Earticle

Despite longstanding concern with the dimensionality of the service quality construct as measured by ServQual and IS-ServQual instruments, variations on the IS-ServQual instrument have been enduringly prominent in both academic research and practice in the field of IS. We explain the continuing popularity of the instrument based on the salience of the item set for predicting overall customer satisfaction, suggesting that the preoccupation with the dimensions has been a distraction. The implicit mutual exclusivity of the items suggests a more appropriate conceptualization of IS-ServQual as a formative index. This conceptualization resolves the paradox in IS-ServQual research, that of how an instrument with such well-known and well-documented weaknesses continue to be very influential and widely used by academics and practitioners. A formative conceptualization acknowledges and addresses the criticisms of IS-ServQual, while simultaneously explaining its enduring salience by focusing on the items rather than the “dimensions.” By employing an opportunistic sample and adopting the most recent IS-ServQual instrument published in a leading IS journal (virtually, any valid IS- ServQual sample in combination with a previously tested instrument variant would suffice for study purposes), we demonstrate that when re-specified as both first-order and second-order formatives, IS-ServQual has good model quality metrics and high predictive power on customer satisfaction. We conclude that this formative specification has higher practical use and is more defensible theoretically.

This study aims to investigate the effect of message content and source user identity on information diffusion in Twitter networks. For the empirical study, we collected 11,346 tweets pertaining to the three major mobile telecom carriers in Korea for three months, from September to December 2011. These tweets generated 59,111 retweets (RTs) and were retweeted at least once. Our analysis indicates that information diffusion in Twitter in terms of RT volume is affected primarily by the type of message content, such as the inclusion of corporate social responsibility activities. However, the effect of message content on information diffusion is heterogeneous to the identity of the information source. We argue that user identity affects recipients’ perception of the credibility of focal information. Our study offers insights into the information diffusion mechanism in online social networks and provides managerial implications on the strategic utilization of online social networks for marketing communications with customers.

IT convergence services, as the main stream of the digital age, are currently on their way to include the concept of Software as a Service (SaaS), where IT products and services are integrated as one. In particular, the recently introduced web-service-based SaaS is expected to be a more developed SaaS model. This new model provides greater influence on clients’ job performances than its previous models, such as application service providers and the web-native phase. However, the effects of technology maturity on task performance have been overlooked in adoption and performance studies. Accordingly, this study introduces SaaS technology maturity as the exogenous technological characteristic influencing job performance. This study also examines the relationships among various SaaS-related performances according to the different levels of SaaS maturity. Results suggest that applying innovative technologies (such as SaaS), particularly when the technology reaches a certain level of maturity, is more helpful for managers in improving task-technology fit and job performance. This study makes an academic contribution by establishing and validating a performance model empirically with SaaS technology maturity perspectives.

The dramatic growth of social networking sites (SNS) has created a myriad of privacy concerns. Our study focuses on how much monetary incentive SNS users are willing to accept in exchange for disclosing their SNS information by accepting friend requests. First, we focused on information privacy in SNS, and estimated the value of information privacy by using the contingent valuation method. Second, we attempted to estimate how SNS users’ willingness to accept would change when demographic information and additional information vary. Privacy-sensitive SNS users have the following characteristics: higher education, less SNS experience, and higher security consciousness. On the contrary, those who make good use of SNS and use open-based SNS are less sensitive to privacy. In summary, privacy-sensitive SNS users are fearful or uneasy when they have insufficient control of SNS information. Considering 14 conditions on the value of information privacy on SNS, the mean value of SNS information per person is 173,957 won. If we apply this value to Facebook users, the total Facebook information value would be 1.91 trillion won, considering that there are 11 million users in Korea.

