A Distributed Cognition Framework to Compare E-Commerce Websites Using Data Envelopment Analysis

This paper presents an approach based on the adoption of a distributed cognition framework and a non parametric multicriteria evaluation methodology (DEA) designed specifically to compare e-commerce websites from the consumer/user viewpoint. In particular, the framework considers a website relative efficiency as a measure of its quality and usability. A website is modelled as a black box capable to provide the consumer/user with a set of functionalities. When the consumer/user interacts with the website to perform a task, he/she is involved in a cognitive activity, sustaining a cognitive cost to search, interpret and process information, and experiencing a sense of satisfaction. The degree of ambiguity and uncertainty he/she perceives and the needed search time determine the effort size – and, henceforth, the cognitive cost amount – he/she has to sustain to perform his/her task. On the contrary, task performing and result achievement induce a sense of gratification, satisfaction and usefulness. In total, 9 variables are measured, classified in a set of 3 website macro-dimensions (user experience, site navigability and structure). The framework is implemented to compare 40 websites of businesses performing electronic commerce in the information technology market. A questionnaire to collect subjective judgements for the websites in the sample was purposely designed and administered to 85 university students enrolled in computer science and information systems engineering undergraduate courses.

Easy Shopping by Electronic Credit

In this paper we suggest a method for setting electronic credits for the customers. In this method banks and market-sites help each other to make doing large shopping through internet so easy. By developing this system, the people who have less money to buy most of the things they want, become able to buy all of them just through a credit. This credit is given by market-sites through a banking control on it. The method suggested can stop being imprisoned because of banking debts.

Identification of Factors Influencing Company's Competitiveness

Fast development of technologies, economic globalization and many other external circumstances stimulate company’s competitiveness. One of the major trends in today’s business is the shift to the exploitation of the Internet and electronic environment for entrepreneurial needs. Latest researches confirm that e-environment provides a range of possibilities and opportunities for companies, especially for micro-, small- and medium-sized companies, which have limited resources. The usage of e-tools raises the effectiveness and the profitability of an organization, as well as its competitiveness. In the electronic market, as in the classic one, there are factors, such as globalization, development of new technology, price sensitive consumers, Internet, new distribution and communication channels that influence entrepreneurship. As a result of eenvironment development, e-commerce and e-marketing grow as well. Objective of the paper: To describe and identify factors influencing company’s competitiveness in e-environment. Research methodology: The authors employ well-established quantitative and qualitative methods of research: grouping, analysis, statistics method, factor analysis in SPSS 20 environment, etc. The theoretical and methodological background of the research is formed by using scientific researches and publications, such as that from mass media and professional literature; statistical information from legal institutions as well as information collected by the authors during the surveying process. Research result: The authors detected and classified factors influencing competitiveness in e-environment.  In this paper, the authors presented their findings based on theoretical, scientific, and field research. Authors have conducted a research on e-environment utilization among Latvian enterprises. 

Managing Legal, Consumers and Commerce Risks in Phishing

Phishing scheme is a new emerged security issue of E-Commerce Crime in globalization. In this paper, the legal scaffold of Malaysia, United States and United Kingdom are analyzed and followed by discussion on critical issues that rose due to phishing activities. The result revealed that inadequacy of current legal framework is the main challenge to govern this epidemic. However, lack of awareness among consumers, crisis on merchant-s responsibility and lack of intrusion reports and incentive arrangement contributes to phishing proliferating. Prevention is always better than curb. By the end of this paper, some best practices for consumers and corporations are suggested.

Customer Need Type Classification Model using Data Mining Techniques for Recommender Systems

Recommender systems are usually regarded as an important marketing tool in the e-commerce. They use important information about users to facilitate accurate recommendation. The information includes user context such as location, time and interest for personalization of mobile users. We can easily collect information about location and time because mobile devices communicate with the base station of the service provider. However, information about user interest can-t be easily collected because user interest can not be captured automatically without user-s approval process. User interest usually represented as a need. In this study, we classify needs into two types according to prior research. This study investigates the usefulness of data mining techniques for classifying user need type for recommendation systems. We employ several data mining techniques including artificial neural networks, decision trees, case-based reasoning, and multivariate discriminant analysis. Experimental results show that CHAID algorithm outperforms other models for classifying user need type. This study performs McNemar test to examine the statistical significance of the differences of classification results. The results of McNemar test also show that CHAID performs better than the other models with statistical significance.

