Tung X. Bui

Harnessing the Influence of Social Proof in Online Shopping: The Effect of Electronic Word of Mouth on Sales of Digital Microproducts

Social commerce has taken the e-tailing world by storm. Business-to-consumer sites and, more important, intermediaries that facilitate shopping experience, continue to offer more and more innovative technologies to support social interaction among like-minded community members or friends who share the same shopping interests. Among these technologies, reviews, ratings, and recommendation systems have become some of the most popular social shopping platforms due to their ease of use and simplicity in sharing buying experience and aggregating evaluations. This paper studies the effect of electronic word of mouth (eWOM) communication among a closed community of book readers. We studied the entire market of Amazon Shorts e-books, which are digital microproducts sold at a low and uniform price. With the minimal role of price in the buying decision, social discussion via eWOM becomes a collective signal of reputation, and ultimately a significant demand driver. Our empirical study suggests that eWOM can be used to convey the reputation of the product (e.g., the book), the reputation of the brand (i.e., the author), and the reputation of complementary goods (e.g., books in the same category). Until newer social shopping technologies gain acceptance, eWOM technologies should be considered by both e-tailers and shoppers as the first and perhaps primary source of social buying experience.

A framework for measuring national e-readiness

Technology and societal changes are moving the global market rapidly towards a new economic order rooted in e-commerce. Hence, assessing and monitoring the e-readiness of a nation has become an increasing challenge. This paper proposes a framework to evaluate the e-readiness of a nation based on eight factors: digital infrastructure, macro economy, ability to invest, knowledgeable citizens, competitiveness, access to skilled workforce, culture, and cost of living and pricing. We identify 52 surrogate measures that can be used to quantify these factors and describe an algorithm to calculate an overall e-readiness index for a country. Using data published by different world organisations on these measures for ten East Asian, USA and G7 countries, we illustrate how the proposed framework can be used in providing e-readiness assessments and in making national strategic decisions on infrastructure that is conducive to the new economy.

A Framework for Designing a Global Information Network for Multinational Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Relief

Large-scale Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Relief (HA/DR) operations, particularly in developing countries, require the intervention and aid of various agencies from all over the world in a concerted and timely manner. As a result, HA/DR operations involve dynamic information exchange, planning, coordination and above all negotiation. Although a number of studies have reported the benefits of using information and communication technologies to support negotiation activities, it remains unclear how such technologies could be adapted to large-scale HA/DR operations. This paper examines negotiational issues involved in a multinational HA/DR environment and presents a framework that would help in developing a Global Information Network (GIN). The proposed framework can be used to assess and characterize individual disaster situations so that the GIN functional and design requirements can be accurately identified early. Future implications to GIN architecture are also discussed.

Can Brand Reputation Improve the Odds of Being Reviewed On-Line?

Recent research has reinforced the importance of product reviews in e-commerce. Since posting and maintaining on-line reviews is quite inexpensive, most e-business sites keep them for the entire duration of a product offering. Few products enjoy a steady stream of new reviews. A longitudinal study measured the impact of brand and pooled reputation on the odds of additional reviews being posted. The model was tested by an analysis of 395 e-books sold by Amazon.com over a period of six months. The analysis suggests that goods that start with a highly rated brand are more likely to have additional reviews posted than goods with an initial poorly rated brand. Early pooled reputation of complementary goods also influences the posting of additional reviews. A key practical recommendation is that firms can improve their on-line sales performance by managing their brand portfolio in ways that improve the odds of generating more reviews of their products.

A Multi-Attribute Negotiation Support System with Market Signaling for Electronic Markets

Despite the rapid growth of technology and Internet-based markets, many of the current systems limit themselves to price as the single dimension variable and offer, if at all, only minimal negotiation support to the consumer. In the real world, commercial transactions take into account many other parameters both quantitative and qualitative such as product quality, speed, reputation, after sales service, etc. This paper discusses how these multiple attributes can be captured to augment standard negotiation processes in order to support electronic market transactions. Using a combination of utility theory and multicriteria decision-making, we propose heuristic algorithms to discover potential trades. In addition, the approach is included within a larger framework that incorporates market-signaling mechanisms. This not only allows for the systematic evolution of negotiation positions among buyers and sellers but can ultimately lead towards improving both market transparency and efficiency. To illustrate the multiple criteria model coupled with the dynamic market signaling framework, we report in this paper the implementation of a Web-based clearinghouse that serves the real estate market.

