Commerce Environment Research Articles

Evaluating the user interface and experience of VR in the electronic commerce environment: a hybrid approach

In recent years, to attract global manufacturers, media reporters, and consumer attention, a popular term in search engines has been virtual reality (VR). In addition to video, entertainment, education, and medical, VR can be used in electronic commerce (E-commerce). Currently, most E-commerce platforms present products using 2D images, text-based interface or animation. However, consumers want to know more about the products while online shopping and compare the product’s material, color, and other elements. Therefore, combining VR with E-commerce can improve the user’s shopping experience. This study will focus on the characteristics of VR and E-commerce. This feature can be used to interactively study UI and UX between users and designers to generate design criteria. Experimental design is carried out through the modified SEM-CPU method. Then, we use the think-aloud protocols, Questionnaire for User Interaction Satisfaction, and User Experience Questionnaire to understand the user’s thoughts on UI and UX. Moreover, this study uses focus group to interview experts to obtain expert opinions on VR E-commerce. Induction and integration of data is carried out to produce design criteria by experimental results. Finally, the Delphi method is utilized to validate and evaluate the practicability of the design criterion. Through the “UI and UX design criteria of VR” generated by this study, many important design elements can be proposed and assessed in VR E-commerce. In closing, this study provides design and development suggestions for VR developers to improve the positive influence of UX.

Corporate Social Responsibility in Malaysia

The field of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has developed exponentially in the last decade and is consistently getting to be a worldwide slant. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a worldwide matter around the world that comes about an expanding number of studies on CSR universally as well as in Malaysia. Furthermore, the importance of CSR practices was emphasized by companies in order to ensure its sustainability in corporate world which are focused on (a) environment, (b) social dimension sustainability, (c) economic advancement, (d) stakeholder behaviour and (e) ethical evolution of society. In this manner, this paper gives a concept of CSR writing that has been conducted in Malaysia to assess the execution of CSR among organizations in Malaysia. It is presently anticipated that organizations expressly take into consideration all perspectives of their execution, not as it were their money related comes about, but moreover their social and commerce environment. Subsequently, most of organizations are presently locked in genuine endeavours to characterize and coordinated CSR into all perspectives of their businesses and exhibitions. The point of our think about is to get it this slant in Malaysia and particularly to explore (i) the status of CSR in Malaysia; (ii) different CSR practices in Malaysia; and (iii) future dissemination of CSR in Malaysia. Finally, over the last few decades, Malaysia has been gradually improving its alignment with global management practices such as quality management and ISO 9002.

Arbitration Mechanisms in Settlement of Maritime Disputes in Nigeria: Challenges and Prospects

The maritime industry is globally recognized as one of the most economically viable industry capable of facilitating sustainable development thus, amicable settlement of maritime disputes is paramount to guarantee unhindered trade and commerce environment. Arbitration is an age-long Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) mechanism applied in the amicable settlement of disputes in a relaxed and semi-formal environment. It is particularly suitable for resolving commercial disputes because of the enforceability of arbitral awards as depicted by the existing international arbitral jurisprudence. Various law of the Sea tribunals such as the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) or an ad hoc panels expressly recognizes arbitration as one of the models for settlement of disputes as a suitable alternative to litigation. In Africa, as nations recover from the era of ocean blindness, maritime practice and administration is prioritized to aid economic growth. The objective of this study is to evaluate application of arbitration as an ADR mechanism for settling maritime disputes in Nigeria’s maritime practices with the aim of identifying the challenges confronting Nigerian’s involvement in maritime business, particularly as it relates to application of Arbitration to dispute settlement. It was found that there are certain loopholes in relevant laws which work hardship against local businesses in cases of maritime disputes settlement. The study suggests viable solutions based on lessons from other climes to create level playing field for parties who opt for arbitration to settle maritime related disputes.

