Search results

The purpose of this paper is to define different types of aggregators and discuss their importance for libraries in the digital era.

A review of literature on aggregators was carried out. The paper focuses mainly on the various aggregators and outlines their advantages and disadvantages for libraries.

Libraries have been working with publishers and aggregators for many years; however, the issues related to aggregators are not well documented. Aggregators have been helping libraries to facilitate their services to users but they have some disadvantages for libraries such as the lack of library influence in selecting individual titles; the lack of control over the contents of aggregator packages; and the confusion of library users when accessing different packages.

The paper provides a useful overview to researchers in any field, enabling them to achieve quickly a clear picture of aggregators in the electronic environment.

Despite the abundance of small-scale farms in the USA and their importance for both rural economic development and food availability, the extensive research on small business management and entrepreneurship has mostly neglected the agricultural context, leaving many of these farms' business challenges unexplored. The authors focus on informing a specific decision faced by small farm managers: selling directly to consumers (i.e. farmer's markets) versus selling through aggregators. By collecting historical data and a series of interviews with industry experts, the authors employ simulation methodology to offer a framework that advises how small-scale farmers can allocate their product across these two channels to increase revenue in a given season. The results, which are relevant for operations management, small business management and entrepreneurship literature, can help small-scale farmers improve their performance and compete against their larger counterparts.

The authors rely on historical and interview data from key industry players (an aggregator and a small farm manager) to design a simulation analysis that determines which factors influence season-long farm revenue performance under varying strategies of channel allocation and commodity production.

The model suggests that farm managers should plan to evenly split their production between the two distribution channels, but if an even split is not possible, they should plan to keep a larger percentage in the nonaggregator (farmers' market/direct) channel. Further, the authors find that farmers can benefit significantly from a strong aggregator channel customer base, which suggests that farmers should promote and advertise the aggregator channel even if they only use it for a limited amount of their product.

The authors integrate small business management and operations management literature to study a widely understudied context and present practical implications for the performance of small-scale farms.

This study aims to address the following research questions: Do the two types of service firms (individual or aggregator) have similar competitiveness on online search ads? How should the two types of service firms select optimal branded keywords to improve search performance? In addition, how do consumers’ search queries influence the service search performance of the two types of service firms?

In this study, the authors conduct an empirical analysis by building a two-stage choice modeling on the process of search engine ranking and consumer click-through decisions. The authors estimate the parameter coefficients and test the hypotheses using maximum likelihood estimation in the logistic regression model.

The empirical findings suggest that consumer response rates are highly dependent upon three aspects (service types, branded keyword strategy and consumer search query). First, the authors found that service aggregators receive greater consumer responses than individual service providers. Second, depending upon the various branded keyword strategies (e.g. generic vs branded, “within-type” vs “cross-type”) implemented by service aggregators or individual firms, the expected consumer responses could be quite different. Finally, customer’s search query, being either generic or branded, also has direct effect and interactive effect with service type on how consumers would response to the sponsored ads in the service search process.

The limitation of the research is twofold. First, conversion rate is not considered in the model estimation due to the nature of the data set. Second, the discussion about the keywords selection strategies is focusing on the hospitality industry. Future research shall further validate the generalizability into other industries.

First, given this competitive advantage, service aggregators should take an aggressive approach to adopting paid search strategy in acquiring new users and enhance its brand salience in the service ecosystem. Second, when considering other competitor’s brand names to include, if a firm is a service provider (e.g. hotel), a strategy that can help it receive higher consumer response would be to use “within-type” rather than “cross-type” branded keyword strategy. If a firm is a service aggregator, a better branded keyword strategy would be to use “across-type” instead of “within-type” approach. In addition, given that consumer’s brand awareness can influence the effectiveness of branded keyword strategy, online service search should target consumers in earlier stages of a decision journey.

The authors believe their theoretical framework can provide actionable solutions to service firms to ease customer’s search process, increase customer’s stickiness using search engines and add value to the customer relationships with all services entities within the digital ecosystem.

This study is the first to expand online search marketing into granule examinations (main and interactive effects of three key factors) in the service search domain. First, the authors differentiate service firms into two categories – online travel aggregators and individual hotels in the model. Second, the authors introduce two sets of new classifications of branded keywords for online service search research (i.e. own versus other brand and “cross-type” versus “within-type” branded keywords). Third, this study integrates service consumers’ search word specificity into the conceptual framework which is often missing in previous online search research.

The paper aims to find out what users expect from a news aggregator service, and how the current and available news aggregator services compare to each other in terms of their features and usability from users' perspectives.

Five news aggregator services were chosen randomly, and a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods were used for data collection involving users from the academic and research community. A total of 45 users participated in the questionnaire survey, and ten users participated in the interview. The researchers created the factors used for comparison of the features and usability of the chosen services based on the review of appropriate literature and a study of the chosen news aggregator services. Users were asked to comment on every feature of a chosen service using a ten‐point scale.

Users identified a number of expected features of news aggregators. Survey results show that an ideal news aggregator service may be created by combining the usability features of TVEyes and the retrieval performance of GoogleNews.

This research is based on a small set of users and a small number of news aggregator services. A larger sample set may produce more conclusive results.

Studies reporting on the features and usability of news aggregator services is not common in the literature. In that respect, this is an important and new piece of research. The findings of this research may be used by researchers or service providers to produce a new aggregator service, or improve an existing news aggregator service.

