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Based on the premises of Putnam’s bridging social capital, and on Ellison, Steinfield and Lampe’s notion of maintained social capital, the purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which the well-being variables of self-esteem and loneliness, as well as What’s App attitudes and intention to use variables, explain the social capital students gain from What’s App use.

The research was conducted in Israel during the second semester of the 2014 academic year and included 124 students from two major universities in Israel. Researchers used six questionnaires to gather data.

Findings confirm that the well-being variables, as well as What’s App attitudes and intention to use, affect the social capital students gain while using What’s App.

The findings of this study shed light on a new technological platform: What’s App that has rarely been examined to date. In addition, it expands the social capital and well-being perspectives to new media.

This study focusses on What’s App, a mobile messaging service for smartphones, that was founded in 2009. The purpose of this study is to explore which factors may influence students’ satisfaction and duration of time, spent on What’s App.

In order to answer this question it uses the Uses and Gratifications (U&G) approach (Katz, 1959), as well as the Big Five model (Costa and McCrae, 1992), and the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) (Davis, 1989). The research was conducted in Israel and encompassed 111 information science (IS) students. Researchers used six questionnaires to gather data.

The findings of this study shed light on a new technological platform: What’s App that has rarely been examined to date, and expands the U&G perspectives to new media. Findings confirm that the U&G paradigm, as well as personality characteristics and perceived enjoyment, effect What’s App satisfaction and duration, and highlight the importance of both the U&G approach and individual differences when exploring motivations underlying What’s App use.

This study proposes a theoretical framework by combining the U&G approach, constructs from the “Big Five” model, and one variable from the TAM, to investigate the attitudes of What’s App users, and propose possible factors that may explain why certain individuals use What’s App.

The case traces the development of the Under Armour (UA) brand, product, and market growth under CEO and founder Kevin Plank from its inception in 1996 through 2016. UA provides a cohesive case study of how to launch and sustain a consumer brand even in the face of its third-party manufacturing approach, which gives its apparel no patentable design or fabric technologies. The case uses UA's brand and advertising development as a backdrop for the current pivotal issue of how to target women to sustain growth. UA's stated goal is to build a $1.9 billion women's business by 2019.

In laying out UA's growth and competitive moves, the case lets students analyze broadcast, social media, and other digital advertising campaigns in view of the company's brand development and strategic targeting. The case also highlights the importance of leveraging brand heritage and historical differentiation while respecting key nuances when extending into new markets (i.e., moving from a predominantly male-driven audience to female). It also allows an exploration of how to use consumer insight and broader cultural attitudes and trends to support extending a position into new markets.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of Web 2.0-based social media for investor relations (IR), in the Middle Eastern (ME) context. IR is one of the under-researched topics of the corporate reporting subject area. This study seeks to contribute by investigating social media for IR in a ME context. It researches the perceptions of corporations, and individual and institutional investors regarding the phenomenon of social media for IR, given the particular cultural context. A conceptual model guiding future research is developed out of the analyzed data.

The research approach is qualitative and exploratory in nature, as the aim is to analyze perceptions and opinions of participants, in order to develop a theoretical argument based on these. To this end, the study employs a qualitative methodology and interview data collection. Data are analyzed using qualitative research coding styles.

Primary findings are encompassed in the theoretical framework, which theorises the adoption of social media for investor relation in particular but addresses voluntary corporate reporting in general. The study determines that there are various factors that support and hinder adoption, such as willingness to adopt social media for IR and potential risks and benefit, and that there are anticipated outcomes, such as improved communications between investors and corporations and a related power adjustment. The new element regarding IR that transpired out of the current study is the notion of investor empowerment and the directly related fear of lack, or essentially loss, of control.

The ME societies are very interested in social media applications, and utilize these in a broad range of their daily work and private activities. IR, as part of voluntary reporting, have been subject of recent debate, as little guidance is available and corporations’ practices vary. The current study highlights these factors in a largely under-researched market, the ME, and focuses a broader knowledge contribution based on the current findings. Finally, the concept of power is investigated in both its conventional and postmodern sense.

