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1 – 10 of 658Imam Salehudin and Frank Alpert
Worldwide In-app Purchase (IAP) revenues reached almost US$37 billion in 2017 and doubled that in 2020. Although the revenue from IAPs exceeds those from paid apps, only 5% of…
Abstract
Purpose
Worldwide In-app Purchase (IAP) revenues reached almost US$37 billion in 2017 and doubled that in 2020. Although the revenue from IAPs exceeds those from paid apps, only 5% of total app users make any IAPs. This paper investigates why some users will not make IAPs and develop a novel concept of users' Perceived Aggressive Monetization of IAPs as an alternative framework to explain IAP behavior.
Design/methodology/approach
Given the newness of IAPs, this study uses qualitative research to understand the phenomenon and develop a model to explain the decision to spend on IAPs. In total, this study collected 4,092 unique user-generated comments from app user review sites and social media webpages where users discuss in-app purchasing.
Findings
The analysis reveals recurring themes that explain user unwillingness to make in-app purchases, such as conflicting meanings of free-to-play, perceived unfairness and aggressive monetization of IAP by app publishers, and self-control issues. Subsequent user interviews support the themes and suggest that IAP spending might be more impulsive.
Originality/value
The paper develops a new concept of perceived aggressive monetization. Additionally, it proposes a novel theoretical framework that future researchers can use to understand why some mobile game users are unwilling to pay for IAPs.
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Aina Ravoniarison and Cédric Benito
This paper aims to offer a comprehensive perspective into Free-to-Play gamers’ attitudes, feelings toward and perceived value of in-app purchases (IAPs).
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to offer a comprehensive perspective into Free-to-Play gamers’ attitudes, feelings toward and perceived value of in-app purchases (IAPs).
Design/methodology/approach
The study is based on a twofold qualitative methodology using an inductive approach: user-generated YouTube videos and gamers’ online reviews posted on Play stores.
Findings
Eight topics have emerged out from the qualitative data related to the characteristics of a good/bad IAP, the IAPs as downsides, the ambiguity with traditional Pay-to-Play games, the financial-risk issues, the resistance behaviors, the worries about over-spending and addiction and the frustration mechanism.
Research limitations/implications
By focusing on IAPs, this research contributes to build an integrative overview to better understand how players deal with IAPs and how this interaction should be analyzed in the light of multiple frameworks. Emphasis is placed on a continuum of player responses from tolerant metacognition to high degree of subversion.
Originality/value
A twofold netnographic approach offers a novel contribution to the field of mobile games by bringing together two materials increasingly connected to the video game universe. It also brought to the fore an experiential context by providing insight into the underlying dynamics of Player/IAP interactions.
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Asmund W. Born and Per H. Jensen
The so‐called individual action plan (IAP) has become a major policy instrument in providing active welfare for social benefit claimants, and as such it has attracted quite a…
Abstract
Purpose
The so‐called individual action plan (IAP) has become a major policy instrument in providing active welfare for social benefit claimants, and as such it has attracted quite a research interest. The purpose of this paper is to maintain that research hitherto has been founded in a too narrow notion of the IAP, arguing instead that IAP represents a new societal rationality, in relation to which the scope of research questions should be broadened.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper explores the basic dynamics and internal features of the IAP dialogue theoretically and ideal typically. It is furthermore argued that IAP‐like arrangements have extended far beyond the domain of social policy; IAP‐like dialogues are practiced in all corners of society in the form of HRM conversations, supervision, coaching etc. Relating to Foucault it is therefore argued that IAP represents a new dispositif.
Findings
The paper states that the emerging dispositif demands that the individual constitutes herself as a creative and self‐expressive subject in dynamic dialogue. Accordingly the microphysics of the interaction change for the clientele as well as for the case worker. Purpose and procedures turn singular, which undermines collective endeavours and general criteria for success in social policy.
Originality/value
The paper employs a theoretical and sociological perspective on the IAP as a new technology in the organisation of social policy, and its contribution lies in its displacement of the perspective on IAP and its consequences on research questions.
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Tomáš Sirovátka, Pavel Horák and Markéta Horáková
The paper deals with the question to what extent implementation conditions influence the profile of activation policies in the Czech Republic. In this way, it helps to clarify…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper deals with the question to what extent implementation conditions influence the profile of activation policies in the Czech Republic. In this way, it helps to clarify more general questions: how are broader objectives of these policies specified at the bottom level of implementation and why activation policies differ among countries, although guided by similar general objectives and principles.