AGENTMAP: A Conceptual Meta-Model of Interacting Simulations

A straightforward and intuitive combination of single simulations into an aggregated master-simulation is not trivial. There are lots of problems, which trigger-specific difficulties during the modeling and execution of such a simulation. In this paper we identify these problems and aim to solve them by mapping the task to the field of multi agent systems. The solution is a new meta-model named AGENTMAP, which is able to mitigate most of the problems and to support intuitive modeling at the same time. This meta-model will be introduced and explained on basis of an example from the e-commerce domain.

Web Personalization to Build Trust in E-Commerce: A Design Science Approach

With the development of the Internet, E-commerce is growing at an exponential rate, and lots of online stores are built up to sell their goods online. A major factor influencing the successful adoption of E-commerce is consumer-s trust. For new or unknown Internet business, consumers- lack of trust has been cited as a major barrier to its proliferation. As web sites provide key interface for consumer use of E-Commerce, we investigate the design of web site to build trust in E-Commerce from a design science approach. A conceptual model is proposed in this paper to describe the ontology of online transaction and human-computer interaction. Based on this conceptual model, we provide a personalized webpage design approach using Bayesian networks learning method. Experimental evaluation are designed to show the effectiveness of web personalization in improving consumer-s trust in new or unknown online store.

A Cascaded Fuzzy Inference System for Dynamic Online Portals Customization

In our modern world, more physical transactions are being substituted by electronic transactions (i.e. banking, shopping, and payments), many businesses and companies are performing most of their operations through the internet. Instead of having a physical commerce, internet visitors are now adapting to electronic commerce (e-Commerce). The ability of web users to reach products worldwide can be greatly benefited by creating friendly and personalized online business portals. Internet visitors will return to a particular website when they can find the information they need or want easily. Dealing with this human conceptualization brings the incorporation of Artificial/Computational Intelligence techniques in the creation of customized portals. From these techniques, Fuzzy-Set technologies can make many useful contributions to the development of such a human-centered endeavor as e-Commerce. The main objective of this paper is the implementation of a Paradigm for the Intelligent Design and Operation of Human-Computer interfaces. In particular, the paradigm is quite appropriate for the intelligent design and operation of software modules that display information (such Web Pages, graphic user interfaces GUIs, Multimedia modules) on a computer screen. The human conceptualization of the user personal information is analyzed throughout a Cascaded Fuzzy Inference (decision-making) System to generate the User Ascribe Qualities, which identify the user and that can be used to customize portals with proper Web links.

The Impact of Website Personality on Consumers' Initial Trust towards Online Retailing Websites

E-tailing websites are often perceived to be static, impersonal and distant. However, with the movement of the World Wide Web to Web 2.0 in recent years, these online websites have been found to display personalities akin to 'humanistic' qualities and project impressions much like its retailing counterpart i.e. salespeople. This paper examines the personality of e-tailing websites and their impact on consumers- initial trust towards the sites. A total of 239 Internet users participated in this field experiment study which utilized 6 online book retailers- websites that the participants had not previously visited before. Analysis revealed that out of four website personalities (sincerity, competence, excitement and sophistication) only sincerity and competence are able to exert an influence in building consumers- trust upon their first visit to the website. The implications of the findings are further elaborated in this paper.

The Impact of Semantic Web on E-Commerce

Semantic Web Technologies enable machines to interpret data published in a machine-interpretable form on the web. At the present time, only human beings are able to understand the product information published online. The emerging semantic Web technologies have the potential to deeply influence the further development of the Internet Economy. In this paper we propose a scenario based research approach to predict the effects of these new technologies on electronic markets and business models of traders and intermediaries and customers. Over 300 million searches are conducted everyday on the Internet by people trying to find what they need. A majority of these searches are in the domain of consumer ecommerce, where a web user is looking for something to buy. This represents a huge cost in terms of people hours and an enormous drain of resources. Agent enabled semantic search will have a dramatic impact on the precision of these searches. It will reduce and possibly eliminate information asymmetry where a better informed buyer gets the best value. By impacting this key determinant of market prices semantic web will foster the evolution of different business and economic models. We submit that there is a need for developing these futuristic models based on our current understanding of e-commerce models and nascent semantic web technologies. We believe these business models will encourage mainstream web developers and businesses to join the “semantic web revolution."

