Negotiation by Software Agents in Electronic Business

Electronic negotiation is one of many applications that software agents can perform to facilitate electronic business. Negotiations between software agents and humans (hybrid negotiation), can make electronic business efficient and intelligent. It can save time, effort and other valueable resources by replacing the human in electronic business activities and many other domains. However, to enable hybrid negotiation, a software agent needs clear machine interpretable semantics to understand and generate natural language content. Although it is not simple to make natural language content understandable by software agents as a whole, it can be achieved in different domains--in this case electronic business. For this purpose, an example of hybrid negotiation is presented, in which a software agent and a human agent negotiate for a business contract. Problems involved in this negotiation process are partially resolved through ontologies (the main Semantic Web technology), NSS (negotiation support system) and hand written rules.

The New Age E-Enterprise

Globalization and the resultant transition to virtual work are changing the dynamics of critical business relationships today. The organizational fabric is undergoing a transformation. The new knowledge economy, coupled with the modern customer based relationship approach has transformed the shape of business, catalyzed further by the internet revolution. Shrinking distance barriers and the emergence of new ways of building and delivering products and services online, is enabling the rapid globalization of markets. This chapter traces how the new knowledge economy, along with the modern customer based relationship approach, impacts the organizational fabric. The collaborative Web along with the e-enterprise, has brought into vogue the use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers. This, along with organizational willingness to take risks, has created new opportunities for companies in the domain of innovation, Internet based collaboration and co-creation.

Two-Sided Markets and Social Media

This chapter introduces the concept of “two-sided” markets and shows how they comprise a unique type of social media that facilitates the development of social networks oriented toward specific product domains (e.g., restaurants), specific brands (e.g., Starbucks), or common consumer concerns (e.g., Yelp.com). Not only do two-sided-markets constitute a unique type of Website, they can be integrated with or linked to other social media, thereby enriching the value of both the two-sided market and its partner(s). Because a two-sided market increases in value for all three parties that constitute it (consumers, the platform, and vendors) as the number of both vendors and consumer participants grows, platform managers are eager to use incentive strategies to encourage consumers to increase their active use of the site. Among these incentive strategies are various reward programs that stimulate use by rewarding consumers who add content, post reviews, comment on others’ reviews, and more. Part of this chapter describes two online experiments that demonstrate that two types of common reward programs, monetary and social rewards (Heyman & Ariely, 2004), are effective in stimulating consumer intent to use the site more actively than without a reward. Finally, we make several suggestions for integrating two-sided markets into other social media, and we propose several avenues for future research into this topic that should increase our understanding of how consumers behave in two-sided markets and how platform managers can both enhance active use and use the information derived from this use.

Can Your Business Have One Million Friends?

In this chapter, we develop a theoretical framework that explains how blogs can be categorized based on audiences’ perceptions and how bloggers use different strategies to shape or shift their audiences’ perceptions and increase the persuasiveness of their messages. We posit that bloggers use two distinguishable communication strategies: (a) developing and sustaining an illusion of relationship between the blogger and the reader in order to individualize the communication, and (b) maintaining a level of ambiguity in their commercial interests in order to conceal the commercial nature of some blogs. We describe the tactics underlying the use of these strategies as well as the efficacy and ethics of these practices.

Using Social Media to Cultivate Positive Community Norms

This chapter analyzes the use of social media in health risk prevention campaigns. According to the Positive Community Norms (PCN) framework, prevention is defined as the process of proactively cultivating positive cultures through transformational leadership, communications, and an integrated portfolio of strategies. This chapter focuses on social media strategies. We review two extant prevention models (Everett Rogers’s framework and the PCN framework), examine underlying theoretical explanations for consumer behaviors related to prevention and the use of social media, provide three brief case studies of prevention campaigns at various stages of maturity and success, and offer caveats for campaign managers who might be considering using social media to reach out to audiences. We intend this material to prove beneficial for researchers, public policymakers, and managers of prevention campaigns.

Interaction between Consumers and Businesses through Social Media

For a great deal of people, social media is the gateway to the Internet and it would not be feasible use of the network if it was not through them. Social media revolutionized not only the Internet but also the way people communicate and, consequently, the way consumers and businesses interact. Therefore, companies need to know and master the use of social media for competitive advantage. The current forms of interaction between businesses and consumers still leave much to be desired and it is not rare to find companies that make mistakes in the process of communication with their consumers through social media. This chapter aims to evaluate the communication channels based on social media used by businesses and consumers, showing successful and non-successful cases in the communication process and suggesting trends of usage of these channels more efficiently.