Design/methodology/approach
The findings are based on implementation case studies carried out at several local labour offices during the pilot stage and later during the routine stage of implementation of Individual Action Plans (IAPs).
Findings
The paper shows that in the pilot stage of IAPs, the employability approach of enforced activation originated from the top‐down and was adopted at the local level; however, in a fragmented way due to unfavourable implementation conditions (above all poor staffing and a lack of activation programmes). It follows from these very conditions that, in the routine stage, the programme has been dying away, despite being supported by legislation and programme documents. On the other hand, processes of institutional learning have been initiated owing to IAPs and, with the availability of new policy opportunities at the local level (brought about with projects funded from the ESF), policy coalitions and activation policies emerge from the bottom‐up, giving rise to another model: capability approach of inclusion through participation.
Practical implications
The findings are signalling to policy makers the necessity to control the implementation conditions at the national, as well as local level and to take the bottom‐up processes of policy re‐formulation into consideration.
Originality/value
The analysis of the contradictions between the levels of policy‐making and of the volatility of implemented policies emerging from specific implementation conditions represents the original contribution of the study.
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Keshav Gupta, Yiran Su, Thilo Kunkel and Daniel Funk
Online services are increasingly utilizing gamification techniques to encourage consumer loyalty and engagement. However, the majority of the gamified services fail to be…
Abstract
Purpose
Online services are increasingly utilizing gamification techniques to encourage consumer loyalty and engagement. However, the majority of the gamified services fail to be financially sustainable. Existing freemium and gamified services literature provides scant knowledge on behavioral predictors of in-app purchases in freemium gamified services. The research examines highly interactive consumers' in-app behaviors using competition-based motivational affordances, daily usage behavior and social competition motivation that convert them into super engagers.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors applied a multimethod approach by using Multivariate Logistic Regression (n = 685) to analyze in-app behavioral data and Qualitative Comparative Analysis (n = 94) to examine survey and in-app behavioral data of highly interactive consumers of a freemium gamified service to explain paying behaviors.
Findings
Results reveal highly interactive consumers that elicit heavy daily usage of the application or excel at in-app challenges are less likely to convert to super engagers. Among super engagers, some are socially competitive, and their inability to advance in the leaderboard corresponds to in-app purchases, while non-socially competitive consumers make purchases to collect extrinsic rewards. Additionally, highly interactive consumers who possess more knowledge about the gamified service become super engagers to increase their chances to be socially competitive.
Originality/value
This research examines in-app behaviors of highly interactive consumers of a freemium gamified service that lead to in-app purchases following varying levels of daily usage behavior and social competition motivation. The authors contribute to the previous literature by defining and examining a new consumer segment – super engagers – that is financially beneficial for freemium services because of their in-app purchases. The authors provide insight on in-app behaviors that convert highly interactive consumers to super engagers and demonstrate that the reason for highly interactive consumers to make in-app purchases is a function of acquiring specific internal and external rewards based on their level of social competition.
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Rajeshwari S. Patil and Nagashettappa Biradar
Breast cancer is one of the most common malignant tumors in women, which badly have an effect on women's physical and psychological health and even danger to life. Nowadays…
Abstract
Purpose
Breast cancer is one of the most common malignant tumors in women, which badly have an effect on women's physical and psychological health and even danger to life. Nowadays, mammography is considered as a fundamental criterion for medical practitioners to recognize breast cancer. Though, due to the intricate formation of mammogram images, it is reasonably hard for practitioners to spot breast cancer features.
Design/methodology/approach
Breast cancer is one of the most common malignant tumors in women, which badly have an effect on women's physical and psychological health and even danger to life. Nowadays, mammography is considered as a fundamental criterion for medical practitioners to recognize breast cancer. Though, due to the intricate formation of mammogram images, it is reasonably hard for practitioners to spot breast cancer features.
Findings
The performance analysis was done for both segmentation and classification. From the analysis, the accuracy of the proposed IAP-CSA-based fuzzy was 41.9% improved than the fuzzy classifier, 2.80% improved than PSO, WOA, and CSA, and 2.32% improved than GWO-based fuzzy classifiers. Additionally, the accuracy of the developed IAP-CSA-fuzzy was 9.54% better than NN, 35.8% better than SVM, and 41.9% better than the existing fuzzy classifier. Hence, it is concluded that the implemented breast cancer detection model was efficient in determining the normal, benign and malignant images.