This paper seeks to report a data‐driven assessment of student and faculty use of electronic scholarly resources pre‐ and post‐implementation of an open‐URL link resolver.

Usage data were extracted from two multidisciplinary scholarly aggregators pre‐ and post‐implementation of an open‐URL link resolver. Open‐URL link resolver usage data for both aggregators were also collected and two timelines established. Statistical analysis was performed to assess direct and indirect impact.

Study results show that the implementation of an open‐URL link resolver has directly contributed to usage increase in the short and long periods under study. Usage patterns also indicate the technology has indirect impact.

Limitations include one‐semester limits of short‐term data. Non‐standardized data could be compared only within each aggregator.

Research outcomes provide a tool for the assessment of student/faculty use of electronic scholarly resources and Collections and Catalog librarian participation in teaching and learning. Usage data are increasingly available to librarians, so work based on research findings can be assessed.

This paper reports student/faculty usage data of searching activities, not their perceptions of electronic resources. Usage data demonstrate that librarians who select and provide access to electronic resources positively affect teaching and learning.

This paper aims to investigate and formulate several business models (BM) for various energy communities (EC) members: prosumers, storage facilities, electric vehicle (EV) charging stations, aggregators and local markets.

One of the flexibility drivers is triggered by avoiding the cost and maximizing value that consists of delivering a service such as increasing generation or reducing consumption when it is valued most. The transition to greener economies led to the emergence of aggregators that aggregate bits of flexibility and handle the interest of their providers, e.g. small entities such as consumers, prosumers and other small service providers. On one hand, the research method consists of formulating six BM and implementing a BM that includes several consumers and an aggregator, namely, scheduling the household electricity consumption (downstream) and using flexibility to obtain revenue or avoid the cost. This is usually performed by reducing or shifting the consumption from peak to off-peak hours when the energy is cheaper. Thus, the role of aggregators in EC is significant as they intermediate small-scale energy threads and large entities' requirements, such as grid operators or retailers. On the other hand, in the proposed BM, the aggregators' strategy (upstream) will be to minimize the cost of electricity procurement using consumers’ flexibility. They set up markets to buy flexibility that is valued as long as their costs are reduced.

Interesting insights are revealed, such as when the flexibility price doubles, the deficit coverage increases from 62% to 91% and both parties, consumers and retailers obtain financial benefits from the local market.

One of the limitations of using the potential of flexibility is related to the high costs that are necessary to implement direct load control. Another issue is related to the data privacy aspects related to the breakdown of electricity consumption. Furthermore, data availability for scientific research is limited. However, this study expects that new BM for various EC members will emerge in the future largely depending on Information Communications and Technology developments.

An implementation of a local flexibility market (LFM) using 114 apartments with flexible loads is proposed, demonstrating the gains obtained from trading flexibility. For LFM simulation, this study considers exemplifying a BM using 114 apartments located in a multi-apartment building representing a small urban EC situated in the New England region in North America. Open data recorded in 2016 is provided by UMassTraceRepository.

As a novelty, six BM are proposed considering a bottom-up approach and including various EC members.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the e‐book marketplace players and their services against a context in which e‐books are becoming an increasingly significant category of digital resource.

The paper starts with a brief overview of the literature on the global e‐book market and e‐book business models offered by vendors to libraries. Analysis of the web sites of nine e‐book publishers and 11 e‐book aggregators was used as a basis for profiling the main features of e‐books (user‐oriented features and librarian‐ oriented features) and the services offered by e‐book publishers and e‐book aggregators. Key points from these profiles are discussed, and conclusions and recommendations for the future of the e‐book marketplace are offered.

The e‐book market is under constant change and it is important to monitor its development, not just at national but also at international level. Currently, the majority of e‐book vendors market to libraries – typically academic libraries, and publishers are increasingly using e‐aggregators to distribute their titles. Collections of e‐books are expanding gradually and there is evidence of increasing uptake. Current e‐book business models are complex and range considerably.

This development of the availability of e‐books could have significant implications for the future role of libraries and for library strategies, policies and processes.

The paper draws attention to the potential of the future importance of e‐books and profiles the uptake of the e‐book marketplace in terms of main players and their services.

To comprehend tablet catalog marketing, the purpose of this paper is to obtain an integrated descriptive analysis of tablet catalogs and to compare the value propositions between retailers’ and aggregators’ applications (apps).

A total of 28 tablet catalog apps were content analyzed in terms of interface attributes. Next, based on the results, a χ2 analysis was applied to compare the value proposition between retailers and aggregators.

The result showed that the value propositions of retailers and aggregators were significantly different in the Context, Customization, and Communication dimensions. In addition, the incongruence of emphasized dimensions among retailers is larger than that among aggregators.

Because mobile commerce exhibits fast-changing dynamics, the results from collected data may vary in different periods. However, the present results may provide a baseline of longitudinal study. The 8Cs framework expanded from the 7Cs framework may be applied to other studies.

Retailers who attempt to engage in tablet catalog marketing may use the information and findings to facilitate their decision making. The list of the attributes can be a benchmark for a retailer to evaluate its current tablet catalog app or be a reference for those retailers who are planning to develop one.

This study identified and demonstrated a need of adding a new “C,” Control, in the previous framework and introduced the expanded framework. In addition, this study provided a set of findings for further research in the area.