Typical Innovative and Involvement Characteristics of Contributors to Consumer Generated Media

One key impact of consumer generated media on today’s firms is that it has become an increasingly important source of information for consumers in their decision making process. Firms that are able to gather positive messages about themselves and their products or services on consumer generated media can be instrumental to the survival and success of their business. The quality and growth of consumer generated media depend on contributions from the consumer public, and some people are more likely to post their own messages, written or otherwise, on consumer generated media than others. Understanding some typical characteristics of these people, termed active contributors to consumer generated media in this chapter, is beneficial for firms, as they can be more ready to identify them and could do something to turn them in their flavour. Based on literature review, this study has identified a number of hypothetical variables that may influence whether a person is an active contributor to consumer generated media. A questionnaire survey on 430 respondents has shown that global innovativeness, electronic innovativeness and consumer involvement significantly affect contributions to consumer generated media. Active contributors to this new medium are also more likely to be male and of a younger age.

Understanding Purchasing Behavior within Virtual Worlds

Although the hype around virtual worlds has slowed down in recent months, chances are high that this type of social media will increase in importance over years to come. Many companies which pioneered in entering virtual worlds have left these environments after their first steps. One of the reasons for these initial failures is likely the lack of understanding of in-world consumers and their expectations toward virtual commerce. The purpose of the authors’ chapter is therefore to investigate consumer purchase behavior within the virtual social world Second Life. Specifically, the authors analyze the types of purchase behavior consumers show within such an environment (planned purchases vs. impulse buying) and the factors that influence the decision to buy virtual products and services in exchange for real life money. For this, the authors’ study is based on a combination of a qualitative pre-study consisting of 29 in-depth interviews and a quantitative analysis based on responses obtained from a representative sample of 580 Second Life residents. The authors’ analysis results in the following three findings: First, the authors show that Second Life residents engage in two different types of purchase behavior: planned purchases and impulse buying. Second, the authors show that traditional consumer behavior theories and concepts can be transferred to similar behavior in a virtual world, although with different degrees of importance for different variables. And finally, the authors show that a Second Life resident’s usage intensity and consumption experience have a significant moderating influence on planned purchase behavior but not on impulse buying. From a managerial perspective, the authors’ results imply that Real Life companies that maintain Second Life flagship stores may consider communicating about their virtual products and services within real life. Additionally, Second Life stores should try to make the purchasing process as simple and convenient as possible (in order to increase planned purchases) and to create an overall exciting and pleasant shopping environment to elicit positive emotions among their potential customers (in order to maximize the probability of impulse buying). Finally, since purchasing behavior within Second Life appears to be more individualistic than what can be observed in real life, firms can consider offering virtual products and services in Second Life that are highly extravagant and may never be purchased in Real Life due to fear of other people’s opinions-–which is likely to be of particular importance for fashion goods.

E-Business Planning in Morphing Organizations

E-business has changed the external face of many organizations widening and extending access to products and services. This has required large scale changes to be made to business processes to accommodate new ways of working. Social media technologies have introduced a new wave of change through organizational trading networks. Further business transformation is needed to embrace the opportunities and challenges of social media technologies. This chapter presents a framework to help morphing organizations plan the business transformation needed to embed social media technologies within their e-business service provision. Business and technological maturity models are analysed and a set of maturity measures for e-business is proposed. The business transformation needed to embed e-business technology in organizational systems is discussed in two UK manufacturers. Dimensions of business transformation and critical success factors for adopting social media technologies are proposed from these cases.

Using Social Network Data to Identify Key Influencers for Social CRM Activities

Social network data can be used to identify key influencers within a company’s customer database. Key influencers are consumers that are equipped with a large and strong network of connected neighbors. Within such a strong network, marketing messages can be passed on easily via the key influencers. The purpose of the chapter is to elaborate on the social effects of customer networks and the possibility to use data from these networks for Social CRM. First, the foundations of social contagion in networks and the relationship between social effects and Social CRM performance measures are explained. Second, possible ways of data acquisition and data integration are discussed and an overview of analytical software solutions is given. Fourth, the implementation process and its challenges are elaborated. The chapter closes with an outline of further research directions.