Service research holds that as services become more technology dominated, new service provider roles emerge. On a conceptual level, the potential impact of different roles has been discussed with regard to service provider readiness, job performance and overall experience. However, as yet, there is sparse empirical support for these conceptual interpretations. The purpose of this paper is to provide an understanding of the new service provider roles that emerge due to the increase of technology mediation in services.

This study follows a qualitative methodology. Insights are drawn from in-depth interviews with 32 junior and senior health-care service providers (across 12 specialties) and 5 information governance/management staff.

This analysis illustrates that new service provider roles include those of the enabler, differentiator, innovator, coordinator and sense-giver. By adopting these roles, health-care service providers reveal that they can encourage, support and advance technology mediation in services across different groups/audiences within their organizations (e.g. service delivery level, peer-to-peer level, organizational level). This paper further shows the relationships between these new service provider roles.

This study contributes to theory in technology-mediated services by illustrating empirically the range of activities that constitute each role. It also complements prior work by identifying that service providers adopt the additional role of sense-giver. Finally, this paper provides an understanding of how by taking on these roles service providers can encourage, support and advance technology mediation in services across different groups/audiences in their organization.

This study, by critically analyzing material from multiple sources, aims to provide an overview of what is available on evaluation tools for educational apps for children. To realize this objective, a systematic literature review was conducted to search all English literature published after January 2010 in multiple electronic databases and internet sources. Various combinations of search strings were used due to database construction differences, while the results were cross-referenced to discard repeated references, obtaining those that met the criteria for inclusion.

The present study was conducted according to the methods provided by Khan et al. (2003) and Thomé et al. (2016). The whole procedure included four stages: planning the review, identifying relevant studies in the literature, critical analysis of the literature, summarizing and interpreting the findings (Figure 1). Furthermore, in this analysis, a well-known checklist, PRISMA, was also used as a recommendation (Moher et al., 2015).

These review results reveal that, although there are several evaluation tools, in their majority they are not considered adequate to help teachers and parents to evaluate the pedagogical affordances of educational apps correctly and easily. Indeed, most of these tools are considered outdated. With the emergence of new issues such as General Data Protection Regulation, the quality criteria and methods for assessing children's products need to be continuously updated and adapted (Stoyanov et al., 2015). Some of these tools might be considered as good beginnings, but their “limited dimensions make generalizable considerations about the worth of apps” (Cherner, Dix and Lee, 2014, p. 179). Thus, there is a strong need for effective evaluation tools to help parents and teachers when choosing educational apps (Callaghan and Reich, 2018).

Even though this work is performed by following the systematic mapping guideline, threats to the validity of the results presented still exist. Although custom strings that contained a rich collection of data were used to search for papers, potentially relevant publications that would have been missed by the advanced search might exist. It is recommended that at least two different reviewers should independently review titles, abstracts and later full papers for exclusion (Thomé et al., 2016). In this study, only one reviewer – the author – selected the papers and did the review. In the case of a single researcher, Kitchenham (2004) recommends that the single reviewer should consider discussing included and excluded papers with an expert panel. The researcher, following this recommendation, discussed the inclusion and exclusion procedure with an expert panel of two professionals with research experience from the Department of (removed for blind review). To deal with publication bias, the researcher in conjunction with the expert panel used the search strategies identified by Kitchenham (2004) including: Grey literature, conference proceedings, communicating with experts working in the field for any unpublished literature.

The purpose of this study was not to advocate any evaluation tool. Instead, the study aims to make parents, educators and software developers aware of the various evaluation tools available and to focus on their strengths, weaknesses and credibility. This study also highlights the need for a standardized app evaluation (Green et al., 2014) via reliable tools, which will allow anyone interested to evaluate apps with relative ease (Lubniewski et al., 2018). Parents and educators need a reliable, fast and easy-to-use tool for the evaluation of educational apps that is more than a general guideline (Lee and Kim, 2015). A new generation of evaluation tools would also be used as a reference among the software developers, designers to create educational apps with real educational value.

The results of this study point to the necessity of creating new evaluation tools based on research, either in the form of rubrics or checklists to help educators and parents to choose apps with real educational value.

