Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research

E-commerce furnishes farmers in rural China with a novel solution accomplishing entrepreneurship transformation, but serious credit constraints still coexist with it at present, which may restrict the release of e-commerce’s potential. Therefore, this study investigates whether formal credit promotes entrepreneurial farmers’ e-commerce utilization and explores its influencing mechanism. Based on the survey data collected from 831 entrepreneurial farmers in Shaanxi province, Ningxia province and Shandong province in rural China, the propensity score matching (PSM) method was applied to measure the impact of formal credit on e-commerce utilization. The results show that formal credit contributes to a 18.41% increase of e-commerce utilization in general and increases entrepreneurial farmers’ online purchases and sales by 11.15% and 14.69%, respectively. Some groups perform significantly in the heterogeneity analysis, the most noteworthy of which are entrepreneurial farmers who are younger, belong to new type of agricultural business entities and use mobile payments. Their e-commerce utilization, including online purchases and sales, are impacted most by formal credit. Furthermore, when the bootstrap method was used to examine the mediating effect, we found that formal credit has a positive and significant effect on the utilization of e-commerce through four channels, which are internet learning, asset allocation, labor allocation and income growth. Hence, the findings suggest that the government should augment the amount of formal credit to optimize entrepreneurial farmers’ internet learning, asset allocation, labor employment and income growth, thereby promoting e-commerce to achieve entrepreneurial transformation and sustainable development in rural areas. Full article

“Tourism for all” is based on three main aspects: accessible tourism, sustainable tourism and social tourism. Accessibility is an essential part of responsible and sustainable tourism. A sizable segment of the population comprises people who have a type of disability or people who are older and, as a result of age, experience diminished physical and/or mental abilities. The aim of this study is to analyze whether the mobile applications and websites of Portuguese and Spanish Destination Management Organizations (DMOs) are accessible. For this purpose, accessible destinations listed by the Tur4all project were taken as a sample for a quantitative exploratory study. Several tools related to accessibility were used to determine their level of compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1. The results reveal that the percentage of non-compliance with accessibility criteria is very high in DMOs in Portugal and especially in Spain. In conclusion, tourism for all is important, including its digital tools. The practical implications include guidance on accessibility for institutions and companies, as well as a need to raise awareness of its importance in the tourism sector. This is the only study that analyzes the accessibility of both apps and websites of the same institution according to the requirements in WCAG 2.1. Full article

Cloud computing has rapidly penetrated enterprise and user computing markets with three prominent service models: software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and infrastructure as a service (IaaS). Cloud computing has also proven to be one of the most important environmentally sustainable technological innovations in the year of Industrial Revolution 4.0. While SaaS and IaaS are the two largest revenue generating services in the cloud service market, the pricing and profit generating mechanisms of the SaaS and IaaS providers have not yet been well understood. Unless the SaaS providers’ profit-maximizing decision is considered, any pricing decision by the IaaS providers is likely to be suboptimal. Hence, this paper proposes a Stackelberg game pricing decision model with the aim of maximizing the profit of the IaaS provider, given the best response of the SaaS provider. This paper develops an analytical closed-form solution to the pricing problem and presents sensitivity analyses to give valuable insights into the pricing dynamics and negotiation between the SaaS provider and IaaS provider. Finally, implications of these findings and future research directions are discussed. Full article

Order picking is a crucial but labor- and cost-intensive activity in the retail logistics and e-commerce domain. Comprehensive changes are implemented in this field due to new technologies like AI and automation. Nevertheless, human worker’s activities will be required for quite some time in the future. This fosters the necessity of evaluating manual picker-to-part operations. We apply the non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to evaluate the efficiency of n = 23 order pickers processing 6109 batches with 865,410 stock keeping units (SKUs). We use distance per location, picks per location, as well as volume per SKU as inputs and picks per hour as output. As the convexity axiom of standard DEA models cannot be fully satisfied when using ratio measures with different denominators, we apply the Free Disposal Hull (FDH) approach that does not assume convexity. Validating the efficiency scores with the company’s efficiency assessment, operationalized by premium payments shows a 93% goodness=of-fit for the proposed model. The formulated non-parametric approach and its empirical application are promising ways forward in implementing empirical efficiency measurements for order picking operations within e-commerce operations. Full article