Originality/value
This paper adopts the latest Improved Awareness Probability-based Crow Search Algorithm (IAP-CSA)-based Region growing and fuzzy classifier for enhancing the breast cancer detection of mammogram images, and this is the first work that utilizes this method.
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Pedro Marques-Quinteiro, Pedro J. Ramos-Villagrasa, Ana Margarida Passos and Luís Curral
While scales were developed to measure individual adaptive performance (IAP), fewer contributions have been done to assess the construct at the team level of analysis. This issue…
Abstract
Purpose
While scales were developed to measure individual adaptive performance (IAP), fewer contributions have been done to assess the construct at the team level of analysis. This issue is addressed through two related studies: Study 1 builds on Pulakos et al. (2000) to develop a measure of IAP. Study 2 follows from the results in Study 1 and tests a measure of team adaptive performance (Chan, 1998).
Design/methodology/approach
Scale development was done adopting a single level (Study 1) and multi-level (Study 2) structural equations modeling approach.
Findings
Results suggest that both measures of individual and team adaptive performance are reliable and show evidence supporting the adequacy of adopting referent-shift methodologies to the measurement and aggregation of team members’ rating of team adaptive performance.
Originality/value
The study offers a reliable, parsimonious and easy to apply measure of individual and team adaptive performance in organizational work environments.
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The scope and activities of the library of the International Airports Projects (IAP) office of the Ministry of Defence and Aviation, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, are described. The IAP…
Abstract
The scope and activities of the library of the International Airports Projects (IAP) office of the Ministry of Defence and Aviation, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, are described. The IAP Library has favoured the application of technology‐intensive techniques, including the development of a computerised Library Administration System (LAS), which makes use of UK and LC MARC tapes. Future developments may include interfacing with a computer‐indexed automated microfiche retrieval system. It is suggested that library and information provision in Saudi Arabia may be entering a period of rapid expansion.
David Streatfield and Sharon Markless
The purpose of this paper is to describe the evolving IFLA approach to impact evaluation through three of its international programmes: Freedom of Access to Information, Building…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe the evolving IFLA approach to impact evaluation through three of its international programmes: Freedom of Access to Information, Building Strong Library Associations (BSLA) and the International Advocacy Programme (IAP). This review positions these three programmes within the wider discourse of the international evaluation community.
Design/methodology/approach
Each of the three programmes is considered in turn to show what they were trying to achieve and how thinking about impact evaluation at IFLA is evolving.
Findings
This paper reports key evaluation findings for relevant phases of the BSLA and IAP programmes in general terms.
Research limitations/implications
The views presented are those of the evaluation consultants who advised each of these programmes (and in the cases of BSLA and the IAP conducted the programme evaluations).
Practical implications
The processes described and the conclusions drawn should be of interest to anyone involved in international or national library evaluation, especially of public libraries, library associations and national libraries.
Social implications
The paper suggests that more systematic impact evaluation of public libraries, library associations and national libraries is necessary to ensure their future survival.
Originality/value
The authors were uniquely placed to see and participate in IFLA impact evaluation discussions over the past decade.
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Although the design studio has formally been the locus for design education, informal education approach has gained more and more acceptance in the world. Informal education…
Abstract
Although the design studio has formally been the locus for design education, informal education approach has gained more and more acceptance in the world. Informal education, which is the education outside the confines of curricula, includes the acquisition of knowledge and skills through experience, reading, social contact, etc. Workshops cover the essential weight of this informal education. Although the role of the design workshops in architectural design education has been very limited through overall design education’s past, many schools of architecture have taken steps to consider workshops as the part of informal learning and education.
“Culture and Space in the Build environment” (CSBE) Network of IAPS have been organizing “culture and design workshop series” for graduate and post graduate students in Turkey since 2001. In these workshops, a design teaching approach based on the conceptual framework of culture and space interactions is applied. The conceptual framework developed for the architectural design education, takes three fundamental starting points for workshops as the part of informal design education: as a tool for informal design education (method), as a tool for learning & understanding culture-environment relations (content), and as a tool for awareness of different environments/contexts (scale/place). The foundation of the conceptual framework is based on the general approach that discusses the “architectural design process” with regards to environmental context and content.
Within this context the aim of the paper is to discuss and evaluate the importance and the contribution of workshops as tool for informal architectural design education. These discussions will be held on the case of IAPS-CBSE Network’s last workshop “Istanbul as a Palimpsest City and Imperfection”. In the paper, the process, the method, the content and the results of workshop studies will be discussed and evaluated.
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