Moez Limayem

Understanding information systems continuance: The case of Internet-based learning technologies

Our research model expanded the Bhattacherjees IS continuance model by adding a moderating effect (IS habit) to IS continuance intention and IS continued usage, postulating direct links between satisfaction and IS continued usage, as well as between prior behavior and IS continued usage. The model was tested with an Internet-based learning technology in a longitudinal setting. Data collected from 505 students were examined using partial least squares analysis. The results presented strong support for the theoretical links of IS continuance model, and for the new moderating effect. Both satisfaction and prior behavior were found to have significant impact on IS continuance. In addition, our findings confirmed the theoretical argument that the strength of intention to predict continuance was weakened by a high level of IS habit.

A Critical Review of Online Consumer Behavior: Empirical Research

Empirical research on online consumer theory has been examined under diverse contexts over the years. Although researchers from a variety of business disciplines have made significant progress over the past few years, the scope of these studies is rather broad, the studies appear relatively fragmented and no unifying theoretical framework is found in this area. In view of this, this study attempts to provide an exhaustive review of prior theoretical literature and to provide an integrative model of online consumer behavior. This framework not only provides us with a cohesive view of online consumer behavior, but also serves as a salient guideline for researchers in this area. The paper is concluded with a research agenda for future studies.

3D Social Virtual Worlds: Research Issues and Challenges

Todays social virtual worlds (SVW) are beginning to realize Stephensons vision of the metaverse: a future massive network of interconnected digital worlds. Tens of millions of people already use these kinds of environments to communicate, collaborate, and do business. Big companies are also moving into these digital realms. Thus, in a context in which the Web is becoming increasingly social, we believe that SVWs are beginning to shape the knowledge-based and glo balized societies and economies of tomorrow. Obviously, an urgent need exists to further understand SVWs and their implications for theory and practice. This article constitutes a first attempt to bring researchers into some of the business, social, technical, legal, and ethical issues related to SVWs. We anticipate that researchers will need to build new theories and concepts for SVWs, to explore the frontiers between reality and virtuality.

Providing Decisional Guidance for Multicriteria Decision Making in Groups

Intelligent user interfaces, particularly in interactive group settings, can be based on system explanations that guide model building, application, and interpretation. Here we extend Silvers (1990, 1991) conceptualization of decisional guidance and the theory of breakpoints in group interaction to operationalize feedback and feedforward for a complex multicriteria modeling system operating within a group decision support system context. We outline a design approach for providing decisional guidance in GDSS and then test the feasibility of the design in a preliminary laboratory experiment. Findings show how decisional guidance that provides system explanations at breakpoints in group interaction can improve MCDM GDSS usability. Our findings support Dhaliwal and Benbasats (1996) conjecture that system explanations can improve decisional outcomes due to improvement in user understanding of decision models. Further research on intelligent agents, particularly in interactive group settings, can build on the concepts of decisional guidance outlined in this paper.

Electronic Group Brainstorming The Role of Feedback on Productivity

The development of electronic brainstorming systems (EBS) forces the process of idea generation to be rethought. These systems can greatly change the interface between the individual and the group, affecting the behavior of both. This study examines how the feedback on group performance provided by the public screen can affect individual motivation and idea generation. Prior psychosocial research has shown that feedback can have positive and negative effects. In a laboratory experiment, two of these psychosocialfactors were studied: social matching and social loafing. The effectiveness of continuous display versus display at the end versus no display was compared for 230 subjects. Results show mixed evidence of social loafing and significant evidence of social matching, that is, participants use EBSfeedback to adjust their level of effort to that of the group. Thesefindings have major implications for the development of better EBS and raise important questions on the theory of EBS-supported groups.

