Weiquan Wang

What leads to post-implementation success of ERP? An empirical study of the Chinese retail industry

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems have been implemented globally and their implementation has been extensively studied during the past decade. However, many organizations are still struggling to derive benefits from the implemented ERP systems. Therefore, ensuring post-implementation success has become the focus of the current ERP research. This study develops an integrative model to explain the post-implementation success of ERP, based on the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) theory. We posit that ERP implementation quality (the technological aspect) consisting of project management and system configuration, organizational readiness (the organizational aspect) consisting of leadership involvement and organizational fit, and external support (the environmental aspect) will positively affect the post-implementation success of ERP. An empirical test was conducted in the Chinese retail industry. The results show that both ERP implementation quality and organizational readiness significantly affect post-implementation success, whereas external support does not. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

Multimedia-based interactive advising technology for online consumer decision support

Multimedia technologies (such as Flash and QuickTime) have been widely used in online product presentation and promotion to portray products in a dynamic way. The continuous visual stimuli and associated sound effects provide vivid and interesting product presentations; hence, they engage online customers in examining products. Meanwhile, recent research has indicated that online shoppers want detailed and relevant product information and explanations [2]. A promising approach is to embed rich product information and explanations into multimedia-enhanced product demonstrations. This approach is called Multimedia-based Product Annotation (MPA), a product presentation in which customers can retrieve embedded product information in a multimedia context.

The Determinants and Impacts of Aesthetics in Users’ First Interaction with Websites

Abstract Though aesthetics is generally acknowledged as an important aspect of website design, extant information systems (IS) research on web user experience has rarely studied what affects website aesthetics and how aesthetics influences users’ perceptions of the website and the organization behind the website. In this paper, we synthesize prior literature from different academic domains and propose users’ perceived quality of five design elements (i.e., unity, complexity, intensity, novelty, and interactivity) as determinants of website aesthetics. We further theorize the effects of aesthetics on users’ attitudes toward the website and their perception of the corporate image. Two studies were conducted to test the research model. In Study 1, we adopted a card sorting method and the results provide substantial support to the determinants of website aesthetics. In Study 2, we conducted a survey using ten company portal websites that were unknown to survey respondents. Our analysis further confirms the effects of users’ perceived quality of the five design elements on the perception of website aesthetics. The findings of Study 2 also show that users’ perception of aesthetics has significant impacts on perceived utility and their attitudes toward the website, which further affects the corporate image exhibited via the website. In addition, we find that in users’ first interaction with a website, perceived aesthetics has a larger impact on their attitudes toward the website than perceived utility.

Comparing Customer Trust in Virtual Salespersons With Customer Trust in Human Salespersons

Virtual salespersons (computer agents) act in a similar role in online stores as human salespersons act in physical stores. Customer trust in a salesperson is key in generating transactions and managing customer relationships. In this exploratory study, 44 participants used the services of both virtual and human salespersons in the same commercial store. Written protocols were collected by asking the participants open-ended questions regarding their comparative trust. This paper finds that similar to trust in a human salesperson, trust in a virtual salesperson contains trust in competence, benevolence, and integrity; however, the formation processes of trust in virtual salespersons, trust in human salespersons, distrust in virtual salespersons, and distrust in human salespersons are different. This paper theoretically outlines to what extent research on trust in computer agents can draw from literature on interpersonal trust. It practically contributes to our understanding of how to better design trustworthy virtual salespersons.

Research Note—A Contingency Approach to Investigating the Effects of User-System Interaction Modes of Online Decision Aids

Interactive online decision aids often employ user-decision aid dialogues as forms of user-system interaction to help construct and elicit users’ attribute preferences about a product type. This study extends prior research on online decision aids by investigating the effects of a decision aid’s user-system interaction mode (USIM), which can be either user-guided or system-controlled, on users’ effort-related (number of iterations of using the aid and perceived cognitive effort expended in using it) and quality-related (perceived quality of the aid and acceptance of the product advice it provides) assessments. A contingency approach with two moderating factors is employed. One factor is the decision strategy (additive-compensatory or elimination) employed by the aid, and the other is the users’ product knowledge (high or low). A laboratory experiment was conducted to compare online decision aids with different USIMs. Although the results largely confirm that users assess the user-guided USIM more positively than the system-controlled USIM, the effects of USIM are stronger in two settings: for the elimination-based aid than for the additivecompensatory-based aid and for users with low product knowledge than for those with high product knowledge, especially in terms of effort assessments. This research advances the theoretical understanding of the effects of interaction between two critical components of online decision aids (USIMs and decision strategies) and the moderating role of user characteristics (product knowledge) in affecting users’ evaluations. It also provides practitioners with design advice for developing these aids.

Empirical Assessment of Alternative Designs for Enhancing Different Types of Trusting Beliefs in Online Recommendation Agents

Abstract competence, integrity, and benevolence are the three key trusting beliefs that are widely acknowledged in the trust literature. Drawing on users’ different dispositional attribution of these trusting beliefs, we investigate the different influence of two sets of experiential reasons on the competence belief versus the benevolence and integrity beliefs in online recommendation agents (RAs). The two sets of experiential reasons encompass interactive reason, including three performance factors (namely, perceived cognitive effort, advice quality, and perceived strategy restrictiveness), and knowledge-based reason (i.e., perceived transparency of an RA). Data were collected through a laboratory experiment to test our hypotheses. Results demonstrate that the three performance factors affect only the competence belief, whereas perceived RA transparency influences all three trusting beliefs. In addition, the effects of perceived transparency on competence are partially mediated by perceived cognitive effort and advice quality. The research contributes to the trust literature by revealing the different antecedents of the three trusting beliefs and provides guidelines for designers to choose specific design elements to improve a particular trusting belief of the user toward an RA.

Effects of Recommendation Neutrality and Sponsorship Disclosure on Trust vs. Distrust in Online Recommendation Agents: Moderating Role of Explanations for Organic Recommendations

We extend the extant research on neutral recommendation agents (RAs) to those that lack recommendation neutrality and are biased toward sponsors. We first investigate the effects of recommendation neutrality on users’ trust and distrust in RAs by comparing a biased RA with sponsorship disclosure with a neutral RA. We then apply a contingency approach to examine the effects of sponsorship disclosure on users’ trust and distrust in biased RAs, with explanations for organic recommendations as a contingent factor. A laboratory experiment was conducted in the United States. We determine that users’ trust in the biased RA with sponsorship disclosure is lower and that their distrust is higher than that in the neutral RA. Results also show that user trust in a biased RA increases only when explanations for organic recommendations and sponsorship disclosure are both provided. Users’ perceived psychological contract violations of an RA have been verified as a key mediator of the examined effects. However, explanati...

Perceived information transparency in B2C e-commerce: An empirical investigation

Abstract Consumers abandon their online purchases at an e-commerce website partly due to the lack of information transparency of the website. We identify the antecedents of consumers’ perceived information transparency of an e-commerce website and its effects on consumers’ online purchase intention. We collected data through a scenario-based survey conducted in a laboratory setting. We found that (1) product transparency, vendor transparency, and transaction transparency significantly influence perceived information transparency; (2) perceived information transparency significantly increases consumers’ online purchase intention; and (3) perceived risk partially mediates the effects of perceived information transparency on purchase intention.

Are Social Dominance-Based Faultlines Harmful in Crowdsourcing Tournaments?

Firms organize tournaments in crowdsourcing platforms to outsource complex tasks to external contributors. Members of a crowdsourcing platform may form temporarily self-organized virtual teams to p...