Information-intensive Industry Research Articles

An integrated measure of eWOM usefulness in the leisure travel: conceptualisation, scale development, and validation

ABSTRACT Internet access and social media led to an astronomical spike in eWOM. Tourism is an information-intensive industry, and travelers frequently use eWOM for travel decisions. Nevertheless, there is a lack of an integrated scale to measure the eWOM Usefulness for influencing cognitive, affective, and conative attitudes in leisure travel. The present study develops and validates an eWOM usefulness scale using the scientific scale development process to fill the research gap. A two-stage study (study 1: EFA; study 2: Measurement Model Assessment – CFA) confirmed the reliability and validity of the scale. Findings suggested the role of eWOM volume, eWOM valence, argument quality, and source credibility in eWOM usefulness. This study is a forerunner in using the stimulus organism response (SOR) lens to explain eWOM usefulness in leisure travel.

Digital Health Value Realization Through Active Change Efforts.

Digital health has massive potential in health care but has been slow to evolve in comparison to other information-intensive industries, which have more readily taken advantage of new technology. One of the key barriers has been the complex relationship between the perceived return on investment for the investor and the resulting value to patients and caregivers. Those actors who pay for technologies do not always see an appreciable return for themselves, while those actors who must apply the technology to generate value are not always incentivized to do so. This misalignment across health system payers and administrators, clinicians and patients must be better understood and addressed to help accelerate digital health. This paper will examine this challenge through the clinician experience, using empirical case examples from Canada to illustrate opportunities for change. While many factors may influence digital health adoption, this paper specifically aims to explore the shifts in the balance of the perceived value of implementing digital health tools, vs. the efforts required to adopt them. It will explore two contrasting case examples: clinical adoption of EMRs in Canada from 2009 to 2015, and clinical adoption of virtual care technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020 to 2021. In 2006, Canada lagged peer countries significantly in the adoption of electronic medical records (EMR) in community-based care. Financial support and cooperation of multiple levels of government and clinical stakeholders were required to address the misaligned incentives, which led to significant uptake by care providers. The rapid adoption of virtual care in Canada in response to the pandemic provides another relevant example of the importance of alignment among the factors of clinical workflows, clinical appropriateness, technology integration and payment models. Experts have highlighted the need for standardization, regulation, and clear policy to ensure sustainable, high quality virtual care that complements in-person care. In both cases, the costs and effort of adopting new technologies outweighed direct clinician value, requiring change initiatives to catalyze progress. This imbalance could be unique to these examples in Canada, and may not be globally generalizable to the adoption of all digital health tools. However, how change efforts can be tailored to adjust to a rapidly evolving health care workforce, spanning diverse jurisdictions and stakeholder groups will be critical to the sustainability of virtual care adoption. Furthermore, what key elements must be considered to guide change initiatives for successful implementation, designed to influence change while adding value for patients, clinicians and Canada's health care systems? Using insights from successful change initiatives past and present, this paper aims to answer these questions to enable a smoother transition to digital health innovations of the future.

Using Activity Theory to Review Internet Technology Engagement by Real Estate Negotiator in Malaysia towards Agency Best Practice

Real estate is a revelatory industry for the study of ICT uses because it is information-intensive and realtors are information intermediaries between buyers and sellers. As agents, buyers and sellers increase their uses of ICT, they also change how they approach their daily work. Information intensive industries, by their nature, show the greatest impacts due to ICTs that enable information sharing and the bypassing of traditional information intermediaries. However, while the effects and uses of ICT are often associated with organizations (and industries), their use occurs at the individual level. In other words, it is changes to individual work related to the use of ICTs that reshape both organization and industry structures, and vice-versa. In this study, we use activity theory to provide an analytic perspective within the setting in Malaysia. Data reveal historical structures of this industry guiding the day-to-day work of agents, buyers, sellers and the role of agency. Many of these structures are embodied in a set of explicit contracts that reify existing structures and legitimize realtors’ actions. While looking from the agencies practices, we explain possible improvement in the real estate industry following the advancement of internet & mobile technology, viewing the possibilities towards the use of IOT in real estate industry.

