Shirin Alavi

An Empirical Segmentation of Users of Mobile Banking Apps

ABSTRACT Digital technologies have squeezed the entire world into a small frame. Trade and transactions never stop, and they go where the customer is. Marketers must reinvent their strategies and toolkits to win in this hyper-connected world. Companies are creating new and improved ways for engaging and involving their consumers, and one significant tool now used by companies for these purposes is the app. Mobile phones have registered the highest growth among all technological evolutions, and mobile apps are proliferating. Apps are being used across a diverse range of industry verticals, including banking, e-commerce, travel, and tourism. This article studies a set of twenty different banking apps and segments consumers based on their adoption and usage of the apps. This article emphasizes the role of mobile technologies to change established channels and banking services, and also analyzes how the Indian banking sector has benefited from the adoption of mobile apps.

Collaborative Customer Relationship Management-Co-Creation and Collaboration through Online Communities

There are four trends reshaping the world of business-technological advances and the speed with which new technologies are created and copied, the loss of geographic advantage resulting from globalization, the shake-up of traditionally stable industries as a result of deregulation and the rising power of the consumer and their ability to get what they want, when they want it, from whomever they want. With this in mind, the collaboration experience becomes one of the greatest competitive aspects for a businesss survival. This has made companies realize the significance of the two levers of Customer Value Management -Co-creation and Collaboration. Further, with the internet having built an open network where information can flow freely, innovation, entrepreneurship and democracy are fast thriving over the world. Self directed co-creation is a wide range of consumer activities that amount to consumer-side production of value. Thus individuals, online communities have become a considerable prolific force in e-commerce. This research paper details the usage of online communities as tool for co-creation and collaboration The research study further classifies the online communities of organizations on the basis of their scores on co-creation and collaboration and further goes on to develop a Community Co-creation and Collaboration Matrix CCCM. The online communities which depict a high score on co-creation and collaboration are the most desirable from the organizations perspective. They facilitate a dynamic environment in terms of reciprocity and optimal level of customization for a win-win organization-community member relationship. Co-creation and collaboration is the strategic outcome of collaborative customer relationship management. Thus online communities can be used to achieve the two important functions of Customer Relationship Management i.e. co-creation and collaboration.

Meta-Analysis of Virtual Teams

Growth in technology has brought the world economy on a single platform which has deeply impacted the working pattern of organizations. It is the increase in usage of internet technology which facilitated the process of bringing individuals across the globe together and forming teams to help them achieve defined tasks. This change in corporate scenarios and shrinking of location barriers has led to the formation of special kinds of teams: virtual teams. The challenge before organizations is to effectively manage these teams because of their negligible physical contact. This research paper attempts to collect and analyze the literature available on the role played by trust in building an effective virtual team. A review of literature presented in the paper deals with the origin and working of virtual teams. This manuscript explores how trust has emerged as an important factor for the appropriate functioning of a virtual team and helps managers and employees in understanding the role of trust in the success of their team. The findings of the study are directed towards benefitting organizations who are involved in planning, developing, and administering programs for the smooth functioning of employees using a virtual paradigm to enhance employee productivity.

Using Facebook as a Digital Tool for Developing Trust amongst Consumers using Netnography and Social Media Analytics: A Study of Jet Airways

ABSTRACT Social media usage is proliferating and millions of consumers are logging onto Facebook, the worlds biggest digital platform. The vastness of the individual database and the huge amount of information generated by the individuals in the online domain make Facebook an interesting tool for marketers. This article evaluates how an organization like Jet Airways uses Facebook as a digital tool for developing trust amongst consumers, using the methodologies of netnography and social media analytics. The article studies the various structural features of Facebook and develops a theoretical framework to identify the benefits of Facebook. The research study further attempts to classify the content generated by Jet Airways on this platform into diverse content typologies, identifies the most significant content typology, and examines how the volume of likes, comments, and shares pertaining to the most significant content typology impacts the development of trust amongst Jet Airways customers. Additionally, the framework identifies the three benefits of Facebook to be building trust and reciprocity, providing user-specific information, and allowing organizations to monitor their online presence. Subsequently, the research work classifies the content generated by Jet Airways into three categories: organizational content, relational content, and promotional content. The study is further able to empirically demonstrate that a greater number of likes, comments, and shares on a relational post has a significant impact on developing trust among customers of Jet Airways.

