Earticle

The success of new product development is a key factor for getting competitive advantages. Marketing research has been investigating marketing capability, manufacturing technical capability, cross-functional integration, market knowledge competence, market orientation, and competitive environment as the key success factors of new product development. Recently, the role of IT infrastructure in enhancing new product advantage is assumed in the literature. However, the empirical studies on the role of IT infrastructure are lacking. The purpose of this study is to empirically exam the impacts of IT infrastructure on new product competitive advantage. In this study, IT infrastructure is conceptualized as the flexibility of IT infrastructure. Based on previous research, a conceptual model is established by incorporating the direct impact of IT infrastructure flexibility and its indirect impact through the key success factors on new product development. To empirically test the research model, data are surveyed from a pair of IS department and Marketing department of 92 consumer goods manufacturers. By employing PLS technique, the measurement reliability and reliability of research variables are tested and the path analysis is conducted to do the hypothesis testing. The path analysis shows that IT infrastructure flexibility has no direct effect on new product advantage, However, the indirect effect of IT infrastructure is found, which is mediated by marketing capability, manufacturing technical capability, cross-functional integration, and market orientation respectively. Hence, The flexible IT infrastructure increases cross-functional integration (H1), market orientation (H3), marketing capability (H5), and manufacturing technical capability (H6). All success factors of new product development excepts for competitive environment have a positive association with new product competitive advantages (from H10 to H14). Finally, the path from IT infrastructure flexibility to cross-functional integration, to market orientation, to market knowledge capability, and to new product advantage is found as the strongest path. These results indicate that the flexible IT infrastructure enhances information sharing with multiple departments and collaboration within a distributed innovation environment. The collaboration among departments positively affects the level of customer and competitor intelligence. The ability to obtain knowledge about customers and competitors makes firms to adapt to a changing environment quickly and to respond to customers' demands adequately. The flexible IT infrastructure also enhances the capability of organization to more rapidly respond to the changes in product design resulting in faster product development and reduced costs. In addition to, it enhances marketing capability by the two-way communications with customers and the analyses of various kinds of customer data. In brief, the finding of this study suggests that the flexible IT infrastructure allows many firms to pursue sustained new product competitive advantages. This study advances research on IT infrastructure in two important aspects. First, by Integrating marketing research and IS research, this study develops a conceptual model on the role of IT infrastructure in enhancing new product advantage. Second, it empirically finds the indirect impacts of IT infrastructure on new product advantage, which confirms the potential for the IS field to contribute to new product development research. The limitations of this study are also discussed to provide research directions for future research.

Owing to the rapid growth of using the Internet, not only click-and-mortar companies but also brick-and-mortar ones have been expanding their distribution channels into online, Moreover, since online channels are more attractive than offline ones in control and maintenance, switching customers into online ones is emerged as one of very important managerial issues in a view of reduction of cost as well as expansion of services. However, the switched customers should be faced by uncertainties which could not have been experienced in offline. Specifically, in online channels, buyers and sellers are separated temporally and spacially and there are always so many kinds of threat for security as well as not enough systems and conventions for them yet. Therefore, trust has been considered as one of the most critical mechanisms for resolution of such uncertainties in online transactions. However, it is not easy to build and maintain the relationships in online since most of them are virtual and indirect generally. Therefore, in order to switch offline customers into online ones, it is very important to make strategies based on identification of the relationship between online transaction and offline trust which has been built in offline business. Generally offline trust, which has been built independent of online, could not include trust for online-dependent activities such as payment security during or after transactions, while most of online trust include it. Therefore, a customer with high offline trust does not always perceive high security and assure safe transactions. Accordingly, while online trust, where technical capabilities for online security is one of main bases, includes control trust implicitly or explicitly, offline trust does not. However. in spite of such clear discrimination and independence between offline trust and perceived security, there can be the significant dependency between these two beliefs. The customers with high offline trust believe that the company would do some activities for online security for customers' safe transactions since it has been believed of doing well for customers' trust. Theoretically, users' perception of security is interpreted as a kind of control trus, which is trust for company's technical control capacities in order to resolve technical uncertainties in online. Therefore, the relationship between two beliefs can be considered as transference from offline trust to another type trust. that is, control trust. The objective of this study is to analyze the effect of offline trust on online transaction uses mediated by perceived security. For this purpose, we suggest a research model based on technology acceptance model (TAM). Reuse intention is adopted as a dependent variable and TAM is modified by adding perceived risk (PR) as well as two beliefs of using Internet banking, perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEOU). Moreover, perceive security (PS) is adopted as an external variable for PR and PU, while offline trust (OT) is an antecedent of PS. For an empirical test, sampling from 108 visitors to the banks in Daegu, Korea, we analyze our model by partial least square (PLS) approach. In result, our model is shown to explain 51.4% of the variance in reuse intention and all hypothesis are supported statistically. A theoretical implication of this study is to identify a role of PS between offline trust and reuse intention of using online transaction services. According to our result, PS can be considered as a mediation variable for bridging between two different concepts: trust that explains social aspects of customers and companies, and TAM that explains customers' reuse intention.

