Multiple Websites Research Articles

New Multiple Sclerosis Website For the Newly Diagnosed

New Multiple Sclerosis Website For the Newly Diagnosed

Turning Visitors into Customers: A Usability-Centric Perspective on Purchase Behavior in Electronic Channels

We develop a theoretical model for predicting purchase behavior in electronic channels. The model suggests that website use (i.e., technology use), a key indicator of the degree to which a site is “sticky,” is a significant antecedent of purchase behavior. Furthermore, we relate the usability of a website to use behavior and purchase behavior. Specifically, individual characteristics and product type are argued to differentially influence the weights that customers place on five different categories of usability. The weighted ratings of the five categories together determine use behavior and purchase behavior, after controlling for purchase need, experience with similar sites, and previous purchase on the specific sites. The model was tested in a longitudinal field study among 757 customers who provided usability assessments for multiple websites from four different industries—i.e., airlines, online bookstores, automobile manufacturers, and car rental agencies. Six months later, 370 of these individuals provided responses to help understand the transition from visitor to customer, i.e., whether they actually transacted with a specific website. Results provided strong support for the model and yield important theoretical and practical implications.

Grainger (W.W.) Inc.

AbstractEngineering Services (MIC: 12.1 SIC: 5063 NAIC: 423610)W.W. Grainger is a broad‐line supplier of facilities maintenance and other related products to customers in North America through a network of 582 branches, 17 distribution centers and multiple Web sites. Operations are divided into three business segments. The Branch‐based Distribution unit provides product applications for facility maintenance and other product needs. Co.'s Lab Safety segment is a direct marketer of safety and other industrial products to U.S. and Canadian businesses. Co.'s Integrated Supply segment offers customers on‐site outsourcing services, including business process re‐engineering, inventory and tool crib management, purchasing management and information management.

Passwords and Passion

A recent survey conducted by Sophos (www.sophos.com/pressoffice/news/articles/2006/04/passwordadvice.html) asked, Do you use the same password for multiple Web sites? Their admittedly unscientific results confirmed what most of us would expect: 41 percent of the respondents said they always use the same password, 45 percent said they have a few different passwords, and 14 percent said they never use the same password on multiple Web sites. Those 14 percent probably either don't have an Internet connection or are security professionals. The problem is that where the security professional sees prudent, responsible behavior, users simply see overhead that gets in the way of performing whatever task they're trying to do.

Changing availability and cost of Internet physician consultations and prescription medications

Internet use by the public to obtain medical information and services continues to grow. In 1999, we found cost of general physician visits was 15% higher, and cost of medications was 10% greater via the Internet than from community providers. The goal of this study was to re-examine changes in product availability and costs to consumers four years later. We searched multiple websites 1 June 2003 - 31 August 2004, offering physician consultations and prescription medications. We compared mean cost of Internet physician visits and price per pill to costs of community-based general physicians and pharmacies in the Philadelphia region. We found 144 sites worldwide providing physician services and prescription medications. Mean charge for an Internet physician consultation was 55 dollars, 8.3% lower than for a comparable visit to a community practitioner. Mean cost per pill across 204 available medications was 36.7% higher at Internet sites than at local pharmacies. Shipping and handling (S&H) added a mean of 15.40 dollars. Total cost to Internet consumers was similar whether or not Internet sites charged for a physician consultation and/or S&H. Obtaining physician visits and medications over the Internet was about 40% more costly than in the local community. The Internet continues to hold great promise for provision of health and medical care services by expanding access. However, increased access to physician care and medications entails higher cost, and quality of physician services and pharmaceuticals provided remain controversial.

Price discrimination through online couponing: Impact on likelihood of purchase and profitability

Oliver and Shor [2003, Digital redemption of coupons: Satisfying and dissatisfying effects of promotion codes. Journal of Product and Brand Management 12(2), 121–134] provide data suggesting that Web sites prompting customers to enter a “promotion code”, a digital version of the coupon, may unwittingly be losing customers who otherwise would be willing to purchase. They suggest that the act of requesting such a code hints at the existence of price promotions that may be unavailable to the current shopper, potentially diminishing one’s likelihood of purchase. We extend their experiment to address the issue of price discrimination and profitability in this context. Our results demonstrate that this diminished likelihood of purchase has adverse effects on profitability and offsets any gains from market segmentation. Further, we analyze a firm’s ability to deliver coupons to targeted market segments successfully, given the availability of such coupons on multiple Web sites outside of the retailer’s control. We observe that the existence of coupon repositories distorts efficient price discrimination, leading to segmentation of consumers not along dimensions of price sensitivity but of technical competence. These results have managerial implications for those considering online couponing policies.

