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The purpose of this paper is to evaluate how the intermediation of an online agent in the relationship between prospective clients and professional service providers affects individual purchasing processes and decisions, and satisfaction with the professional service provider once the commercial transaction is concluded.

Drawing on the integrated trust-technology acceptance model, modified to include two additional variables to take into account of the specificities of the context investigated – users’ perceived reduction of information asymmetry and satisfaction with the professional service provider – a research framework is developed and tested with a research design combining a decision tree procedure with structural equation modelling and multi-group analysis. Participants are 188 users of an Italian website which incorporates an online agent that refers notaries to prospective clients.

Decisions to purchase professional services brokered by online agents depend upon trust in the agent, and users’ perceptions of the agent’s ability to reduce information asymmetry, as well as its perceived usefulness. Online agents for professional services can be effective as well as efficient: users who bought the service from an agent-referred notary had higher levels of satisfaction with their professional service provider than users who purchased the service from a different notary.

This is the first empirical effort to investigate the effects of online agents in the specific context of professional service purchasing. The uniqueness of the research context permitted identification of a new type of online agent, the “double-sided online referral agent”.

Smart card-based E-payment systems are receiving increasing attention as the number of implementations is witnessed on the rise globally. Understanding of user adoption behavior of E-payment systems that employ smart card technology becomes a research area that is of particular value and interest to both IS researchers and professionals. However, research interest focuses mostly on why a smart card-based E-payment system results in a failure or how the system could have grown into a success. This signals the fact that researchers have not had much opportunity to critically review a smart card-based E-payment system that has gained wide support and overcome the hurdle of critical mass adoption. The Octopus in Hong Kong has provided a rare opportunity for investigating smart card-based E-payment system because of its unprecedented success. This research seeks to thoroughly analyze the Octopus from technology adoption behavior perspectives.

Cultural impacts on adoption behavior are one of the key areas that this research posits to investigate. Since the present research is conducted in Hong Kong where a majority of population is Chinese ethnicity and yet is westernized in a number of aspects, assuming that users in Hong Kong are characterized by eastern or western culture is less useful. Explicit cultural characteristics at individual level are tapped into here instead of applying generalization of cultural beliefs to users to more accurately reflect cultural bias. In this vein, the technology acceptance model (TAM) is adapted, extended, and tested for its applicability cross-culturally in Hong Kong on the Octopus. Four cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede are included in this study, namely uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, individualism, and Confucian Dynamism (long-term orientation), to explore their influence on usage behavior through the mediation of perceived usefulness.

TAM is also integrated with the innovation diffusion theory (IDT) to borrow two constructs in relation to innovative characteristics, namely relative advantage and compatibility, in order to enhance the explanatory power of the proposed research model. Besides, the normative accountability of the research model is strengthened by embracing two social influences, namely subjective norm and image. As the last antecedent to perceived usefulness, prior experience serves to bring in the time variation factor to allow level of prior experience to exert both direct and moderating effects on perceived usefulness.

The resulting research model is analyzed by partial least squares (PLS)-based Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach. The research findings reveal that all cultural dimensions demonstrate direct effect on perceived usefulness though the influence of uncertainty avoidance is found marginally significant. Other constructs on innovative characteristics and social influences are validated to be significant as hypothesized. Prior experience does indeed significantly moderate the two influences that perceived usefulness receives from relative advantage and compatibility, respectively. The research model has demonstrated convincing explanatory power and so may be employed for further studies in other contexts. In particular, cultural effects play a key role in contributing to the uniqueness of the model, enabling it to be an effective tool to help critically understand increasingly internationalized IS system development and implementation efforts. This research also suggests several practical implications in view of the findings that could better inform managerial decisions for designing, implementing, or promoting smart card-based E-payment system.

To report the highlights of the 2005 Online Information Conference.

Provides a brief review of the conference.

The conference offered a wide variety of timely presentations on online content and information management solutions

This paper is a useful summary of a conference of interest to library and information management professionals.

