M.Comm. / In summary, e-commerce will absolutely change the way in which many company decisionmakers and business leaders think, as their companies compete in an online virtual world of business: a real-time, highly competitive marketplace. Companies will be required to rethink their core business processes and then create new strategies for performing e- businesses (Fellenstein & Wood, 2000:105). Forehand (2001:22), who is managing partner and CEO of Accenture, formerly known as Andersen Consulting, has the following views on succeeding in the New Marketplace: • "The New Economy pioneers have unearthed a few truths about how to win in the new marketplace. Speed is the new mantra. Change is the only constant. Content carries a premium. Consumers have perfect information. Brands signal trust. Value drives loyalty. And so on. These are quite important considerations, because when you take a step back and think about it, the way we conduct business really has been radically altered. Forever. • It's not easy to keep an organisation thriving as each new technology change surfaces. (And we've barely tapped the awesome potential for mobile commerce through wireless technology.) Success requires a sense of urgency across the entire organisation. It requires deep cultural change. It requires different and new relationships with customers, employees, alliance partners and even competitors. The end result is often significant business transformation that gets to a company's core business model. • Leading companies will put the customer at the centre of everything they do. Think about the implications of that to your business model. About a year ago we conducted research in the area of customer relationship management (CRM), which concluded that superior customer capabilities could account for 50 percent of the difference in return on sales between low and high performing companies. Those companies that can effectively put the customer at the centre of their business add tens of millions of dollars to the bottom line. • Leading companies will put technology on the personal agenda of every senior executive. Information technology has clearly progressed beyond the early days when it was relegated to the back office. But leaders of tomorrow will look at technology as much more than an enabler of business strategy. Technology will become a creator of business strategy. • Leading companies will apply the same rigour to human performance that they do to all areas of the business. There is an enormous challenge in getting the human element of an organisation equipped to operate in an increasingly digital world. Part of that challenge is finding and keeping talent. And the other is maximizing an individual's performance. Ensuring that people have the right skills, knowledge and behaviours is quickly becoming a company's biggest gating factor to future success. Not technology, not financial capital: human capital. • Leading companies will operate at speed. This is about an emerging leadership style that enables companies to be responsive to a dynamically changing marketplace. Leadership used to be structured and hierarchical. But now leadership requires quick wits, quick decisions, judgement calls, guts and passion. To operate at speed, companies will create internal environments that support and promote constant innovation. Success can often breed complacency, which dampens a company's sense of urgency and its ability to capitalise quickly on good ideas. The winners of tomorrow will realise the power of innovation and bring a start-up mentality inside". The above extract highlights various factors, which will become clearer as one progress through the dissertation. At the end, if one returns to this section, it is hoped that the new insight gained into the online world of the Internet will become apparent. This dissertation considers research into the various business models for Internet-based start-ups, the expectations of the customer, how to satisfy these expectations by means of customer service and how to build customer loyalty. Also considered are what relationships, if any, exist between a successful business model and customer loyalty. More emphasis will be placed on business-toconsumer as opposed to business-to-business transactions and models throughout the dissertation. The research method used in this dissertation is that of a literature study. A literature survey is conducted of the various business models used, customer expectations, customer service and the building of customer loyalty by Internet organisations. The collected information is described, interpreted and evaluated on a qualitative basis to address the purpose and the objectives of the study. With the above as background, this study proposes a business model and identifies factors that build customer loyalty, which will make a contribution towards guiding start-up ventures in strategically directing their business into a globally competitive and customer-focused world. The important findings that were identified in this study are: • Design a business model based on the following components — people, innovation, focus, speed, equity, technology, size, metrics, strategic vision and leadership. (These are the prime levers that today's Internet start-ups use to compete against the incumbent world of business.) • Carry out regular market research to establish exactly what it is that your customers expect from your web site. Constantly innovate, and by meeting or exceeding customer expectations, the customer expectation gap will be narrowed, which will lead to increased customer satisfaction, with a higher likelihood of customer retention. • Establish relationships with your customers and provide them with a unique online experience by utilising technology in such a way that every customer interaction is kept simple and saves the customer time and money. Providing this kind of customer service will build customer loyalty and enhance the company's brand name.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- Mississippi State University. Department of Management and Information Systems. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

In this thesis, we consider how service platforms can provide personalized service to incoming consumers in order to improve ease and convenience for their users, or to enhance their own revenues. With an increasing trend toward digitalization, there is now a massive amount of data that can be leveraged to accomplish this goal. In this thesis, we explore how to leverage feature data about the consumers and products, as well as the way consumers interact with the platforms, in order to make better operational decisions, such as pricing, ranking, and recommendations of products and services. In Chapters 1 & 2, we study platforms in which consumers' purchasing decisions are strongly influenced by reviews that are posted by previous consumers. In Chapter 1, we consider how a platform can learn from the choices that consumers make, as well as the reviews they leave, in order to form increasingly accurate estimates about product quality and consumer preferences, so that the platform can provide better personalized product rankings. In Chapter 2, we focus on platforms where each consumer forms an impression of a product by browsing the available reviews in a chosen order following a cascade click model. We consider how to rank the reviews as well as how to price a product given the reviews, in order to maximize short- and long-term revenue. In Chapter 3, we study a platform that offers a menu of memberships of different durations to a pool of heterogeneous consumers. A consumer's choice depends on both the menu prices and his personal intended usage time. The platform wants to maximize the long-term revenue while considering the choices made by heterogeneous customers. We show insights into the optimal solution of each problem when all the parameters are known. For the case where some parameters are initially unknown, we propose a joint learning and optimization algorithm, and provide theoretical guarantees for its performance.

