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This paper aims to explore factors affecting young consumers’ purchasing of new smart products under the influence of social media.

Twenty semi-structured, face-to-face, in-depth interviews were conducted with young consumers who used new media, and five extended interviews were conducted with popular smartwatch retailers in Macau.

The findings reveal that they tend to garner product information from multiple channels of communication. Social media exert the greatest influence. Reliable information, strong branding and interactions with vendors are also influential, although new product pre-announcements may be boring and difficult to understand.

This study presents new insights into diffusion of innovation theory and provides retailers launching smart products with a better understanding of their target young customers’ purchasing behavior.

Almost every study undertaken by academicians or practitioners on the Internet of Things (IoT) has mainly highlighted the privacy concerns and information security issues with the IoT products. On the contrary, this paper aims to explore the motivators that could encourage customers of an IoT product to share their IoT product’s data with a third-party aggregator system to facilitate computer-generated product reviews which are defined as electronic Word of Thing (eWOT) in this paper.

An experiment was conducted with customized e-commerce prototypes of eWOT. Structural equation modeling analysis was conducted to test the measurement model by using confirmatory factor analysis and thereafter a structural model to test the relationships amongst the latent variables.

This paper found that five consumer motivators (personal innovativeness, enjoyment of helping, anticipated extrinsic rewards, moral obligations and venting negative feelings) contribute to eWOT intention.

This research advances the understanding of human interaction with computer-generated product reviews and opens up avenues for future studies in online consumer behavior in the IoT context.

This paper presents motivators for eWOT intention to share IoT product data. This is done through a novel concept of an experimental IoT-based prototype, namely, eWOT. These eWOT reviews can be generated from the IoT products data by applying analytics and using natural language generation. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no other study has been conducted on this subject.

Smart eyewear, such as augmented or virtual reality headset, allows the projection of virtual content through a display worn on the user’s head. This paper aims to present a mobile platform, named “CARTON”, which transforms a smartphone into smart eyewear, following a do-it-yourself (DIY) approach. This platform is composed of three main components: a blueprint to build the hardware prototype with very simple materials and regular tools; a software development kit (SDK) to help with the development of new applications (e.g. augmented reality app); and, finally, a second SDK (ControlWear) to interact with mobile applications through a Smartwatch.

User experiments were conducted, in which participants were asked to create, by themselves, the CARTON’s hardware part and perform usability tests with their own creation. A second round of experimentation was conducted to evaluate three different interaction modalities.

Qualitative user feedback and quantitative results prove that CARTON is functional and feasible to anyone, without specific skills. The results also showed that ControlWear had the most positive results, compared with the other interaction modalities, and that user interaction preference would vary depending on the task.

The authors describe a novel way to create a smart eyewear available for a wide audience around the world. By providing everything open-source and open-hardware, they intend to solve the reachability of technologies related to smart eyewear and aim to accelerate research around it.

This study aims to examine the relationship between key value propositions of luxury fashion smartwatches, consumer attitudes and their purchase intentions, and to explore Millennial consumers' overall perceptions of using these wearable technologies.

The research adopts a mixed methods approach. Quantitative enquiry consisting of 312 respondents was followed by two qualitative focus groups in order to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the issue.

The findings indicate that functional, individual and social factors influence Millennial consumers' adoption intention of luxury fashion smartwatches. Empirical results reveal that perceived hedonism and usefulness are the most important factors that motivate adoption intentions, followed by subjective norm and perceived conspicuousness, indicating that luxury smartwatches are perceived as both a technological device and luxury fashion accessory.

Given extant research on luxury fashion smartwatches is limited, this study contributes to this unique research stream by exploring Millennial's perceptions towards using these new generation smartwatches. This research develops a theoretical framework building on technology adoption model 2 (Venkatesh and Davis, 2000), theory of reasoned action (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1975) and luxury perception models (Wiedmann et al., 2007).

To develop the case, the authors used secondary sources including company annual reports, industry reports, news articles, social media sites, academic journal articles and company websites. This case has been classroom tested with students in the MBA Program and Master of Science in Management and Technology Program, and with undergraduates in an operations management course.

Movado Group, which has been a fierce competitor in the luxury watch market, has been facing unprecedented challenges posed by consumers’ enthusiasm for smartwatches and by their love of shopping online. The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic has intensified these problems and brought new setbacks. This case examines these challenges to the company’s current business model. It then explores opportunities that could transform Movado into an innovative, digitally oriented organization capable of reaching consumers in a dynamic market while combating intense competition from the smart wearable devices that threaten traditional watch companies. The case also discusses the importance of building a robust supply chain through the lens of Industry 4.0 to guard against future supply chain disruptions.

Instructors can use this case in operations and supply chain management classes at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The focus of the case aligns with discussions of supply chain management and Industry 4.0. In particular, the case uses supply chain innovation theory to investigate the implications of Industry 4.0 in the watch industry and dovetails into discussions of omni-channel experience and virtual reality in retail that integrate multiple points of contact to reach consumers efficiently.

Despite the increased use of wearables in education, little attention has been paid to why some students are more likely to adopt smartwatches than others. The question of what impacts the adoption of smartwatches in educational activities is still neglected. In addition, the question of how security determinants can affect the adoption of smartwatches by students has not been addressed yet. Hence, this study aims to develop a theoretical model by integrating the technology acceptance model (TAM) and protection motivation theory (PMT) to study students' adoption of smartwatches for educational purposes.