Grainger (W.W.) Inc.

AbstractEngineering Services (MIC: 12.1 SIC: 5063 NAIC: 423610)W.W. Grainger is a broad‐line supplier of facilities maintenance and other related products to customers in North America through a network of 582 branches, 17 distribution centers and multiple Web sites. Operations are divided into three business segments. The Branch‐based Distribution unit provides product applications for facility maintenance and other product needs. Co.'s Lab Safety segment is a direct marketer of safety and other industrial products to U.S. and Canadian businesses. Co.'s Integrated Supply segment offers customers on‐site outsourcing services, including business process re‐engineering, inventory and tool crib management, purchasing management and information management.

A Critical Analysis of Personal Statements Submitted by Radiology Residency Applicants 1

Each year, radiology residency program directors and selection committees receive hundreds of applications for a limited number of residency positions in the field. Selection committees are often forced to make difficult decisions in order to rank academically similar applicants based solely on their application materials. With the advent of the Electronic Residency Application System (ERAS), the application has become standardized, making it even more difficult for applicants to distinguish their applications. To this end, the personal statement is considered a critical part of any radiology residency application, being one of the few chances applicants have to express their personality to a residency selection committee (1–5). Applicants often agonize for weeks over what should or should not be included. A brief search of the internet using a common search engine (www.google.com; Google, Mountain View, CA) and the key words “personal statement” and “residency” revealed multiple websites advertising personal statement writing, editing, and “assistance” services to applicants for significant fees. The fact that these services exist implies that, from an applicant’s perspective, the personal statement is a vital component of the application. The personal statement remains, however, a very subjective measure of an applicant’s value. There is no standardized measure of what defines an effective personal statement versus an ineffective one. Although those who read personal statements for an admissions committee seem to have an abstract sense of “good” personal statements and “bad” per-

Grainger (W.W.) Inc.

AbstractEngineering Services (MIC: 12.1 SIC: 5063 NAIC:423610)W.W. Grainger is primarily a supplier of facilities maintenance products in North America through its Branch‐based Distribution segment, which includes a network of 575 branches in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, 17 distribution facilities, and multiple Web sites. Co.'s Lab Safety segment is a direct marketer of safety and other industrial products to U.S. and Canadian businesses. Co.'s Integrated Supply segment offers customers on‐site outsourcing services, including business process reengineering, inventory and tool crib management, purchasing management and information management.

Grainger (W.W.) Inc.

AbstractEngineering Services (MIC: 12.1 SIC: 5063 NAIC:423610)W.W. Grainger is primarily a supplier of facilities maintenance products in North America through its Branch‐based Distribution segment, which includes a network of 575 branches in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, 17 distribution facilities, and multiple Web sites. Co.'s Lab Safety segment is a direct marketer of safety and other industrial products to U.S. and Canadian businesses. Co.'s Integrated Supply segment offers customers on‐site outsourcing services, including business process reengineering, inventory and tool crib management, purchasing management and information management.

A KNOWLEDGE LEARNING APPROACH TO INFORMATION EXTRACTION FROM MULTIPLE TEXT BASED WEB SITES

This paper describes a learning/adaptive approach to automatically building knowledge bases for information extraction from text based web pages. A frame based representation is introduced to represent domain knowledge as knowledge unit frames. A frame learning algorithm is developed to automatically learn knowledge unit frames from training examples. Some training examples can be obtained by automatically parsing a number of tabular web pages in the same domain, which greatly reduced the amount of time consuming manual work. This approach was investigated on ten web sites of real estate advertisements and car advertisements and nearly all the information was successfully extracted with very few false alarms. These results suggest that both the knowledge unit frame representation and the frame learning algorithm work well, domain specific knowledge bases can be learned from training examples, and the domain specific knowledge base can be used for information extraction from flexible text-based semi-structured Web pages on multiple Web sites. The investigation of the knowledge representation on five other domains suggests that this approach can be easily applied to other domains by simply changing the training examples.

