Usability Engineering and Research on Shopping Portals

2011 ◽  
pp. 1050-1053
Author(s):  
Yuan Gao ◽  
Hua Luo
Keyword(s):  
Web Sites ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Electronic Marketplace ◽  
Search Cost ◽  
Usability Engineering ◽  
Shopping Experience ◽  
Online Shoppers ◽  
Business To Consumer

A business-to-consumer (B2C) electronic marketplace (emarketplace) portal helps online shoppers in searching for desired products and services, customizing a user’s shopping experience, and identifying reputable merchants and service providers. These shopping portals provide the ability for a shopper to specify personal preferences, compare prices from multiple vendors, obtain merchant ratings and feedback from other customers, read reviews of products, find featured products and promotion, and create his or her own wish list in a online profile, among others. From an economics perspective, these portals reduce a buyer’s search cost (Bailey & Bakos, 1997). Web sites falling into this category include Yahoo! Shopping, bizrate.com, shopzilla.com, and nextag.com, among others.

scholarly journals Batch Order and Discrete Order Picking Integrated with Vehicle Routing Decisions

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 60-67
Author(s):  
Gerrit Karel Janssens ◽  
Stef Moons ◽  
Katrien Ramaekers ◽  
An Caris
Keyword(s):  
Vehicle Routing ◽  
Vehicle Routing Problem ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Dynamic Environment ◽  
Order Picking ◽  
Routing Problem ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Online Shoppers ◽  
Business To Consumer

In a business-to-consumer (B2C) context, customers order more frequently and in smaller quantities, resulting in a high number of consignments. Moreover, online shoppers expect a fast and accurate delivery at low cost or even free. To survive in such a market, companies can no longer optimise individual supply chain processes, but need to integrate several activities. In this article, the integrated order picking-vehicle routing problem is analysed in an e-commerce environment. In previous research, a mathematical programming formulation has been formulated in literature but only small-size instances can be solved to optimality. Two picking policies are studied: discrete order picking and batch order picking. The influence of various problem contexts on the value of integration is investigated: a small picking time period, outsourcing to 3PL service providers, and a dynamic environment context.

Enabling Technology and Functionalities of Shopping Portals

2011 ◽  
pp. 337-340
Author(s):  
Hua Luo ◽  
Yuan Gao
Keyword(s):  
Credit Cards ◽  
Virtual Space ◽  
Electronic Marketplace ◽  
Enabling Technology ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Online Shoppers ◽  
Business To Consumer

An electronic marketplace (e-marketplace) is a virtual space where buyers and sellers exchange goods and services (Bailey & Bakos, 1997). An e-marketplace that searches for and aggregates information from multiple vendors and presents information of related products and services to individual consumers is an example of a business-to-consumer (B2C) shopping portal. Many smart online shoppers start from a shopping portal that provides the added ability for a shopper to compare prices, read reviews, find deals, and even create a wish list or apply for credit cards. Examples of such sites include Yahoo! Shopping, bizrate.com, shopzilla. com, nextag.com, and the marketplace function of amazon. com, where new and used books from online vendors and individuals are listed and sold.

Clinical governance in Australia

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 56-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan D Spigelman ◽  
Shane Rendalls
Keyword(s):  
Web Sites ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Service Level ◽  
Clinical Governance ◽  
Success Factor ◽  
Quality And Safety ◽  
Funding Policy ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Health Service Providers ◽  
Governance Systems

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to overview, background and context to clinical governance in Australia, areas for further development and potential learnings for other jurisdictions. Design/methodology/approach – Commentary; non-systematic review of clinical governance literature; review of web sites for national, state and territory health departments, quality and safety organisations, and clinical colleges in Australia. Findings – Clinical governance in Australia shows variation across jurisdictions, reflective of a fragmented health system with responsibility for funding, policy and service provision being divided between levels of government and across service streams. The mechanisms in place to protect and engage with consumers thus varies according to where one lives. Information on quality and safety outcomes also varies; is difficult to find and often does not drill down to a service level useful for informing consumer treatment decisions. Organisational stability was identified as a key success factor in realising and maintaining the cultural shift to deliver ongoing quality. Research limitations/implications – Comparison of quality indicators with clinical governance systems and processes at a hospital level will provide a more detailed understanding of components most influencing quality outcomes. Practical implications – The information reported will assist health service providers to improve information and processes to engage with consumers and build further transparency and accountability. Originality/value – In this paper the authors have included an in depth profile of the background and context for the current state of clinical governance in Australia. The authors expect the detail provided will be of use to the international reader unfamiliar with the nuances of the Australian Healthcare System. Other studies (e.g. Russell and Dawda, 2013; Phillips et al., n.d.) have been based on deep professional understanding of clinical governance in appraising and reporting on initaitives and structures. This review has utilised resources available to an informed consumer seeking to understand the quality and safety of health services.