However, to date, no systematic review has been published summarizing the available app evaluation tools. This study, by critically analyzing material from multiple sources, aims to provide an overview of what is available on evaluation tools for educational apps for children.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the use patterns and ownership of smartphone apps among students at the Department of Library and Information Science (DLIS) at the South Valley University (SVU), Egypt. This study may help faculty members and students, as well as DLISs in general and SVU’s DLIS, in particular, to understand the nature and purpose of such use.

This study used quantitative research methodology in the form of a survey, which was undertaken from February to March 2015. The survey instrument was a self-administrated questionnaire, with a response rate 82.7 per cent (441/533).

The findings of this study showed that smartphone users (82.7 per cent) at SVU’s DLIS tended to be junior females. Smartphone non-users (17.3 per cent) tended to be also young females but primarily sophomores. The highest percentage of smartphone users had been using smartphones for four to five years, and the largest number of students was described to be advanced users who heard first about these mobile devices through friends and the Web. Most users had 21 to 25 apps. Social apps were the most popular and included Facebook, e-mail and Twitter. For professional purposes, students used smartphones more for communication purposes than learning purposes. Apps related to educational purposes included Google Mobile, Facebook, e-mail, Twitter, YouTube and Wikipedia Mobile. Students perceived most apps to be easy to use and useful to them. There were a number of uses for socializing including messaging, following the news and playing games. Students had mainly positive attitudes towards apps with a few negative concerns. Almost all students confirmed that they trust most apps. Barriers related to the use of apps included training and lack of awareness. Further research may be needed to specify the relationship between the students’ use of these apps and their academic performance. The main tasks done on smartphone devices were mainly for socializing. Students indicated that popular tasks and activities, such as sending and receiving messages, following the news, making communications, making chat, making friends, finding specific information, finding general information, making discussion groups, playing games, completing class assignments, checking materials related to courses, doing business, seeking jobs, watching movies, listening to music and accessing library services are important tasks accomplished by them through the use of these devices. The current study indicated very positive attitudes towards the use of these apps. Student at least agree with the statement that smartphone apps allow for easy dissemination of information, provide too much information, increase the speed of finding information, help communication, convenient, secure, build confident and reduce paper use. However, a large number of students also at least agree with the statement that these apps are time consuming, intimidating, addictive, violate privacy, require high language and technical skills, harmful and frustrating. Almost all students confirmed that they are at least trustful in some apps, such as WhatsApp, e-mail, YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and Viber. A large number of smartphone users surveyed in this study have been described to make excessive usage of social apps, such as communication apps, messaging/texting apps and social networking sites, which were at the forefront of use. Additionally, a large number of them adopted these devices, especially for communication purposes. The most used apps were Facebook, e-mail, Twitter, WhatsApp, YouTube and Viber. For professional purposes, students used smartphones more for communication purposes than learning purposes. However, some of the students were using some of apps related to educational purposes, such as Google mobile, Facebook, e-mail, Twitter, YouTube and Wikipedia mobile but not on a regular basis. Students perceived the use of e-mail app, Google mobile, Facebook app WhatsApp, Kik, Twitter, YouTube, Google maps, Viber, Line, Skype, Tango, Instagram, Flickr and Wikipedia mobile as at least fairly easy to them. Additionally, they perceived the use of e-mail app Google mobile, WhatsApp, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Viber, Instagram, Wikipedia mobile, Google maps, Kik, Skype, Line, Tango and Flickr as at least fairly useful to them, especially for the purpose socialization more than learning.

This study focuses only on undergraduate library and information science students belonging to SVU’s DLIS, Egypt. Any findings and conclusions resulting from this study are limited in scope to only SVU’s DLIS’s undergraduate students. The study does not contain a significantly large sample of a population from across Egypt to draw meaningful widespread conclusions indicative of such a larger population.

This study provides valuable insight into the use pattern of smartphones among a very important client group. It may serve as useful input to researchers who are interested in the study of mobile internet technologies (MITs), particularly in the education society.

Being the first study of its kind about university students in Egypt, it is considered a pioneering and a unique study among studies conducted in the field of ICTs and MITs, especially with this category of information users.