A New Framework to Model a Secure E-Commerce System

The existing information system (IS) developments methods are not met the requirements to resolve the security related IS problems and they fail to provide a successful integration of security and systems engineering during all development process stages. Hence, the security should be considered during the whole software development process and identified with the requirements specification. This paper aims to propose an integrated security and IS engineering approach in all software development process stages by using i* language. This proposed framework categorizes into three separate parts: modelling business environment part, modelling information technology system part and modelling IS security part. The results show that considering security IS goals in the whole system development process can have a positive influence on system implementation and better meet business expectations.

XML Schema Automatic Matching Solution

Schema matching plays a key role in many different applications, such as schema integration, data integration, data warehousing, data transformation, E-commerce, peer-to-peer data management, ontology matching and integration, semantic Web, semantic query processing, etc. Manual matching is expensive and error-prone, so it is therefore important to develop techniques to automate the schema matching process. In this paper, we present a solution for XML schema automated matching problem which produces semantic mappings between corresponding schema elements of given source and target schemas. This solution contributed in solving more comprehensively and efficiently XML schema automated matching problem. Our solution based on combining linguistic similarity, data type compatibility and structural similarity of XML schema elements. After describing our solution, we present experimental results that demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach.

E-Commerce Adoption and Implementation in Automobile Industry: A Case Study

The use of Electronic Commerce (EC) technologies enables Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to improve their efficiency and competitive position. Much of the literature proposes an extensive set of benefits for organizations that choose to adopt and implement ECommerce systems. Factors of Business –to-business (B2B) E-Commerce adoption and implementation have been extensively investigated. Despite enormous attention given to encourage Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to adopt and implement E-Commerce, little research has been carried out in identifying the factors of Business-to-Consumer ECommerce adoption and implementation for SMEs. To conduct the study, Tornatsky and Fleischer model was adopted and tested in four SMEs located in Christchurch, New Zealand. This paper explores the factors that impact the decision and method of adoption and implementation of ECommerce systems in automobile industry. Automobile industry was chosen because the product they deal with i.e. cars are not a common commodity to be sold online, despite this fact the eCommerce penetration in automobile industry is high. The factors that promote adoption and implementation of E-Commerce technologies are discussed, together with the barriers. This study will help SME owners to effectively handle the adoption and implementation process and will also improve the chance of successful E-Commerce implementation. The implications of the findings for managers, consultants, and government organizations engaged in promoting E-Commerce adoption and implementation in small businesses and future research are discussed.

Efficiency Evaluation of E-Commerce Websites

This study suggests a model of a new set of evaluation criteria that will be used to measure the efficiency of real-world E-commerce websites. Evaluation criteria include design, usability and performance for websites, the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) technique has been used to measure the websites efficiency. An efficient Web site is defined as a site that generates the most outputs, using the smallest amount of inputs. Inputs refer to measurements representing the amount of effort required to build, maintain and perform the site. Output is amount of traffic the site generates. These outputs are measured as the average number of daily hits and the average number of daily unique visitors.

Potential of GIS to Find Solutions to Space Related Problems in Construction Industry

Geographic Information System (GIS) is a computerbased tool used extensively to solve various engineering problems related to spatial data. In spite of growing popularity of GIS, its complete potential to construction industry has not been realized. In this paper, the summary of up-to-date work on spatial applications of GIS technologies in construction industry is presented. GIS technologies have the potential to solve space related problems of construction industry involving complex visualization, integration of information, route planning, E-commerce, cost estimation, etc. GISbased methodology to handle time and space issues of construction projects scheduling is developed and discussed in this paper.

