Russell K. H. Ching

E-Government Strategies in Developed and Developing Countries: An Implementation Framework and Case Study

Given the fact that more and more governments invest heavily in e-government design and implementation, e-government has become an evolving and important research area in the IS field. Most, if not all, currently published e-government strategies are based on successful experiences from developed countries, which may not be directly applicable to developing countries. Based on a literature review, this study summarizes differences between developed/developing countries. It identifies key factors for a successful e-government implementation and proposes an implementation framework. As a demonstration, we follow the guidance of the proposed framework in conducting a case study to analyze the implementation strategies of e-government in developed and developing countries.

An Empirical Study of the Relationship of IT Intensity and Organizational Absorptive Capacity on CRM Performance

In recent years, e-business has emerged as a mainstream business practice for engaging in global markets. To gain a competitive advantage in these highly competitive markets, many business organizations have turned to customer relationship management (CRM), an integrated system that draws upon the strengths of IT, to allow them to gain greater insights into their customers’ needs. This study examines the relationship of information technology (IT) intensity and organizational absorptive capacity to CRM practices and performance. Data collected through a survey of Taiwanese financial service companies generally suggest that CRM practices mediate the effects of IT intensity and organizational absorptive capacity on CRM performance. Thus, it behooves organizations that seek to compete in global markets to invest in developing both their IT infrastructure and organizational absorptive capacity, and apply these resources toward building their marketing intelligence and innovating products and services that meet their customers’ needs and expectations.

An examination of the effects of virtual experiential marketing on online customer intentions and loyalty

This study examines the relationship between five virtual experiential marketing (VEM) elements (sense, interaction, pleasure, flow, community relationship) and customer browse and purchase intentions and loyalty and the moderating effects between the VEM elements and customer intentions. To test the proposed model, a survey was conducted of customers who frequently visited two online games stores to simulate online shopping and experiential marketing. The results suggest that a business engaged in VEM should focus its web atmospherics on leveraging three of the VEM elements and facilitating the price and convenience motives of consumers to create an emotional attachment to browsing.

Electronic Government Implementation: A Comparison between Developed and Developing Countries

Over the last decade, the Internet has become one of the most important means of communication in all social areas. The success of Web technology adoption in the private sector has put pressures on the public sector to adopt the Internet to present information and service resources. The concept of creating more efficient and convenient interaction between government and the interacting parties using Internet technology is referred to as electronic government (or digital government). Recent studies have shown an increase in the adoption of electronic government by various countries (Archer, 2005; I-Ways, 2005; Janssen et al. 2004). Nevertheless, the level of implementation diverges from country to country. This study identifies critical success factors of electronic government and proposes an implementation framework. This chapter presents an extensive case study to illustrate how the proposed framework can be used to analyze electronic government strategies in a developed country (United States) and a developing country (China). In conclusion, recommendations are made to developed and developing countries for their implementation of electronic government.

Measuring CRM effectiveness: Construct development, validation and application of a process-oriented model

The quality of customer relationship management (CRM) is usually evaluated by outcome indicators such as customer loyalty and business performance. To maintain or improve these indicators, CRM managers should regularly evaluate the progress of CRM practices. In this paper, we propose and develop a construct, called CRM effectiveness (CRME), comprising three dimensions: relationship marketing (RM), customer-focused information technology (CFIT) and customer-focused organisational climate (CFOC). The development of CRME followed the three-stage methodology of Churchill (1979). A survey was conducted at 523 financial services institutions and 407 manufacturing companies in Taiwan with 221 usable returns. The survey evaluated reliability, convergent validity, discriminant validity and nomological validity of the construct. The results support the proposed construct and its three dimensions. The three dimensions and their measures offer a parsimonious and practical approach for evaluating CRME and identifying its strengths and weaknesses. They reflect the process perspective of CRME and provide a better operationalisation of CRME for businesses and researchers to apply in practices.

