Search results

Despite the increasing technological capabilities and its affordability, a significantly large proportion of developing nations’ population are still lacking resources to own basic information and communication technologies such as computer and internet. This suggests that majority of the citizens from developing countries (e.g. India) are also not able to access and use emerging electronic government applications and services. This is leading to a further and bigger digital divide gap that already exists between rural and urban as well as economically less and more able population. To reduce the widening digital divide, India has innovated Common Services Centres (CSCs) as means to deliver public services electronically to citizens at the village level. This viewpoint paper aims to discuss some of the challenges and obstacles of such CSCs and to offer some recommendations for their effective implementations and sustainable operations.

This is a viewpoint paper that is based on authors’ awareness of the context as well as knowledge and issues relevant to the research topic. A number of appropriate and current citations have been utilised to illustrate the current state on the topic as well as to support authors’ arguments presented in this paper.

The paper identified a number of key issues relevant for effective implementation and sustainable operation of CSCs. The authors present their views and recommendations related to the following key issues: connectivity problems, lack of or delayed rollout of government to citizen (G2C) services, demotivated village-level entrepreneurs due to lack of G2C services, low computer literacy, lack of awareness about services and facilities, lack of adequate training and support, poor provisioning of an effective infrastructure, lack of support from the concerned government officials, inaccessible locations, burden of high investment, corruption at the government level, lack of skilled manpower to run the CSCs, lack of power supply, language barrier, lack of space, problem with maintenance and management of connectivity network and problem caused by the Naxalite and anarchist activity.

The discussion and recommendations presented in this paper would be valuable to various agencies (both from public and private sectors) as well as policymakers for effective implementation and long-term sustainability of CSCs. The approach discussed in this paper offers an effective way to diffuse e-government applications and services in other developing countries (particularly resource-constrained nations from African, Asian and Latin American regions).

Digital financial services (DFS) have substantial prospect to offer a number of reasonable, appropriate and secure banking services to the underprivileged in developing countries through pioneering technologies such as mobile phone based solutions, digital platforms and electronic money models. DFS allow unbanked people to obtain access to financial services through digital technologies. However, DFS face tough challenges of adoption. Realising this, the purpose of this paper is to identify such challenges and develop a framework.

The authors developed a framework of challenges by utilising interpretive structural modelling (ISM) and fuzzy MICMAC approach. The authors explored 18 such unique set of challenges culled from the literature and further gathered data from two sets of expert professionals. In the first phase, the authors gathered data from 29 professionals followed by 18 professionals in the second phase. All were pursuing Executive MBA programme from a metropolitan city in South India. The implementation of ISM and fuzzy MICMAC provided a precise set of driving, linkage and dependent variables that were used to derive a framework.

ISM model is split in eight different levels. The bottom level consists of a key driving challenge V11 (i.e. high cost and low return related problem), whereas the topmost level consists of two highly dependent challenges namely V1 (i.e. risk of using digital services) and V14 (i.e. lack of trust). The prescribed ISM model shows the involvement of “high cost and low return related problem (V11)”, which triggers further challenges of DFS.

None of the existing research has explored key challenges to DFS in detail nor formulated a framework for such challenges. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper on DFS that attempts to collate its challenges and incorporate them in a hierarchical model using ISM and further divide them into four categories of factors using fuzzy MICMAC analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and examine the most important factors that could predict the Saudi customer’s continued intention towards adoption of mobile banking.

The proposed conceptual model was based on the technology acceptance model (TAM) and task-technology fit (TTF) model. This is also expanded by considering two additional factors: perceived privacy and perceived security. By using a self-administered questionnaire, the data were collected from a convenience sample of Saudi banking customers from different parts of Saudi Arabia.

The main results based on structural equation modelling analyses supported the impact of perceived privacy, perceived security, perceived usefulness and TTF on the customers’ continued intention to use mobile banking.

The moderation influence of the demographic factors (i.e. age, gender, income level, educational level) was not tested. The data were also collected using a self-report questionnaire; however, it would be more accurate to utilise more statistics from the bank database about the users of m-banking.

