J. Theor. Appl. Electron. Commer. Res., Volume 15, Issue 2 (May 2020) – 8 articles

Digital products are illegally used in various areas in the world. This behavior causes bad effects on e-commerce activities. This study aimed to find out factors influencing digital piracy behavior in Vietnam, where digital piracy rate is fairly high. In previous research, the approach focused on separate aspects and the scope focused mainly on students. Therefore, an integrated approach could return a better result. Based on the theory of planned behavior and related researches, this study proposed an integrated model to explore the factors affecting digital piracy behavior in Vietnam. Some viewpoints that have been integrated into the proposed model include a psychological, moral, legal, economic and technological viewpoint. The sample consists of 264 people in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The results showed that the perceived behavioral control strongly influences the intention, and then on the digital piracy behavior. Besides, perceived behavioral control is influenced by technology development and perceived risk. This research confirmed most of the proposed hypotheses and showed the important role of technology in predicting this kind of behavior in Vietnam. Based on the findings of this study, several suggestions have been made to mitigate the digital piracy situation in Vietnam. Full article

Control and management of e-markets are one of the essential needs in social commerce context. Social commerce systems include not only informational flows, financial and goods/services but also social relationships and interactions. The focus of this research is to find the meaningful relationship between social relations and the network of various commercial flows among human resources (i.e., activity network) in social commerce context. If the activity network conforms with social relations, then business processes and, in general, the e-market can be steered by social relations. The proposed research framework has been constructed from a combination of process mining concepts, multi-layered network modeling, network analyzing, and social theories. Such a combination in the conformance checking field is an original contribution of this study, not yet explored. Two simulated sample datasets in four different versions are applied for the evaluation. Furthermore, Friedman's statistical test is employed to proof of the research hypothesis and gain more confidence in the obtained results. The results indicate that, despite the structural mismatch of the social network with the activity network, social relations affect the formation of business interactions among human resources. This effect is also different for various flow types. Multi-layered network modeling demonstrates this difference. Full article

The popularity of multiplayer online battle arena games is closely linked to customer engagement. The purpose is to investigate the influences that individual motivators and environmental antecedents have upon customer engagement and continuous playing games intention, and compare the impacts between playing Multiplayer online battle arena games on personal computers and on mobile phones. A Triadic reciprocal determinism framework was developed to explain the relationship among individual motivator (flow experience), environmental antecedents (technical features and social interaction), individual behavior (continuous playing games intention), and customer engagement within multiplayer online battle arena gaming settings. Altogether 531 questionnaires from multiplayer online battle arena players were collected. Structural equation modeling with Smart-partial least squares was used to evaluate the research model. The findings suggest that the influence of flow experience on customer engagement in personal computers gaming is more significant than that in mobile gaming, while the effects of perceived ease of use and offline social interaction on customer engagement in mobile gaming are comparatively higher. This study indicates the importance of flow experience, perceived control, perceived ease of use, and social interaction in the Multiplayer online battle arena gaming development and the prosperity for better customers engaged, and to enhance customer experience. Full article

The smartphone has made gaming more accessible and desirable for a wider market than ever before. Game apps are one of the most consumed and fastest growing products in the world today. Yet, few studies have thus far explored the implications of games apps consumption from a consumer perspective, addressing the transfer of abilities from one technological field to another. The main purpose of this paper is threefold: to ascertain the role of personality as a determinant of self-efficacy, to establish whether there is a transfer process from self-efficacy in video gaming with apps to online shopping and to analyze the impact of self-efficacy on the online purchase of game-related products. Results show that neuroticism, extraversion, and agreeableness determine the gaming self-efficacy that is transferred to online shopping self-efficacy and finally to the online purchase of game-related products. These insights provide interesting managerial implications that could affect video game marketing. Full article

With the emergence of social media, customer relationship management has undergone noticeable changes and gained a great deal of attention from researchers and practitioners in recent years. In this paper, we provide additional insights into how intensively business-to-customer micro, small and medium-sized enterprises adopt social customer relationship management. Based on the literature review and insights from interviews with six micro, small and medium-sized enterprise owners/managers, we developed a conceptual research model that integrates the antecedents, intensity of social customer relationship management adoption, and performance outcomes. For the intensity of social customer relationship management adoption, we applied process-based conceptualization consisting of the customer engagement process and customer data management process. Then we empirically tested a conceptual research model by using data collected in a survey of 119 micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in Slovenia. We found that not all antecedents are equally relevant to both processes of the intensity of social customer relationship management adoption. Additionally, we found that the intensity of social customer relationship management adoption has a positive effect on customer relationship performance. Based on these findings, we provide recommendations for further research and offer practical implications for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises considering social customer relationship management adoption. Full article

Information technology architecture is an essential element of an enterprise’s strategy and impacts competitive advantage. The management of information technology architectures is unexplored in theory and confused in practice. In particular, the roles of information technology architects are interpreted in various ways. The purpose of this study is to examine the roles of information technology architects by investigating the required activities and skills demanded in the human resources market. In-depth content analysis was applied on job advertisements. Categories were inductively developed by allocating meaning units until saturation: 2438 meaning units were assigned to 37 task categories and 49 skill categories. As a result, three types of architects with distinctive profiles were identified. In addition to technological expertise, all architects must provide outstanding social and methodological skills. Knowledge of particular frameworks is rarely required. Skills and architect types from The Open Group Architecture Framework were disproved in parts. Attributes specific to e-commerce architects and digital architects were elaborated. The found task and skill categories may be used as catalogs for recruiting purposes in practice. Full article

Although there is a great number of maturity models proposed for Information Systems, most of them have three limitations: (1) they are focused on a single or small subset of companies; (2) they do not address the evolution of enterprise systems and e-business applications, simultaneously; (3) they are only focused on developed countries and do not consider emerging economies. We developed a maturity model of Information Systems that addresses these limitations through a data mining approach. The results showed that clustering analysis was an effective method for discovering similar groups of companies according to the set of enterprise systems and e-business applications that they adopted. Two major conclusions can be outlined: Unlike previous models, it has been shown that companies can be grouped only in three stages of maturity. Furthermore, the evolutionary pattern of systems adopted by companies follows a path oriented to obtain greater efficiencies at the expense of those that strengthen the relationship with customers. The results are relevant to practitioners, researchers and policy makers in emerging economies. Full article