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Marketing in Customer Technology Environments
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83909-601-3

Book part
Publication date: 4 September 2003

Michael W Preis, Salvatore F Divita and Amy K Smith

Missing in most of the research on selling has been an examination of the process from the point of view of the customer. When satisfaction in selling has been considered…

Abstract

Missing in most of the research on selling has been an examination of the process from the point of view of the customer. When satisfaction in selling has been considered, researchers have focused on the satisfaction of the salesperson with his job and/or the impact of this job satisfaction on performance (e.g. Bluen, Barling & Burns, 1990; Churchill, Ford & Walker, 1979; Pruden & Peterson, 1971). To concentrate on salesperson performance while neglecting customers is to ignore the most important half of the relationship between buyers and sellers and entirely disregards the marketing concept and the streams of research in customer satisfaction. This research takes a different approach and examines customers’ satisfaction with salespeople.

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Evaluating Marketing Actions and Outcomes
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-76231-046-3

Book part
Publication date: 10 December 2015

Chun Kit Lok

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…

Abstract

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.

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E-services Adoption: Processes by Firms in Developing Nations
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78560-709-7

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Public Transport in Developing Countries
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-08-045681-2

Book part
Publication date: 30 October 2009

David J. Leonard

Although the commodification of black bodies amid state violence and widespread racism is nothing new, considering the histories of Hollywood, jazz, minstrelsy, or even athletes…

Abstract

Although the commodification of black bodies amid state violence and widespread racism is nothing new, considering the histories of Hollywood, jazz, minstrelsy, or even athletes enslaved on plantations (Rhoden, 2006), the hyper commodification of the contemporary black athlete, alongside expansive processes of globalization, growth in the profitability of black bodies, and their importance within colorblind discourse, demonstrates the importance of commodification within our new racist moment. Likewise, the shrinking opportunities afforded to African American youth, alongside clear messages about the path to desired black masculinity (Neal, 2005; Watkins, 1998; West, 1994), push black youth into a sports world where the possibility of striking it rich leads to a “win at all costs” attitude. Robin Kelley argues that African American youth participate in sports or engage in other cultural practices as an attempt to resist or negotiate the inherent contradictions of post-industrial American capitalism (Kelley, 1998). Patricia Hill Collins describes this process in the following terms: “Recognizing that black culture was a marketable commodity, they put it up for sale, selling an essentialized black culture that white youth could emulate yet never own. These message was clear – ‘the world may be against us, but we are here and we intend to get paid’” (Collins, 2006, p. 298). Celia Lury concurs, noting that heightened levels of commodification embody a shift from a racial logic defined by scientific racism to one centering on cultural difference. She argues that commodity racism “has contributed to shifts in how racism operates, specifically to the shift from a racism tied to biological understandings of ‘race’ in which identity is fixed or naturalized to a racism in which ‘race’ is a cultural category in which racial identity is represented as a matter of style, and is the subject of choice” (Lury, 1996, p. 169; as quoted in Spencer, 2004, p. 123). In the context of new racism, as manifested in heightened levels of commodification of Othered bodies, racial identity is simply a choice, but a cultural marker that can be celebrated and sold, policed, or demonized with little questions about racial implications (Spencer, 2004, pp. 123–125). Blackness, thus, becomes little more than a culture style, something that can be sold on Ebay and tried on at the ball or some something that needs to be policed or driven out-of-existence. Race is conceptualized “as a matter of style, something that can be put on or taken off at will” (Willis as quoted in Spencer, 2004, p. 123). Collins notes further that the process of commodification is not simply about selling “an essentialized black culture,” but rather a particular construction of blackness that has proven beneficial to white owners. “Athletes and criminals alike are profitable, not for the vast majority of African American men, but for people who own the teams, control the media, provide food, clothing and telephone services, and who consume seemingly endless images of pimps, hustlers, rapists, and felons” (2006, p. 311). bell hooks, who describes this process as “eating the other,” sees profit and ideology as crucial to understanding the commodification of black bodies. “When race and ethnicity become commodified as resources for pleasure, the culture of specific groups, as well as the bodies of individuals, can be seen as constituting an alternative playground where members of dominating races…affirm their power-over in intimate relations with the other” (Hooks, 1992, p. 23). She, along with Collins, emphasizes the importance of sex and sexuality, within this processes of commodification, arguing that commodification of black male (and female) bodies emanates from and reproduces longstanding mythologies regarding black sexual power.