Thesis (MTech (Information Technology))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2007 / Over a period spanning approximately twenty five years Information Systems (IS) researchers have been plagued by the problem of how to evaluate IS effectiveness or success. After the advent of the World Wide Web (WWW) in the 1990s, questions have arisen regarding the relevance of previously established evaluation approaches to the evaluation of web-based IS. Subsequently, firms have invested billions of dollars anually in information systems but the lack of appropriate frameworks for evaluating their effectiveness made it difficult to determine the return on IS investment. In a period spanning 20 years IS researchers proposed a diverse number of approaches e.g. the communications research of Shannon and Weaver (1949) and the information "influence theory" of Mason (1978). These were subsequently incorporated into a single model in 1992, called the IS Success Model (Delone & McLean, 1992). The principal objective of this research project was to develop a generic methodology for web-based Information Systems (IS) success evaluation from a multi-stakeholder perspective for specific IS contexts. The Delone and McLean IS Success Model (Delone and McLean, 1992) provides an underpinning framework for measuring IS effectiveness. In the latter 1990's the concept of service-quality was introduced into the IS effectiveness literature. In their updated IS Success Model, Delone and McLean (2003) then included service quality as key measure in the evaluation of IS success. Consequently this research project focused on how service quality concepts could be applied as a measure of IS effectiveness within e-commerce. A 3-pronged approach to IS evaluation was proposed viz. identification of generic stakeholder groups such as e-Customer, sponsoring manager, internal users etc.; identification of the context of the IS evaluation for each stakeholder i.e. what is the main function and context of operation of the IS; and lastly identification of stakeholder specific e-SQ criteria. The study demonstrates that the success of IS deployed within online environments, could be evaluated and measured differently by each stakeholder for the various e-Service Quality (e-SQ) dimensions within a particular IS context. The study presents the results of an investigation into a web-based IS at a national telecommunications company in South Africa which was evaluated using e-Service Quality (e-SQ) constructs. The study demonstrates the operationalisation of an e-SQ instrument for the purposes of evaluating IS effectiveness amongst multi-stakeholders. Evidence is provided that measuring attitudes of different stakeholders provides a more holistic perspective of IS success. The primary conclusion reached is that by using a step-by-step methodology of IS success measurement, the objective of establishing whether companies have received a return on web-based IS investment, can be achieved. Furthermore, the outcomes of the study has contributed to existing literature on IS effectiveness measurement. In particular, it will add to the existing body of knowledge regarding the use of e-SQ instrument to evaluate multi-stakeholder perceptions.

Creating effective functions in website designs that reduce consumers' anxiety in shopping online is a challenge common to most e-retailers. The present study investigated the roles of online reputation systems and instant chat services in decreasing customer perceived risk and increasing initial trust in unfamiliar e-retailers. Therefore, the reputation system when coupled with live chat service may be an effective external mechanism for providing potential consumers with critical decision making information. The present research focused on examining the respective value of live chat services and reputation systems in reducing potential consumers' perceived risk and simultaneously increasing their initial trust towards an unfamiliar e-retailer. The present research tested an e-retailing trust model based on the consumer decision making process. The model incorporated the following variables: (1) live chat service, and (2) reputation system, and explanatory variables: (1) perceived risk and (2) an initial trust. Customer prediction of purchasing is the response variable. The moderating role of interdependent and independent self-construal on online consumers’ behavior was also examined. Based on the review of literature, the following hypotheses were developed: (H1) Perceived risk associated with an unfamiliar web retailer will vary as a feature of the reputation system feature of a web retailer; where the reputation is positive, perceived risk will decrease. (H2) Perceived risk associated with an unfamiliar web retailer will vary as a feature of the instant chat feature of a web retailer; the mere presence of a live chat feature will decrease perceived risk. (H3) Initial trust associated with an unfamiliar web retailer will vary as a feature of the reputation system feature of a web retailer; where the reputation is viewed as negative, perceived risk will increase. (H4) Initial trust associated with an unfamiliar web retailer will very as a feature of the instant chat feature of a web retailer; the mere absence of a live chat feature will result in an increase in perceived risk. (H5) Purchase Intention will be influenced by the live chat function in the e-retailing website. (H6) Purchase Intention will be influenced by the evaluation system presented in the website. (H7) Purchase Intention will be influenced by the customers' perceived risk. (H8) Purchase intention will be influenced by the customers' initial trust. (H9) There is no interaction effect between the perceived risk and initial trust. (H10) Self-construal will moderate the effects on initial trust and perceived risk. A two by two factorial between-subjects experiment was conducted using a mock retail website design to examine the effect of reputation system and live chat service on customers. The findings demonstrated that the evaluation system significantly influences customers' perceived risk and initial trust, and directly influences customers' purchase intention. Perceived risk and initial trust influence customers' purchase intention independently. For future marketing implications, this research suggests that positive customer reviews, transaction history or other evaluation details in the web presentation is crucial for a starting e-retailer. Although there is no significant direct effect of self-construal on the perceived risk and initial trust, this research demonstrated that female and male have different self-construal and self-construal can be a good mediator to observe its effects on the customers' attitude and behavior. Furthermore, customers' initial trust and perceived risk determine their behavior separately which indicates that customers' initial trust increase doesn’t mean their perceived risk will decrease. / Graduation date: 2012