This study represents a worthy attempt to test such novel technology (m-banking) in the KSA where there is a scarcity of literature. A considerable theoretical contribution was also made by integrating the TTF model with the TAM in addition to consider privacy and security in one single model. Moreover, considering both perceived privacy and security in the current model creates an accurate picture about the adoption of m-banking especially as there are a limited number of m-banking studies that have considered privacy and security alongside the TTF model and TAM in the same model.

This study investigates the role of consumer cosmopolitanism on consumer attitudes and purchase intentions (PIs) towards foreign and local brands.

The responses were collected on a structured questionnaire through a consumer survey. The data were then analysed through structural equation modelling (SEM).

The results depict the positive influence of consumer cosmopolitanism on consumer attitudes towards foreign brands, which positively influences PIs towards foreign brands and negatively influences the PIs of local brands. Further, the mediating role of perceived quality was observed in explaining the consumer preference towards foreign and domestic brands.

Finally, the study concludes by providing implications for marketing scholars and managers of global and local brands.

The paper examines the underlying mechanisms related to consumer cosmopolitanism and its role in influencing the foreign and local brand purchase.

This study, an exploratory research, aims to investigate social media users' expectations of information systems (IS) products that are conceived but not yet launched. It specifically analyses social media data from Twitter about forthcoming smartphones and smartwatches from Apple and Samsung, two firms known for their innovative gadgets.

Tweets related to the following four forthcoming IS products were retrieved from 1st January 2020 to 30th September 2020: (1) Apple iPhone 12 (6,125 tweets), (2) Apple Watch 6 (553 tweets), (3) Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 2 (923 tweets) and (4) Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 3 (207 tweets). These 7,808 tweets were analysed using a combination of the Natural Language Processing Toolkit (NLTK) and sentiment analysis (SentiWordNet).

The online community was quite vocal about topics such as design, camera and hardware specifications. For all the forthcoming gadgets, the proportion of positive tweets exceeded that of negative tweets. The most prevalent sentiment expressed in Apple-related tweets was neutral, but in Samsung-related tweets was positive. Additionally, it was found that the proportion of tweets echoing negative sentiment was lower for Apple compared with Samsung.

This paper is the earliest empirical work to examine the degree to which social media chatter can be used by project managers for IS development projects, specifically for the purpose of end-users' expectation management.

The best possible way for brick-and-mortar retailers to maximise engagement with personalised shoppers is capitalising on intelligent insights. The retailer operates differently with diversified items and services, but influencing retail atmospheric on personalised shoppers, the perception remains the same across industries. Retail atmospherics stimuli such as design, smell and others create behavioural modifications. The purpose of this study is to explore the atmospheric effects on brick-and-mortar store performance and personalised shopper's behaviour using cognitive computing based in-store analytics in the context of emerging market.

The data are collected from 35 shoppers of a brick-and-mortar retailer through questionnaire survey and analysed using quantitative method.

The result of the analysis reveals month-on-month growth in footfall count (46%), conversation rate (21%), units per transaction (27%), average order value (23%), dwell time (11%), purchase intention (29%), emotional experience (40%) and a month-on-month decline in remorse (20%). The retailers need to focus on three control gates of shopper behaviour: entry, browsing and exit. Attention should be paid to the cognitive computing solution to judge the influence of retail atmospherics on store performance and behaviour of personalised shoppers. Retail atmospherics create the right experience for individual shoppers and forceful use of it has an adverse impact.

The paper focuses on strategic decisions of retailers, the tactical value of personalised shoppers and empirically identifies the retail atmospherics effect on brick-and-mortar store performance and personalised shopper behaviour.

Several industries including banking are booming because of COVID-19. However, it is still unknown whether this growth is momentary or permanent in nature. Hence, this study aims to identify the role of health-related concerns and trust as stimuli on M-payment loyalty.

Data were collected through Google Forms from 431 participants. Subjects were M-payment users. The hypothesized model was tested using structural equational modeling.

Results of the study indicate that perceived severity and trust act as stimuli for M-payment loyalty. Further, trust not only influences loyalty directly but also through intimacy. Additionally, no linear relationship was found between perceived usefulness and M-payment loyalty.