The Big Data Regulator, Rebooted: Why and How the FDA Can and Should Disclose Confidential Data on Prescription Drugs

Medicines and vaccines are complex products, and it is often extraordinarily difficult to know whether they help or hurt. The FDA holds an enormous reservoir of data on that sheds light on that precise question, yet currently releases only a trickle to researchers, doctors, and patients. Existing processes that might allow public access to such data, such as FOIA, have failed, and reactive disclosure as a model cannot succeed. We present here a wealth of new evidence about the urgency of the problem and argue that the FDA must “reboot” its rules to proactively disclose all safety and efficacy data for drugs and vaccines, with minimal redaction — what we deem “data publicity.” We also provide a road-map to enable this data publicity and show that it can be done without legislative reform, while respecting privacy, protecting any legitimate trade secrets, and maintaining or improving incentives to innovate. The regulatory state in the information age faces enormous challenges. Medicines and vaccines are just two examples of the enormous array of products that are increasingly information-ally complex. The FDA must adapt to protect and expand structural accountability, and to protect the public and its trust. The model we offer here could, we suggest, become a template for other regulatory agencies, enabling better oversight of information-intensive industries and helping safeguard the agencies themselves.

Antecedents and Impact of E-commerce Adoption among New Venture Firms: Evidence from Tourism and Hospitality Industry

Newly created ventures face many challenges, of which, successfully competing with rivals is a daunting task. In order to grow, and turn profitable, start-up firms must extensively search for strategies that create and sustain competitive advantage. Adoption of e-commerce is considered as a very potent strategy to beat competitors and generate profits. Taking tourism and hospitality, an information-intensive industry, this study set two primary objectives regarding e-commerce adoption. First, to investigate the antecedents of e-commerce adoption and second, to gather empirical evidences about the impact of e-commerce adoption on such firms. The study was motivated by the paucity of literature on adoption of e-commerce by start-up firms, especially in the tourism and hospitality industry. The empirical results showed that market- and organization-related factors were prime determinants of e-commerce adoption by start-up firms. The study also confirmed the improved performance of tourism and hospitality start-ups as a result of e-commerce adoption.

AI Down on the Farm

Agriculture has become an information-intensive industry. In the production of crops and animals, precision agriculture approaches have resulted in the collection of spatially and temporally dense datasets by farmers and agricultural researchers. These big datasets, often characterized by extensive nonlinearities and interactions, are often best analyzed using machine learning (ML) or other artificial intelligence (AI) approaches. In this article, we review several case studies where ML has been used to model aspects of agricultural production systems and provide information useful for farm-level management decisions. These studies include modeling animal feeding behavior as a predictor of stress or disease, providing information important for developing precise and efficient irrigation systems, and enhancing tools used to recommend optimum levels of nitrogen fertilization for corn. Taken together, these examples represent the current abilities and future potential for AI applications in agricultural production systems.

Analysis on the Economic Development and Innovation Path of Tourism Cultural and Creative Industry Based on Big Data Statistics

As Computer Internet improves by leaps and bounds, human beings have been in an era full of data and information. Various efficient and advanced management software has filled every aspect of human life, and the rapid growth of it is more and more suitable for people’s travel and lifestyle. As an information-intensive industry, tourism cultural and creative industry is naturally integrated with information technology. Therefore, the use of big data on the Internet has triggered two revolutions as the core. All of this have profoundly changed the mode of running, management and operation, and play a vital role in the development of such enterprises.

Customer attrition analysis in the securities industry: a large-scale field study in Korea

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to identify the attributes that predict customer attrition behavior in the brokerage and investment banking sectors.Design/methodology/approachThe authors analyze the complete stock trading records and customer profiles of 458,098 retail customers from a Korean brokerage house. The authors develop customer attrition prediction models and further explore the practicality of these models using statistical classification techniques.FindingsThe results from three different binary selection models indicate that customer transaction patterns effectively explain the attrition of active retail customers in subsequent periods. The study results demonstrate that monetary value variables are the most critical for predicting customer attrition in the securities industry.Research limitations/implicationsThis study contributes to the customer attrition literature by documenting the first large-scale field-based evidence that confirms the practicality of the canonical recency, frequency and monetary (RFM) framework in the investment banking and brokerage industry. The findings advance previous survey-based studies in the financial services industry by identifying the attributes that predict customer attrition behaviors in the securities industry.Practical implicationsThe outcomes can be easily operationalized for attrition prediction by practitioners in financial service firms. Moreover, the ex post density of inactive customers in the top 10 percent most-likely-to-churn group is estimated to be five to six times the ex ante unconditional attrition ratio, which ascertains that the attributes recognized in this study work well for the purpose of target marketing.Originality/valueWhile the securities industry is regarded as one of the most information-intensive industries, detailed empirical investigation into customer attrition in the field has lagged behind partly due to the lack of suitable securities transaction data and demographic information at the customer level. The current research fills this gap in the literature by taking advantage of a large-scale field data set and offers a starting point for more elaborate studies on the drivers of customer attrition in the financial services sector.