Data collection in the digital age: innovative alternatives to student samples

Online crowdsourcing markets (OCM) are becoming more popular as a source for data collection. In this paper, we examine the consistency of survey results across student samples, consumer panels, and online crowdsourcing markets (specifically Amazons Mechanical Turk) both within the United States and outside. We conduct two studies examining the technology acceptance model (TAM) and the expectation-disconfirmation theory (EDT) to explore potential differences in demographics, psychometrics, structural model estimates, and measurement invariances. Our findings indicate that (1) U.S.-based OCM samples provide demographics much more similar to our student and consumer panel samples than the non-U.S.-based OCM samples; (2) both U.S. and non-U.S. OCM samples provide initial psychometric properties (reliability, convergent, and divergent validity) that are similar to those of both student and consumer panels; (3) non-U.S. OCM samples generally provide differences in scale means compared to those of our students, consumer panels, and U.S. OCM samples; and (4) one of the non-U.S. OCM samples refuted the highly replicated and validated TAM model in the relationship of perceived usefulness to behavioral intentions. Although our post hoc analyses isolated some cultural and demographic effects with regard to the non-U.S. samples in Study 1, they did not address the model differences found in Study 2. Specifically, the inclusion of non-U.S. OCM respondents led to statistically significant differences in parameter estimates, and hence to different statistical conclusions. Due to these unexplained differences that exist within the non-U.S. OCM samples, we caution that the inclusion of non-U.S. OCM participants may lead to different conclusions than studies with only U.S. OCM participants. We are unable to conclude whether this is due to of cultural differences, differences in the demographic profiles of non-U.S. OCM participants, or some unexplored factors within the models. Therefore, until further research is conducted to explore these differences in detail, we urge researchers utilizing OCMs with the intention to generalize to U.S. populations focus on U.S.-based participants and exercise caution in using non-U.S. participants. We further recommend that researchers should clearly describe their OCM usage and design (e.g., demographics, participant filters, etc.) procedures. Overall, we find that U.S. OCM samples produced models that lead to similar statistical conclusions as both U.S. students and U.S. consumer panels at a considerably reduced cost.

Virtual community informatics: what we know and what we need to know

The virtual community has just recently emerged with divergent opinions on the basic understanding of it. This study aims at collecting different definitions and classifications in the virtual community, and offers a working definition. It also addresses research conducted in the field by referring to Information Systems journals. The research categorizes the different stages in virtual community growth to show the transition of research in this area. A survey is also conducted on the extent of the adoption of informatics in virtual community web sites.

Drivers of Internet shopping

The two distinct forms of e-commerce—business-to-business (B2B) and business-toconsumer (B2C)—have emerged as an important way of doing business that will surely grow in years to come. According to some recent forecasts, total Web sales will reach 1.4 trillion dollars in 2004. Most of the growth, however, is expected to be in B2B, with projected B2C barely constituting 21% of Web sales in 2004 [3]. With the exception of software, hardware, travel services, and a few other niche areas, shopping on the Internet is far from universal, even among people who spend long hours online. While B2C has not yet attained widespread acceptance in the overall scheme of e-commerce, the potential is definitely there. Indeed, there is substantial room for the growth of B2C once the major obstacles are overcome. Although some of the hurdles to the growth of B2C e-commerce have been discussed in the literature, we still lack a good understanding of consumer behavior on the Internet and how new technologies challenge the traditional assumptions underlying conventional theories and models. Butler and Peppard [1], for example, explain the failure of IBM-sponsored Web shopping malls on a lack of understanding of the true nature of consumer behavior on the Internet. A critical understanding of this behavior in cyberspace, as in the physical world, cannot be achieved without a good appreciation of the factors affecting the purchase decision. If cybermarketers know how consumers make these decisions, they can adjust their marketing strategies to fit this new way of selling so that they can convert potential customers to real ones and retain them. Similarly, Web site designers, who are faced with the difficult question of how to design pages to make them not only popular but also effective in increasing sales, can benefit from such an understanding. In this research we applied well-established behavioral theories to explain Internet consumer behavior. We then conducted a longitudinal survey study to identify key factors influencing purchasing on the Web and to examine their relative importance. The results of this study enhance our understanding of consumer behavior on the Web and lead to valuable implications for marketers and managers on how to

Facilitating computer-supported meetings: A cumulative analysis in a multiple-criteria task environment

There have been many instances of the ineffective applications of new information technology. This article describes a program of enhancing the effectiveness of a new technology, Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS), through a series of studies which resulted in improvements in the technology itself as well as in how the technology is supported. Our approach emphasizes human facilitation and facilitative features embedded in the GDSS software.

Online Customer Stickiness: A Longitudinal Study

The growth of e-commerce has been mainly in B2B, while B2C is still facing major hurdles associated with consumer acquisition and retention. In the evaluation of B2C businesses, the focus is shifting from measures of visitor attraction such as pageviews and click-through ratios to measures of consumer retention such as stickiness. Most prior research focused on explaining/predicting the intention to adopt and the usage of online shopping rather than repeated behavior such as repurchase. In this study, we develop and empirically validate a model explaining online consumer stickiness as measured by repurchase. The results provide strong support for the importance of satisfaction in explaining repurchase and for the moderating effect of online shopping habit on the relationship between satisfaction and repurchase. The implications of these findings for theory and practice are discussed.