This paper explores the influence of product type and arithmetic task complexity on users’ perceived mental effort and satisfaction in the context of online grocery shopping. A two-factor within-subject experiment was conducted with 32 participants. Results show that experience products and complex arithmetic tasks are associated with higher perceived mental effort compared to search products and simple arithmetic tasks. Perceived mental effort and satisfaction are negatively related. The more cognitive effort users need to invest in their online shopping tasks, the less satisfied they are likely to be with their online experience. Our results suggest that cognitive absorption mediates the relationship between cognitive effort and satisfaction. The study contributes to our understanding of online grocery shopping by explaining the effect of arithmetic complexity and product type on user satisfaction. It also offers shopping website designers a way to improve consumers’ online grocery shopping experience by implementing simple technology features in their websites to help users reduce their mental effort. Full article

Brand placement in videogames consists in integrating various brands that are not intrusive to give a feeling of reality to the context, as such increasing awareness and recognition of the brand in the mind of the consumer. The goal of this study is to ascertain if brand position, familiarity and congruency influence memorization of brands presented in a racing videogame. An experimental design 2 (position: prominent or subtle) × 2 (congruency: yes or no) × 2 (familiar: yes or no) was used in a sample of 117 participants (M = 20.91 years, SD = 1.75 years). Consumers have better recall and recognition of brand placement when it is familiar. Likewise, there is more memorization of placement that is congruent with the videogame’s subject matter. Nevertheless, it appears that position has no influence on memory. Regarding the three-way interaction, it turns out that the best way to remember brands is when they are familiar to the consumers, congruent with the videogame’s genre, and they are positioned in a prominent position. This article is the first to investigate the interaction between the three main variables that affect the memorization of brand placement. Full article

Recently, crowdfunding has become a popular e-commerce model based on web 2.0 platforms for fundraisers to collect funding from a large group of supporters using the Internet. However, many projects failed to reach their funding targets. Despite the growing interest of academic researchers and e-commerce professionals in identifying drivers of crowdfunding success, important factors like competition and incentive design have not received much attention in prior research. In this study we aim to fill this gap by investigating the impact of competition and incentive design on the performance of crowdfunding projects. Drawing upon literature of entrepreneurship, we develop a research model involving key factors such as competition intensity and the number of reward levels. Using real data of 209 independent movie projects of an online crowdfunding platform, we test the proposed hypotheses of the impact of competition and incentive design on crowdfunding success. Our results show that competition plays a significant role in crowdfunding performance. The higher competition pressure is, the lower performance of crowdfunding projects will be. We also find that factors such as the number of reward levels and the plan of attending movie festivals are essential to the success of crowdfunding projects, but the funding level of getting the top reward does not exert a significant impact. Our study contributes to the e-commerce literature by further exploring the mechanism of crowdfunding success with theoretical explanation and empirical evidence. Researchers and professionals can apply our theoretical findings regarding competition and incentive design in other e-commerce platforms. Furthermore, our results provide useful managerial insights and operational policies for project founders and managers of crowdfunding platforms. Full article

This study aims to establish actionable guidelines and provide strategic insights as a means of increasing the social media effectiveness of consumer brands. Post-related factors in addition to the contextual and temporal factors influencing consumer engagement (i.e., reposting, commenting on or liking posts), as an indicator of social media effectiveness, are considered in detail in the research model. Moreover, the model considers differences between industries as well as social media platforms. A total of 1130 posts made by four brands, two each from the durable goods and fast-moving consumer goods sectors, were collected from Facebook and Twitter in Turkey. Through predictive analysis, four different machine learning algorithms were utilized to develop easy-to-apply plans of action and strategies. The findings highlight the significant impact of videos, images, post frequency and interactivity on engagement. Furthermore, social media platforms and the brands themselves were found to be instrumental in influencing engagement levels, indicating that more than one formula is needed for effective social media management. The range and depth of the post-related factors (e.g., image type, video length, kind of interactivity) considered go far beyond those found in the significant majority of similar studies. Moreover, the unique setting and the novel data analysis algorithms applied set this study apart from similar ones. Full article

Opinion leaders and eWOM are becoming two of the most effective ways to launch a brand on social media by creating viral marketing. However, how much influence does an opinion leader’s eWOM (OL eWOM) have on consumer purchasing decisions? This research looks at the role of OL eWOM as well as the effect of its valence and product type on the decision to buy or not buy from a realistic experimental online store design. In total, 300 undergraduate students were randomly assigned to one of five scenarios in a 2² experimental arrangement. Results show that OL eWOM influences consumer online decisions when purchasing experience-type goods and the valence of eWOM is positive. However, if we compare the OL eWOM with a control group, then OL eWOM does not have a significant influence. This research provides novel empirical evidence for the limited influence of OL in modeling shopping behaviors in e-commerce contexts. Full article