Modeling Browsing Behavior at Multiple Websites

While there is a growing literature on investigating the Internet clickstream data collected for a single site, such datasets are inherently incomplete because they generally do not capture shopping behavior across multiple websites. A customer's visit patterns at one or more other sites may provide relevant information about the timing and frequency of his or her future visit patterns at the site of interest. We develop a stochastic timing model of cross-site visit behavior to understand how to leverage information from one site to help explain customer behavior at another. To this end, we incorporate two sources of association in browsing patterns: one for the observable outcomes (i.e., arrival times) of two timing processes and the other for the latent visit propensities across a set of competing sites. This proposed multivariate timing mixture model can be viewed as a generalization of the univariate exponential-gamma model. In our empirical analysis, we show that a failure to account for both sources of association not only leads to poor fit and forecasts, but also generates systematically biased parameter estimates. We highlight the model's ability to make accurate statements about the future behavior of the “zero class” (i.e., previous nonvisitors to a given site) using summary information (i.e., recency and frequency) from past visit patterns at a competing site.

Toward Agency and Ontology for Web-Based Information Retrieval

This paper presents a system that selects information sources, browses websites, and monitors changes in selected websites. Its distinguishing features are 1) adopting a holistic approach for bolstering web-based information gathering using a society of agents and 2) exploiting features of ontology and lexical chain for processing user queries and filtering relevant information. By engineering web-based information gathering systems along the dimensions of agency and ontology, relations among concepts can be identified and established, and information filtering and monitoring tasks can be automated by information filtering agents (IFAs) and information monitoring agents (IMAs). IFAs and IMAs relieve users of the tasks of browsing and monitoring changes in websites and multiple web sites can be browsed and monitored in parallel by several IFAs and IMAs. By establishing ontological relations among (key)words 1) the query processing agent (QPA) selects appropriate URLs for a query and 2) IFAs search and filter information relevant to the query. Empirical results demonstrated that the QPA can find appropriate number of websites and IFAs are effective in filtering relevant information.

Modeling Browsing Behavior at Multiple Websites

While there is a growing literature on investigating the Internet clickstream data collected for a single site, such datasets are inherently incomplete because they generally do not capture shoppin...

Automatic composite wrapper generation for semi-structured biological data based on table structure identification

Biological data analyses usually require complex manipulations involving tool applications, multiple web site navigation, result selection and filtering, and iteration over the internet. Most biological data are generated from structured databases and by applications and presented to the users embedded within repeated structures, or tables, in HTML documents. In this paper we outline a novel technique for the identification of table structures in HTML documents. This identification technique is then used to automatically generate composite wrappers for applications requiring distributed resources. We demonstrate that our method is robust enough to discover standard as well as non-standard table structures in HTML documents. Thus our technique outperforms contemporary techniques used in systems such as XWrap and AutoWrapper. We discuss our technique in the context of our PickUp system that exploits the theoretical developments presented in this paper and emerges as an elegant automatic wrapper generation system.

Building a cluster of intelligent, adaptive web sites

Many attempts have been made to track web usage patterns and provide dynamic suggestions that might help users reach the information they seek more quickly. These mechanisms rely on mining the web log files for usage patterns. While this is easy for a single server, it would be much more difficult for multiple servers. We propose a mechanism that uses agent-based technologies and dynamic self-organizing maps to combine usage patterns in multiple web server logs and structures of multiple web sites to provide a more efficient and informative set of suggested links. This paper includes results of an ongoing project, which builds upon previously published results.

Enrollment in a Multiple Sclerosis Clinical Trial: The EVIDENCE Experience

This paper describes the methods used to recruit patients for the EVIDENCE (EVidence for Interferon Dose-Effect: European-North American Comparative Efficacy) study, and the results of that recruitment. The majority of enrolled patients came from the investigators' clinic populations, with an additional 30% entering the study as a result of specific recruitment efforts. Local efforts, including referrals from colleagues, postings on bulletin boards, contacts with local Multiple Sclerosis Society chapters and newspaper advertisements, were the most successful recruitment tools. Mass mailings to local neurologists, referrals from a national multiple sclerosis registry, Web sites, and radio or television spots were less effective in recruiting eligible patients.

