, 2018). To date, only a handful of studies explored factors driving social media use for B2B marketing purposes (Siamagka et al, 2015; Lacka and Chong, 2016). Lacka and Chong (2016), for example, revealed that practical acceptability (perceived usefulness, usability and utility) drives adoption decision. They ignored however the role of social acceptability, referred to social factors, which according to Nielsen (1993) is crucial in the technology adoption decision. Social factors are conceptualised as subjective norms or group norms, which motive persuasion of specific behaviour (e.g. technology use). The importance of assessing social acceptability has been most recently highlighted by Brink (2017), who recognises the key role of leadership from senior managers in the adoption and use of social media by B2B firms. Empirical research is however yet to verify such an impact. In addition to limited research on B2B social media adoption, there is lack of research on the role culture plays in the adoption decision. Previous research has showed hat culture impacts adoption of social media and its use (e.g. Hsu et al, 2015). Yet, there is lack of research on the impact of culture on the social media adoption in B2B setting. This study aims to address this research gap. Specifically, in line with this conference call this study aims to examine the impact of Chinese culture on social media adoption by B2B marketing professionals. This will be achieved though exploratory quantitative study.

UNDERSTANDING E-COMMERCE ADOPTION BY ETHNIC MINORITY CONSUMERS: THE ROLE OF INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERISTICS AND CULTURE CONTACT

The literature provides strong evidence to suggest that e-commerce adoption is subject to the effect of culture. In this stream, researchers adopting Hofstede’s framework (1980) conceptualise culture at the aggregate level, and thus they assume country’s cultural homogeneity. Yet, the argument emerges that this view does not seem to be appropriate anymore, as every country having its unique mix of ethnic groups portrays cultural diversity (Cleveland and Laroche, 2007). Research exploring the adoption of e-commerce by ethnic minority consumers however, is scare (Lacka and Yip, 2018). Considering growing migration levels, and particularly intra-European migration as well as the increase of ethnic consumers internet use (Kizgin et al, 2018), the investigation of migrants’ attitudes and behavioural intentions to adopt e-commerce as well as factors affecting adoption decision are important research topics for researchers, practitioners and policy makers. Although technology adoption has been extensively researched, previous studies on e-commerce adoption suffer from two limitations, which this study aims to address. First, most research on e-commerce adoption considers consumers to be a homogeneous group. Yet, within group differences exist, and they have an impact on e-commerce adoption decision. So far however, only a handful of studies explored the role of consumers’ individual characteristics on behavioural intentions to adopt e-commerce (e.g. Hasan 2010). Second, although the effect of culture on e-commerce adoption has been extensively studied, the simultaneous impact of various cultural influences migrants are subject to has not been examined. To address these research gaps, this research aim is to assess the role of individual characteristics in e-commence adoption and to reveal the impact of contact with heritage and host cultures on ethnic minority consumers’ attitudes towards behavioural intentions to adopt e-commerce.

Does Change of Cultural Environment Change Attitudes toward e-Commerce? New Research Method Investigating the Effect of Culture on e-Commerce Acceptance

Nowadays it seems that businesses have no other choice but to incorporate the e-commerce platform into their business operations if they wish to have unrestricted access to beyond national borders markets. Before they will do so they have to be careful as researchers revealed that due to culture and its effect on attitudes towards e-commerce some consumers willingly participate in online shopping environment while others seem to reject this convenient form of shopping. In the present-day global economy however, world researchers cannot follow traditional approaches and definitions of culture; instead they have to recognise many new multicultural aspects and dimensions and the effects of these on consumer processes. Consumers and their attitudes it seems are not only influenced these days by their native culture, but also by the culture where they temporarily reside. Therefore researchers are driven to provide comprehensive solutions to the challenges raised by globalisation, and to illustrate advanced research methods of cultural influences on behaviour. Hence, by investigating whether any change of cultural environment results in a change of consumer attitudes towards e-commerce, this research project aims to offer a fresh approach and method, which might guide and inform us in the face of such emerging challenges.

E-commerce Platform Acceptance: Suppliers, Retailers, and Consumers

This book aims to offer a comprehensive overview of the issues facing organizations when deciding whether to accept e-commerce as a platform for business. It provides a detailed evaluation of how the implementation of e-commerce may affect all parties within the supply chain: suppliers, retailers and consumers. It also compares various opportunities and threats of accepting e-commerce in order to conclude whether it might offer access to a new digital era, or whether it is an uncertain option yielding potential pitfalls. This book helps to reveal existing and future consequences of e-commerce acceptance, which are crucial for business decisions and operations in the present and going forward. It therefore provides a unique insight into emerging e-commerce platform acceptance and is one of the first to provide a holistic perspective of how each party in the supply chain is affectedby e-commerce acceptance. E-commerce is bringing into view more flexible, effective and efficient ways of conducting business activities among suppliers, retailers and consumers. It is not limited to time and space and therefore this digital platform has already established for itself a major role in todays world economy. Despite promised benefits however, threats emerge which need to be faced when turning to the virtual marketplace - all of which have to be acknowledged before businesses will shift and adapt to the e-commerce platform. This book is intended for postgraduate students, executive MBA students and researchers interested in information management, marketing and operations management.