Information privacy has attracted considerable attention in the information system research field. However, little effort has been made to review its latest developments from a marketing perspective. As research on consumer privacy advances rapidly, a comprehensive evaluation of the field is required. In this paper, two bibliographic databases retrieved from Web of Science were used to perform a series of bibliometric analyses consisting of co-citation analysis, co-occurring keyword analysis, and structural variation analysis. To facilitate these analyses, we use the software CiteSpace. Our results present the existing literature’s publication performance, thematic concentration, intellectual turning points and influential studies, and identify emerging trends in the literature. We found that a number of landmark studies has greatly affected the development of the consumer privacy research. Most importantly, this study proposes a research agenda for the field. Recent emerging topics focusing on privacy calculus, privacy ethic, privacy enhancing technologies, privacy-related coping strategies, and new contemporary privacy contexts should be further discussed in the future research. Full article

Crowdsourcing has attracted significant attention in the past decade because it has more competitive advantages than traditional methods for mobilizing distributed labor and utilizing innovation. Crowdsourcing contests are one of the most popular and effective crowdsourcing modes. Reasonable task rewards and duration are the key factors for seekers to attract solvers who can efficiently participate in the crowdsourcing contest task. Previous studies have mainly focused on task results to analyze solvers’ participation behavior in crowdsourcing contests, but have paid little attention to the task process, and there have been conflicting conclusions regarding the impact of task rewards and duration on solvers’ participation behavior and the performance of crowdsourcing contests. In view of this gap, this study collected 2706 logo design task data points from 2015–2017 on an online crowdsourcing platform and measured the performance of solvers’ participation behavior in two stages. The participation time was used to represent the performance of solvers’ participation behavior in the task process, while the number of submissions of solutions was used to represent the performance of participation behavior in the task result. The results show that task rewards and duration have an inverted U-shaped effect on the number of submissions, money rewards have a positive impact on participation time, and duration has an inverted U-shaped relationship with participation time. This study proposes the nonlinear effects of task rewards and duration on participation behavior and explains the reason for the conflicting results of previous studies. This paper also expands upon existing research by using solvers’ participation time in the task process to measure the performance of solvers’ participation behavior. Full article

We analyze the private equilibrium of a two-sided market representing the online gaming industry under a principal-agent model. A monopoly-holding platform hires a manager to attract new members from both sides of the market while considering uncertainty on the adhesion of viewers and online gamers. First, we mathematically demonstrate that increasing cross-group network externalities can decrease the platform’s profit, which contradicts a canonical result from the field of two-sided markets. Moreover, knowing that the intermediary’s goal is aligned with the private interest of online gamers, machine learning models empirically show that the main theoretical outcome is observed in reality due to the presence of heterogeneous indirect network effects in online gaming activities. Second, we conclude that social welfare can be either harmed or improved for increasing cross-group network externalities, which means that the professionalization of online gaming may or may not be legitimized depending on the value taken by exogenous parameters related to the platform’s uncertainty on the number of agents that get on board, risk aversion of viewers, and royalty rate applied to online gamers. Finally, a discussion based on 2020 facts is provided and several policy recommendations are formulated to ensure the persistence of best regulatory practices. Full article

Modern IT systems collect detailed data on each activity, transaction, forum entry, conversation and many other areas. The availability of large data volumes in the business, industry and research fields opens up new opportunities for the empirical verification of various economic theories and laws. The analysis of big datasets in turn allows us to look at many issues from a new point of view and see the dependencies that are otherwise difficult to derive. In this paper, we propose a new measure for dependencies between goods in market basket data. The introduced measure was inspired by the well-known microeconomic concept of complementarity. Due to its similar properties to those of complementarity, the new measure was called basket complementarity (b-complementarity). B-complementarity not only measures the strength of dependencies between goods but also measures the direction of these dependencies. The values of the proposed measure can be relatively easily calculated using market basket data. This paper also presents a simple example illustrating this new concept, areas of possible application (e.g., in e-commerce) and preliminary results of searching for goods that meet the criteria of basket complementarity in real market basket data. Full article

When studying the impact of online reviews on product sales, previous scholars have usually assumed that every review for a product has the same probability of being viewed by consumers. However, decision-making and information processing theories underline that the accessibility of information plays a role in consumer decision-making. We incorporate the notion of review visibility to study the relationship between online reviews and product sales, which is proxied by sales rank information, studying three different cases: (1) when every online review is assumed to have the same probability of being viewed; (2) when we assume that consumers sort online reviews by the most helpful mechanism; and (3) when we assume that consumers sort online reviews by the most recent mechanism. Review non-textual and textual variables are analyzed. The empirical analysis is conducted using a panel of 119 cosmetic products over a period of nine weeks. Using the system generalized method of moments (system GMM) method for dynamic models of panel data, our findings reveal that review variables influence product sales, but the magnitude, and even the direction of the effect, vary amongst visibility cases. Overall, the characteristics of the most helpful reviews have a higher impact on sales. Full article

