Yunjie Xu

Which is more important in Internet shopping, perceived price or trust?

Price and trust are considered to be two important factors that influence customer purchasing decisions in Internet shopping. This paper examines the relative influence they have on online purchasing decisions for both potential and repeat customers. The knowledge of their relative impacts and changes in their relative roles over customer transaction experience is useful in developing customized sales strategies to target different groups of customers. The results of this study revealed that perceived trust exerted a stronger effect than perceived price on purchase intentions for both potential and repeat customers of an online store. The results also revealed that perceived price exerted a stronger influence on purchase decisions of repeat customers as compared to that of potential customers. Perceived trust exerted a stronger influence on purchase decisions of potential customers as compared to that of repeat customers.

Effects of outcome, process and shopping enjoyment on online consumer behaviour

Abstract Customer value is one of the most powerful forces in today’s marketplace and emerging as the strategic imperative for the 1990s. In this study, we proposed a three-component customer value model for e-commerce. Drawing upon the literature in marketing and information systems, our research model decomposed customer value into process value, outcome value, and shopping enjoyment. The results from this study showed that outcome value and process value contributed significantly to customer satisfaction and loyalty. Also, evidences confirmed that customer satisfaction affect customer loyalty. Enjoyment, however, had no significant positive impact on customer satisfaction.

Building Caries Risk Assessment Models for Children

Despite the well-recognized importance of caries risk assessment, practical models remain to be established. This study was designed to develop biopsychosocial models for caries risk assessment in various settings. With a questionnaire, an oral examination, and biological (salivary, microbiological, and plaque pH) tests, a prospective study was conducted among 1782 children aged 3-6 years, with 1576 (88.4%) participants followed in 12 months. Multiple risk factors, indicators, and protective factors were identified. Various risk assessment models were constructed by the random selection of 50% of the cases and further validated in the remaining cases. For the prediction of a “one-year caries increment”, screening models without biological tests achieved a sensitivity/specificity of 82%/73%; with biological tests, full-blown models achieved the sensitivity/specificity of 90%/90%. For identification of a quarter of the children with high caries burden (baseline dmft > 2), a community-screening model requiring only a questionnaire reached a sensitivity/specificity of 82%/81%. These models are promising tools for cost-effective caries control and evidence-based treatment planning. Abbreviations: decayed, missing, filled teeth in primary dentition (dmft); receiver operation characteristics (ROC); relative risk (RR); confidence interval (CI); National Institutes of Health (NIH); World Health Organization (WHO); US Department of Health and Human Services (US/DHHS); American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry (AAPD).

Behavioral Pathways Explaining Oral Health Disparity in Children

Policymakers’ understanding of and ability to reduce health disparities are pivotal for health promotion worldwide. This study aimed to verify the behavioral pathways leading to oral health disparities. Oral examinations were conducted for 1782 randomly selected preschoolers (3-6 yrs), and 1576 (88.4%) participants were followed up after 12 months. Parents were surveyed on their knowledge (K), attitude (A), and practices (P) regarding their children’s oral health homecare (infant feeding, diet, and oral hygiene) and dental attendance. Structural equation modeling substantiated the links between specific KAs and corresponding practices, while generic KA did not affect practices. KAP pathways partly explained the ethnic and socio-economic disparities in oral health. Deprivation had a direct effect (not mediated by KA) on dental attendance, but not on oral health homecare. Ethnicity directly influenced oral health homecare practices, but not dental attendance. These behavioral pathways, furthering our understanding of health disparity, may have practical implications for health promotion and policy-making.

User-Oriented Relevance Judgment: A Conceptual Model

The concept of relevance has been heatedly debated in last decade. Not satisfied with the narrow and technical definition of system relevance, researchers turn to the subjective and situational aspect of this concept. How does a user perceive a document as relevant? The literature on relevance has identified numerous factors affecting such judgment. Taking a cognitive approach, this study focuses on the criteria users employ in making relevance judgment. Based on Grices theory of communication, this paper proposes a five-factor model of relevance: topicality, novelty, reliability, understandability, and scope. Data are collected from a semi-controlled survey study and analyzed following a psychometric procedure. The result supports topicality and novelty as the key relevance criteria. Theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed.