A privacy-preserving certificateless two-party authenticated key exchange protocol without bilinear pairing for mobile-commerce applications

ABSTRACTIn recent times, several three-party authenticated key exchange (3PAKE) and two-party authenticated key exchange (2PAKE) protocols have been proposed to establish secret session key for confidentiality of transactions among clients in mobile commerce (m-commerce) environments. However, the involvement of a trusted server (TS) in every communication as well as the numerous communication rounds and many message exchanges in 3PAKE make them unsuitable for m-commerce applications. In this work, we propose an efficient and privacy-preserving 2PAKE protocol based on certificateless public key cryptography using elliptic curve cryptography with only one communication round and one message exchange between two clients. The protocol is provably secure, autonomous and provides conditional, location and identity privacies. The performance analysis shows that the proposed protocol has better efficiency than the existing related protocols in terms of computation cost and communication overheads.

A framework for antecedents of trust in social commerce

Trust is essential in social commerce environment, where consumers rely on feedback and advice that they collect from social platforms. Despite the importance of trust in virtual environments, there are a limited number of studies in this field. Research need to identify the main drivers that establish trust in social commerce domain. To this end, this study reviewed the literature related to trust in social commerce environment and proposed a framework for the antecedents of trust in social commerce. The proposed framework suggests two main components: social networking site and social company. The results supported nine hypotheses out of ten excluding the relationship between perceived-ease-of-use (PEOU) and content quality. Word-of-mouth, communication, perceived ability, after sale service, trust in transaction, and perceived usefulness were found as key factors that significantly impacted trust in social commerce. The model explained 33.2% of the variance in trust in social commerce.

A Dual-Channel Equilibrium Management Model for Service Products Under Electronic Commerce Environment

With the development of electronic commerce, the online auction has been used as another basic sales channel in addition to the traditional list price. How to balance two channels to maximize the total expected profit under limited supply has drawn wide attention from both researchers and sellers. Faced with this issue, this paper proposes an equilibrium management model for dual-channel sales of the service products aiming to optimize the list price and the best setting of the auction scheme. First, we analyze the symmetric equilibrium participation strategy of rational consumers facing two channels. We model the consumer choice of channels through a threshold type function based on the consumer’s utility represented by a power exponential function, and then prove the unique existence of an auction-participation symmetric equilibrium, and demonstrate its monotone property in the customer’s valuation. Based on the strategy of consumers, from the perspective of sellers, an equilibrium management model is built to obtain the optimal choice of the auction quantity, auction duration, and the posted price. Finally, an airline example is used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed model. This work enables the seller to segment the market appropriately so that two channels reinforce each other and cannibalization is mitigated.

The Effectiveness of Consumer Perceived Mobile Commerce Environment on Shopping Value, Trust, and Information Accept

The Effectiveness of Consumer Perceived Mobile Commerce Environment on Shopping Value, Trust, and Information Accept

Ef ects of O2O Commerce Service Quality on Customer Satisfaction and Repurchase Intention in Korea and Japan

본 논문은 최근 더욱 각광받고 있는 O2O커머스 시장을 배경으로 하여 한국과 일본의 O2O커머스 서비스 품질과 소비자만족도 및 재구매의도를 실증적으로 비교 분석하는 것에 연구 목적을 두고 있다. 이에 SERVQUAL모형을 기반으로 서비스품질측정을 위한 연구모형을 설계하고 구조방정식 모델링분석 방법을 적용하였으며, 실증분석에는 SPSS 24 통계패키지와 AMOS 24 프로그램이 활용되었다. 연구결과에 의하면 양 국가에서 O2O커머스의 온라인, 오프라인 서비스품질은 모두 만족도에 유의하게 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났으며, 국가 변수의 조절효과는 나타나지 않는 것으로 파악되었다. 이는 세계 수준의 온라인 시장을 구축한 양국의 유사한 O2O커머스 환경에서 비롯된 것으로 설명된다.This study focused on the background of the O2O commerce market which is getting more popular. At this perspective, the purpose of this study is to analyze and compare the O2O commerce service quality of Korea and Japan. Based on the SERVQUAL model, a research model for service quality measurement was designed and a structural equation modeling analysis method was applied. The SPSS 24 statistical package and the AMOS 24 program were used for empirical analysis. According to the results of the study, both online and offline service quality of O2O commerce in both countries have a significant effect on customer satisfaction and the moderate effect of national variables was not found. This can be explained by the similar O2O commerce environment of the two countries that have been built the world-class online market.