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Studies in Symbolic Interaction
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84855-785-7

Book part
Publication date: 18 February 2021

Alexander Manu

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Dynamic Future-proofing
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80043-526-1

Book part
Publication date: 19 September 2022

Christian Fuchs

This essay asks: How can we understand and theorise the impacts of robots and Artificial Intelligence (AI) on everyday life based on Radical Humanism? How can Lefebvre's ideas be…

Abstract

This essay asks: How can we understand and theorise the impacts of robots and Artificial Intelligence (AI) on everyday life based on Radical Humanism? How can Lefebvre's ideas be used to reveal the ideological character of contemporary accounts of the impacts of robots and AI on society? It engages with rather unknown works of the Radical Humanist Henri Lefebvre on the sociology and philosophy of technology such as Vers le cybernanthrope (Towards the Cybernanthrope). Foundations of a Lefebvrian, dialectical, Radical Humanist approach to the sociology and philosophy of technology are presented. This essay introduces Lefebvre's notion of the cybernanthrope and sets it in relation to robots and AI in contemporary society. Based on Lefebvre's critique of the cybernanthrope, this chapter develops foundations of the ideology critique of robots and AI in digital capitalism. It discusses examples of technological deterministic and social constructivist thought in the context of robotics, AI, and cyborgs and argues for an alternative, Lefebvrian, dialectical approach. This essay situates Humanism in the context of computing, AI and robotics. The chapter advances a Lefebvrian Radical Humanism by engaging in analyses of AI and robots in Post-humanism, Transhumanism, techno-deterministic approaches, social construction of technology approaches, techno-optimism, techno-pessimism, acceleratonism, the mass unemployment hypothesis and Spike Jonze's movie Her. This chapter shows that the major lesson we can learn from the Radical Humanist sociology of technology and Henri Lefebvre's works on technology is that Radical Humanism helps creating and sustaining technologies for the many, not the few. This insight remains of high relevance in the age of digital capitalism, smart robots and AI.

Book part
Publication date: 14 October 2019

Stanislav Ivanov and Craig Webster

Purpose: The purpose of this chapter is to elaborate on the major conceptual and practical considerations of the use of robots, artificial intelligence and service automation…

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this chapter is to elaborate on the major conceptual and practical considerations of the use of robots, artificial intelligence and service automation (RAISA) in travel, tourism, and hospitality companies (TTH).

Design/methodology/approach: The chapter develops a conceptual framework of the major issues related to the use of RAISA in the travel, tourism and hospitality context.

Findings: The findings indicate that while there is a creeping incursion of RAISA into TTH, there are major concerns that the TTH industry has to consider in regard to automating TTH services.

Practical implications: In a practical sense, the chapter identifies the decisions that TTH industry professionals need to take when dealing with RAISA technologies. Furthermore, the chapter elaborates on the impacts RAISA have on business operations, marketing management, human resources and financial management of TTH companies. The TTH industry has to adjust its practices and communicate with its workforce in ways as not to increase Luddite tendencies and resistance among employees.

Social implications: The analysis shows that there is an upcoming era in which automation of services will be so advanced that wealthy countries may not need to import labour to make up with its own aging workforce, suggesting that RAISA and its further development has the potential for disrupting society and international relations.

Originality/value: This chapter provides a comprehensive review of the issues related to the use of RAISA in the TTH industry, including the drivers of RAISA adoption in tourism, advantages and disadvantages of RAISA technologies compared to human employees, decisions that managers need to take, and the impacts of RAISA on business processes. It shows how macroenvironmental pressures shape the microeconomic decisions to use RAISA in a TTH context.

Details

Robots, Artificial Intelligence, and Service Automation in Travel, Tourism and Hospitality
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78756-688-0

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 30 January 2002

Y.S. Brenner

Abstract

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A Research Annual
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84950-137-8

Abstract

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Videogames, Libraries, and the Feedback Loop: Learning Beyond the Stacks
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80071-505-9

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