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Due to the development of Information and Communication Technologies, the scenario has changed in modern library services such as access to electronic or digital collections, web portals, personalized services, online library instruction, e-reference service, online document delivery, helpdesk services and electronic publishing. Today many university libraries in India offer electronic information resources to their users in order to satisfy their information needs. Managing the development and delivery of electronic library services is one of the major challenges for these libraries. The University libraries in Odisha state which is situated at the eastern part of India gradually transformed their traditional library services to e-services. Thus, it is important to understand and conceptualize library service quality in the web-based service environment and how it can be accessed. In this chapter, E-S-QUAL model is adopted to identify the criteria to assess the service quality of library website of Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (SOA) University located in Bhubaneswar city of Odisha from the research scholars’ viewpoints. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of E-S-QUAL dimensions such as efficiency, system availability, fulfillment and privacy on user’s perceived value, e-service quality and e-loyalty that influence the digital library services. With an empirical data set including 350 valid questionnaires collected through online survey from the research scholars of SOA community, the result provides a foundation for better understanding research scholars’ perceptions on e-service quality for libraries. This information is also useful to universities’ libraries website designers and service providers and in the management of web-based services.

The concept and practice of e-services has become essential in business transactions. Yet there are still many organizations that have not developed e-services optimally. This is especially relevant in the context of Indonesian Airline companies. Therefore, many airline customers in Indonesia are still in doubt about it, or even do not use it. To fill this gap, this study attempts to develop a model for e-services adoption and empirically examines the factors influencing the airlines customers in Indonesia in using e-services offered by the Indonesian airline companies. Taking six Indonesian airline companies as a case example, the study investigated the antecedents of e-services usage of Indonesian airlines. This study further examined the impacts of motivation on customers in using e-services in the Indonesian context. Another important aim of this study was to investigate how ages, experiences and geographical areas moderate effects of e-services usage.

The study adopts a positivist research paradigm with a two-phase sequential mixed method design involving qualitative and quantitative approaches. An initial research model was first developed based on an extensive literature review, by combining acceptance and use of information technology theories, expectancy theory and the inter-organizational system motivation models. A qualitative field study via semi-structured interviews was then conducted to explore the present state among 15 respondents. The results of the interviews were analysed using content analysis yielding the final model of e-services usage. Eighteen antecedent factors hypotheses and three moderating factors hypotheses and 52-item questionnaire were developed. A focus group discussion of five respondents and a pilot study of 59 respondents resulted in final version of the questionnaire.

In the second phase, the main survey was conducted nationally to collect the research data among Indonesian airline customers who had already used Indonesian airline e-services. A total of 819 valid questionnaires were obtained. The data was then analysed using a partial least square (PLS) based structural equation modelling (SEM) technique to produce the contributions of links in the e-services model (22% of all the variances in e-services usage, 37.8% in intention to use, 46.6% in motivation, 39.2% in outcome expectancy, and 37.7% in effort expectancy). Meanwhile, path coefficients and t-values demonstrated various different influences of antecedent factors towards e-services usage. Additionally, a multi-group analysis based on PLS is employed with mixed results. In the final findings, 14 hypotheses were supported and 7 hypotheses were not supported.

The major findings of this study have confirmed that motivation has the strongest contribution in e-services usage. In addition, motivation affects e-services usage both directly and indirectly through intention-to-use. This study provides contributions to the existing knowledge of e-services models, and practical applications of IT usage. Most importantly, an understanding of antecedents of e-services adoption will provide guidelines for stakeholders in developing better e-services and strategies in order to promote and encourage more customers to use e-services. Finally, the accomplishment of this study can be expanded through possible adaptations in other industries and other geographical contexts.