The impact of atmospheric cues on consumers’ approach and avoidance behavioral intentions in social commerce websites

Approach and avoidance are typical behavioral tendencies of consumers when exposed to a new environment. Drawing on the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) framework, this study investigates the effects of atmospheric cues on consumers' approach and avoidance intentions in social commerce environments. We elucidate the interaction mechanisms between atmospheric cues (task, aesthetic and social cues) and consumers' evaluations through the lens of perceived affordances. Then we investigate how three types of perceived affordances (utilitarian, hedonic and connective) influence consumers’ approach and avoidance behavioral intentions. A three-way factorial experiment provides strong evidence that task cues, aesthetic cues and social cues elicit perceived utilitarian, hedonic and connective affordances, respectively. Approach behavioral intentions were affected by all three types of perceived affordances, yet avoidance intentions were only affected by perceived utilitarian and hedonic affordances. This paper discusses both theoretical and practical implications for social commerce research.

Analysis of influence factors of customer loyalty under e-commerce environment

Whether in physical commerce environment or e-commerce environment, cultivating and maintaining customer loyalty is the key factor for enterprises to make profits. How to systematically construct customer relationship and effectively enhance customer loyalty is an important problem that online stores must face in the e-commerce environment. This paper points out the rational and active features of the online customer loyalty. Based on the above analysis, the index system of influence factors of customer loyalty under e-commerce environment is given, which involves three first-level indicators (index of behaviour, attitude and affection) and twelve second-level indicators (number of repeat purchases, frequency of repeat purchases, number of recommendation to other customers, communication time with the customer service, time conversion cost, economic conversion cost, sensitivity degree to the price, premium ability, privacy protection, business reputation, perceived service quality, perfection degree of credit system). The weight of each index is given according to Entropy Method.

Skewing users’ rational risk considerations in social commerce: An empirical examination of the role of social identification

Social commerce has emerged as a new platform that enables users to conduct shopping assisted by inputs from other members and to publicly comment on transactions or products. It therefore adds a social aspect to traditional online commerce environments. Nevertheless, the role of the social facet embedded in such transactions in influencing user behaviors is not fully understood. In this study, we rely on theories of risk deterrence in decision-making and the “risky/choice shift” logic to suggest that the social identification of users regarding their community members skews the way they consider risks in decision-making on these sites. Using data from 175 users of etsy.com, we show that perceived commerce risk reduces intentions to buy from the website and that perceived participation risk curtails intentions to post comments on social commerce forums. The findings further show that the influence of these risk assessments is reduced when the degree of social identification with the website community increases; these risk considerations become negligible in decision-making processes when ’social identification is one standard deviation above the mean. Hence, users’ social identification with the social commerce website community skews their rational decision-making.

Factors and characteristics that influence consumers’ participation in social commerce

Purpose The popularity of social networks has created business opportunities to the electronic commerce environment, being recently named as social commerce. The purpose of this paper is to analyze – from the perspective of the consumer – the main factors and characteristics (personal or related to the products bought) that have influenced consumers to participate in social commerce buying, recommending, comparing and sharing information about products and services in online marketplace and communities. Design/methodology/approach The study is characterized as an exploratory descriptive research, operationalized through a survey, applied to 229 participants of the social network Facebook. The research involves a qualitative stage for identifying potential variables that influence the participation of consumers in social commerce, followed by a quantitative one, including data collection procedures, validation and data analysis. Findings The results show trust, perceived usefulness and information quality as the factors that most influence consumer participation in social commerce, being trust in the website the main predictor. Concerning the characteristics, the findings also show that more expensive products and products classified as computers and electronics use ratings, recommendations and comments online more intensively than books, travel, household appliances and fashion products. Research limitations/implications As limitations of the study, the authors highlight the small number of interviews conducted during the qualitative stage, which may have left out other relevant factors of the analysis on consumers’ participation in social commerce. Another limitation refers to the selection of the participants of the study; all members of the social network Facebook are identified by the contact net of the authors – though it has been tried to enlarge this contact list by requesting the respondents to share the questionnaire link with their acquaintances, we should be cautious about the generalization of the results. Originality/value The study proposes an instrument to identify factors and characteristics that are taken into consideration by the consumers when participating in social commerce. Such a tool can be replicated by firms included in this type of commerce, in order to evaluate the behavior and perception of their customers about their performance in the online environment. This study also highlights trust, information quality and perceived usefulness of the website as the most influencing factors of the consumers’ participation in social commerce. In addition, the authors identified that more expensive products and products classified as computers and electronics seem to use more intensively ratings, recommendations and comments online provided by other people. This fact supports the research literature that (positive or negative) online recommendations influence the consumers purchase behavior, reducing uncertainties about the products and increasing credibility and trust.

