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The purpose of this paper is to explore how technological and strategic developments enable new billing processes for mobile content services.

Interviews with practitioners are used as input for designing different archetypical role division models for billing and process models. The potential of these process models to reshape the mobile industry is evaluated on three criteria: convenience for the end‐user; potential resource barriers; and the fit with strategic interests of the actors involved.

Both technological advances and the introduction of new roles and strategies in the mobile domain enable the emergence of alternative billing methods. While network operator‐centric models remain relevant in the short term, in the longer term they will co‐exist with other models in which the customer transaction is owned by the content aggregator, the content provider, the ISP or the payment provider.

The research demonstrates the relevance of analysis at the process level in assessing the feasibility of new role division models at the value creation level.

The emergence of alternative billing providers is expected to change the power balance in the value network and assist in opening up the “walled garden”.

The analysis extends beyond existing discussions on billing in the mobile industry, which typically focus on the value network level, as the process level and the related resources are included. Moreover, the empirical data from the interviews with practitioners at various organizations provide new insights into the feasibility of these models in practice.

Electronic content, today’s principal means for information exchange, is dramatically reshaping how businesses compete and meet their goals and performance objectives. Now that the essential structure of business information technology, the Internet and supporting software tools has been built, the competition for strategic business advantage is shifting to focus on how companies use these tools to enable their people to compete through ready access to relevant and critical knowledge as they need it. E‐Content encompasses the world of electronic office documents, e‐mails, sites on the free web and premium content from subscription and syndicated publishers. It is integrated through a variety of authoring and content sharing tools from search engines and evolving content aggregation systems to newer forms of real time communication and electronic authoring including instant messaging, blogs, and text messaging through cell phones and other portable devices. As the sheer amount of available information and means of use proliferate, the need is growing for companies to include knowledge sharing via electronic content as a key element in their overall strategy. The fundamental strategic issue is empowering the people and decision makers who drive the business with relevant information in real time. E‐content provides the core of the business and competitive advantage lies in the immediacy of access, exchange and providing a meaningful flow of real‐time to the people who make decisions and the people who execute them. This article presents a structured model of the e‐content playing field and demonstrates how the integrated system for creating, delivering, using and sharing e‐content should be factored into strategic considerations for all businesses.

This paper aims to understand the motivational factors that influence the purchase of mobile phone content among young Australians.

An interpretive qualitative analysis of focus group data is used to explore the topic. Focus group participants were strategically selected from a larger sample to be representative on a broad range of demographic variables.

There is considerable negativity associated with spending money on mobile content owing to the following factors: The mobile phone is perceived primarily as a communication tool. Money spent on the mobile phone for uses not related to communication is often perceived as wasted. The mobile phone is seen as an inferior channel for entertainment and information when compared to television, magazines, and the internet. Consumers are wary of deceptive advertising practices for mobile content. Many consumers are able to access “free” content.

Future research should focus on comparisons to consumers in other countries and on the relative pervasiveness of the factors identified in this study in the general population.

Considerable negativity towards spending money on content suggests problems with revenue models relying on direct sales of content. However, “free” content is often perceived very positively. Advertiser‐sponsored models and branded “value add” models may prove to be effective ways of leveraging this positive sentiment.

The paper provides a unique examination of the link between perceptions of mobile content and the perceived role of the mobile phone in everyday life, and draws important conclusions regarding the implementation of successful revenue models. The conclusions reached are likely to be of interest to mobile application developers, content aggregators, content owners, and mobile telecommunication companies.

Science policy and practice for open access (OA) books is a rapidly evolving area in the scholarly domain. However, there is much that remains unknown, including how many OA books there are and to what degree they are included in preservation coverage. The purpose of this study is to contribute towards filling this knowledge gap in order to advance both research and practice in the domain of OA books.

This study utilized open bibliometric data sources to aggregate a harmonized dataset of metadata records for OA books (data sources: the Directory of Open Access Books, OpenAIRE, OpenAlex, Scielo Books, The Lens, and WorldCat). This dataset was then cross-matched based on unique identifiers and book titles to openly available content listings of trusted preservation services (data sources: Cariniana Network, CLOCKSS, Global LOCKSS Network, and Portico). The web domains of the OA books were determined by querying the web addresses or digital object identifiers provided in the metadata of the bibliometric database entries.

In total, 396,995 unique records were identified from the OA book bibliometric sources, of which 19% were found to be included in at least one of the preservation services. The results suggest reason for concern for the long tail of OA books distributed at thousands of different web domains as these include volatile cloud storage or sometimes no longer contained the files at all.

Data quality issues, varying definitions of OA across services and inconsistent implementation of unique identifiers were discovered as key challenges. The study includes recommendations for publishers, libraries, data providers and preservation services for improving monitoring and practices for OA book preservation.

This study provides methodological and empirical findings for advancing the practices of OA book publishing, preservation and research.