Retailers have recently leveraged store-loyal customers’ store attachment to maintain customer relationships and motivate patronage intentions. However, the COVID-19 outbreak has driven customer migration from offline to mobile channels. Mobile retail applications (APPs) have been used by numerous retailers to reach their customers. Nonetheless, it has yet to be determined (1) whether store attachment can facilitate (or impede) the adoption of mobile retail APPs and (2) whether store-loyal customers will continue visiting offline stores in the post-pandemic era. To address these questions, we propose a theoretical account using integrated theories on trust transfer and store attachment.

We conducted multi-stage, longitudinal field surveys in two cities of mainland China: Beijing and Guangzhou. From two rounds of data collection, 237 and 103 responses were obtained in March 2022. Hypotheses were tested by partial least squares – structural equation modelling (PLS–SEM).

Results showed that customer trust in an offline retailer can be transferred to the retailer’s mobile APP at the pre-adoption stage, facilitating APP adoption. Notably, store-loyal customers who exhibited a strong attachment to the physical store of a retailer were more inclined to transfer their trust to the mobile APP of the retailer. This occurrence leads to an increased adoption rate, enhanced post-adoption satisfaction and increased inclination to continue (rather than discontinue) usage.

This study is the first to investigate the changes in store-loyal customers' shopping behaviour in the mobile retail era and in the post-COVID-19 pandemic recovery. Our findings elucidate the role of physical store attachment in the trust-transfer mechanism. Furthermore, store attachment may not prevent customers’ channel migration behaviour. Retailers may have to re-consider how to manage channel cannibalisation issues in the post-pandemic recovery.

This study aims to test the effect of system quality, information quality and service quality on user engagement and its effect on smartphone travel apps’ satisfaction, love and behavioral intentions.

Using the self-selection sampling technique, data was collected from 417 respondents recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk. Data was subjected to partial least squares based structural equation modeling.

Results indicate that system quality, information quality and service quality have a significantly positive impact on user engagement with smartphone travel apps. Moreover, user engagement has a positive and significant impact on smartphone app satisfaction, smartphone app love and behavioral intentions.

This is the first study to integrate DeLone and McLean (2003) updated information system success model and stimulus-organism-response model to propose a holistic model of user’s engagement with smartphone travel apps.

本论文旨在检测智能手机旅游app的系统质量、信息质量、和服务质量对于用户参与度的作用, 以及其对app满意度、喜爱、和行为意愿的作用。

本论文采用自选取样技术, 通过Amazon Mechanical Turk共搜集417分问卷。本论文采用PLS-SEM分析数据。

研究结果表明, 系统质量、信息质量、和服务质量对智能手机旅游app的用户参与度起到显著的积极作用。此外, 用户参与度对智能手机app的满意度、喜爱、以及行为意图起到显著的积极作用。

本论文是首篇结合Delone和McLean(2003)改良版IS Success 模型和Stimulus-Organism模型, 以建立针对智能手机旅游app用户参与度的综合类模型。

The emergence of mHealth applications has led to the rise of health-based services delivered over smartphones. Younger people are often found to be more innovative toward technology, especially related to smartphones (Rai et al., 2013). Most mHealth application downloaders are continually shifting between applications because of the hyper-competition making achieving loyal consumers challenging (Racherla et al., 2012). The purpose of this paper is to study the determinants that help increase young consumers mHealth application loyalty. This study integrates self-determination theory (SDT), gamification elements and engagement to examine loyalty.

A valid sample of 263 college student’s data was obtained for data analysis from a survey conducted in multiple campuses of the Delhi University in India.

The three psychological needs: need for autonomy, need for competence and need for relatedness, showed a positive impact on intrinsic motivation. From the gamification factors; perceived playfulness, the level of challenge and social interaction, only the first two showed a positive impact on extrinsic motivation. Both motivation factors influence engagement, showing a frequent interaction with the application, leading to loyalty.

Previous studies examined the adoption of mHealth services, this study is one of the first to examine young consumers’ loyalty in using mhealth apps. It sheds light on the existing literature and contributes to research on mHealth applications by determining the factors that lead to loyalty by the young consumers.