The use of the repertory grid technique in online trust research

2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 362-382 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonina Bauman
Keyword(s):  
Web Sites ◽  
Web Site ◽  
Repertory Grid ◽  
Repertory Grid Technique ◽  
Privacy And Security ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Online Trust ◽  
Online Consumers ◽  
Online Shoppers ◽  
Grid Technique

Purpose – This paper aims to explore online consumers’ perceptions of a trustworthy Web site. Specifically, it analyzes which Web site elements and features online buyers identify as online trust cues signaling e-vendor’s trustworthiness. Design/methodology/approach – This study implemented a repertory grid technique to gain insight into the customers’ perceptions of Web site trustworthiness. Findings – The most frequently identified online trust cues belong to the “Layout”, “Easy to Use” and “Sales” categories. This is in contrast with the traditional views that Web elements related to customers’ privacy and security are leading trust cues. In addition, online shoppers confirmed two trends in e-commerce: the role of social media in developing online trust to e-vendors is increasing and online shopping is associated with entertainment. Research limitations/implications – Rich data collected from 16 participants of this qualitative study present a challenge for generalizability. A caution should be taken in extending findings to the whole population of online shoppers. Practical implications – This study proves that the repertory grid technique is a useful method for qualitative market research. This method helped to solicit a list of Web site elements and features that online consumers identified as online trust cues. As buyers refer to those cues when deciding to trust or not to trust an e-vendor with the private and confidential information, businesses could use these research findings in designing Web sites that signal trustworthiness to customers. Originality/value – This study contributes to the research methodology as it extends the use of the repertory grid technique to the study of online trust cues and collection of data online. It is one of a few qualitative studies of online trust cues.

How do consumers choose offline shops on online platforms? An investigation of interactive consumer decision processing in diagnosis-and-cure markets

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer JooYeon Lee ◽  
Zecong Ma
Keyword(s):  
Service Providers ◽  
Geographic Distance ◽  
Consumer Decision ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Consumer Decisions ◽  
Customer Base ◽  
Shopping Experience ◽  
Specific Factors ◽  
Problem Awareness ◽  
Price Quotes

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is twofold: (1) to understand the process and consequences of the two-way communication between consumers and businesses on online-to-offline (O2O) diagnosis-and-cure services platforms and (2) to examine how consumer request-specific factors and service quote-specific factors influence consumer decisions in the interactive marketing context.Design/methodology/approachThe study analyzes a dataset of 17,878 service requests and 57,867 price quotes obtained from an O2O platform bridging consumers and automotive repair shops. On the platform, consumers request service quotes by uploading the description of automotive damage and multiple service providers suggest price quotes. The authors formulated a logit model to examine consumer decisions of responding service quotes.FindingsThis paper finds that (1) consumers receiving more severe diagnostic results are more likely to respond to the price quotes, and (2) diagnostic severity and inconsistency moderate the impacts of geographic distance, shop size, and quote price on consumers' responses to the service quotes.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper fills the gap in the literature by advancing the consumer decision processing model to address the interactive shopping experience on O2O diagnosis-and-cure services platforms. The findings are limited by the data and the research context.Practical implicationsFor marketing practitioners, the empirical results imply specific positioning and targeting strategies for markets with informational and geographic barriers to expand the market scope and customer base.Originality/valueThe present work is the first to examine the consumer decision process on O2O diagnosis-and-cure service platforms. It adds value to the literature by investigating how consumers update their problem awareness through the service request-specific factors (i.e. diagnostic severity and diagnostic inconsistency) and how the request-specific factors moderate the impacts of the quote-specific factors (i.e. shop distance, shop size and quote price) on consumers' responses to price quote. The conceptual model and empirical findings provide theoretical and practical values for e-commerce researchers and practitioners.