This study aims to evaluate the role of social media on the hotel decision-making process of consumers during the evaluation stage of searching, identifying the alternatives and selecting a hotel in India. It will help the stakeholders in the hotel industry of India to make the social media platform more efficient for consumers by providing inputs on the factors consumers consider while making online hotel purchase.

This study involves an exploratory qualitative approach which includes 32 face-to-face, semi-structured, in-depth individual interviews with the social media platform users. The selection of interviewees for this study has been done on the basis of a non-random purposive sampling approach.

The findings reveal that social media plays an important role in affecting the way consumers search, decide and book hotels. It also suggests that social media helps consumers in collecting information about products and services, assessing alternatives and making their choices. It confirms that while negative facets exist, the positive benefits outweigh the negative aspects of using social media when selecting a hotel. The results also reveal the impact of circumstantial influence related to social media on hotel selection, on the basis of content source and the level of trust and accuracy in the content.

This study has some strategic implications for hospitality marketing and management related to a better understanding of the influence of social media on the hotel customer decision-making process. The study shows that a variety of social media with associated content sources and levels add to the complexity of hotel-related information search and decision behaviour.

The study makes a contribution by addressing the existing gaps and bridging the arena of consumer behaviour and social media literature in a hotel context and sheds light on how consumer decisions while selecting a hotel are influenced through social media. The core contribution is the generation of factors through in-depth interviews which are based on real-life scenarios relating to the influence of social media on hotel decision-making.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors influencing investment decisions in mobile services for profitablity and to become a global leader in mobile services sector.

A two-stage methodology is followed. In the first stage, factors are identified from literature, and are validated with telecommunication domain experts using the t-test. In the second stage, interpretive structural modeling (ISM) is used to understand the complex interrelationships among various factors. Further, MICMAC analysis is performed to analyze the indirect relationships and their effect on different factors by stabilizing the rank based on driving and dependence power. Based on MICMAC analysis, four clusters are identified to aid the policy- and decision-makers.

The major contribution of this research is imposing directions and dominance of various factors to make informed decision-making for investment in mobile services to meet the upcoming demand for mobile services in Indian telecommunication sector.

The applicability of these research findings is limited to emerging telecommunication market.

This paper forms the basis for identifying various factors that act as the driving force for the Indian telecommunication operators to pay special attention toward mobile services, with telecommunication data analytics and developing context-aware services. This paper will aid policy-makers in the government, managers in telecommunication companies and other stakeholders such as content providers, channel partners and application developers to take a lead role in developing appropriate mobile services to meet local needs of Indian users. It will help in developing strategies to collaborate and motivate other stakeholders, including device manufacturers to understand and work collaboratively to become world leader in mobile services.

This paper provides a framework for understanding the various factors that encourage telecommunication companies to establish and invest in mobile services and setup a separate vertical in their organization with a focus on mobile services to meet the future demands of Indian market. Appropriate utilization of telecommunication data analytics, personalization of services, customization in local languages and support for convergent services would encourage adoption of mobile services.

The OpenURL standard provides a mechanism to transport metadata or identifiers of a digital item from one resource to another as well as a way to construct links in a dynamic linking environment. The OpenURL standard provides a means of integrating electronic resources. This article first describes some integration issues for electronic resources in the library and continues to discuss types of URL before giving an overview of the OpenURL standard and the OpenURL linking system, the link resolver. The major OpenURL linking products and host solution options are described, and the impact of the OpenURL standard and OpenURL linking system on library users and library services are discussed. New developments in the OpenURL standard and OpenURL linking systems are provided in the concluding section.

This study aims to explore if, with increasing consumer empowerment, consumers are actively pulling content through a multitude of platforms rather than relying on media owners to dictate their product choices. How do media owners and content producers move toward a more reciprocal and interactive business strategy to deal with the change?

The study was qualitative and exploratory in nature and utilized in-depth and semi-structured interviews of media consumers and experts.

Consumer behavior has changed due to increased product control, in terms of type and occasion, across all income levels. The value of curatorship has increased and social media has fundamentally changed consumption patterns. Using the Berthon et al. model of response functions, we found that, content producers often suffer from inertia and operate with an Isolate strategy. The second most common approach is that of Follow or customer orientation. There is limited engagement with the innovation orientations of Shape and Interact. It is best for the industry to move toward an Interact model, accepting that consumers sometimes wish to create and at other times wish content to be effortlessly provided to them.

This study adopted a qualitative approach of industry experts and consumers within a single context. The further implications would be to develop the Interact strategy in more detail, especially toward the end of how to get media providers to change their current orientations.

Business models of product producers in the new business environment seek to be more consumer-centric. This must not be done at the expense of an innovation orientation.

There has been a lot of discussion on the need to change business models in the wake of changed consumer behavior. The current paper provides guidance on how to respond to the new media world.