Ting-Peng Liang

Personalized Content Recommendation and User Satisfaction: Theoretical Synthesis and Empirical Findings

Personalized services are increasingly popular in the Internet world. This study identifies theories related to the use of personalized content services and their effect on user satisfaction. Three major theories have been identified—information overload, uses and gratifications, and user involvement. The information overload theory implies that user satisfaction increases when the recommended content fits user interests (i.e., the recommendation accuracy increases). The uses and gratifications theory indicates that motivations for information access affect user satisfaction. The user involvement theory implies that users prefer content recommended by a process in which they have explicit involvement. In this research, a research model was proposed to integrate these theories and two experiments were conducted to examine the theoretical relationships. Our findings indicate that information overload and uses and gratifications are two major theories for explaining user satisfaction with personalized services. Personalized services can reduce information overload and, hence, increase user satisfaction, but their effects may be moderated by the motivation for information access. The effect is stronger for users whose motivation is in searching for a specific target. This implies that content recommendation would be more useful for knowledge management systems, where users are often looking for specific knowledge, rather than for general purpose Web sites, whose customers often come for scanning. Explicit user involvement in the personalization process may affect a users perception of customization, but has no significant effect on overall satisfaction.

A growth theory perspective on B2C e-commerce growth in Europe: An exploratory study

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) continue to have a profound effect on the economies and societies where they are used. In this article, we propose three related theories to describe the underlying mechanism for growth in e-commerce revenues at the national level. Endogenous growth theory posits that the primary drivers of e-commerce growth are internal to a country. Exogenous growth theory suggests that the primary drivers of e-commerce growth are external to an economic system, and reflect the forces of the regional economy. A blend of these, a mixed endogenous-exogenous growth theory, incorporates drivers from both the economy and the region of a country. We test a number of hypotheses about e-commerce growth in the context of these theories. The key variables include Internet penetration, telecommunication investment intensity, venture capital and credit card availability, and education level. The data are drawn from 17 European countries over a five-year period from 2000 to 2004, and are analyzed using panel data regression with robust error terms, a variant of weighted least squares. The results show the differential efficacy of internal and external drivers as endogenous and exogenous precursors of e-commerce growth across the countries for a number of different modeling specifications. We conclude with a discussion of alternative approaches to model e-commerce growth in a country. The results also suggest the appropriateness of exploring models of regional contagion for e-commerce growth.

Special Section: Customer-Centric Information Systems

Ting-Peng Liang is National Chair Professor in Information Systems and Director of the Electronic Commerce Research Center of National Sun Yat-sen University in Taiwan. He received his Ph.D. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to joining his current university in 1 993, he taught at the University of Illinois and Purdue University. At National Sun Yat-sen University, he has served as the Dean of the College of Management (1994-97) and University Provost (1999-2002). His research has been published in Journal of Management Information Systems, MIS Quarterly, Management Science, Operations Research, Decision Support Systems, Information and Management, and many other academic journals. Professor Liangs primary research interests include electronic commerce, knowledge management, intelligent systems, and strategic applications of information systems. He has served on the editorial boards of several journals, including Decision Support Systems, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, Industrial Management and Data Systems, and Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, among others. He is a fellow of the AIS and a member of ACM, INFORMS, and IEEE Computer Society.

Knowledge evolution strategies and organizational performance: A strategic fit analysis

The rapid growth of electronic commerce on the Internet provides a platform for organizational knowledge to be changed faster than ever. The process by which knowledge assets of an organization change over time to cope with the pressure of environmental variation is called knowledge evolution. In this paper, we adopt the strategic fit theory to examine whether different knowledge evolution strategies would affect organizational performance in different circumstances. We adopt the concept from natural evolution to define two knowledge evolution strategies: knowledge mutation that relies on internal knowledge sources and knowledge crossover that takes advantage of external sources such as online communities and professional consultants. A survey was conducted to explore the effects of different strategies on organizational performance, as measured by the balanced scorecard (BSC). The results show that knowledge mutation and crossover have impacts on different aspects of organizational performance. In addition, many industrial factors, such as environment variation, knowledge density, and organizational factors, including IT capability and sharing culture, are found to have moderating effects. The findings of this research will help organizations choose the right strategy for knowledge enhancement and light up new directions for further research.