Research in the IS (Information Systems) outsourcing has focused on the importance of legal contracts and partnerships between vendors and clients. Without detailed legal contracts, there is no guarantee that an outsourcing vendor would not indulge in self-serving behavior. In addition, partnerships can supplement legal contracts in managing the relationship between clients and vendors legal contracts by itself cannot deal with all the complexity and ambiguity involved with IS outsourcing relationships. In this paper, we introduce a psychological contract (between client and vendor) as an important variable for IS outsourcing success. A psychological contract refers to individual's mental beliefs about his or her mutual obligations in a contractual relationship (Rousseau, 1995). A psychological contract emerges when one party believes that a promise of future returns has been made, a contribution has been given, and thus, an obligation has been created to provide future benefits (Rousseau, 1989). An employmentpsychological contract, which is a widespread concept in psychology, refers to employer and employee expectations of the employment relationship, i.e. mutual obligations, values, expectations and aspirations that operate over and above the formal contract of employment (Smithson and Lewis, 2003). Similar to the psychological contract between an employer and employee, IS outsourcing involves a contract and a set of mutual obligations between client and vendor (Ho et al., 2003). Given the lack of prior research on psychological contracts in the IS outsourcing context, we extend such studies and give insights through investigating the role of psychological contracts between client and vendor. Psychological contract theory offers highly relevant and sound theoretical lens for studying IS outsourcing management because of its six distinctive principles: (1) it focuses on mutual (rather than one-sided) obligations between contractual parties, (2) it's more comprehensive than the concept of legal contract, (3) it's an individual-level construct, (4) it changes over time, (5) it affects organizational behaviors, and (6) it's susceptible to organizational factors (Koh et al., 2004; Rousseau, 1996; Coyle-Shapiro, 2000). The aim of this paper is to put the concept, psychological contract commitment (PCC), under the spotlight, by finding out its mediating effects between legal contracts/partnerships and IS outsourcing success. Our interest is in the psychological contract commitment (PCC) or commitment to psychological contracts, which is the extent to which a partner consistently and deeply concerns with what the counter-party believes as obligations during the IS project. The basic premise for the hypothesized relationship between PCC and success is that for outsourcing success, client and vendor should continually commit to mutual obligations in which both parties believe, rather than to only explicit obligations. The psychological contract commitment playsa pivotal role in evaluating a counter-party because it reflects what one party really expects from the other. If one party consistently shows high commitment to psychological contracts, the other party would evaluate it positively. This will increase positive reciprocation efforts of the other party, thus leading to successful outsourcing outcomes (McNeeley and Meglino, 1994). We have used matched sample data for this research. We have collected three responses from each set of a client and a vendor firm: a project manager of the client firm, a project member from the vendor firm with whom the project manager cooperated, and an end-user of the client company who actually used the outsourced information systems. Special caution was given to the data collection process to avoid any bias in responses. We first sent three types of questionnaires (A, Band C) to each project manager of the client firm, asking him/her to answer the first type of questionnaires (A).

