Julia Klier

Social commerce—state-of-the-art and future research directions

In recent years, social commerce evolved into an emerging phenomenon of global interest for marketers, businesses, and researchers alike. In light of this development, it is not surprising that the number of publications focusing on this phenomenon at the interplay of electronic commerce and social media has been rising substantially. The goal of this paper is to provide a structured overview of social commerce research by means of a structured literature review. Based on our literature search between 2007 and 2014 resulting in 116 published papers, we carve out and assess the knowledge and the research areas that have been predominantly addressed by the Information Systems, Electronic Commerce, and Marketing research community so far. By providing a research agenda, we hope that our results will stimulate and guide future research in this exciting field.

How to manage IS requirements in complex public sector structures: toward an action design research approach

Information systems (IS) are a key enabler to improve effectiveness and efficiency in the public sector. The realization of large IS projects, however, still remains a challenge in public administrations. One reason is that the complex task of IT governance in federal structures requires contributions from a large number of stakeholders. To address this challenge, we conducted Action Design Research in cooperation with different institutions of the German labor market and developed a requirements engineering process with a corresponding IT governance in the public sector that takes complex federal structures into account. The process was successfully implemented at the German Federal Employment Agency and proved valuable to deal with 146 municipal requirements regarding an IS in the context of unemployment benefits. Moreover, we derived four general success factors with a special attention on the interleaving of requirements engineering process and IT governance.

Why should I do it myself`? Hedonic and utilitarian motivations of customers' intention to use self-service technologies

Customer self-service technologies (SST) have been gaining increasing economic importance given their proliferation in the customer service industry. Self-service kiosks have gradually been replacing traditional service employees and their progress is expected to continue. The growing relevance of SST results in the need for companies to understand why customers are willing to use SST and which motivations drive SST adoption. Two central constructs determine a customer’s willingness to use SST, namely utilitarian and hedonic value. Thus, the aim of this paper is twofold: first, we explore the multidimensional nature of utilitarian and especially hedonic value. Second, we examine their relative importance in determining repeat use intention, depending on a customer’s prior experience with SST. We develop a research model based on means-end chain (MEC) theory. The results underline that both values positively influence repeat use intention of SST. While hedonic value is prevalent for customers with little experience, utilitarian value weights stronger for customers with more experience.

Customer lifetime network value: customer valuation in the context of network effects

Nowadays customers are increasingly connected and extensively interact with each other using technology-enabled media like online social networks. Hence, customers are frequently exposed to social influence when making purchase decisions. However, established approaches for customer valuation mostly neglect network effects based on social influence. This leads to a misallocation of resources. Following a design-oriented approach, this paper develops a model for customer valuation referred to as the customer lifetime network value (CLNV) incorporating an integrated network perspective. By considering the customers’ net contribution to the network, the CLNV reallocates values between customers based on social influence. Inspired by common prestige- and eigenvector-related centrality measures it incorporates social influence among all degrees of separation acknowledging its viral spread. Using a real-world dataset, we demonstrate the practicable applicability of the CLNV to determine individual customers’ value.

The impact of self-service technologies – towards an economic decision model and its application at the German Federal Employment Agency

Abstract Self-service technologies have been gaining increasing economic importance given their proliferation in the customer service industry. By using customers as resources, organisations aim at achieving not only more efficient business processes but also positive effects on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. However, the specific economic effects resulting from customer integration via self-service technologies still remain unclear for many companies. Thus, the aim of this paper is to develop a quantitative economic decision model that supports decisions about integrating customers into business processes by using self-service technologies. The application of the model and its practical utility are demonstrated using the example of the German Federal Employment Agency.