Earticle

Electronic Commerce or e-commerce implies such an industry where goods and services are bought and sold over electronic systems. This is rapidly growing sectors in Bangladesh which influence local and international trade. Government of Bangladesh has also initiated quite a good number of measures for the expansion of e-commerce. However, low adoption of e-commerce is not uncommon in Bangladesh. The objective of this study is to determine the factors that influence the adoption of e-commerce services in Bangladesh. Extended version of Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is envisaged as the theoretical backbone of the study. Reliability analysis using Cronbach’s Alpha test indicates that the research model is internally consistent. The study reveals that 35 percent of respondents became interested in e-commerce services from advertisement on Internet or other electronic media. The findings of the study shows that all the four constructs, namely-Computer Self Efficacy, Perceived Credibility, Perceived Usefulness and Perceived Ease of Use have significant effect on the adoption of e-commerce. The study has also demonstrated that Perceived Usefulness appeared as the most important factor in describing user’s adoption of e-commerce.

Use cases are commonly used to represent customer requirements during systems development. In a large software development environment, finding relevant use cases from a library of past or related projects is a complex, error-prone and expensive task. This study proposes an ontological methodology to support use case retrieval in an interactive manner. The architecture of a prototype system that implements this methodology is presented. To evaluate whether the proposed approach can provide satisfactory results to users, this study develops a research model and hypotheses based on interaction theory. These hypotheses are empirically tested using a laboratory experiment which controls information filtering and perceived interaction. Our study suggests that a system which interacts with a user intelligently reduces cognitive load and increases self-efficacy and satisfaction.

Investment in research and development (R&D) is critical in the information technology (IT) firms, where newer and better technology is a quintessential goal that directly affects innovation and competitive advantage. This study investigates how R&D investment influences firm performance and value, and how the effect of R&D investment differs between IT hardware and software firms. We also analyze the relationship between firm age and R&D investment in order to identify learning effects on continuous R&D investment. The empirical investigation in this study, based on longitudinal archival data from 2001 to 2010, found a significant effect of R&D investment on firm performance in IT firms. Further, this study demonstrates causal relationship between firm age, and verifies that learning effects are present in R&D investment. Moreover, the results are found to differ between IT hardware and IT software firms.

Recently, the exhibition industry has developed rapidly with the development of information technologies. Most exhibitors in an exhibition plan and deploy many events that may provide advantages to visitors as a method of effective promotion. The growth and propagation of wireless technologies is a powerful marketing tool for exhibitors. However, exhibitors still rely on domain experts who are costly and time consuming because of the manual knowledge input procedure. Moreover, it is prone to biases and errors and not suitable for managing fast-growing and tremendous amounts of data that far exceed a human's ability to comprehend. To overcome these problems, data mining technology may be a great alternative, but it needs to be fit to each exhibition. This study uses data mining technology with the Predictive Model Markup Language (PMML) to suggest a system that supports intelligent services and that improves stakeholder satisfaction. This system provides advantages to the exhibitor, show organizer, and system designer, and is first enhanced by integrating data mining technologies through the knowledge of exhibition experts. Second, using the PMML, the system can automate the process of applying data mining models to solve real-time processing problems in the exhibition environment.

Smart tourism is a social phenomenon arising from the convergence of information technology with the tourism experience. New ways of doing business, new patterns of experience and new problems concerning tourism destination image management and marketing are emerging due to the ubiquitous presence and influence of the internet and mobile devices. New conceptual tools are also available to enable researchers to further understand the social implications as well as the practical implementation of these new virtual and augmented smart tourism ecosystems. To this effect this paper introduces the constructivist paradigm and associated research methodologies as another toolbox for interpreting how smart tourism works as a form of soft power. The implications revealed by constructivism are that through smart tourism ecosystems, destination commodification and commoditization, experience and image formation are increasingly self- perpetuating, autonomous and organic social constructions. Researchers in information technology can use constructivist research to further explore these dynamic developments in smart tourism.

With the rapid spread of social media, video-sharing social media like YouTube has emerged as a consumption and distribution channel for entertainment goods such as music videos and movie trailers. In tourism research, there has been a lot of research of how the visual media such as movies and soap operas induced tourism. However, no studies have attempted to examine the role of social media as a music consumption channel and its impact on tourism. Expanding a body of media-induced tourism, we analysed the impact of video-sharing social media on music-induced tourism with a case of Korean pop music and inbound tourism to Korea. Developing a Web-crawler, we collected YouTube users’ comments data on 166 Korean pop music video clips which were released from 2009 to 2012 with over 1 million view counts. Controlling many of the determinants of tourism and analysing country-by-country impact of YouTube comments with the panel data, we found that engagement of Korean pop music video clips on YouTube is a significant predictor for the flow of inbound tourists to Korea.

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) nations are a potpourri of diverse religions, races and cultures with rich natural and cultural heritage but yet to tap the full potential of tourism. An investigation into the glorifying heritage of these eight SAARC nations pinpoints towards their rich food and culinary heritage that is yet to be explored to carve them as food destinations that would definitely help ameliorating tourism too. The Global Report on Food Tourism of the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) reveals results from a survey on food tourism marketing promotion, from which internet marketing tools, such as websites have been effectively utilized to promote food tourism in a particular destination. (UNWTO, 2012). Sensing the importance of the websites in the promotion of food tourism for any destination, the present study aims at the comparative content analysis of the official tourism websites of SAARC nations to evaluate their performance from the perspective of promotion of culinary heritage on world -wide web. The modified Balanced ScoreCard (BSC) approach is incorporated into the evaluation by taking into consideration four perspectives: technical, user friendliness and site attractiveness, tourism effectiveness and food tourism effectiveness. A set of 88 critical success factors representing these four perspectives is then used to examine the websites. The study reflects on the relative strength and weakness of the tourism websites of SAARC nations in promoting food tourism and as well help suggesting the remedial measures catalyzing the food tourism promotion through websites.

This paper specifically delineated the methodological application of constructivism in smart tourism studies. It explained what constructivism is and how this methodology could be applied in the study of smart tourism. In this study, residents of Seoul participated in constructivist research using the Q method to identify their subjectivities toward Seoul based on photographs most commonly found in tourism promotional material. Residents are concerned with good governance and cultural integrity, and they are aware of their role as stakeholders in tourism in their communities. However their potential contribution to destination image formation has been usually overlooked by researchers and marketers. Three clusters of subjectivities were revealed after 42 photographs of Seoul were sorted by 37 respondents. The results show how respondents perceived Seoul’s destination image. The three clusters agreed that symbolic monuments were the key representations of Seoul. The paper recommends that tourism marketers and policy makers should focus on understanding and coordinating with residents’ perceived image of Seoul as a destination when planning and decision making, especially in promoting Seoul as a destination market. This study, in conjunction with other constructivist research offers insight into how destination image is, especially with the rise of smart tourism, a complex social construction.

Despite the increasing adoption of gamification and its huge potential in tourism, research in gamification is still limited. As preliminary findings show that the effectiveness of gamification depends on the context of its application and the players’ use of the gamified app, this paper fills in these gaps: by exploring and analysing the application of gamification in a specific e-commerce tourism context; and assessing the gamification's effectiveness by measuring the players’ gamification usage and the latter's behavioural and psychological outcomes. The gamified TripAdvisor website and its Facebook enabled gamification app are used as the specific context of the study. Findings from a survey conducted on TripAdvisor users provide useful practical and theoretical implications to gamification designers and researchers alike on how game mechanics can be designed for enhancing the users' motivation, flow, task involvement and engagement with the ‘play’ tasks, and so, increasing the gamification's effectiveness.