We are motivated by how offline and online firms compete. The Internet made many conventional offline firms build a dynamic online business as another sales channel using their advantages such as brand equity, an existing customer base with comprehensive purchasing data, integrated marketing, economies of scale, and longtime experience with the logistics of order fulfillment and customer service. Even though the hybrid selling using both offline and online channel seems to have advantages over a pure online retailer, all the conventional offline firms are not seen to create an online business. Many conventional offline firms began to launch online business since the Internet era, however, just being online business is not likely to guarantee success. According to Bizate.com's report whether the hybrid channel strategy is successful is still under investigation. For example, consider the classic case of Barnes and Noble versus Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble was already the largest chain of bookstores in the U,S., when Amazon.com was established in 1995, BarnesandNoble.com followed suit in 1997, After suffering losses in its initial years, Amazon finally turned profitable in 2003. In 2004, Amazon's net income was $588 million on revenues of $6.92 billion, while Barnes and Noble earned $143 million on revenues of $4.87 billion, which included BarnesandNoble.com's loss of $21 million on revenues of $420 million. While these examples serve to motivate our thinking, it does not explain when offline firms should venture online. It also does not provide an analytical framework that can generalized to other competitive online-offline situations. We attempt to do this in this paper and analyze a hybrid channel model where a conventional offline firm competes against online firms using its own direct online channels. We are particularly interested in an optimal channel strategy when a conventional offline firm sells its products through its own direct online channel to compete with other rival online firms. We consider two situations where its direct online channel and other online firms are symmetric and asymmetric in the brand effect. The analysis of this paper presents several findings. In the symmetric model where a hybrid firm's online channel is not differentiated from a pure online firm, (i) a conventional offline firm will not launch its online business. In the asymmetric model where a hybrid firm's online channel is differentiated from a pure online firm, (ii) a conventional offline firm can launch its online business if its brand effect is greater than a certain threshold. (iii) there is a positive relationship between its brand effect and online customer costs showing that a conventional offline firm needs more brand effect in order to launch online business as online customer costs decrease. (iv) there is a negative relationship between its brand effect and the number of customers with access to the Internet showing that a conventional offline firm tends to launch its online business when customers with access to the Internet increases.

Conventional networking and telecommunications infrastructure characterized by wires, fixed location, and inflexibility is giving way to mobile technologies. Numerous research reports point to the ultimate domination of wireless communication. With the increasing prevalence of advanced cell-phones, various mobile data services (hereafter MDS) are gaining popularity. Although cellular networks were originally introduced for voice communications, statistics indicate that data services are replacing the matured voice service as the growth engine for telecom service providers. For example, SK Telecom, the Korea's largest mobile service provider, reported that 25.6% of revenue and 28.5% of profit came from MDS in 2006 and the share is growing. Statistics also indicate that, in 2006, the average revenue per user (ARPU) for voice didn't change but MDS grew seven percents from the previous year, further highlighting its growth potential. MDS is defined "as an assortment of digital data services that can be accessed using a mobile device over a wide geographic area." A variety of MDS have been deployed, with a few reaching the status of killer applications. Many of them need to access the Internet through the cellular-phone infrastructure. In the past, when the cellular network didn't have acceptable bandwidth for data services, SMS (short messaging service) dominated MDS. Now, Internet-ready, next-generation cell-phones are driving rich digital data services into the fabric of everyday life, These include news on various topics, Internet search, mapping and location-based information, mobile banking and gaming, downloading (i.e., screen savers), multimedia streaming, and various communication services (i.e., email, short messaging, messenger, and chaffing). The huge economic stake MDS has on its stakeholders warrants focused research to understand associated dynamics behind its adoption. Lyytinen and Yoo(2002) pointed out the limitation of traditional adoption models in explaining the rapid diffusion of innovations such as P2P or mobile services. Also, despite the increasing popularity of MDS, unexpected drop in its usage is observed among some people. Intrigued by these observations, an exploratory study was conducted to examine decision factors of MDS usage. Data analysis revealed that the increase and decrease of MDS use was influenced by different