Big Data Analytics Implications for Smart Tourism Destinations Towards the Enrichment of Content Tourism

Smart tourism has huge amount of Social Big data available from tourists can cherish the value conception process for a Smart Tourism Destination. Applying a multiple-case study analysis, a set of regional tourist experiences related and destination, to derive patterns and opportunities of value creation generated by Big Data in tourism. Near conclusions and data in terms of improving decision making, creating marketing strategies with more personalized offerings, transparency and trust in dialogue with customers and stakeholders, and emergence of new business models, exploitation of Big Data in the context of information-intensive industries and mainly in Tourism. Smart Tourism Destination today is the front line of study in the tourism field and is a promising area from various research perspectives in terms of models, tools and strategies to keep up the process of intelligent configuration of destinations.

Empirical study of the Environmental Kuznets curve and Environmental Sustainability curve hypothesis for Australia, China, Ghana and USA

This study examines Environmental Kuznets and Environmental Sustainability curve hypotheses for Australia, China, Ghana and the USA from 1971 to 2013 in order to examine the factors contributing to adverse greenhouse gas emission and economic impacts relative to their development. The study revealed that the decline of carbon dioxide emissions in developed countries can be attributed to a paradigm shift and structural change from high-energy intensive and carbon-intensive industries to services and information-intensive industries. The increasing levels of carbon dioxide emissions in developing and least developing countries can be attributed to the economy driven by agriculture, transport and services. Environmental policies and regulations in developing and least developing countries are weaker compared to developed countries, as such, they become a haven for high-energy and carbon-intensive industries. The high awareness of environmental sustainability, technological advancement, stringent environmental regulations and policies in developed countries result in a decline in energy intensity and a decline in carbon dioxide emissions. The Environmental Sustainability Curve hypothesis shows that the affecting factors include economic growth, energy consumption patterns and carbon dioxide emissions. The study reveals electric power consumption as the main contributor of energy intensity in the selected countries. Decoupling economic growth from electric power consumption and improving energy efficiency in China, Ghana, Australia, and the USA will enhance energy security and decline the economic related dynamics and activities on the environment.

An IT Governance Framework for Virtual Enterprise in Tourism Industry: Evidence from Small Tourism Enterprises in Thailand

Information technology (IT) plays a significant role on a highly information-intensive industry like tourism industry globally and dramatically. Virtual enterprise (VE) concept is an innovation that enables small tourism enterprises (STEs) in developing countries to offer effective tourism services without large investment in IT. As STEs operate their VEs based on cloud-sourcing environment, STEs have to deal with IT risks that may affect the entire organization. As almost all STEs are found lacking in IT management experience, it is not effective to apply traditional IT governance frameworks, such as Control objectives for information and related technologies (COBIT), IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), and International organization for standardization (ISO). This study proposes an IT governance framework for STEs operating in VE concept with cloud-sourcing environment. The methodology began with multiple-case study research via semi-structure interviews. Subjects are IT leaders from 10 STEs. IT governance framework for STEs was derived from the interview results, the framework consists of five IT governance areas: Strategy, Administration, Technology and Infrastructure, Supply, and Human Resource. This study also proposed performance assessment criteria for assessing IT governance performance. The proposed assessment criteria were integrated from relevance criteria in COBIT, ISO38500, ITIL, and previous research. STEs can adopt the proposed framework in their VEs to ensure the achievement of effectiveness and efficiency of their services in virtual environment. This will eventually guarantee their continued success in tourism services at present and in the future.

Online Referrals Categorization and Performance of the Hospitality Industry: The Case of International Hotel Brands in Europe

