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Despite its potential, warehouse managers still struggle to successfully assimilate autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) in their operations. This paper means to identify the moderating factors of AMR assimilation for production warehouses that influence the digital transformation of their intralogistics via AMRs.

Drawing on innovation of assimilation theory (IAT), this study followed an explorative approach using the principles of the case study method in business research. The cases comprised of four AMR end users and six AMR service providers. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews.

Four clusters of moderators that affect each stage of AMR assimilation were identified. These clusters include organizational attributes of end users (i.e. production warehouses), service attributes of service providers, technology attributes of AMRs and relational attributes between the AMR service providers and the AMR end users.

The authors extend the IAT framework by identifying various moderating factors between different stages of the AMR assimilation process. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to introduce the perspective of AMR end users in conjunction with AMR service providers to the “Industry 4.0” technology assimilation literature. The study propositions regarding these factors guide future intralogistics and AMR research.

This research aims to develop and test a model for measuring end-user satisfaction (EUS) in a practical manner and then statistically verify its reliability and validity.

A comprehensive list of attributes using extensive literature review, focus group and brainstorming meetings were used to create a set of attributes for the model. These attributes were then used in a survey among the end-users (N = 687) of seven case studies with different characteristics (type, size and location) to assess the reliability and validity of the model. The statistical methods included reliability tests (Cronbach's alpha), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and correlation analysis), canonical discriminant analysis (CDA), item response theory (IRT) and model specification tests.

EUS must be quantified before determining a project's overall performance. The analysis of repeatability and consistency (reliability and validity) performed on case studies (data collected from the end-users) strongly suggests that the EUS model is robust for a range of project types.

Although many studies have proposed customer satisfaction models in the project success context, research on quantitative measurement tools is scarce. The paper departs from past research and develops and validates a new EUS model independent of project characteristics (while the study's limitations are acknowledged).

The purpose of this paper is to identify the antecedents of continued usage intentions in the connected devices ecosystem in health care by analyzing the users' and physicians' expectations in a new ecosystem where one prefers to connect digitally rather than physically.

This is a unique study in which data was collected from 242 doctors and 215 end-users to gauge the expectations from the connected devices in health care. Further, these responses were hypothesised using UTAUT-2 and ECT theories to analyze general users’ and professional users’ or doctors’ expectations for continued usage in connected devices ecosystem in the health-care ecosystem.

Performance expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions and price value emerged as significant predictors of satisfaction in both user groups. But habit and hedonic motivation reflected an insignificant impact on user satisfaction. Surprisingly, effort expectancy emerged as a significant factor for end-user satisfaction, and this became insignificant for professional user satisfaction. Satisfaction was positively related to continued usage for both user groups, and app quality has a positive impact on all the predictors.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first comparative study to understand the factors which influence consumer behavior leading to a holistic model and can be imbibed for creating a better customer experience in an era where we are more comfortable connecting digitally rather than physically.

This study has used the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology-2 model and expectation confirmation theory to analyze the key factors influencing the intentions for continued usage of devices in the Internet of Medical Devices setup.

This work aims to understand how social value is created and delivered using community-based water supply projects. It examines social value creation given the enabling concepts – value co-creation and service ecosystems as business models for infrastructure.

Inductive reasoning, including qualitative research design, was applied to two water supply projects. The qualitative stage created social value co-creation features using the purposive sampling of 72 semi-structured interviews.

The qualitative analysis features social value co-creation, which includes a sense of social unity, end-user empowerment, Behavioural transformation, and knowledge transfer. Although value destruction also emerged while examining social value co-creation, the research identifies the “red flags” and value contradictions that must be avoided.

The enablers of sustainable infrastructure projects should include social value, service ecosystems and value co-creation.

There is a need for the government and non-governmental organisations to create enabling platforms that involve a planned dialogical communication process supporting the development and enhancement of relationships of stakeholders to maximise social value from infrastructure projects.

The work offers a widened perspective of social value creation and a new framework called “Social value co-creation/destruction” (SVCC/SVCD) as the business model for sustainable infrastructure projects. It is the first attempt to illustrate social value creation in construction from service ecosystems and value co-creation perspectives.

