Her-Sen Doong

The Effect of Price Dispersion in an e-Market on Consumers’ Intentions to Join Group Buying

Based on the economics theory of information and the transaction utility theory, this paper shows how the market price dispersion affects a consumer’s intention to join group-buying transactions using the transaction utility, which compares the consumer’s internal reference price and the predicted final price of group buying. The experimental data show that consumers consistently perceive a higher internal reference price as well as a higher predicted final price of group buying in a market with narrow price dispersion. Consumers also perceive a higher transaction utility in a market with narrow price dispersion, except in the best case. Furthermore, the transaction utility in the most-probable case is the highest irrespective of the price dispersion. This is consistent with the transaction utility in the most-probable case being most strongly correlated with the intention to join group buying. Overall, consumers exhibit a higher intention to join group buying in a market with narrow price dispersion, and our results also show that the percentage of subjects joining group buying is much higher in a market with narrow price dispersion than in one with wide price dispersion.

Validation in Internet Survey Research: Reviews and Future Suggestions

In recent years, Internet surveys have been widely used by researchers and companies as a means of data collection. However, few IS studies have discussed the validation of Internet survey research. From the perspective of the positivist and quantitative research, studies that fail to organize a scientific and rigorous research design will harm their findings validity, reliability and generalizability. In turn; their contributions to the literature and implications for business are limited. Building on a review of past marketing research studies which were well-developed in Internet survey methodological validation, this study illustrated nine issues for IS researchers to re-consider in their empirical Internet surveys. Alternative ways to enhance the necessary rigor of the survey quality in term of the Internet survey types, population, and pros./cons, of each survey type were also proposed. This paper should serve as a useful guide for IS researchers in the planning and execution of an Internet survey, or in judging the inferential ability of other Internet survey research

Nine issues for Internet-based survey research in service industries

Internet-based surveys have recently become a popular means of data collection among researchers in the service industries. However, there has been little discussion regarding the validation of Internet-based surveys in this services discipline. From the perspective of positivist and quantitative research, failure to organise a scientific and rigorous research design will damage the validity, reliability, and generalisability of a studys findings and, in turn, its contributions. This paper identifies nine key issues from theoretical discussions and accordingly examines the Internet-based survey studies published in The Service Industries Journal between 2001 and 2008 to demonstrate the current status of the Internet-based survey development in this field. Further, an empirical study with a carefully designed methodology is presented to serve as a useful guide in planning and executing Internet-based surveys.

An Initial Investigation of Integrating Innovation Diffusion Models for Drawing First‐time Visitors

Prior studies in the existing tourism literature have frequently emphasized the relatively expensive costs for drawing first‐time visitors. These studies, however, have largely failed to explain how to draw first‐time visitors to a destination. In other words, little was known regarding what destinations should do to attract first‐time visitors in an effective way. To provide more insights, this research investigated the impact of three diffusion models on attracting first‐time visitors. These models included an external influence model for impact of mass media, an internal influence model for impact of interpersonal communications, and a mixed model for impacts of both mass media and interpersonal communications. Assessing the model impact in a macroapproach for first‐time visitors to Hong Kong, empirical findings indicated that the mixed influence model provided the highest explanatory quality, with word‐of‐mouth being a dominant factor. The authors would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for offering constructive comments about an early version of this paper. This research was partly supported by a research funded by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

The Effects of Virtual Product Experience on Changing Consumers’ First Impression Bias

Recommendation agents have been seen as one of the most powerful Website marketing techniques due to their ability to facilitate consumers’ online purchase decisions. However, in a modern society within which information is exchanged and transmitted quickly, it is quite often the case that consumers have already received product information from different sources before they browse recommendation agents’ messages on the Website. That is, the first impression bias toward a specific product may already exist in the consumer’s mind when they read the Website message that is trying to persuade them to buy that product. Is the message delivered by recommendation agents able to change such bias and achieve its intended benefit: persuading consumers to buy from the Website? By integrating the theory of first impression bias, the elaboration likelihood model and virtual product experience, this study has developed and empirically examined a research model proposing that the virtual product experience can improve the recommendation agents’ argument quality and source credibility, by which consumers’ first impression bias can be changed.

