[AISWorld] Publication of Vol.16, No.2, 2015 issue of Journal of Electronic Commerce Research

[Melody Kiang]

Dear Colleagues,
On behalf of the Journal of Electronic Commerce Research (JECR), we are pleased to announce that Vol. 16, Number 2, 2015 issue of JECR is now available at the journal web site: http://www.jecr.org.
JECR is indexed in Social Science Citation Index (SSCI 2013 impact factor: 1.111).

Table of Contents
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Providing Information and Enabling Transactions: Which Website Function is More Important for Success?
Janny C. Hoekstra

University of Groningen, Netherlands

Eelko K.R.E. Huizingh

University of Groningen, Netherlands

Tammo H.A. Bijmolt

University of Groningen, Netherlands

Adriana C. Krawczyk

Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences/Hogeschool van Amsterdam, Netherlands

81-94

Abstract

In this study, we propose and test a chain of effects from website content, through informational and transactional success to overall website success and company performance. This framework enables us to determine the relative importance of the informational and transaction-related website functions for website success, and to show how website functions, through a number of intermediate performance measures, contribute to the financial performance of a company. The results are based on an empirical study of 380 companies across a wide range of industries. We find that both the informational and the transaction-related website functions have a significant positive impact on website success, but that the impact of the informational function is considerably larger. Our results show that firms can improve website performance through providing relevant website functions throughout the entire customer purchase process. An important result of our study concerns the mediating role of customer performance: customer performance in terms of e.g., customer satisfaction and retention, is a necessary condition for website success to result in financial performance. The chain of effects shows that firms profit from websites that are designed to meet customer needs and wants.

Keywords: Website success; Informational and transaction-related website functions; Company performance

Customers Complaints in Online Shopping: The Role of Signal Credibility
Mingyao Hu

Beijing Jiaotong University, China

Elliot Rabinovich

Arizona State University, USA

Hanping Hou

Beijing Jiaotong University, China

95-108

ABSTRACT

Because online customer complaint behavior influences not only customer loyalty, but also other customers’ purchase intentions, it is important to examine the antecedents of customer complaint behavior. Previous research on antecedents of customer complaint behavior focuses on personal traits and post-purchase perceptions, while this paper focuses on online customer pre-purchase perceptions. In an online market, trustworthy online retailers send signals to separate themselves from retailers who are untrustworthy in the eyes of customers. However, untrustworthy online retailers can mimic trustworthy online retailers’ behavior by sending similar signals without providing services indicated by the signals. Relying on expectation-confirmation theory and signaling theory, we study conceptually and empirically how signal credibility influences online customer complaint intentions. Signal credibility reflects customer pre-purchase perceptions of the quality of an online retailer. Data were collected from a Chinese online B2C market, Tmall.com. The results from this data indicate that signal credibility has a direct negative influence on online customer complaint intentions. Furthermore, signal credibility can moderate the relationship between customer satisfaction with post-purchase services and online customer complaint intentions.

Keywords: online shopping; complaint intentions; signaling theory; expectation-confirmation theory; signal credibility


Unity is Strength: Understanding Users’ Group Buying Behavior in Taiwan from A Collectivism Perspective
Chiahui Yen

Ming Chuan University, Taiwan

Chun-Ming Chang

Aletheia University, Taiwan

109-122

Abstract

This study proposes a theoretical model from a collectivism perspective to examine the factors affecting buyers’ motivation to engage in auctions through online group-buying websites. The model was tested using the data collected from 218 buyers participating in a Taiwan online group-buying website. The results show that the intention to participate in online group-buying auctions significantly affected group-buying behavior, while conformity, attitude, and collective efficacy had significant influences on the intention to participate in online group-buying auctions. The results also indicate that trust in websites, trust in auction initiators, and trust in buyers are the antecedents of attitudes toward online group-buying auctions. Implications for theory and practice and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Keywords: Online group-buying auctions; Collective efficacy; Trust; Conformity; Theory of planned behavior (TPB)


An Annotation Approach to Contextual Advertising for Online Ads
Yen-Liang Chen

National Central University, Taiwan

Zong-Cheng Chen

National Central University, Taiwan

Yu-Ting Chiu

Chunghwa Telecom Laboratories, Taiwan

Chia-Ling Chang

National Central University, Taiwan

123-137

Abstract

In recent years, contextual advertising has been widely applied to text-based web advertising. Because contextual advertising relies on text to determine the advertising context, it cannot be applied to multimedia advertisements that have no text. Therefore, this paper proposes an annotation-based contextual advertising method for matching multimedia advertisements and web pages. In the proposed method, a term vector represents a web page and an advertisement is represented by a small set of keyword tags that are either annotated by experts or extracted automatically from the text of the advertisement. This study then developed a matching mechanism for computing the similarity between a web vector and the advertisement tags. Experiments and evaluations were performed for demonstrating the performance of the proposed method. The results showed that the proposed method demonstrated a more favorable performance than traditional advertising methods.

Keywords: Contextual advertising; Tag; Recommendation; Online advertisements; Annotation


Content Analysis of Social Media: A Grounded Theory Approach
Linda S.L. Lai

Macao Polytechnic Institute, Macao

W.M. To

Macao Polytechnic Institute, Macao

138-152


ABSTRACT

Social media has become a vital part of social life. It affects the beliefs, values, and attitudes of people, as well as their intentions and behaviors. Meanwhile, social media enables governments and organizations to engage people while allowing consumers to make informed decisions. Therefore, converting social media content into information, key concepts, and themes is crucial for generating knowledge and formulating strategies. In this paper, we introduce a grounded theory approach that involves (i) defining the goal and scope of a study; (ii) logically and systematically identifying social media sources, total sample size, and the sample size of every source category; (iii) employing computer-aided lexical analysis with statistical and graphical methods to identify the key dimensions of the topic while minimizing human errors, as well as coding and categorization biases; and (iv) interpreting the findings of the study. This systematic approach was illustrated with the destination image of Macao as an example. The proposed methodology with its hybrid nature can quantitatively analyze qualitative social media content (e.g., impressions, opinions, and feelings) and can identify emergent concepts from the ground up. This paper contributes to electronic commerce research by presenting a novel approach for extracting, analyzing, and understanding social media content.

Keywords: Social media; Content analysis; Lexical and statistical approaches; Concept formation

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Sincerely,

Dr. Melody Kiang, Editor-in-Chief,

Journal of Electronic Commerce Research

Information Systems Department,

College of Business Administration

California State University, Long Beach

1250 Bellflower Blvd.,

Long Beach, CA 90840

Journal Website: www.jecr.org<http://www.jecr.org/>