Younger generations comprise an essential segment for the mobile payment market to prosper. However, empirical evidence of the drivers/barriers of the young generation’s adoption of mobile payment has been inconclusive. This study intends to advance the body of knowledge on this subject based on the extended Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), incorporating the young generation’s risk perception and bonus/rewards provided by the mobile-pay firms. To this end, 295 samples with the majority being more tech-savvy, namely generation Y and generation Z, were collected from an online survey in Taiwan. The empirical results in this study demonstrate the uniquely positive effect of social influence on the young generations’ behavioral intention to adopt mobile payment. While behavioral intention and promotional activities are the drivers of the young generation’s actual usage of mobile payment, perceived risks are found to exert a negative impact, reflecting the risk-averse preferences of the young generation in Taiwan. The ignorable moderation effect of gender, on the other hand, suggests the absence of a gender gap in the use of mobile payment among the young generations. The findings in this research have important implications for the development of promotion programs motivating the young generation’s adoption of mobile payment. Full article

In this digital era, the internet, and Social Media (SM) has had a radical impact on the shopping behavior of “costumers” The SM provides a platform where “costumers” are exposed to the best product with the best price along with reviews and opinions about the merchandise. So, we can turn our heads and look at a brand in a way as if the brand is speaking to us. This study was an attempt to explore the Social Media Marketing Activities (SMMA) that are being used for the marketing of fashionable products like apparel and to what level the SMMA activities of brands truly strengthen the relationship with customers and motivate purchase intention. Moreover, SMMA has a robust application in developing a marketing strategy for business. It has become a significant tool that collaborates with businesses and people. It is concluded that the “costumer”-brand relationship does have a positive and statistically significant impact on consumers’ purchase intention through SM. Full article

This research aims to identify price determinants for sharing economy-based accommodation services and to further use the identified price determinants to predict accommodation prices. A dataset drawn from Airbnb.com, was collected for analysis. We identify price determinants from five categories. The top five price determinants are identified as room type, city, distance to tourist attractions, number of pictures posted, and number of amenities provided. More importantly, we find that interaction effects between variables can also significantly influence price. Finally, a series of price prediction models are built based on the identified price determinants. Full article

Mobile applications (mobile Apps) have changed the ecosystem of the business world. The rapid progression in the market for smart devices and mobile Apps has brought about a revolution with regard to the mobile Apps’ economy. The major revenue stream of this economy is the sale of mobile Apps, with such sales being expected to increase dramatically every year. However, in spite of this, a considerable number of mobile Apps fail to capture consumers’ attention. Additionally, in developing countries such as Jordan, there is lack of research into understanding and determining the major factors that influence consumers’ decisions to purchase mobile Apps. Accordingly, the main objective of this study is to identify the key factors that Jordanian consumers consider in determining whether or not to purchase mobile Apps for their smartphones. To achieve this objective, a mixed-methods approach is adopted. An exploratory study involving a qualitative methods approach (interviews with consumers) is first conducted in order to determine the factors that influence consumers’ purchase behavior decisions. Then, a confirmatory study that employs a quantitative approach (a survey questionnaire) is undertaken to test the proposed model, the building of which is based on the findings of the exploratory study. The results indicate that seven factors are recognized as being pre-eminent when it comes to decisions to purchase mobile Apps. These factors include the price value of the App, App performance, App enjoyment, App trialability, electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) about the App, App technical reliability and App usefulness. While this study advances our understanding of the main factors that influence mobile Apps purchase, it also reveals useful implications for mobile Apps publishers and developers, in order to promote and increase the sales of Apps. Full article

As a sports activity with immense tradition, current offerings and future prospects, golfing represents a first-rate tourist resource. In choosing golfing destinations, tourists rely upon information that is available online, just as consumers do in making decisions about any resource. Thus, in our study, we sought to profile the internet presence of golf courses in Catalonia, as well as the maturity of their e-commerce. To that end, we developed an integrated model for analysing the websites of golf courses: one based on web content analysis and structured with four dimensions (i.e., information, communication, e-commerce and additional functions) and the phases of the extended model of internet commerce adoption (eMICA). Applied to all golf courses in Catalonia that operate websites, the model revealed that, despite the sport’s great importance to the local economy and tourism, the golf courses do not have an adequate online presence or sufficient platforms for communication. The present work includes information on its theoretical contribution, implications for management, limitations and future lines of research. Full article