Internet-based selling technology and e-commerce growth: a hybrid growth theory approach with cross-model inference

Innovations associated with information and communication technology (ICT) have opened up new opportunities for the global economy and ushered in the age of e-commerce. Our objective in this research is to explore the role of Internet-based selling technology, which acts as technology infrastructure for B2C e-commerce growth at the country level. This study proposes the use of a new hybrid growth theory approach as the theoretical basis for examining exogenous and endogenous factors that influence e-commerce growth over time. We estimate three different models to evaluate their explanatory capabilities. We investigate a panel-corrected feasible generalized least squares regression that incorporates the direct effects of country-level variables. We also specify an endogeneity-adjusted two-stage least squares model and estimate it with an embedded technology adoption function in a simultaneous equation model. This permits the analysis of the relevance of IT infrastructure, as well as reverse causality between e-commerce growth and Internet-based selling technology. We test these models using archival data for four different regions, based on either 24 or 42 countries around the world, depending on the data requirements of the models. Our empirical tests evaluate quasi-production environmental inputs, in which technology determines the environment of production of e-commerce services. Our main finding is that both endogenous variables (e.g., Internet user penetration, capital invested in telecommunication) and exogenous variables (international openness) drive the GDP-normalized level of B2C e-commerce revenues over time. A second main finding is that it is useful to include an embedded technology adoption function in a modeling specification for growth, since growth is founded on the availability of relevant IT infrastructure that is made possible by the availability of venture capital. In addition, B2C e-commerce revenue growth and venture capital also contribute to the adoption of Internet-based selling technology. We discuss our overall approach for the interpretation of the strength of our main findings, as well as the policy implications, and why our hybrid growth theory approach is useful.

A Growth-Theoretic Empirical Analysis of Simultaneity in Cross-National E-Commerce Development

The emergence of information and communication technologies infrastructure has transformed the global economy. The development of information technology infrastructure is limited to some developed countries though. This research explores the role of information technology infrastructure in B2C e-commerce growth at the country-level from the perspective of growth theory in economics. We propose a hybrid exogenous and endogenous growth model to explain e-commerce growth. We estimate a panel data model that incorporates the direct effects of e-commerce infrastructure and other key explanatory variables. We further specify a simultaneous effects model that permits the analysis of reverse causality in the association between e-commerce growth and Internet-based selling technology adoption. The data include 24 countries in four different regions around the world. We found that endogenous factors (online payment availability, and Internet-based selling technology adoption) and exogenous factors (international openness) both contribute to B2C e-commerce growth in a country. We also found that there is a two-way interaction between Internet-based selling technology adoption and e-commerce growth. The empirical findings support the effectiveness of our theoretical approach.

Posts that attract millions of fans: The effect of brand-post congruence

Abstract Facebook Pages enable brands to connect with consumers and have become the major venues for marketers to attract fans’ attention and engagement to the brands. While an increasing number of brands have established Facebook Pages to produce a tremendous amount of posts for attracting potential consumers, a key to have effects is to deliver proper advertising content that can create positive consumer attitude. This study examines the effect of brand-post congruence based on the relevance of the post to the brand to explore the effects of congruence and brand types on consumers’ attention to the post as measured by the intention to interact and whether the interaction intention may affect consumers’ attitude toward the brand. The possible moderating effect of brand involvement is also assessed. The results show that low congruence posts on experience brands’ pages and high congruence posts of credence brands’ pages generated less interaction intentions while low brand-post congruence posts in search brands’ pages exerted higher interaction intention. Low brand involvement significantly increased interaction intention when the brand-post congruence was low. Theoretical and managerial implications on Facebook marketing strategies are discussed.