forces. The findings of the exploratory study triggered our confirmatory research effort to validate the uni-directionality of studied factors in affecting MDS usage. This differs from extant studies of IS/IT adoption that are largely grounded on the assumption of bi-directionality of explanatory variables in determining the level of dependent variables (i.e., user satisfaction, service usage). The research goal is, therefore, to examine if increase and decrease in the usage of MDS are explained by two separate groups of variables pertaining to information quality and system quality. For this, we investigate following research questions: (1) Does the information quality of MDS increase service usage?; (2) Does the system quality of MDS decrease service usage?; and (3) Does user motivation for subscribing MDS moderate the effect information and system quality have on service usage? The research questions and subsequent analysis are grounded on the two factor theory pioneered by Hertzberg et al(1959). To answer the research questions, in the first, an exploratory study based on 378 survey responses was conducted to learn about important decision factors of MDS usage. It revealed discrepancy between the influencing forces of usage increase and those of usage decrease. Based on the findings from the exploratory study and the two-factor theory, we postulated information quality as the motivator and system quality as the de-motivator (or hygiene) of MDS. Then, a confirmative study was undertaken on their respective role in encouraging and discouraging the usage of mobile data service.

The advent of the Internet and related Web technologies has created an easily accessible link between a firm and its customers, and has provided opportunities to a firm to use information technology to support supplementary after-sale services associated with a product or service. It has been widely recognized that supplementary services are an important source of customer value and of competitive advantage as the characteristics of the product itself. Many of these supplementary services are information-based and need not be co-located with the product, so more and more companies are delivering these services electronically. Net-based customer service, which is defined as an Internet-based computerized information system that delivers services to a customer, therefore, is the core infrastructure for supplementary service provision. The importance of net-based customer service in delivering supplementary after-sale services associated with product has been well documented. The strategic advantages of well-implemented net-based customer service are enhanced customer loyalty and higher lock-in of customers, and a resulting reduction in competition and the consequent increase in profits. However, not all customers utilize such net-based customer service. The digital divide is the phenomenon in our society that captures the observation that not all customers have equal access to computers. Socioeconomic factors such as race, gender, and education level are strongly related to Internet accessibility and ability to use. This is due to the differences in the ability to bear the cost of a computer, and the differences in self-efficacy in the use of a technology, among other reasons. This concept, applied to e-commerce, has been called the "e-commerce divide." High Internet penetration is not eradicating the digital divide and e-commerce divide as one would hope. Besides, to accommodate personalized support, a customer must often provide personal information to the firm. This personal information includes not only name and address, but also preferences information and perhaps valuation information. However, many recent studies show that consumers may not be willing to share information about themselves due to concerns about privacy online. Due to the e-commerce divide, and due to privacy and security concerns of the customer for sharing personal information with firms, limited numbers of customers adopt net-based customer service. The limited level of customer adoption of net-based customer service affects the firm profits and the customers' welfare. We use a game-theoretic model in which we model the net-based customer service system as a mechanism to enhance customers' loyalty. We model a market entry scenario where a firm (the incumbent) uses the net-based customer service system in inducing loyalty in its customer base. The firm sells one product through the traditional retailing channels and at a price set for these channels. Another firm (the entrant) enters the market, and having observed the price of the incumbent firm (and after deducing the loyalty levels in the customer base), chooses its price. The profits of the firms and the surplus of the two customers segments (the segment that utilizes net-based customer service and the segment that does not) are analyzed in the Stackelberg leader-follower model of competition between the firms. We find that an increase in adoption of net-based customer service by the customer base is not always desirable for firms. With low effectiveness in enhancing customer loyalty, firms prefer a high level of customer adoption of net-based customer service, because an increase in adoption rate decreases competition and increases profits. A firm in an industry where net-based customer service is highly effective loyalty mechanism, on the other hand, prefers a low level of adoption by customers.