Systematic review of gender differences and similarities in online consumers’ shopping behavior

Purpose This study aims to systematically examine gender specific behavioral differences and similarities in online shopping consumers, underlying theories for such differences and similarities and moderating and mediating roles of gender in studying the effects of online marketing strategies. This synthesis explores gender differences and similarities from a wide range of online settings, including readiness for adoption of new technology, willingness to make online payments, trust in online vendors, perception and behavior toward online business websites and perceived online service quality. Design/methodology/approach A systematic approach was adopted to derive and then analyze the existing literature. The authors accessed relevant literature from three electronic databases. After a thorough screening process and applying inclusion and exclusion criteria, the study shortlisted 61 academic articles from an initial pool of 187 papers. Findings The findings reveal more differences than similarities between men and women as online consumers. Men generally have more favorable attitudes toward e-tailers (electronic retailing), online purchase/re-purchase and e-payments than women do. Social influences positively affect the online purchase intentions of men and women, but they have a more substantial effect on women. Privacy concerns negatively affect the online trust of men and women, but they also manifest a more significant influence on women. Practical implications Findings of review guide practitioners in formulating effective positioning and communication strategies that enable them to appeal to gender-specific consumer segments in multiple products and business contexts. It offers guidelines to online businesses for developing e-business platforms (websites) that persuade the target audience across gender groups, based on consumer browsing and web navigation preferences. Originality/value This review fulfills the need for a systematic synthesis of empirical research vis-à-vis online consumer behavior studies to find gender-specific perceptions, attitudes and behaviors.

Cartografía de la revista Profesional de la información: mapa visual de 30 años de historia

The process of creating a cartography, an interactive visualization, from the bibliographic data of the contents of the scientific journal Profesional de la información during its almost 30 years of life is presented. The cartography is available on the EPI journal website: https://profesionaldelainformacion.com/cartografia/EPI_GLOBAL/index.html. Its objective is to serve as a navigable index for the quick localization of information of interest to readers as well as a visual map that highlights the characteristics of the knowledge network that these data form through the interconnection of relationships between its nodes. This device has been created by extracting data from the journal’s website using web scraping tools and the free software Gephi for network visualization. A graph viewer allows access and manipulation through the web. Navigation through the bibliographic data network is facilitated by different strategies: (1) the use of different colors for each category of node (author, keyword, number, and article); (2) the viewer’s search tools, including a node label finder, a zoom bar, a magnifying glass, and a button to hide the network of relationships; and (3) the possibility of displaying different linked graphs. Selecting a node opens a side-space where all the attributes providing information about that node are displayed and that enables a new window to be opened, displaying all the information linked to an external page. The information on the authors is obtained from the Directory of Experts in the Management of Information (EXIT). This tool thus undeniable provides a useful source of secondary information on the journal, as were printed indexes in their day, with the advantage that it can be updated almost simultaneously with the publication of new issues. The data obtained will be used to carry out other analyses of the evolution of the journal, the topics of interest to the profession, and its stakeholders. Resumen Se presenta el proceso de realización de una cartografía, una visualización interactiva, a partir de los datos bibliográficos de los contenidos de la revista científica Profesional de la Información en sus casi 30 años de vida. La cartografía se puede consultar en el sitio web de la revista EPI: https://profesionaldelainformacion.com/cartografia/EPI_GLOBAL/index.html. Su objetivo es servir como índice navegable para la localización rápida de información de interés para los lectores, así como un mapa visual que resalta las características de la red de conocimiento que esos datos forman a través de la interconexión de relaciones entre sus nodos. Este dispositivo ha sido realizado a partir de la extracción de datos de la web de la propia revista mediante programas de web scraping, y el software libre Gephi para la visualización de las redes. Un visor de gráficos permite el acceso y su manipulación a través de la web. La navegación por la red de datos bibliográficos se facilita mediante distintas estrategias: (1) la diferenciación por colores de cada categoría de nodo (autor, palabra clave, número y artículo); (2) las herramientas de búsqueda del visor: un buscador de etiquetas de nodo, una barra para acercar y alejar la red, una lupa y un botón para ocultar la red de relaciones; y (3) la posibilidad de mostrar distintas gráficas enlazadas. La selección de un nodo abre un espacio lateral donde se muestran todos los atributos que dan información sobre ese nodo y permite abrir en una ventana nueva toda la que está enlazada con una página exterior. La información sobre los autores se obtiene del Directorio de Expertos en el Tratamiento de la Información (EXIT). Se constituye así en una fuente de información secundaria sobre la revista de innegable utilidad, como lo fueron en su día los índices impresos, con la ventaja de que su actualización puede realizarse de forma casi simultánea a la publicación de nuevos números. Los datos obtenidos servirán para la realización de otros análisis de la evolución de la revista, de las temáticas de interés de la profesión y sus actores.