Narrative online advertising: identification and its effects on attitude toward a product

– Drawing on extant literature on narrative persuasion, online advertising, and transportation theory, this research aims to study Internet‐based online narrative advertising and investigate the effects of four pertinent advertising design elements, interactivity, entertainment, vividness, and self‐referencing, on consumer products and the moderating effects of advertisement involvement on these relationships., – Data were collected using an online questionnaire that contained measures adapted from prior studies. Participants first selected a product that they would seriously consider purchasing and answered a set of questions prior to viewing a narrative online advertisement, which was followed by a different set of questions. Structural equation modeling was used to empirically test the authors’ proposed model., – Greater levels of interactivity, vividness, entertainment, and self‐referencing in narrative online advertisements led to more favorable attitudes toward a product. In particular, self‐referencing had a substantial effect on transportation in forming product attitudes. Advertisement Involvement moderates (i.e. enhances) the effect of self‐referencing on attitudes toward a product., – If properly designed, a narrative online advertisement can fully utilize Internet‐enabled features and can maximize their potential to produce a favorable consumer attitude toward a featured product., – This study advances narrative advertising research and provides empirical evidence to highlight the effects of the pertinent characteristics of Internet‐based advertising, interactivity and entertainment in the conversion process of transportation and consumer attitudes. Moreover, this study identifies and sheds light on important contingencies (i.e. advertisement involvement) of the focal relationships.

The effects of Information and Communication Technology on Customer Relationship Management and customer lock-in

Many businesses have turned to customer relationship management (CRM) to strategically position themselves in electronic marketplaces with information and communication technologies (ICT). With greater emphasis placed on the application of technology, does the infusion of ICT influence a business’ ability to retain its customers? This study examined the relationships among three CRM elements benefiting from ICT, CRM performance, partnership quality, and customer lock-in. The results suggest that the three elements have positive relationships with CRM performance and partnership quality. However, only positive relationships exist between CRM performance and customer lock-in. None exists between partnership quality and customer lock-in. The findings further suggest that CRM performance mediates the effects of the CRM elements on customer lock-in.

An extended study of the K-means algorithm for data clustering and its applications

The K-means algorithm has been a widely applied clustering technique, especially in the area of marketing research. In spite of its popularity and ability to deal with large volumes of data quickly and efficiently, K-means has its drawbacks, such as its inability to provide good solution quality and robustness. In this paper, an extended study of the K-means algorithm is carried out. We propose a new clustering algorithm that integrates the concepts of hierarchical approaches and the K-means algorithm to yield improved performance in terms of solution quality and robustness. This proposed algorithm and score function are introduced and thoroughly discussed. Comparison studies with the K-means algorithm and three popular K-means initialization methods using five well-known test data sets are also presented. Finally, a business application involving segmenting credit card users demonstrates the algorithms capability.

Virtual Experiential Marketing on Online Customer Intentions and Loyalty

Advances in information and Web technologies have open numerous opportunities for online retailing. The pervasiveness of the Internet coupled with the keenness in competition among online retailers has led to virtual experiential marketing (VEM). This study examines the relationship of five VEM elements on customer browse and purchase intentions and loyalty, and the moderating effects of shopping orientation and Internet experience on these relationships. A survey was conducted of customers who frequently visited two online game stores to play two popular games in Taiwan. The results suggest that of the five VEM elements, three have positive effects on browse intention, and two on purchase intentions. Both browse and purchase intentions have positive effects on customer loyalty. Economic orientation was found to moderate that relationships between the VEM elements and browse and purchase intentions. However, convenience orientation moderated only the relationships between the VEM elements and browse intention.

The Study of Mobile Customer Relationship Management and Loyalty

In this study, a research model along with 8 hypotheses is proposed to test the effects of CRM practices and mobile technology acceptance on customer loyalty. The mediating effects of brand image and customer satisfaction are examined and the results show that CRM practices have positive impacts to brand image and customer satisfaction. Brand image and customer satisfaction also mediate the impact of CRM practices to customer loyalty. However, the direct effects of mobile technology to brand image and customer satisfaction are only partially supported. A new defined variable, mobile coverage has the direct impact to brand image and customer satisfaction