Information asymmetry is an inevitable issue in e-commerce and largely hampers the development of online shopping. The purpose of this paper is to propose a model to investigate the emotional content of online customer reviews, which are considered an efficient way to reduce information asymmetry, as a potential signal of product quality. The moderating effects of perceived empathy and cognitive effort are also explored on the basis of signaling theory.

A laboratory experiment with 120 subjects was used to empirically test the proposed research hypotheses. The subjects were randomly assigned to two treatment groups, with 60 subjects in each group. ANOVA, linear regression and binary logistic regression were used.

The emotional content of online customer reviews positively influences perceived product quality, which subsequently and positively affects purchase decisions. The emotional content of online customer reviews greatly influences perceived product quality when perceived empathy or cognitive effort is high.

This study is the first to extend extrinsic cues to emotional content on the basis of signaling theory and reveals the important role of emotional content of reviews. Moreover, the mediating effect of perceived product quality and the moderating effect of perceived empathy and cognitive effort illustrate the mechanism of the influence of emotional content on purchase decision. Findings demonstrate the positive signal of emotional content and provide important practical implications for sellers and customers.

This study explores the mediating role of marketing management in the relationship between online presence and product innovation among Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).

The sample comprises 205 Costa Rican SMEs collected by the Global Competitiveness Project during the first half of 2019. The data were analyzed using a two-stage modeling strategy for ordinary regression models to analyze mediation effects.

Marketing management as a strategic resource or capability accounts for the relationship between online presence and product innovation performance in SMEs, meaning that online presence resources require complementary organizational capabilities in marketing management to enhance product innovation.

This study, grounded in the resource-based view theory, contributes to the innovation field by identifying marketing management capabilities as an intermediate strategic interaction between online presence and product innovation performance in SMEs. Thus, managers should recognize the advantages of integrating marketing management principles and tactics into online presence tools to realize the value of their products by tailoring them to their client’s needs.

With the proliferation of ideas submitted by users in firm-built online user innovation communities, community managers are faced with the problem of user idea overload. The purpose of this paper is to explore the influencing factors on the idea adoption to identify high quality ideas, and then propose a method to quickly filter high value ideas.

The authors collected more than 110,000 data submitted by Xiaomi community users and analyzed the factors affecting idea adoption using a multinomial logistic regression model. In addition, the authors also used BP neural network to predict the idea adoption process.

The empirical results show that idea semantics, number of likes, number of comments, number of related posts, the existence of pictures and self-presentation have positive impact on idea adoption, while idea length and idea timeliness had negative impact on idea adoption. In addition, this paper calculates the idea evaluation value through the idea adoption process predicted by neural network and the mean value of idea term frequency inverse document frequency (TF-IDF).

This empirical study expands the theoretical perspective of idea adoption research by using dual-process theory and enriches the research methods in the field of idea adoption research through the multinomial logistic regression method. Based on our findings, firms can quickly identify valuable ideas and effectively alleviate the information overload problem of online user innovation communities.

Social shopping website (SSW) introduce the social side into the shopping process, thus making “window” shopping or browsing more interesting for customers. The purpose of this paper is to investigate customer online browsing experience and its antecedents (i.e. information quality and social interaction) and consequences (i.e. urge to buy impulsively and continuous browsing intention) in the context of SSW.

A survey questionnaire was distributed to visitors of online SSW to collect data, and partial least squares technology was used to test the research model.

The results of this study reveal that three types of web browsing, namely, utilitarian browsing, hedonic browsing and social browsing, take place in a SSW. The unique factors of SSW, namely, the quality of user generated contents and social interaction are critical for facilitating customers’ browsing experiences. Furthermore, the findings reveal that hedonic browsing experience is found to be the most salient factor influencing customers’ urge to buy impulsively and continuance intention.