Questionnaires were distributed to university students in Malaysia. A total of 679 valid responses were collected. The collected data were analyzed using partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The results of data analysis provide support for the proposed model. Furthermore, the findings indicated that perceived vulnerability, self-efficacy, response efficacy, response cost, ease of use and perceived usefulness have significant effects on students' behavioral intention to use smartwatches for educational purposes. In addition, perceived ease of use of smartwatches for educational purposes helps students to realize the benefits of this technology.

This is an original study that develops a new holistic theoretical model by combining the PMT and TAM to study the effects of ease of use, usefulness and security-related factors on the adoption of smartwatches for educational purposes. The study offers practical implications for universities and higher education institutions to improve students' learning experiences to ensure their sustainability using new and innovative ways by exploiting new technologies such as smartwatches.

Consumers interacting with smart wearable devices is on the rise in the current health-AI market, which offers a great opportunity for companies to execute interactive marketing. However, this opportunity is mainly reliant on consumers' use of smart wearable devices. This paper aims to develop a model considering health and privacy factors to elucidate consumers' use of smart wearable devices for unleashing their full potential in interactive marketing.

The authors collected 250 samples via an online survey to validate the smart wearable devices usage model that elucidates factors that stimulate consumer usage, including privacy concerns, health consciousness and consumer innovativeness. The authors used structural equation modeling and multi-group analysis to test the hypotheses.

Privacy concerns of consumers have a negative effect on smart wearable devices usage, while health consciousness positively impacts consumers' usage of smart wearable devices. Consumer innovativeness indirectly affects smart wearable devices usage via effort expectancy. Experienced consumers are less sensitive to the performance expectancy but more affected by effort expectancy regarding smart wearable devices.

The present study contributes to the literature stream of health-AI usage by unraveling the impacts of privacy concerns and health consciousness and examining the moderating role of prior experience. The findings suggest marketers in the health-AI industry should endeavor to build transparent and sound privacy protection mechanisms and promote smart wearable devices by fostering health awareness of potential consumers.

Corporate Strategy; Strategy.

Post-graduate; Executive education; Under-graduate.

The case is based on Titan Company Limited (Titan), one of India’s profitable diversified companies. Set in April 2020, the case presents the evolution of Titan’s growth strategy in the last three decades. The company had grown by continuously exploring adjacent categories in the personal lifestyle space. The case asks whether the strategy that has guided Titan for the past three decades would continue to provide growth. What changes, if any, should be made by C.K. Venkataraman—the new CEO who had taken charge a few months back in October 2019—and his team?

The case describes Titan’s evolution from 1987 to 2020. ‘Winning times’, the first section of the case, describes Titan’s early choices in the watches business that helped the company achieve market dominance and its successive choices to expand the scope of watches businesses by entering new adjacencies. The section also details the evolution of Titan’s design, manufacturing, marketing and retailing capabilities in early years. ‘Looking for another gem’ describes Titan’s venture into the jewellery business – the failure of its early attempts to export and its pivot to domestic market and the successful turnaround of the business. ‘On the fast track to growth’ deals with Titan’s accessories business. The section ‘Eyeing new businesses’ describes Titan’s foray into prescription eyewear and precision engineering businesses and the company’s performance in these businesses. ‘A new identity’ details Titan’s adoption of a distinct corporate identity in 2013. ‘New businesses’ provides information on Titan’s recent foray into fragrances and sarees business. The case ends with the section ‘Years ahead’ which asks what changes, if any, should be made by the leadership team.

Upon completion of the case study discussion, participants will be able to: understand the concept of the ‘core competence’ and the three tests of core competence; how core competencies evolve in an organization over time; diversification (growth) strategy based on core competencies and adjacencies; and key managerial choices and organizational processes required to ensure effectiveness of diversification strategy based on core competencies.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

The purpose of the study is to introduce the idea of arena-relevant marketing capabilities and examine their impact on firm performance. Arena-relevant marketing capabilities are capabilities particularly relevant for success in a specific competitive arena in which rivals from different industries try to satisfy customer needs with alternative products and services. The authors focus on the luxury arena and pose the following research questions: Which are the arena-relevant marketing capabilities in the luxury competitive arena (i.e. luxury-arena-relevant capabilities)? (2) What is the relative importance of luxury-arena-relevant vs general marketing capabilities for firm performance in the luxury competitive arena?

To identify luxury-arena-relevant marketing capabilities, the authors conduct a qualitative study among 21 top managers of luxury brands. A subsequent large-scale managerial survey empirically tests the effects of luxury-arena-relevant vs general marketing capabilities on firm performance.

The study identifies four luxury-arena-relevant marketing capabilities: perfection in product creation, exclusive pricing, luxury-congruent storytelling and luxury brand inspiration. It confirms empirically that they have a higher impact on firm performance within the luxury competitive arena than general marketing capabilities.

The study takes an innovative perspective on marketing capabilities by linking them with the concept of a competitive arena and underlines the academic relevance of the concept of arena-relevant marketing capabilities for explaining firm performance.