Web Services for Negotiation and Bargaining in Electronic Markets: Design Requirements and Implementation Framework

Information systems researchers continue to develop Web services hoping that, in a near future, these services will be offered in the e-marketplace. Perhaps the most foreseeable mechanism to enable the web services market is the use of WSDL, SOAP, XML, UDDI and the like that allow posting of existing services. Posting services does not, however, necessarily lead to market transactions. In this paper, we propose a set of web services that provide negotiation and bargaining support to facilitate the matching of supply and demand of web services. As a market broker, these web services would help (a) discover the supply/demand of web services; (b) find the most appropriate available service for a given request; (c) request services be modified if needed to satisfy user’s needs; (d) arbitrate the pricing mechanism with the recourse to bargaining whenever necessary; and (e) generate a contract.

Communications Requirements for Group Decision Support Systems

Abstract:Despite the increasing interest in developing group decision support systems (gdss), it remains unclear how communications between participants of a group problem solving process can be designed, implemented, and utilized in a computer-based distributed GDSS. This paper presents a framework for developing a Communications component for the GDSS. It supports conceptualization of a communication system as being composed of four main modules: the Group Norm Monitor, the Group Norm Filter, the Invocation Mechanism, and the individual decision support system (idss)-to-gdss Document Formatter. In reference to the International Standard Organization (ISo) Open System Architecture, the three first modules are integrated in the Application layer, and the last module in the Presentation layer.

Simulating mixed agile and plan-based requirements prioritization strategies: proof-of-concept and practical implications

In this paper, we address the efficacy and pragmatics of mixing two primary strategies for requirements prioritization in order to incorporate the benefits of both plan-based (PB) and agile development methods while avoiding their drawbacks. As it is intractable to directly study the performance of strategies on real projects, we conducted a comprehensive empirically based simulation under a variety of conditions of requirements dynamism, project size, and duration. Simulation results suggest that a mixed strategy for requirements prioritization seems to work best in all but cost for typical levels of dynamism on average. Our findings also indicate that, as theorized, PB and agile strategies perform well within opposite extremes of dynamism. However, they do not outperform the mixed strategies even within their home grounds – that is large and complex systems with stable requirements for PB, and small and dynamic projects for agile methods. Given the unknown, unknowable, or variable nature of dynamism and the dramatic differences in effectiveness for agile and PB strategies under extreme development scenarios, a mixed strategy appears to yield the best results overall. We introduce two mixed strategies – simply adding cost–benefit (CB) to the agile approach, and a more sophisticated ‘hybrid’ (HY) approach that modulates development iteration size to maximize the expected CB for each iteration. We propose a step-by-step method to implement this HY strategy. We provide a structured analysis of the benefits and assumptions of agile and PB requirements prioritization methods (e.g., Pareto optimization), and outline a framework for analyzing and assessing the effectiveness of strategies including several new metrics. This research can furthermore serve as a framework for future validation of the proposed mixed strategies using actual software projects.

Negotiation support systems

Negotiation support systems (NSS) are designed to assist negotiators in reaching mutually satisfactory decisions by providing a means of communication and through analysis of available information. The purpose of this minitrack is to provide a forum for the interchange of ideas, research results, development activities, and applications among academicians and practitioners in the NSS field. Since 1991, this minitrack has gathered a respectable collection of papers in this young yet promising area of research. Collectively, the selected papers in this minitrack continue to offer innovative and thought-provoking research in computer-supported mediation.

A multi-agent-based negotiation support system for distributed transmission cost allocation

We have developed a multi-agent system (MAS), based on the network flow model and KQML, called MASCAN, to support negotiations in the cost allocation of network transmission. This is very important to industries that have different entities connected with lines or pipes, such as the Internet and telecommunications. Such an approach is especially useful to the utility industries, such as electricity and gas, and the transportation industry. In the system, each agent represents a node in a network, for example supplier or consumer. Agents do not receive any centralized controls or information from centralized sources to guarantee autonomy–a key requirement for the agent. In this all decisions are made locally based on the rules or knowledge that each agent has or captured to communicate or coordinate with other agents for the cheapest path under fair-play requirements. We also assume that each agent is rational, that is, one of the goals or objectives of agent decisions or movements is to minimize costs or increase profits. The solution to cost allocation is to search for the equilibrium point of a non-cooperative game subject to the given constraints, for example network capacity. We applied MASCAN to model and support the negotiation of cost allocation in power transmission, and the results and how this approach supported the process of negotiation are perceived to be closer to the real-world negotiation and the outcomes were accepted more easily by the participants. Copyright