In children with autism, is intravenous secretin more effective than placebo in improving social skills, communication, behaviour or global functioning?

In children with autism, is intravenous secretin more effective than placebo in improving social skills, communication, behaviour or global functioning?

Semantic bookmarking for non-visual web access

Bookmarks are shortcuts that enable quick access of the desired Web content. They have become a standard feature in any browser and recent studies have shown that they can be very useful for non-visual Web access as well. Current bookmarking techniques in assistive Web browsers are rigidly tied to the structure of Web pages. Consequently they are susceptible to even slight changes in the structure of Web pages. In this paper we propose <i>semantic bookmarking</i> for non-visual Web access. With the help of an ontology that represents concepts in a domain, content in Web pages can be semantically associated with bookmarks. As long as these associations can be identified, semantic bookmarks are resilient in the face of structural changes to the Web page. The use of ontologies allows semantic bookmarks to span multiple Web sites covered by a common domain. This contributes to the ease of information retrieval and bookmark maintenance. In this paper we describe highly automated techniques for creating and retrieving semantic bookmarks. These techniques have been incorporated into an assistive Web browser. Preliminary experimental evidence suggests the effectiveness of semantic bookmarks for non-visual Web access.

Editor's note: Cyberplagiarism...what is it?

One consequence of easy access to the vast amount of information on the World Wide Web (WWW) is the growth of plagiarism. Failing to acknowledge the work of others in your own work is plagiarism: Using another person's ideas or expressions in your writing without acknowledging the source constitutes plagiarism. Derived from the Latin plagiarius (‘kidnapper’), plagiarism refers to a form of intellectual theft…to plagiarize is to give the impression that you wrote or thought something that you in fact borrowed from someone, and to do so is a violation of professional ethics. (Gibaldi 1998, p. 151) Cutting and pasting information from web pages and then claiming it as one's own original work has been termed ‘cyberplagiarism’ or ‘webnapping’ (Eysenbach 2000). Clearly this is an emerging phenomenon and it is causing considerable concern. I used a popular search engine and the term ‘cyberplagiarism’ and located 323 web pages that discuss this form of academic dishonesty. Most of those websites were linked to academic institutions and gave instructions to students and staff on how to avoid and detect plagiarism and cyberplagiarism (to see an example, go to http://www.aquinas.edu/library/plagiarism.html). Editors and reviewers for the Journal of Advanced Nursing now need to be vigilant in trying to detect instances of cyberplagiarism in manuscripts submitted for publication in the journal. Eysenbach (2000) reported a case of cyberplagiarism detected in 1999 in a manuscript published in the Journal of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (JRCSEd). Use of purpose-developed software established that more than one third of the published paper in question consisted of unedited phrases and sentences copied directly from multiple websites but the sources were not cited or credited (Eysenbach 2000). As a result of this investigation and infringement of copyright the article was withdrawn and a letter of apology from its author was published. What can JAN authors learn from this example of cyberplagiarism? The health literature is vast and it is unusual for us to develop ideas independently, without being influenced by the work of others. This is not to say that as researchers, academics and practitioners we never formulate new ideas, but rather that it is usual for our thinking to be prompted and shaped in the light of work that has gone before. It is important to acknowledge the work of predecessors by correctly citing their work, and this is equally important when accessing information from the HTTP://WWW. Information accessed from the WWW needs to be referenced so that readers may go directly to that source, and the correct way to do this for JAN is shown in the example below: World Health Organization (2003) First data on stability and resistance of SARS coronavirus compiled by members of WHO laboratory network. http://www.who.int/csr/sars/survival_2003_05_04/en/index.html (last accessed 28 July 2003). Anti-plagiarism software is already in use by some universities and by JRCSEd, and more sophisticated electronic detection systems are being developed Eysenbach 2000). Will the time soon come when we have to do this for JAN too?