A recent trend in innovation paradigm is the shift from closed innovation to open innovation principles. This trend is characterized by the use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge not only to accelerate internal innovation, but also to expand the markets for external use of innovation. However, the Not- Invented-Here (NIH), and Not-Sold-Here (NSH) or Only-Use-Here (OUH) syndromes are the most common challenges encountered in open innovation processes. Therefore, this study has the following main aims: 1) propose a research model that explains the factors that influence NIH and NSH/OUH attitudes based on motivation theory with perceived organizational fairness and commitment, 2) investigate their impacts on NIH and NSH/OUH attitudes, and 3) provide useful theoretical and practical insights. The proposed research model was empirically tested using survey data collected from information technology (IT) professionals in Korea. One of the major findings indicates that IT professionals’ perceived organizational fairness has a negative effect on NIH attitudes in open innovation process. Theoretical and practical contributions of this study are also discussed.

The Internet has become one of the most important channels for people to communicate and for companies to implement their sales promotion activities, such as advertising. Marketing and advertising attempt to influence customers’ attitude to persuade them to choose to buy the advertisers’ products instead of the competitors’. With the different forms of online marketing, such as search engine marketing, email marketing, and mobile marketing, advertisers can find more effective strategies to attract the attention of more targeted audiences. With the emergence of the social web (web 2.0), a new platform was introduced called social networks. This paper presents the current work in internet marketing activities until web 2.0, and conducts a social network analysis to aid in data extraction. Marketing and advertising companies have understood the power of information for a very long time. The more knowledge these companies have on the demographics, consumer habits, and preferences of particular customer types, the more they can tailor their product offerings, and the more sales they can make. This paper aims to understand the internet marketing concepts as well as present challenges and work directions in internet marketing.

Public sectors around the world utilize social media tools and technologies in their daily activities for a variety of purposes, including disseminating useful information, fostering mass collaboration, and enforcing laws and regulations. A number of social media-based government stage models have emerged to document this use. In this chapter, we conducted a qualitative meta-synthesis of four social media-based government models. These models include 1) the open government maturity model, 2) the social media utilization model, 3) the adoption process for social media, and 4) the social media-based engagement model. The concepts, metaphors, and themes contained in these developmental models are extracted through a series of in- depth semantic analyses of descriptions, resulting in a common frame of reference.

The dynamic capabilities of social media are changing the nature of contemporary news by allowing users to communicate and create content, deliver and share newsworthy information, and consume news. News organizations engage with social media because this computer-mediated tool provides an alternative platform for delivering news and connecting with global audiences. This role of social media is conceptualized as its complementarity. However, when mass user-generated-content is constantly shared with other users, more users are attracted to indulge in news-seeking activities on social media. This phenomenon potentially fulfills users’ news requirements on social media, which is contrary to what news companies envisioned when they began engaging with social media. This dichotomous role of social media, providing complementarity and showing the potential for becoming a superior news medium, is conceptualized as its competing- complementarity. This paper offers preliminary evidence of competing-complementarity by analyzing the news consumption of individuals. Such consumption is explained through the theoretical perspective of punctuated equilibrium by conceptualizing news consumption as a deep structure radically impacted by a disruptive technology. Although social media benefit news organizations, its competing potential poses serious challenges to their monopolistic controls on news production, distribution, readership, and revenue generation.

Social media websites have continued to proliferate, and the way in which people stay connected has also evolved. The issue of user loyalty a website remains crucial given that the competition is severe. Websites need loyal users who continue to use their sites to survive and be successful. In this research, we applied self-regulation framework to investigate the factors leading to user loyalty to a social media site. In particular, the role of sense of belonging, which is a common emotional reaction to a social media site, is examined. A survey of users in a popular social media site in Taiwan was conducted. Results show that both sense of belonging and service quality have direct effect on loyalty, whereas trust affects loyalty indirectly by fostering a sense of belonging. Service quality affects loyalty through trust and sense of belonging. Notably, trust has insignificant effect on loyalty as originally proposed. Users are then classified into two groups, namely, heavy and light users, based on their usage. Among light users, service quality has no direct effect on loyalty. Therefore, sense of belonging has sole direct impact on loyalty. Both service quality and sense of belonging contribute to loyalty in users who spend more time online. Implications of this study are also discussed.