Search results

The way market research is conducted has changed dramatically over the past 30 years, as a result of both the development of the prevailing view of best practice and the state of technology available to researchers. While it is clear that the World Wide Web (WWW) will increasingly be used as a medium for conducting market research, the full implications of this new channel are not yet fully understood. This paper examines the potential for an Internet‐based financial services firm (Xenon Laboratories) to analyse conduct market research using the WWW. The case demonstrates that, by employing a novel approach to market research, Xenon Laboratories is in a unique position to understand the charging structures in its market, the market for international payments using credit or charge cards. In doing so, the paper highlights the opportunity to unobtrusively gather market information from an international group of customers by providing Internet‐based value‐added services.

In the past few months a new breed of online search facility has made its début, accessible through the World Wide Web using any standard browser such as Netscape. Here is an introduction to three such newcomers: NlightN, NewsPage and Infoseek. We used Netscape to run a test search on each of these, choosing both a current topic (the HotJava browser: see our last issue's News Roundup, p. 174) and one slightly more obscure (the 1994 film Shadowlands, about the romance between C.S. Lewis and Joy Gresham). We will show the results of these searches elsewhere in this article but first, here is more about the services themselves.

The costs of software piracy are enormous. According to Business Software Alliance, it was estimated that the software industry lost $34 billion globally due to software piracy in 2005. The present study was an exploratory attempt to analyze software piracy at individual level, using a qualitative approach.

A qualitative research study with few, if any, theoretical preconceptions would seem to be justified in the Asian context. An internet online survey and a content analysis of internet newsgroups were conducted. Data were transcribed, coded and interpreted so as to generate main predictors of the reported leniency toward software piracy.

Using extensive qualitative data from two studies, marketing, individual and situational variables are examined as a set of predictors of respondents' reported leniency towards software piracy. The results of the content analysis suggested that the cost of original software was extremely important in software piracy. Respondents commented that excessive price of original software was the key factor pushing them to commit piracy.

This is the first piece of qualitative research to study software piracy. The results of the content analysis suggested that the cost of original software was extremely important in software piracy. It provides new insights to software companies and government officials who are developing programs to promote the concept of anti‐piracy.

Information security of an organization is influenced by the deployed policy and procedures. Information security policy reflects the organization’s attitude to the protection of its information assets. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the status of the information security policy at a subset of Saudi’s organizations by understanding the perceptions of their information technology’s employees.

A descriptive and statistical approach has been used to describe the collected data and characteristics of the IT employees and managers to understand the information security policy at the surveyed organizations. The author believes that understanding the IT employees’ views gives a better understanding of the organization’s status of information security policy.

It has been found that most of the surveyed organizations have established information security policy and deployed fair technology; however, many of such policies are not enforced and publicized effectively and efficiently which degraded the deployed technology for such protection. In addition, the clarity and the comprehensibility of such policies are questionable as indicated by most of the IT employees’ responses. A comparison with similar studies at Middle Eastern and European countries has shown similar findings and shares the same concerns.

The findings of this research suggest that the Saudi Communications and Information Technology Commission should develop a national framework for information security to guide the governmental and non-governmental organizations as well as the information security practitioners on the good information security practices in terms of policy and procedures to help the organizations to avoid any vulnerability that may lead to violations on the security of their information.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.