J. Theor. Appl. Electron. Commer. Res., Volume 14, Issue 2 (May 2019) – 11 articles

The impact of reverse auction adoption has been a very important issue recently and is the subject of many studies. We are extending research results in the field of empirical studies by examining problems with reliability of methods for cost savings calculation of electronic reverse auction adoption in business processes. Reliability of savings proclamation in research studies or promotional materials is crucial for understanding real impact, benchmarking studies or comparison of several auction strategies from different auction environments. From our experience and empirical examinations, the problem for savings calculations is based on reliability and suitability of comparative or sometimes called expected price as the core factor for savings calculations when comparing with winning price. Our empirical study was based on real data from 1198 reverse auctions in Slovak commercial sector. On the base of our study, the most frequent strategy for electronic reverse auction adoption is multi-phase auction with first phase using sealed bid format. We have identified that reliability of using comparative prices as parameter for cost savings calculations vary according to different auction situations or settings and number of participants, auction volume and ratio of new participants are very sensitive for the reliability of savings calculations. Full article

The eBooks market has been growing rapidly in recent years. At the same time, evidence shows that eBooks are cannibalizing the market for physical books. To alleviate the cannibalization effect between eBooks and physical books, publishers may choose to delay the release of eBooks or physical books for a period of time. Adopting a stylized two-period model, this paper investigates three publishing strategies for a monopolistic publisher: delaying the release of eBooks, delaying the release of physical books, and releasing them simultaneously. We find that the publisher should delay the format that has significantly less market potential. Furthermore, the one that has greater market potential should be priced higher. In addition, a stronger substitution effect between eBooks and physical books favors delaying strategies. Finally, the smaller marginal cost for eBooks than physical books renders the strategy to delay the release of physical books more popular. Full article

The effect of the Internet and social media on consumer behavior has recently begun to outweigh the effect of traditional marketing strategies. Therefore, numerous enterprises have begun to use social media to communicate with brand users, and social media has b"ecome the optimal tool for brand marketing. According to current brand-community relationships from the perspectives of brand authenticity and brand identification, we identified the mediating factors (brand trust and brand passion) of relationships between community members and brands and developed an integrated model to determine the effects of these factors on community member purchase intentions. The research targets in the present study were consumers who had purchased products from one of the top three cosmetic brands in Taiwan and had been a member of the brand’s official fan page for at least 1 year. Overall, 484 valid samples were collected in this study. We employed structural equation modeling to examine our model. Five hypotheses were supported, and excellent model fits to the data were obtained. Additionally, this study discovered that brand trust and brand passion played crucial mediating roles. Finally, we propose management implications and make suggestions that can serve as a reference for brand community managers Full article

Drawing upon the Theory of Consumption Value, this empirical study developed a readiness-value model and examined the direct effect of customer readiness on customer value types and the mediation impact of perceived emotional and functional value toward products being used in the relationship between customer readiness and customers’ upgrade intention, customers’ loyalty intention toward the brands they are currently using and customers’ affective commitment toward their current service providers. Surveys obtained from 174 adult respondents were analyzed, and they show that customer readiness directly and significantly impacts all types of value: emotional, functional, social, monetary and epistemic. Perceived emotional value toward products in use acts as a complementary mediator and perceived functional value toward the products in use acts as a competitive mediator for the impact of customer readiness and customers’ upgrade intention. Additionally, perceived emotional value acts as a competitive mediator for the effect of customer readiness on customers’ affective commitment toward their service providers. Perceived functional value toward products being used fully mediates the effect of customer readiness on customers’ loyalty intention toward the brands they are using. Full article

Consumer satisfaction with online shopping is directly dependent on a number of factors. There is a constant dilemma in the market related to the question which online shopping determinants affect the customer satisfaction. This issue is particularly important for underdeveloped markets, where online commerce is not sufficiently present. In order to increase the online commerce participation, it is necessary to explore and analyze the connection between customer satisfaction and diverse determinants. Accordingly, this paper develops the research model to determine the impact of certain online purchase determinants on the consumer satisfaction in the market of Serbia. A conceptual model is defined, consisting of 26 items categorized into seven variables: security, information availability, shipping, quality, pricing, time, and customer satisfaction. Input model parameters were collected through surveys, with the aid of appropriate Internet tools. The validity of the developed model was verified through the Confirmatory Factor Analysis and the Partial Least Squares. The obtained result analysis confirmed the basic research hypotheses that customer satisfaction in online shopping, on the Serbian market, directly depends on the following determinants: security, information availability, shipping, quality, pricing and time. Full article