The Future Scope of Netnography and Social Network Analysis in the Field of Marketing

ABSTRACT The marketing landscape has evolved to a great extent with the advent of Internet strategy integration, refined Internet marketing metrics, increase in wireless networking, rising consumer ownership of computers, the era of big data and e-commerce, influencer marketing, and the evolution of the Internet. To tap this virtual environment, newer methods of Internet research are required. This article studies the usage of two Internet research methodologies—Netnography and Social Network Analysis—and explores their potential toward the domain of marketing. An exhaustive literature review was conducted and after analyzing the previously published literature in this domain, it is seen that a clear link between these methodologies and the field of marketing has not been established. With a detailed analysis of previously published research work, using these two methodologies the authors are able to derive correlations with marketing concepts and are able to establish the future potential of the two methodologies of Netnography and Social Network Analysis as marketing research methodologies.

Generating trust using Facebook-A study of 5 online apparel brands

Abstract In this world of growing social media usage, organizations need to adopt well directed social media strategies to create relationships with consumers. Social media marketing enhances consumer engagement and creates brand awareness. This paper aims at studying the impact of the Facebook content posted by 5 online apparel brands, on building trust among consumers. Consumer needs for self gratification and their level of engagement and involvement, with an organization make them depict specific behaviors online. A multiple linear regression analysis is conducted to study the impact of total number of posts, hosted by an organization as well as the number of reactions and comments on building consumer trust. Results of the study indicated a positive relationship between trust and number of posts, comments and reactions.

Cyber psychology and cyber behaviour of adolescents-the need of the contemporary era.

Abstract Cyber psychology is also addressed as Internet psychology or web psychology. In the modern era it is gaining momentum as a field, as more and more people are embracing the virtual world. Changing lifestyles and a constant digital presence is impacting the minds of millions of youngsters as the average amount of time spent on the internet increases rapidly. Youngsters are spending a lot of time online-chatting with their friends through social networks, playing online games with their peers, and shopping products online. As the individual need for recognition and self actualisation grows, youngsters are trying to form and establish identities online. This hunger for appreciation, coupled with long hours spent online are paving way for several problems regarding the health and well being of the adolescents. This manuscript proposes a research framework which will enable classification of adolescents as Expressive, Impatient, Connected, Impersonal, and Knowledgeable, based on their social media presence.

Learning management through mobile apps - a new buzzword

The innovation in mobile apps has forced educators to look for their suitability in providing learning. The various apps available for different platforms have something unique to offer in terms of user experience and functions. This paper examines the specific parameters which these apps have to offer the academia and organisations in terms of their use in educational setting. Web 2.0 technologies, particularly various mobile apps are changing the environment and possibilities for education. With the rapid development of these mobile apps users can now actively participate and construct their own learning experiences. Technologies like blogs, wikis, media sharing services and collaborative editing tools, promote collaboration and the sharing of knowledge by students and teachers. This research paper aims to explore the parameters associated with these mobile apps and analyse the performance of these five mobile apps to identify lessons for designing the most effective mobile apps by calculating their mobile application score (MAS).

E-Marketing and the Hotel Industry: Calculating Web Presence Index (Wpi) for the Hospitality Sector

In todays world, as online consumers become more price sensitive, less brand loyal and more sophisticated, e-Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and e-marketing becomes a strategic necessity for attracting and increasing consumers patronage. This manuscript traces the evolution of e-marketing and demonstrates the relationship between the Web Presence Index (WPI) of the hospitality sector across a set of hotels. Here WPI of a particular hotel brand is a function of the total web presence across the Website, FaceBook Page, YouTube, Twitter and MakeMyTrip.com. Subsequently, a positive relationship is visible between the Web Presence Index (WPI) for each hotel and further, its Alexa traffic volume indicates the total online user traffic. This manuscript demonstrates the web presence of hotels through WPI, Alexa, traffic volume, and their weighted calculated score on the basis of the above parameters. The Web Presence Index is indicative of the usability, credibility and persuasiveness of a consumer in the context of hotel websites. It further depicts how hotels can build better relations with customers by recognizing their needs, preferences, complaints and so on.

Business online community credibility model of an online consumption community using linear programming for effective customer relationship management

In the present era there has been significant technological advancements which led to the move towards mobile and multiple screens, the era of online paradigm and the trend of the cloud whereby everybody expects access to data anytime, anywhere enabled via the cloud, this has changed the way business is done today. Organisations are waking up to the need of extending business processes beyond corporate firewalls which implies inclusion of people outside the company as readily as they do people inside the firm thus giving rise to the formation of various online consumption communities. In this research paper, a business online community credibility (BOCC) model was developed by incorporating the perspective of the community manager to measure the credibility of an online consumption community by incorporating the concepts of community dynamics, co-creation, collaboration enabler, CRM goals, return on investment and customer life time value.