1.IntroductionTechnological enhancements, especially the internet and mobile devices have been reshaping the world and marketing as well. Today, all communication directions in terms of business (B2B, B2C, C2C, C2B) possible within the virtual environment. Digital media is a new avenue to retain existing customers and acquire new customers for marketers. Numerous business fields have been affected by technological changes and the tourism industry as well. Tourism is highly affected by these developments since tourists have a high tendency of using digital platforms and tourism is an information-intensive industry (Poon, 1993; Sheldon, 1997). Tourists' purchases and the whole information search behavior being digitalized. As Schueckert, Liu and Law (2015: 608) stated that 71% of independent tourists make their hotel bookings online. These figures demonstrated that virtual channels dominate the tourism distribution system. Although tourists make their hotel bookings offline, they may use the internet for gathering information about hospitality establishments. Gretzel and Yoo (2008: 39) have found out that 96.4% of the frequent internet users consult online tourists' reviews while they planning their trips. Also, another research showed that 49% of potential tourists won't make their hotel reservations without reading online tourist reviews (Statisticbrain, 2014). Thus, keeping up with new media has become indispensable for hospitality managements.People today can be defined as cyber citizens because they spend more and more of their time in digital environments. As Wertime and Fenwick (2008) stated, the boundaries of physical and virtual begin to blur. Also, markets begin to digitalize in parallel with the digitalization of the human lives. Therefore, marketers have to focus on virtual markets in addition to physical markets. In other words, companies competing with them both in the physical and virtual markets. There is a huge potential in the virtual world for marketers and if they omit this to target this market, they will pay a heavy price for such their unsuccessful strategies. In this context, there is an old statement where the fish are which may guide marketers.This research simply broadens the understanding of online reviews in hospitality. The aim of this research is to evaluate current online marketing performance of international hotel brands in Europe by adopting a holistic approach. As Wang and Tang (2003: 14) highlighted that further empirical research and theoretical development necessary for understanding online marketing better. Also, Cantallops and Salvo (2014) have published a literature review article which classified the researches under two categories as review-generating and impact of e-wom. It can be observed that the subjects like how frequently consumers use digital sources, to what extend they affected, why they share information in these environments and similar - broadly investigated in the literature. Although researchers have focused on the subject in terms of demand-side in their researches, it is possible to say that they don't pay enough attention to the supply-side. This research may be thought to be important due to its contribution on the supply-related side of the subject. This paper is composed of six parts. In the theoretical review part, conceptual aspect of the subject is explained and a review of literature is given. The proposed model of classification of online referrals is presented in part three. In the fourth part, selected European hotel chains' use of online marketing in a certain point of time is provided. The fifth part provides the results followed by concluding remarks.2.Literature Review2.1.Online ReviewsIt is known that the internet is one of the digital areas affected by rapid changes. Web 2.0 or social media technology is a milestone in the history of internet's development. There is no need to discuss how web 2. …

Industry characteristics, stages of E-commerce communications, and entrepreneurs and SMEs revenue growth

This paper empirically examines the role of industry characteristics portrayed by information intensity of value chain or product in the relationship between the stages of E-commerce development and revenue growth for a large representative sample of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and other entrepreneurs who operate in the United Kingdom. The results indicate that SMEs characterised by (A) high information intensity of value chain or product of industry that (B) have their own business website, a third-party website and/or a social profile, on average more often report increases in revenue growth versus their counterparts in either (A) other industries or that (B) do not have the E-commerce development. However, the likelihood of improved performance does not vary significantly among SMEs which are at different development stages of E-commerce. This finding holds regardless of whether the business is in a high value chain information intensive industry or a product information intensive industry. In short, business performance appears to improve as entrepreneurial organizations adopt information technology to facilitate greater market communication and increased exposure to online shoppers. Furthermore, this is irrespective of the level of sophistication of the interface, the design of the E-commerce technology and the high information intensity types of the industry. To conclude, this paper presents some discussions and recommendations for entrepreneurial research and practice that are implied by the results.

Creating value from Social Big Data: Implications for Smart Tourism Destinations

This paper aims to demonstrate how the huge amount of Social Big Data available from tourists can nurture the value creation process for a Smart Tourism Destination. Applying a multiple-case study analysis, the paper explores a set of regional tourist experiences related to a Southern European region and destination, to derive patterns and opportunities of value creation generated by Big Data in tourism. Findings present and discuss evidence in terms of improving decision-making, creating marketing strategies with more personalized offerings, transparency and trust in dialogue with customers and stakeholders, and emergence of new business models. Finally, implications are presented for researchers and practitioners interested in the managerial exploitation of Big Data in the context of information-intensive industries and mainly in Tourism.

Does offshore outsourcing impact home employment? Evidence from service multinationals

This paper investigates the impact of offshore outsourcing across 5746 European service multinational enterprises (MNEs) on employment at home. We estimate labour demand equations and specifically isolate the global financial crisis (GFC) by undertaking analysis through our longitudinal 19-year panel data, separately for the pre- (1997–2007) and crisis period (2008–2016). We distinguish between offshoring to high and low income countries, as well as between service industry groups. We show that there is some evidence that offshoring by location intensive service firms is associated with employment growth at home during the crisis period, while offshoring in information intensive industries in high income countries is associated with a reduction in employment at home, as firms offshore to be nearer to the client. Overall, our findings suggest that the crisis period has lessened the impact of offshoring service FDI on employment at home.