The “what is beautiful is good” (WIBIG) effect implies that observers tend to perceive physically attractive people in a positive light. The authors investigate how the WIBIG effect applies to user personas, measuring designers' perceptions and task performance when employing user personas for the design of information technology (IT) solutions.

In a user experiment, the authors tested six different personas with 235 participants that were asked to develop remote work solutions based on their interaction with a fictitious user persona.

The findings showed that a user persona's perceived attractiveness was positively correlated with other perceptions of the persona. The personas' completeness, credibility, empathy, likability and usefulness increased with attractiveness. More attractive personas were also perceived as more agreeable, emotionally stable, extraverted and open, and the participants spent more time engaging with personas they perceived attractive. A linguistic analysis indicated that the IT solutions created for more attractive user personas demonstrated a higher degree of affect, but for the most part, task outputs did not vary by the personas' perceived attractiveness.

The WIBIG effect applies when designing IT solutions with user personas, but its effect on task outputs appears limited. The perceived attractiveness of a user persona can impact how designers interact with and engage with the persona, which can influence the quality or the type of the IT solutions created based on the persona. Also, the findings point to the need to incorporate hedonic qualities into the persona creation process. For example, there may be contexts where it is helpful that the personas be attractive; there may be contexts where the attractiveness of the personas is unimportant or even a distraction.

The findings point to the need to incorporate hedonic qualities into the persona creation process. For example, there may be contexts where it is helpful that the personas be attractive; there may be contexts where the attractiveness of the personas is unimportant or even a distraction.

Because personas are created to closely resemble real people, the authors might expect the WIBIG effect to apply. The WIBIG effect might lead decision makers to favor more attractive personas when designing IT solutions. However, despite its potential relevance for decision making with personas, as far as the authors know, no prior study has investigated whether the WIBIG effect extends to the context of personas. Overall, it is important to understand how human factors apply to IT system design with personas, so that the personas can be created to minimize potentially detrimental effects as much as possible.

Many buildings fail to meet user expectations, causing a performance gap. Pre-occupancy evaluation (PrOE) is believed to have the potential to close the gap. It enables designers to obtain end-user feedback in the design phase and improve the design for better performance. However, PrOE implementation faces challenges due to still maturing knowledgebase. This study aims to understand the state-of-the-art knowledge of PrOE, thereby identifying future research needs to advance the domain.

A systematic literature review following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) framework was conducted. A thorough search in five databases and Google Scholar retrieved 90 articles, with 30 selected for systematic review after eliminating duplicates and irrelevant articles. Bibliometric analyses were performed using VOSviewer and Biblioshiny on the article metadata, and thematic analyses were conducted on their contents.

PrOE is a vehicle for engaging building end-users in the design phase to address the credibility gap caused by the discrepancies between the expected and actual performance of buildings. PrOE has gained limited applications in healthcare, residential, office and educational building design for two broad purposes: design management and marketing. Using virtual reality technologies for PrOE has demonstrated significant benefits. Yet, the PrOE domain needs to mature in multiple perspectives to serve its intended purpose effectively.

This study identifies four knowledge gaps for future research to advance the PrOE domain: (1) developing a holistic PrOE framework, integrating comprehensive performance evaluation criteria, useable at different stages of the design phase and multi-criteria decision algorithms, (2) developing a mixed reality tool, embodying the holistic PrOE framework, (3) formulating a PrOE framework for adaptive reuse of buildings and (4) managing uncertainties in user requirements during the lifecycle in PrOE decisions.

Banking traces back to 2000 BC in Assyria, India and Sumeria. Merchants used to give grain loans to farmers and traders to carry goods between cities. In ancient Greece and Roman Empire, lenders in temples, provided loans, and accepted deposits while performed change of money. The archaeological evidence uncovered in India and China corroborates this. The major development in banking came predominantly in the mediaeval, Renaissance Italy, with the major cities Florence, Venice and Genoa being the financial centres. Technology has become an inherent and integral part of our lives. We are generating a huge amount of data in transfer, storage and usage, with greater demands of ubiquitous accessibility, inducing an enormous impact on industry and society. With the emergence of smarter cities and societies, the security challenges pertinent to data become greater, impending impact on the consumer protection and security. The aim of this chapter is to highlight if SSI and passwordless authentication using FIDO-2 protocol assuage security concerns such as authentication and authorisation while preserving the individual's privacy.