Tyrant Leaders as e-Government Service Promoters: The Role of Transparency and Tyranny in the Implementation of e-Government Service

While prior studies offer significant insights into the extent of EGS (Electronic Government Service) implementation from productivity-transparency trade-off perspectives, critical questions remain about how transparency of government department/agency facilitates the implementation timing of EGS. Such questions are important because transparency is an explicit indicator to outsiders, such as IT (Information Technology) vendors, to help them plan their marketing strategies in advance. Drawing insights from signaling and upper echelon theories, this research contributes to the electronic government literature by proposing that the government department/agency performance transparency is closely aligned to its timing of EGS implementation. Moreover, this relationship varies as it depends both on the size of the government department/agency and the level of tyranny of its leader or head. Empirical findings indicate that, in order to gain a competitive advantage, a tyrannical manager in a smaller organization accelerates the speed of IT implementation to use it as a strategic weapon to elicit favorable public response. This research, thus, complements and extends extant knowledge by exploring the key roles of both a government department/agency performance transparency and its tyrannical leadership on the timing of EGS implementation.

Determinants of Continuance Intention towards Self-service Innovation: A Case of Electronic Government Services

Service science has attracted the attention of researchers from different disciplines and has become an increasing important issue. As service science was proposed to integrate people, management and technologies, the self-service innovation, such as electronic government (e-Government) services, have shown its unique implication in this field. To explore the determinants of continuance intention towards self-service innovation, this study utilizes psychological approaches, revealing how users’ innovative style and involvement level may influence their continuance intentions towards innovative e-Government service. Based on psychological and marketing theories, this study proposed research propositions and provide useful insights for practical implications in terms of enhancing the execution performance via integrating the psychological approach into the pilot implementation strategy for self-service innovation.

An evaluation of whether the psychological traits of managers are relevant to their intentions to purchase E-government software

Managers have played a double identity of electronic government (egovernment) software implementation within their organizations. On the one hand, they are potential sponsors of the software applications. On the other, they are also explicit users. However, past e-government software and information systems studies have overlooked this unique nature. While individual innovativeness has been asserted to be significantly related to innovation adoption behavior, an increasing number of studies have evidenced that innovativeness alone does not command innovation adoption behavior. In such cases, individual involvement may play a ruling effect on innovative behaviors. Therefore, this study empirically tested a model that was developed to assess whether the factors affecting the managers decision for using or purchasing e-government software may be diverse. The experiment involved 56 managers from different functional departments in governments, and the present study proposes managerial implications according to the results.

Distinct Impact of Information Access Patterns on Supplier’s Non-contractible Investments and Adaptation for Supply Chain Agility

This study explores how distinct information access patterns affect a supplier’s supply chain agility. A supplier’s specific investments for IT-enabled supply chain coordination and relational adaptation in supply chain operations are identified as the technical and behavioral antecedents to its supply chain agility. Because both are non-contractible elements in formal contracts and complementary to buyer’s supply chain coordination information and buyer’s specific investments in monitoring and control, either buyer or supplier may hold up their counterpart based on their own information assets. Therefore, this study draws on the theory of incomplete contracts and suggests that both buyer and supplier need to make their idiosyncratic information assets alienable and accessible to their counterpart so that the rent-seeking problem can be alleviated and the supplier’s investment and adaptation incentives improved. This study contributes to the literature by demonstrating that distinct information access patterns can improve a supplier’s supply chain agility through the mediation of the non-contractible investments and adaptation made by the supplier.

The Effects of Co-creation on Citizens' Intentions to Accept Virtual Civil Servants.

Many governments have implemented software agents – virtual civil servants (VCSs) – in order to offer citizens better experiences when they choose the service they require. However, VCSs have not created as many benefits as was originally expected of them, leaving citizens frustrated and dissatisfied. Consequently, effective VCS design has become a critical issue. Grounded on previous research into co-creation, we suggest that citizens would perceive VCSs to be more effective if the agents were to engage them in the co-creation process by interacting directly with them; this would also enable the VCSs to provide services that are more closely aligned with citizens’ preferences. Hence, this study will contribute to e-Government literature by explaining how a co-creation policy regarding VCSs’ might impact on both citizens’ behavior and on their subsequent acceptance of what they have to offer. A key practical implication of our findings, therefore, is that governments may benefit substantially from collating citizens’ preferences, while citizens would receive the required services more effectively, thereby engendering a sense of satisfaction toward their governments.