The findings suggest that practitioners, such as designers and managers of SSW should give special attention to the benefits of browsing activity to convert web browsers into impulse purchasers and increase customers’ loyalty. Moreover, they should focus on improving the quality of user generated content and pay more attention to support and encourage social interaction to enhance browsing experiences on a SSW.

Existing studies about browsing behavior mostly focus on traditional online e-commerce website. This study represents the first step toward understanding browsing activity on SSW. Moreover, prior studies mainly focused on utilitarian and hedonic browsing experience; however, there is a lack of research on social browsing experience. The current study attempts to fill this research gap.

The purpose of this paper, building on the media richness theory (MRT), is to propose that while communicating product information via streaming video should enhance outcome measures, such an enhancement will be evident mainly for users with equivocal, latent goals (i.e. recreational browsing) rather than for those with less equivocal, concrete goals (i.e. the search of a specific product).

The experiment involved 337 potential online consumers in Canada, and had full factorial design with four conditions (two methods to communicate product information: textual vs streaming video, and two goals: product searching vs recreational browsing). Analysis of covariance was used to test the hypotheses.

The results lent support to the hypotheses. The perceived information quality, trusting competence, and arousal for participants with recreational browsing goals were significantly affected when product information where communicated using streaming video. For participants with concrete goals (product searchers), the traditional textual method was as effective as the streaming video method.

The findings entice practitioners to use rich media such as the streaming video method to communicate online information predominantly for users with experiential browsing goals, and to use lean media for users with less equivocal, concrete goals.

The results contribute to the sparse literature that underscores the key role of user goal in shaping the effectiveness of online information. The results provide empirical support to the prediction of MRT that the use of rich media to communicate information is advantageous for users with latent, equivocal goals.

Enterprises build online product community to expect users to contribute: opinion sharing (content contribution) and product consumption (product contribution). Previous literature rarely focused on both. The purpose of this paper is to explain user contribution mechanism by identifying content contribution and product contribution.

This research chose Xiaomi-hosted online product community (bbs.xiaomi.cn) and Huawei-hosted online product community (club.huawei.com) where users can freely share ideas and buy products at the same time. Data were crawled from 109,665 community users to construct dependent variable measurement, and 611 questionnaires were used to verify research hypotheses.

The results indicate that both cognitive needs and personal integration needs have a significant positive impact on browse behavior; social integration needs and hedonic needs have a significant positive impact on content contribution behavior. Browse behavior not only directly affects but also indirectly influences product contribution through content contribution behavior.

Findings of this research provide community managers with useful insights into the relationship between content contribution and product contribution.

This study explains the formation mechanism of user product contribution and reveals the relationship between user content contribution and product contribution in online product community. This paper provides a different way of theorizing user contributions by incorporating uses and gratifications theory into the “Motivation-Behavior-Result” framework.

Recently, an increasing number of Internet users have begun to purchase various products, both secondhand and new, from online auction websites. However, some Internet users are still hesitant to purchase products from these websites. Moreover, the factors affecting male and female users' intention to shop on the websites may be different. Past studies have indicated that uncertainty is a major determinant of online shopping behaviors and may have different effects on men's and women's purchase intentions. Therefore, to explore the differences, this study seeks to propose a research model based on uncertainty and agency theory.

This study included members of the Yahoo! and PChome online portal sites in Taiwan as research subjects. A web survey was conducted, and data were collected from a total of 313 bidders of online auctions. The casual model was validated using partial least squares (PLS) techniques.

Gender moderated most of the relationships in the research model. The analysis results showed that the factors influencing men's and women's uncertainty are different. In addition, uncertainty has stronger influence on men's intention to purchase products from online auction websites.

This study contributes to a theoretical understanding of the factors that promote men's and women's intention to purchase products from online auction websites. From a practical perspective, insights provided by this study can help online auction service providers understand buyers' concerns and eliminate the sources of the uncertainty.

The primary value of this paper lies in providing a better understanding of male and female behaviors on online C2C market, and investigating the gender differences in the factors that influence the consumers' purchase in online auctions.