Towards building a value co-creation circle in social commerce

The rise of social commerce has brought several new challenges for firms and reshaped the way people purchase products and services. Firms are struggling to co-create value with customers to identify their needs and offer innovative products. To address these challenges, this study proposes a value co-creation circle and explores the key factors for developing a successful value co-creation circle on social commerce platforms. A case study of a taxi company in Taiwan was conducted. Data was collected from face-to-face interviews with the managers and analysed using Google Analytics. The proposed value co-creation circle not only creates benefits from network externality by the growth in membership, but also enhances service quality in the social commerce platform. This study explores a new perspective of the value co-creation circle in the social commerce environment that allows practitioners to develop a value circulation by network externality and co-create value with customers.

Factors Affecting Online Impulse Buying: Evidence from Chinese Social Commerce Environment

First, the purpose of this study is to examine the impact of situational variables, scarcity and serendipity, on online impulse buying (OIB) in Chinese social commerce (SC) environment. Second, the study further assesses the moderating role of five dimensions of hedonic shopping value. Data were gathered from 671 online shoppers who come from two metropolitan cities of China, Beijing, and Shanghai. Structure equation modeling utilized was generated by AMOS 23 version to test the study hypotheses. The results confirm that situational factors positively influence the online impulse buying among Chinese online shoppers in SC environment. Four dimensions of hedonic shopping value (social shopping, relaxation shopping, adventure shopping and idea shopping) positively moderate the relationship between serendipity and OIB; value shopping is insignificant with moderation effect. The finding is helpful to the online retailers and SC web developers by recommending them to take the scarcity and serendipity in their consideration. These factors have the potential to motivate the consumers to initiate the hedonic shopping aptitude to urge to buy impulsively. Unlike the previous work which remained unsuccessful in incorporating all factors into one study, this study has incorporated irrational and unplanned consumption along with rational and planned one in the same research.

Exploring smartphone social networking services for mobile tourism

Through advanced mobile technologies, multi-functionalities offered by smartphones are emerging for people to use during travel. Under this circumstance, smartphone users can promptly receive information and accordingly adjust travel plans. Such scenario can be extended to social networking services (SNS) for accessing and sharing information on-the-go. However, there is little research in such mobile SNS context. This study aims to investigate the mobile users' willingness to specifically trust travel advice obtained from smartphone SNS, by conducting a quantitative survey to explore factors influencing users' trust on travel advice acquired from smartphone SNS (TTAASS). Our findings show that both perceived value of smartphone SNS (PVSS) and enjoyment of SNS activity (ESA) significantly influence TTAASS, mobile users' smartphone experience significantly affects ESA and PVSS, ESA significantly affects PVSS and facilitating conditions significantly affect ESA. These findings can help managers harvest the benefits of mobile social commerce in the ubiquitous commerce environment.

Study on the Recommended Model Based on Personal Information System

This paper classifies the scenario elements which affect the real-time information needs of mobile commerce users, and proposes a nomination model that integrates the user’s personalized context elements. In this model, the top K scenarios that have the greatest impact on each user’s instant information demands are calculated from the user’s current scenario and historical data, thereby constructing a user personalized situation and improving it as an input condition that existing scenario-based multi-dimensional information recommendation algorithm is used for project nomination. Result/Conclusion: The improved algorithm and other three algorithms were compared by Movie lens and MBook Crossing dataset. The experimental results show that the model has higher prediction accuracy and can effectively improve user satisfaction and more effectively and solve personalized nomination issues in a mobile commerce environment.