The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) calls for far-reaching changes to the way economic activity will occur in EU digital markets. Before its remedies are imposed, it is critical to assess their impacts on individual markets, the digital sector, and the overall European economy. The European Commission (EC) released an Impact Assessment in support of the DMA that purports to evaluate it using cost/benefit analysis.

An economic evaluation of the DMA should consider its full impacts on dynamic competition. The Impact Assessment neither assesses the DMA's impact on dynamic competition in the digital economy nor evaluates the impacts of specific DMA prohibitions and obligations. Instead, it considers benefits in general and largely ignores costs. We study its benefit assessments and find they are based on highly inappropriate methodologies and assumptions. A cost/benefit study using inappropriate methodologies and largely ignoring costs cannot provide a sound policy assessment.

Instead of promoting dynamic competition between platforms, the DMA will likely reinforce existing market structures, ossify market boundaries, and stunt European innovation. The DMA is likely to chill R&D by encouraging free riding on the investments of others, which discourages making those investments. Avoiding harm to innovation is critical because innovation delivers large, positive spillover benefits, driving increases in productivity, employment, wages, and prosperity.

The DMA prioritizes static over dynamic competition, with the potential to harm the European economy. Given this, the Impact Assessment does not demonstrate that the DMA will be beneficial overall, and its implementation must be carefully tailored to alleviate or lessen its potential to harm Europe’s economic performance.

The study aims to introduce a cloud-based virtual reality (VR) approach and investigate its applicability and performance in aiding the remote design evaluation process by assessing the clients' convenience perception toward cloud-based VR-aided design evaluation (Cloud-based VR Approach) compared to 3D model-aided design evaluation (3D Model Approach) and rendering images-aided design evaluation (Image Approach).

A multicriteria comparative study was conducted with 26 university students using the “analytic hierarchy process” technique to compare the three approaches applied to home finishing material selection tasks based on the five “service convenience” dimensions, consisting of access convenience, decision convenience, transaction convenience, benefit convenience and post-benefit convenience.

The results indicated that the “Cloud-based VR Approach” was perceived to be more convenient than the “3D Model Approach” and the “Image Approach” based on the aspects of “decision convenience”, “transaction convenience”, “benefit convenience” and “post-benefit convenience”. The only aspect that the Cloud-based VR Approach was comparatively less convenient than the 3D Model Approach and Image Approach for the user was “access convenience”. Overall, the findings showed that the developed Cloud-based VR Approach had more potential than the conventional approaches in aiding the design evaluation process under ongoing social distancing measures requiring designers and clients to work remotely.

The disastrous impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on logistical systems have resulted in massive disruptions to the construction industry worldwide. Various construction activities have been halted and most meetings moved online. Design evaluation conducted between clients and designers is one of the important activities affected by such an impact. Thus, this study presents the Cloud-based VR Approach as an innovative means to maintain essential ongoing activities and meeting of the current design evaluation approach with respect to the social distancing measures.

Millions of dollars are being spent by over-the-top platform (OTT) providers to produce content for the Indian market. These circumstances highlight the necessity for a solution that attracts and maintains customers, enabling OTT providers to generate revenues and profits. This study explores the underlying gratifications (e.g. informative; connectivity) obtained from over-the-top platform (OTT) attributes (e.g. global content; regional and cultural content) through consequences (e.g. create awareness; related to reality).

Means-end chain theory uncovered gratifications consumers fulfill through the use of OTT platforms. The laddering technique explores the linkage among attributes, consequences and gratifications that influence OTT platforms' consumers' consumption patterns. In total, 27 interviews were conducted in India, and participants responded to questions regarding attributes of OTT platforms, consequences and gratifications in a one-on-one interview procedure. Hierarchical value maps were built to better understand customer selection of OTT platforms based on the replies.

The results suggested that six attributes of OTT platforms (for ex-global content; regional and rural content; rating before watching) were associated with the four consequences (for ex-create awareness; related to reality; saves time), which were associated with four gratifications, which are informativeness, connectivity, social enhancement and productivity.

The prospective function of OTT services in the entertainment and media business has grabbed consumer attention. However, limited literature focuses on identifying gratifications consumers gain from OTT attributes. Through these findings, managers and practitioners can gain insights regarding strategies to increase OTT adoption and help develop a loyal consumer base.