Shopping Agent Web Sites

2011 ◽  
pp. 222-231
Author(s):  
Ming Wang
Keyword(s):  
Web Sites ◽  
Internet Marketing ◽  
Agent Technology ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Price Information ◽  
Comparison Shopping ◽  
Online Shoppers ◽  
Software Programs ◽  
The Web

This chapter introduces the shopping agent technology as a new Internet marketing trend. The recent development of shopping agent Web sites has offered online shoppers an excellent comparative shopping environment. Shopping agent Web sites, also called shopping agents or shopping bots, are software programs that search the Internet stores on the Web and find products that meet a buyer’s specifications. Not only do these agent Web sites bring comparative product and price information from individual merchants’ Web sites, but also provide the online merchant ratings to customers. In summary, these agent Web sites take a query, search the Web sites of individual merchants that may have the product sought, bring back the results, and present them in a consolidated and compact format that allows comparison shopping at a glance.

Quality of Perception in M-Commerce

2011 ◽  
pp. 284-302 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Ghinea ◽  
M. C. Angelides
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Service ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
User Experience ◽  
Communication System ◽  
Multimedia Applications ◽  
Perceptual Quality ◽  
Network Bandwidth ◽  
Shopping Experience ◽  
Business To Consumer

In an m-commerce setting, the underlying communication system will have to provide a quality of service (QoS) in the presence of two competing factors—network bandwidth and, as the pressure to add value to the business-to-consumer (B2C) shopping experience by integrating multimedia applications grows, increasing data sizes. In this chapter, developments in the area of QoS-dependent multimedia perceptual quality are reviewed and are integrated with recent work focusing on QoS for e-commerce. Based on previously identified user perceptual tolerance to varying multimedia QoS, we show that enhancing the m-commerce B2C user experience with multimedia, far from being an idealised scenario, is in fact feasible if perceptual considerations are employed.

The Effectiveness of Privacy Policy Statements

2011 ◽  
pp. 84-111
Author(s):  
Roger Clarke
Keyword(s):  
Web Sites ◽  
Personal Data ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Consumer Trust ◽  
Privacy Policy ◽  
Internet Commerce ◽  
Privacy And Security ◽  
Security Practices ◽  
Policy Statements ◽  
Business To Consumer

An expectation exists in the U.S.A. that operators of business-to-consumer (B2C) Web sites will provide public notice of their privacy and security practices in relation to the personal data that they hold. Such documents are referred to in this paper as Privacy Policy Statements (PPS). The use of PPS has become mainstream in many other countries as well. Privacy and security of personal data are important elements in consumer trust, and hence in a consumer‘s decision to make purchases using Internet commerce services. PPS could therefore be expected to play an important role in overcoming the impediments to consumer purchases online. This paper adds to the growing research literature on PPS by developing a research design involving comparison of an organisation’s PPS against a normative template developed on the basis of professional practice and laws, policies, practices, and public expectations around the world. A study of six B2C sites was undertaken, in order to assess the practicability of the design, and provide some initial substantive insight into the contributions that PPS currently make to consumer trust. It appears that many organisations’ PPS may be seriously inadequate, and hence may be more of an impediment to trust than an enabler of Web-commerce adoption.

Augmented Reality as a Tool to Enhance the Experiential Value of Online Shopping

2016 ◽  
pp. 280-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tuğçe Ozansoy Çadırcı ◽  
Şirin Gizem Köse
Keyword(s):  
Augmented Reality ◽  
Direct Product ◽  
Online Shopping ◽  
Purchase Decisions ◽  
Product Experience ◽  
Interactive Applications ◽  
Utilitarian Value ◽  
Shopping Experience ◽  
Online Shoppers ◽  
Experiential Value

Perceived shopping value is an essential factor that affects the purchase decisions of consumers (Babin, Darden & Griffin, 1994). Former research has proved that experiential value associated with shopping activities helps retailers to create sustainable relationships with their consumers (Mathwick, Malhotra & Rigdon, 2001). Therefore, many retailers are seeking for interactive applications that facilitate the online shopping experience. Applications like Augmented Reality (AR) which provides a direct product experience for online shoppers can be a valuable tool for online fashion retailers. This paper aims to provide insights about AR applications' probable experiential value in online fashion retailing. As a result, a conceptualization of AR's experiential value is proposed with hedonic and utilitarian value perspectives combined with assumed benefit and risks of online shopping that can be eliminated with the use of AR technology.

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