This study investigates the motivation among customers to be more loyal to online food delivery applications (OFDA) services even after the COVID-19 epidemic by using perceived service quality aspects in Sri Lanka. The data were gathered by physically distributing a self-administrated questionnaire to clients in Sri Lanka who continue to use OFDA services on platform to customer (P2C) service delivery platforms to buy food despite the COVID-19 outbreak. Multiple regression is employed to analyse 287 effective observations, and the data revealed the significant positive effect of interaction, environment, outcome, and food qualities on customer loyalty to OFDA services. In fact, there is no impact from the delivery quality on customer loyalty to OFDA services due to outsourced food delivery. The findings suggest regular improvements in attributes such as interaction, environment, outcome, and food qualities in this hyper-competitive business environment. Further, this study sets substantial facts for the interested parties to establish an exemplary delivery system and other technological advancements to have a sustainable competitive advantage and solid customer base in the long run.

Identifying the dimensionality of a construct and selecting appropriate items for measuring the dimensions are important elements of marketing scale development. Scales for measuring marketing constructs such as service quality, brand equity, and marketing orientation have typically been developed using the influential classical test theory paradigm (Churchill, 1979), or some variant thereof. Users of the paradigm typically assume, albeit implicitly, that items and respondents are the only sources of variance and respondents are the objects of measurement. Yet, marketers need scales for other important managerial purposes, such as benchmarking, tracking, and perceptual mapping, each of which requires a scaling of objects other than respondents such as products, brands, retail stores, websites, firms, advertisements, or social media content. Scales that are developed without such objects in mind might not perform as expected. Finn and Kayande (2005) proposed a multivariate multiple objective random effects methodology (referred to here as M-MORE) could be used to identify construct dimensionality and select appropriate items for multiple objects of measurement. This chapter applies M-MORE to multivariate generalizability theory data collected to assess online retailer websites in the early 2000s to identify the dimensionality of and to select appropriate items for scaling website quality. The results are compared with those produced by traditional methods.

The study here responds to the view that the crucial problem in strategic management (research) is firm heterogeneity – why firms adopt different strategies and structures, why heterogeneity persists, and why competitors perform differently. The present study applies complexity theory tenets and a “neo-configurational perspective” of Misangyi et al. (2016) in proposing complex antecedent conditions affecting complex outcome conditions. Rather than examining variable directional relationships using null hypotheses statistical tests, the study examines case-based conditions using somewhat precise outcome tests (SPOT). The complex outcome conditions include firms with high financial performances in declining markets and firms with low financial performances in growing markets – the study focuses on seemingly paradoxical outcomes. The study here examines firm strategies and outcomes for separate samples of cross-sectional data of manufacturing firms with headquarters in one of two nations: Finland (n = 820) and Hungary (n = 300). The study includes examining the predictive validities of the models. The study contributes conceptual advances of complex firm orientation configurations and complex firm performance capabilities configurations as mediating conditions between firmographics, firm resources, and the two final complex outcome conditions (high performance in declining markets and low performance in growing markets). The study contributes by showing how fuzzy-logic computing with words (Zadeh, 1966) advances strategic management research toward achieving requisite variety to overcome the theory-analytic mismatch pervasive currently in the discipline (Fiss, 2007, 2011) – thus, this study is a useful step toward solving the crucial problem of how to explain firm heterogeneity.

The service sector is a major segment of the economy and contributes to the gross national product in a significant manner. It complements the manufacturing sector as organizations become global in nature. Sources of raw material may be quite dispersed from the manufacturing site. Further, not all manufacturing may take place in one particular location. Based on the availability of expertise and the required operations to produce the product, components, subassemblies, or assemblies could be produced in different geographical locations. This creates the necessity to transport raw material, components, or assemblies in a timely manner from one location to another based on the needs of the supply chain. All customers prefer not only an efficient delivery system but also one that is damage-free. In this chapter, we consider a model whereby service organizations offer a contract for damage protection based on product value. The objective is to determine the premium to be charged by the service organization so as to at least break even or accomplish a desired profit margin.