Factors Adopting E-Travel Website: The Case of Indonesia

E-travel is travel agency-s companies employing internet and website as e-commerce context. This study presents numerous initial key factors of electronic travel model based on small travel agencies perspectives. Browsing previous studies related to website travel activities are conducted. Five small travel agencies in Indonesia has been deeply interviewed in case studies. The finding of this research is identifying numerous characteristics and dimension factors and travel website operations including ownermanager roles, business experiences, characteristically business, and technological aspects. This study is the preliminary research related to travel website adoption in Indonesia. The further study would be conducted in questionnaires of the quantitative research in Indonesia contexts as a developing country.

Behavioral Analysis of Team Members in Virtual Organization based on Trust Dimension and Learning

Trust management and Reputation models are becoming integral part of Internet based applications such as CSCW, E-commerce and Grid Computing. Also the trust dimension is a significant social structure and key to social relations within a collaborative community. Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) is a difficult task in the context of distributed environment (information across different geographical locations) and multidisciplinary decisions are involved such as Virtual Organization (VO). To aid team decision making in VO, Decision Support System and social network analysis approaches are integrated. In such situations social learning helps an organization in terms of relationship, team formation, partner selection etc. In this paper we focus on trust learning. Trust learning is an important activity in terms of information exchange, negotiation, collaboration and trust assessment for cooperation among virtual team members. In this paper we have proposed a reinforcement learning which enhances the trust decision making capability of interacting agents during collaboration in problem solving activity. Trust computational model with learning that we present is adapted for best alternate selection of new project in the organization. We verify our model in a multi-agent simulation where the agents in the community learn to identify trustworthy members, inconsistent behavior and conflicting behavior of agents.

A Survey on Supply Chain Management and E Commerce Technology Adoption among Logistics Service Providers in Johor

Logistics is part of the supply chain processes that plans, implements, and controls the efficient and effective forward and reverse flow and storage of goods, services, and related information between the point of origin and the point of consumption in order to meet customer requirements. This research aims to investigate the current status and future direction of the use of Information Technology (IT) for logistics, focusing on Supply Chain Management (SCM) and E-Commerce adoption in Johor. Therefore, this research stresses on the type of technology being adopted, factors, benefits and barriers affecting the innovation in SCM and ECommerce technology adoption among Logistics Service Providers (LSP). A mailed questionnaire survey was conducted to collect data from 265 logistics companies in Johor. The research revealed that SCM technology adoption among LSP was higher as they had adopted SCM technology in various business processes while they perceived a high level of benefits from SCM adoption. Obviously, ECommerce technology adoption among LSP is relatively low.

Sounds Alike Name Matching for Myanmar Language

Personal name matching system is the core of essential task in national citizen database, text and web mining, information retrieval, online library system, e-commerce and record linkage system. It has necessitated to the all embracing research in the vicinity of name matching. Traditional name matching methods are suitable for English and other Latin based language. Asian languages which have no word boundary such as Myanmar language still requires sounds alike matching system in Unicode based application. Hence we proposed matching algorithm to get analogous sounds alike (phonetic) pattern that is convenient for Myanmar character spelling. According to the nature of Myanmar character, we consider for word boundary fragmentation, collation of character. Thus we use pattern conversion algorithm which fabricates words in pattern with fragmented and collated. We create the Myanmar sounds alike phonetic group to help in the phonetic matching. The experimental results show that fragmentation accuracy in 99.32% and processing time in 1.72 ms.

Determining the Online Purchasing Loyalty for Thai Herbal Products

The objective of this study is to identify the factors that influence the online purchasing loyalty for Thai herbal products. Survey research is used to gather data from Thai herb online merchants to assess factors that have impacts on enhancing loyalty. Data were collected from 300 online customers who had experience in online purchasing of Thai Herbal products. Prior experience consists of data from previous usage of online herbs, herb purchase and internet usage. E-Quality data consists of information quality, system quality, service quality and the product quality of Thai herbal products sold online. The results suggest that prior experience, Equality, attitude toward purchase and trust in online merchant have major impacts on loyalty. The good attitude and E-Quality of purchasing Thai herbal product online are the most significant determinants affecting loyalty.