Adapting the fruit supply chain for e-commerce

In many countries, but especially in China, there has been a rapid increase in on-line grocery shopping, with delivery direct to the customer's home (e-tailing). Fresh fruit feature prominently in on-line grocery advertising, but fruit has special challenges that set them apart from most grocery products: they should be delivered in an optimum ready-to-eat state rather than simply in a minimum time; and there can be much variation in taste and texture between individual pieces. These challenges exist for conventional fruit trading, but are particularly important for e-tailing because it removes the customer's traditional role in selecting their own fruit, and thus the blame for any disappointment will be wholly on the e-tailer. As e-tailers put considerable value on the trustworthiness of their brand, this will generate a new demand for technology that will require the fruit supply chain to improve the predictability and safety of its products. In the near future we can expect to see the demands of business-to-consumer e-commerce driving a transformation in the global fruit trade into an information-intensive industry, leading to the implementation of many new sensor systems. Technology companies entering the fruit industry and creating vertically integrated operations from orchard to retail will bring an enthusiasm for new technology, the resources to develop it and the means to extract value from it. Orchard and fruit monitoring, predictive data mining and postharvest condition management will become increasingly common throughout the fruit supply chain.

OM Forum—The Service and Information Economy: Research Opportunities

The U.S. economy is already dominated by service and information-intensive industries in terms of both gross national product and jobs, and these trends are visible in all major world economies. These economic shifts are driven by productivity changes, which today often depend on new information and communication technologies. These changes can be thought of as service industrialization, which underlies productivity improvements. Industrialization is, in turn, closely related to the design and operation of service processes at the level of firms and sectors. Some of the implications for process economics, operations strategy, and process management are outlined, and the opportunities for research in operations and technology management related to these trends are discussed.

Development trend and coping strategies of financing sector in big data era

A review of the major characteristics of the big data era shows that the financing sector, as an information-intensive service industry, is stepping into the primary stage of the big data era. This is evident because the data characteristics and data processing requirements applied in the financing sector comply with the concepts and features of big data. This paper also verifies that in the future, the financing sector, especially the banking sector, will be distinguished by features of open-mindedness, digitization, high productivity, and scientific decision-making processes in the big data era. However, efforts will need to be made to face challenges from verified corporate cultures and various expertise in management and technology. This paper also suggests proper strategies for the financial sector in the big data era, providing practical guidance for financial service planning, and lays a consolidated foundation to explore theories of new finance.

The effects of the use of ICT by tourism enterprises

Nowadays tourism economy is driven by information technology (IT) and telecommunications. All tourism oriented companies, such as tour operators, travel agencies, rental agencies, cruisers and hotels experience the growing impact of what is commonly known as information and communication technology (ICT). Tourism sector represents the information-intensive industry characterized by a significantly long value chain influenced, to a great extent, by information. Its creation, collection, storage, retrieval and transfer remain within the core activities of all tourism enterprises. Every single innovation in IT sector can potentially change the strategy followed by tourism companies in running a business. Such transformations are also imposed by tourists’ behaviors which keep altering under the influence of information technology. The process of tourist services purchase is based on information collected through many different channels, e.g. travel agencies, brochures, the word-of-mouth, or web sides offered by tourist service suppliers, which are currently gaining much importance. Consumer decision making process in tourism sector is transformed into an online one, since direct service booking has become possible. Proper understanding of behaviors presented by those searching for travel information online, as well as using innovative information and communication technologies by tourists, remain essential for designing an effective ICT-based business model. Currently it seems to be the crucial challenge for the entire tourism sector. ICT is focused on designing the new scientific paradigm (by innovation, co-opetition, collaboration with customers) of tourism development based on modern e-technologies. The paper discusses the level of information and communication technologies application in the tourism sector. The study covers small and medium-size hotels (SMEs) and travel agencies which dominate the tourism industry worldwide. The article draws experience from the tourism industry in one of the most popular tourist destinations in Poland - Lower Silesia.

Towards a governance framework for chains of Scrum teams

ContextLarge companies operating in the information intensive industries increasingly adopt Agile/Scrum to swiftly change IT functionality because of rapid changing business demands. IT functionality in large enterprises however is typically delivered by a portfolio of interdependent software applications involving a chain of Scrum teams. Usually, each application from the portfolio is allocated to a single Scrum team, which necessitates collaboration between the Scrum teams to jointly deliver functionality. ObjectiveIdentify the collaboration related issues in chains of Scrum teams. MethodWe used a qualitative approach with transcripted interviews from three case studies that were coded and analyzed to identify the issues. ResultsWe identified six issues in chains of codependent Scrum teams; coordination, prioritization, alignment, automation, predictability and visibility. The synthesis of these issues with existing theory resulted in nine propositions. These nine propositions have been combined into a conceptual model. ConclusionWe propose this conceptual model as a starting point for a governance framework to manage chains of Scrum teams that addresses the identified issues.