A framework for antecedents of trust in social commerce

Trust is essential in social commerce environment, where consumers rely on feedback and advice that they collect from social platforms. Despite the importance of trust in virtual environments, there are a limited number of studies in this field. Research need to identify the main drivers that establish trust in social commerce domain. To this end, this study reviewed the literature related to trust in social commerce environment and proposed a framework for the antecedents of trust in social commerce. The proposed framework suggests two main components: social networking site and social company. The results supported nine hypotheses out of ten excluding the relationship between perceived-ease-of-use (PEOU) and content quality. Word-of-mouth, communication, perceived ability, after sale service, trust in transaction, and perceived usefulness were found as key factors that significantly impacted trust in social commerce. The model explained 33.2% of the variance in trust in social commerce.

Supply chain quality and pricing decisions under multi-manufacturer competition

PurposeIn today’s global competition, supply chain quality management is the key to a firms’ competitiveness. However, managers find that making sound quality and pricing decisions under a complex multi-echelon in the current competitive electronic commerce environment is daunting and challenging. The purpose of this paper is to examine the optimum quality strategies under different cooperative mechanisms and investigate its effects on channel members’ profits.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is a result of a China-UK collaborative research effort, involving researchers with expertise in information systems, quality management, supply chain management, pricing, and game theory models. The authors consider the quality decisions of a single product in a supply chain system that consists of a supplier and two competing manufacturers. The authors examine the optimum quality strategies under different cooperative mechanisms and investigate its effects on channel members’ profits. A modified Nerlove-Arrow model is employed to investigate the quality levels on goodwill and product sales.FindingsThe results reveal that the traditional cooperative program is not very effective in the horizontal competitive market; and each channel member may have a profit improvement when the supplier integrates with a manufacturer.Originality/valueThe authors believe that this paper will contribute to the existing body of knowledge. Moreover, the paper provides insights for managers to better manage their supply chain quality management in an information-centric context.

Analysis of the Performance of Electronic Commerce in Ukraine

The current phase in the development of economic relations is characterized by the high level of informatization. The rapid science & technology advancement in information and communication technologies pushes up the development of consumption, industry and trade, and lays the background for new forms of economic relations. Electronic commerce is an advanced area of business. Taking advantages from electronic trade, organizations can: considerably reduce financial and time resources, enhance competitiveness, enter new markets, obtain supplementary information on consumer needs, and rapidly respond on the changing demand. Many companies take advantage from electronic commerce and set up pre-sales and after-sales services.
 Today, the Ukrainian market of electronic commerce is undergoing rapid expansion. The objective of the study is to analyze the expansion dynamics of electronic commerce by Ukrainian region and find the latest tendencies in this industry. The analysis is made by statistical data on Internet use in Ukraine. The overall performance of electronic commerce in Ukraine lags far behind the analogous figures of Western countries. Negative effects of the economic crisis, lack of high performing telecommunication networks in a number of Ukrainian regions, and limited use of advanced electronic payment systems hampered the development of the electronic market in Ukraine, and still hamper it in some way. Yet, due to ICT solutions, the environment for electronic commerce, in which the increasing demand pushes up the supply, have recently been improved.
 The method for studying the electronic commerce performance by Ukrainian region by use of the dynamic personified matrix is proposed. On its basis the ranking of Ukrainian regions is built, the regions with the highest performance in electronic commerce are identified, performance trends are analyzed. It is found that the electronic commerce market is concentrated mainly in large cities that are regional centers. The reason behind is that provider firms and firms rendering hosting services are concentrated in large cities, whereas small towns and villages have no access to high quality connection. Therefore, the development of advanced telecommunications market is supposed to contribute to the expansion of the electronic commerce market, enabling to take full advantage from the Ukrainian potential in electronic trade and enhance the competitiveness of Ukrainian business.

The Channel Conflict and Management Strategy of O2O Network Marketing Pattern under the Electronic Commerce Environment

With the application of Internet technology and the gradually popularization of the network, the electronic commerce rapidly advanced at an unprecedented speed. Starting with the electronic retail and electronic trade evolves to the present stage of online trading market, it gradually become the main part of strategic emerging industry and the modern ways of distribution under market economy environment. Electronic commerce as a new kind of economic activity in Internet environment, it realizes the integrated information of the whole process of production, procurement and sales. All transactions are network virtualization transaction, which can be called a completely new channels different form the traditional marketing channels. This paper discusses the channel conflict of O2O network marketing pattern under the electronic commerce environment and then puts forward some management strategies.