ACCESSIBILITY TO UNDERWATER CULTURAL HERITAGE: INTERACTIVE WEB NAVIGATION OF THE ROMAN SUBMERSED VESSEL OF CALA MINNOLA

The possibilities offered by photogrammetric reconstruction based on computer vision algorithms allowed in recent years to develop new interesting solutions for the use and dissemination of knowledge on Cultural Heritage (CH). In the same way, the recent technological development in the field of Virtual Reality (VR) has offered new possibilities for the creation of interactive virtual environments which can be freely accessed via the browser using any type of device. These technologies acquire an additional relevance if applied to archaeological sites or monuments that are difficult to access, or even totally inaccessible, except by specialized personnel. In this case the virtual fruition on web becomes strategic for the valorization of CH, as in the case of submerged archaeological sites, where the virtual tour represents in fact the only opportunity of diffuse accessibility. The present case shows the virtual reconstruction of the wreck area of the Roman ship found on the seabed of Cala Minnola on the island of Levanzo (TP, Italy). The model, obtained from a Structure from Motion (SfM) processing of a chunk of photos originally intended for a traditional photogrammetric survey, was edited and inserted into a specific template based on HTML5 and linked to Javascript libraries (Three.js) which allowed browsing on web. Subsequently, the navigation model was appropriately adapted to the purpose, so as to make the use of the network more intuitive possible, considering any type of device and using the most common browsers (Chrome, Safari, Firefox). This experimentation is a viable procedure for spreading the knowledge of a submerged archaeological site in a simple way, by web-browsing. This type of navigation models with the future development of 5G networks will find greater diffusion and application, with the possibility of including increasingly complex environments in the navigation.

Online web navigation assistant

The problem of finding relevant data while searching the internet represents a big challenge for web users due to the enormous amounts of available information on the web. These difficulties are related to the well-known problem of information overload. In this work, we propose an online web assistant called OWNA. We developed a fully integrated framework for making recommendations in real-time based on web usage mining techniques. Our work starts with preparing raw data, then extracting useful information that helps build a knowledge base as well as assigns a specific weight for certain factors. The experiments show the advantages of the proposed model against alternative approaches.

COVID-19 lockdown: impact on online gambling, online shopping, web navigation and online pornography

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic and control measures may have had an impact on unpleasant emotions experimented during the lockdown (LD). This may have increased the number of hours spent online and could have impacted the quality of the enacted behavior, in terms of loss of control of Internet use. In this online survey, we were interested in measure how much loss of control was perceived regarding online gambling, online shopping, the fruition of online pornographic content and web navigation.Design and methods: The online survey was carried out during the COVID-19 pandemic in the post-lockdown and 1232 subjects participated in the survey. In the participating sample, healthcare workers (HW) were 43.1% of the sample, of which 18.7% were directly involved in the Coronavirus emergency, and 52.3% of the sample is not a HW. Only 0.6% of the sample gambled online and 37.5% of those reported losing control of their gambling mode. Most of the sample shopped online during the LD (70.1%), but only 7.2% of those lost control by buying and/or spending more than what they had set themselves.Results: Significant data emerged showing that those who lost control while online shopping also lost control regarding the amount of time spent online (p<0.001); 21.6% of the sample, reported making use of online pornographic material during LD, 4.7% of them stated that the frequency increased and 5.1% reported losing control by having spent more money or more time than what was intended. Finally, 44.7% of the sample have experienced loss of control during the web navigation. Furthermore, during the LD 67.8% of the sample reports having experienced unpleasant emotions. Of these, 8.4% state that they enacted behaviors such as online gambling, online shopping, online pornographic material viewing and web navigation to counter their negative emotions. Interestingly, we found a correlation between loss of control during web navigation and online shopping and the emotional states “upset”, “scared” and “restless” (p<0.05).Conclusion: To conclude, there was no significant increase in potentially addictive behaviors, nor an increase in loss of control of these behaviors when enacted online. However, the loss of control in online shopping and web navigation was significantly correlated to the unpleasant emotional states of nervousness, fear and restlessness, whereas those who reported feeling strong and able to handle the situation experienced a lower loss of control in their web navigation. These correlations may suggest that these online behaviors may act as modulators of unpleasant emotional states.

Research work in the Applied Cognitive Modelling Lab

Dr Junya Morita is based at the Applied Cognitive Modelling Laboratory (ACML) within the Department of Behavior Informatics at Shizuoka University in Japan. His team is conducting investigations that use computational models in an effort to improve our understanding of human minds and their inner workings. There are currently two directions of study underway at ACML. The first is concerned with theoretical studies of cognitive modelling, where the team try to construct models that explain human minds as computational and algorithmic levels. The second direction of study is the application of computational cognitive models. Morita and his team believe that there are fundamental values within the basic endeavours of cognitive science and are working to prove these values exist and are valid. Current topics of application include education, driving, entertainment, graphic design, language development, web navigation and mental illness.