Discourses on critical librarianship have been mainly theoretical. However, discourses with a practical application of Critical Theory in librarianship, critical librarianship, or library management and operations are limited. Yet, librarianship underscores efficiency and practicality in service provision with the dominant ideology in librarianship being practicality. Based on Critical Theory and emerging power dynamics in e-services, this chapter presents a discussion on the practical application of Critical Theory in academic libraries. The Web 2.0 technologies have triggered a shift in information seeking and use by empowering the academic library users to seek and use information from nontraditional sources. This shift in information seeking behavior and the resultant power dynamics has an impact on strengthening of the academic library as a public sphere; a public virtual space where people can meet and exchange ideas with the eventual outcome of democratization of knowledge. This chapter analyses the practical implications of power dynamics in academic libraries and the need for realignment of academic library functions to key Critical Success Factors (CSFs) including the role of library management, a focus on librarian power, a focus on user empowerment, creating awareness of the Web 2.0 services, and maximizing the use of Web 2.0 technologies. A proper realignment of the shifting power is necessary and must be pursued as a deliberate strategy by academic libraries to facilitate generation and sharing of information. It concludes by presenting the practical implications of power dynamics in academic libraries and recommendations on dealing with the emerging paradigm shifts.

We are living in an electronic age, where everything that we want to know or are curious about is increasingly facilitated by the internet and search engines. Now, much of the world’s knowledge is at our fingertips. Students have unlimited access to information in the form of e-books, journals and other open sources. The value of a physical repository of knowledge is diminishing and the printing of material is becoming less compelling. It has been noted that college students spend as much time on the internet as they do while studying (Jones, 2002). The most pertinent question is whether the library is still considered an important source of information to students? Can we imagine a university without a library with just computers and a server room? The information highway is posing new challenges that the librarians have to deal with (Dunn, 2002; Rockman & Smith, 2002). In the past, gatekeepers like the librarian decided what a student should read, depending on their level of study and their comprehension power. The picture has altered and now students decide what exactly they should read with the click of their computers. Leaders in higher education institutions are skeptical as to how much they should actually invest in buying books, how many shelves to create to stack them and whether the collection of books is going to be an indicator of the academic quality of that institution. This book talks about a vital subject as to how much and in what ways a library can engage a student to create information literacy. Various interventions have been discussed as case studies in colleges and universities from Canada to India. Student-centered workshops have been designed along with university partnerships with a writing center as well as the role of a library as a source of socio-economic transformation in Africa. The experiences shared by the authors in this book will be a valuable resource for librarians across the world as they increase their collaborative efforts to promote the value of information literacy for students.

While prior research on websites has largely focused on service quality perception by customers, little research has gone into the investigation of the specific sales function of the website. A survey of 111 German, Swiss and Austrian four and five star hotels was designed to test the responsiveness of hotels to reservation inquiries made through the options offered by the companies’ corporate websites (e.g. e-mail, online booking forms, request for proposal forms etc.) and to evaluate the hotels online sales performance in terms of the technical and process quality while dealing with a typical reservation request. The current study found that many hotels missed the opportunity to increase sales by failing to respond adequately to electronic reservation inquiries.

Together with developing information and communication technologies and the increasing use of the Internet, there have been changes in the behaviors of the consumers during the purchasing decision process. Today’s consumers realize most of the decision process phases (such as gathering the information, determining the alternatives, evaluating the alternatives and even purchasing) from the Internet. Tourists who would like to purchase a holiday are also using the Internet during their holiday decision process. Today, websites which became an increasingly popular information source for the consumers play a significant role in potential visitors/tourists’ choices related to the destinations. Websites are used as a distribution and marketing tool in promotion and marketing of the tourism destinations. In this context, the design and content of the destination websites should be on a level which would attract and satisfy the tourists. In this chapter, the author will primarily discourse the visual and auditory factors which affect the perception of tourists and the application areas of these factors in website design. Then, the subjects such as the key features of the websites, information that should be provided on websites, the design of the website and their functions will be covered. The parameters that should be taken under consideration in order to evaluate the performance of a website and the evaluation criteria for the sites will also be included within the context of this chapter. In this chapter, the author will also discourse the benefits that the websites provide for destinations and the success factors of the destination websites. In the conclusion section of this chapter, the author will provide propositions related to the factors that should be taken under consideration in destination website design.