This work is an early attempt to consider health-related concerns and trust as stimuli to predict M-payment loyalty. Further, this study focused on three new constructs, namely perceived severity, perceived susceptibility and intimacy, that are underexplored in digital banking literature.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the integrated impact of the application of protection measures against identity theft on consumers’ synergistic perception of trust, the cost of products/services and operational performance (OP) – all of which in turn is postulated to contribute to purchase intention (PI) when shopping online.

In order to accomplish the specified aim, this study first conducted an experiment by involving the students from a university in Bangladesh. Then a survey was conducted to capture their opinion based on the previous experiment.

The study identified that in e-commerce, OP and trust have potential impact on pursuing consumers’ PI. Traditionally, price is always an issue in marketing; however, for e-commerce, this issue does not have direct impact on PI.

The main limitation of this study is that a less established e-commerce example was utilized to conduct the experiment and survey for validating the model. Also, the study was conducted only in the context of Bangladesh and a student sample was utilized. Future studies can test the model in different contexts (particularly to verify the impact of privacy) by utilizing data from consumers.

This study has resolved a controversial issue by generating clear guidelines that the overall conjoint effect of OP, trust, and price on PI is neither negative nor neutral. Synergistically, the application of these controlling tools of identity theft can substantially enhance consumers’ trust, which is the single most predictor to pursue consumer PI.

This study has provided in-depth insight into the impact of different controlling measures in e-commerce PI. Practitioners have potential learning from this study that if consumers find the application of different controlling mechanisms against cybercrimes, particularly identity theft, enhancing the reliability, authenticity and security of transactions in this virtual medium, they do not mind paying a higher price. Such insights have not been provided by existing studies on this topic. Developing trust on e-commerce purchase is the driving force, not the price.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the factors that determine the knowledge exchange intention and behavioural nature of academics by the help of social media tools in the Indian higher education.

This study has used valance–instrumentality–expectancy (VIE) theory to determine the knowledge exchange behaviour of academics. The study has considered the effects of knowledge contributor (KC) and knowledge seeker (KS) as moderators. The model has been validated by using a survey with 320 usable respondents.

The results highlight that if the stakeholders of higher education institutions feel the deficits of knowledge exchange, they realize importance of knowledge sharing and use social media to increase effect of knowledge exchange. Besides, perceived usefulness impacts on the use of social media for knowledge exchange by the concerned stakeholders. Moreover, it is observed that experience of the use of social media impacts the use of this tool for knowledge exchange.

The use and application of VIE theory have successfully been able to interpret the factors affecting use of social media for knowledge exchange in higher educational institutes. The use of VIE theory has also been able to explain the proposed model better as the model could achieve a high explanative power (87%).

This study has provided meaningful insights to the practitioners and policymakers to realize how the stakeholders of the higher education institutions in India can be motivated to feel the need of sharing of knowledge and how they can use social media with ease for this purpose.

Not much research has been conducted with regard to the usage of social media as a tool for knowledge sharing in higher education sector in India. In that sense, this study is a novel attempt to undertake such research.

This study's main objective is to investigate the influence of brand credibility on the intention to purchase organic food. In addition, this research studies the moderating role of customer ethnocentricity as well as the mediating role of customer value.

To explore correlations between brand credibility and purchase intentions, cross-sectional data were collected from 433 Indian consumers. The data were analysed by structural equation modelling.

The findings indicate that brand credibility is positively related to purchasing intention. The association between brand credibility and purchasing intentions is partially mediated by customer value. Customer ethnocentrism was also shown to have a negative moderation effect. Healthiness, high quality and sensory properties (i.e. natural taste) were found to be some of the most significant organic food characteristics, according to Indian consumers.

The research is confined to India's geographical area, specifically the National Capital Regions.

To increase the purchase frequency of local or global branded organic food, businesses can include rational features in their marketing method such as the health benefits compared to the conventional product, a better emphasis on environmental safety and the social advantages of organic food.

This study develops an integrative model, including brand credibility (PBG & PBL), to predict organic food purchase intentions. This is an important contribution as, according to the results of the literature review, no previous studies have analysed these relationships.