Developing an approach to manage privacy risk is critical to the success of e-marketing. Understanding the antecedents of privacy risk is therefore essential for the success of e-business. Because governments, businesses, and consumers are economic agents, this study examined the effects of governmental (privacy legislations) and firm-related (online business brand image) factors on consumer perceptions of online privacy risk. This paper proposes a conceptual model for exploring the underlying mechanisms of privacy legislations and online business brand image on consumer perceptions of online privacy risk. To test the conceptual model, data were collected from 425 students on a university campus which provided real personal information to online businesses within the preceding 3 months. Structural equation modeling was employed to test all the hypotheses in the conceptual model. The results reveal that perceived effectiveness of privacy legislations and online business brand image positively affect trust in online businesses. In addition, trust in online businesses positively affects perceived effectiveness of business privacy policies and perceived benefits of information disclosure, which in turn negatively influences online privacy risk perception. Full article

The knowledge of high-value customers provides the possibility to make decisions ensuring profitability of the company. By analyzing and optimizing a buyer’s journey, companies can better understand their customers and optimize marketing costs in the way that will generate a higher return on investment. The primary objective of this paper is to define the current state of multichannel attribution and, based on the literature, study and analyze the data regarding the buyer’s journey of high- and low-value customers of selected e-commerce business. To accomplish the main objective of our study, we retrieved and analyzed top conversion paths from Google Merchandise Store, the e-commerce website selling goods branded by Google, with the use of Markov chains and heuristic models. A difference between high- and low-value customers regarding the acquisition by marketing channels before the purchase was found. Moreover, it was found that high-value customers' journeys consist of more interactions compared to those of low-value customers. Full article

The open data ventures can be summarized in a way that companies are reluctant to share their data with anyone, whereas governments open their data for citizens, institutions, and businesses as much as they can. However, this principle is changing, since there is added value in the digital information and datasets the companies possess and they are slowly understanding the value of crowdsourcing. In order to engage external experts, companies are reluctant to open their data, but they are interested in hosting hackathons. Hackathons are seen as a valuable direction to engage developers with private data. In this article, we observed and analyzed different industry cases for strategies and opinions on how and why organizations arrange hackathon events to extract information from their data, and how this relates to the popular open data movement. Our results indicate that hackathons offer more control and practical solutions over the fundamental open data approach. It would seem that hackathons provide better inroads for the companies to monetize their datasets and information assets, while open data could bring more visibility to the brand. Full article

Trust is viewed as a crucial factor in social commerce due to the prominent role and significant amount of peer-generated contents. The current study aims to investigate the relationship between trust in social commerce and customers' purchase intentions by providing a mechanism to describe this relationship. Thus, a proposed model is developed based on three concepts: social presence, social commerce information seeking and familiarity with the platform. The model explains the mechanisms through which social commerce information seeking, familiarity, social presence and trust influence customers' intentions to purchase from social commerce platforms. For the purpose of this study, a survey is designed and distributed to Facebook users. The findings demonstrate that trust in a social networking site has positive influence on purchase intentions. Moreover, trust encourages information seeking, which in turn improves purchase intentions. Furthermore, both social presence and familiarity are found to enhance trust and purchase intentions. According to the findings, several managerial and theoretical implications are highlighted. Particularly, as the first study to investigate the adoption of social commerce among Jordanian customers, this study offers valuable insights and implications for Jordanian firms’ managers and marketers who are targeting direct sales on social networking platforms. Full article

The evolution of social commerce (s-commerce) has changed both businesses and customers. Therefore, understanding customer engagement behaviour in the s-commerce context has become a key competitive advantage for companies that aim to build a customer-centric business. The purpose of this study is to provide an in-depth review of customer engagement studies in the context of s-commerce. This study used a systematic literature review approach on customer engagement studies in the context of s-commerce. The results show that social theories and factors play a significant role in customer engagement along with technological factors. More importantly, drawn from the review results, a research framework was developed to show the factors that provide the greatest influence in customer engagement behavior. Full article