The effects of web site aesthetics and shopping task on consumer online purchasing behavior

This research-in-progress investigates the effects of website aesthetics and shopping task type on consumer attitude towards electronic shopping sites. The conceptualization of website aesthetics is based on the two-dimensional structure, namely, classical and expressive aesthetics, proposed by Lavie and Tractinsky (2004). The online shopping tasks are categorized as hedonic versus utilitarian shopping tasks. A pre-test was conducted for selection of utilitarian and hedonic products. Based on the results of the pre-test, a laboratory experiment was designed to capture the effects of website aesthetics on online consumer purchasing behavior across different shopping tasks.

Information Retrieval with a Hybrid Automatic Query Expansion and Data Fusion Procedure

We propose a hybrid information retrieval (IR) procedure that builds on two well-known IR approaches: data fusion and query expansion via relevance feedback. This IR procedure is designed to exploit the strengths of data fusion and relevance feedback and to avoid some weaknesses of these approaches. We show that our IR procedure is built on postulates that can be justified analytically and empirically. Additionally, we offer an empirical investigation of the procedure, showing that it is superior to relevance feedback on some dimensions and comparable on other dimensions. The empirical investigation also verifies the conditions under which the use of our IR procedure could be beneficial.

Cue consistency and page value perception: Implications for web-based catalog design

The web-based product catalog is a central element of online retailing. Although the extant research has studied the effect of design elements, such as product presentation, recommendation agents, and image and text on consumer choice, little is known about how Internet vendors could distribute products in a multi-page online product catalog for better performance. It is well-known that the first page of an online product catalog is particularly important to a vendor. Based on price signaling literature and cue consistency theory, this study investigates how price and product popularity cues could be carefully designed for the first page to achieve better sale performance. This study suggests there is a delicate balance point where price cues and popularity cues can achieve consistency and synergy and lead to better page value perceptions for the first page. The boosted page value perceptions, in turn, lead to better sales from the first page. This study extends the theory of cue consistency to the product group level.

Interaction Effects of Contextual Cues on Privacy Concerns: The Case of Android Applications

The prevalence of mobile applications poses a new challenge in privacy protection. To address privacy concerns, prior studies have identified the direct effects of contextual cues but few have revealed their interaction effects. In reality, contextual cues do not appear in isolation, existence of multiple contextual cues introduces an extra complexity in a users privacy decision-making. This study aims to address the research question of how contextual cues interactively shape privacy concerns. This study focuses on the Android application downloading context. Three contextual cues (i.e., App popularity, permission sensitivity, permission explanation) are identified. Our experimental study postulates both the direct effect and interaction effects of contextual cues on privacy concerns. This study contributes to literature with a better understanding of the combinatory effects of multiple contextual cues.

Ambidexterity in Mobile Collaboration: Balancing Task- and Socialization-Oriented Communication in Team Member Interaction

Due to the affordance to synchronous information exchange and anytime-and-anyplace communication, mobile instant messaging system (MIMS) becomes increasingly important in project collaboration. Compared to traditional team-collaboration information systems, MIMS better supports both task- and socialization-oriented communication in project member interaction, yet whether this feature improves project performance is still a question to be answered. Analyzing 120 responses from team members in different projects, this study got two interesting findings: (1) Project performance is directly affected by offline team relationship, including work interdependence and social strength. (2) Online communication in MIMS (total number of task- and socialization-oriented communications and the percentage of social communications) interacts with offline team relationship and task type, thus impact project performance under certain conditions. Overall, this study provides a better theoretical understanding of mobile collaboration, and also offers practical implications for how and when to use MIMS in teamwork.