Predicting customers’ intention to purchase products online is an important issue. This thesis aims to understand how online shopping decision is determined by individual’s intention to buy via Internet and his/her attitude toward e-purchase. This study by integrating the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) with the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), attempts to understand how website usefulness and ease of use, as well as customers’ attitude toward online shopping, influence purchase intention influence the online purchase. Those two models adopted in an online environment were used to analyze the outcome of the survey among Polish e-shoppers. By adopting the idea of regular and heavy Internet users, this study tries to differentiate the online shopping behavior in those two groups. The findings of the thesis have been found to be partially consistent with both models. However the difference between heavy and regular Internet users in frequency of buying online has not been confirmed.

Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 130-135). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Please read the abstract in the 00front part of this document / Thesis (DPhil (Information Science))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Information Science / unrestricted

Information privacy concerns are one of the major causes behind a dramatic decline in the readiness of individuals to share their personal information on the Internet. The aim of this research is to explore the information privacy concerns from the users’ perspective. In the focal point of this qualitative study stands the kryast.se website. The healthcare promotion activities that this website carries out involve the sharing by its users of their personal information on the Internet. For this reason, this study takes recourse to the construct of Internet Users’ Information Privacy Concerns (IUIPC) developed by Malhotra, Kim and Agarwal (2004) as its interpretive framework. It was expected that by using both semi-structured interviews and non-participant observation among the users of the above mentioned website, the concerns of its users can be identified through the interpretative lens of the analytical framework that Malhotra et al. (2004) proposed for privacy concerns of Internet Users. The results of this study indicate that the selected conceptual lens has sufficiently accounted for the concerns that website users may have when sharing their personal information on the Internet, while indicating that internet users tend to be reluctant in sharing their sensitive information.

published_or_final_version / Journalism and Media Studies Centre / Master / Master of Philosophy

Orientador: Érico Bruno Viana Campos / Banca: Andréia Schmidt / Banca: Sandro Caramaschi / Resumo: O desenvolvimento de novas tecnologias, especialmente da internet, é uma característica marcante da sociedade pós-moderna. Além disso, o narcisismo também se mostra como uma característica social importante, refletindo os ideais individualistas incentivados pela mídia. Entretanto, percebe-se uma escassez de estudos nacionais que se propõem a relacionar o uso de internet e características narcísicas da personalidade. Com isso, o presente estudo teve como objetivo investigar o uso de internet e características narcísicas da personalidade em estudantes universitários, além de verificar a existência de uma possível correlação entre tais aspectos. Trata-se de uma pesquisa descritiva, de natureza quantitativa. A pesquisa foi conduzida em uma universidade pública do interior paulista. Participaram do estudo 106 estudantes universitários matriculados no primeiro ou segundo anos dos diversos cursos de graduação, com idade média de 20,41 anos. Foram utilizados os instrumentos: Questionário Sociodemográfico, Teste de Dependência de Internet (Internet Addiction Test, IAT) e o Inventário de Personalidade Narcisista (Narcissistic Personality Inventory, NPI-16). Os dados foram analisados de forma quantitativa e submetidos à análise estatística descritiva e inferencial. Como resultado, foi confirmado o grande uso de internet entre os jovens universitários, especialmente das redes sociais e aplicativos de troca de mensagens. Porém, foram encontradas pontuações médias consideradas baixas tanto... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: The development of new technologies, especially the internet, is a hallmark of postmodern society. In addition, narcissism also shows itself as an important social feature, reflecting the individualistic ideals encouraged by the media. However, there is a shortage of Brazilian studies that propose to relate the use of internet and narcissistic characteristics of the personality. Thus, the present study aimed to investigate the use of internet and narcissistic characteristics of personality in university students, in addition to verifying the existence of a possible correlation between such aspects. It is a descriptive research, with a quantitative nature. The research was conducted at a public university in the interior of São Paulo. A total of 106 university students enrolled in the first or second year of the various undergraduate courses, with a mean age of 20.41 years, participated in the study. The instruments were: Sociodemographic Questionnaire, Internet Addiction Test (IAT) and Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI-16). Data were analyzed quantitatively and submitted to descriptive and inferential statistical analysis. As a result, the great use of the internet among young university students, especially social networks and messaging applications, was confirmed. However, mean scores considered low in both IAT and NPI were found, which does not qualify students as either dependent or narcissistic. Moreover, after the Spearman's ρ test, it was concluded that there is ... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Mestre

Network applications and Internet services fail all too frequently. However, end users cannot effectively identify the root cause using traditional troubleshooting techniques due to the limited capability to distinguish failures caused by local network elements from failures caused by elements located outside the local area network. To overcome these limitations, we propose a new approach, one that leverages collaboration of user machines to assist end users in diagnosing various failures related to Internet connectivity and poor network performance. First, we present DYSWIS ("Do You See What I See?"), an automatic network fault detection and diagnosis system for end users. DYSWIS identifies the root cause(s) of network faults using diagnostic rules that consider diverse information from multiple nodes. In addition, the DYSWIS rule system is specially designed to support crowdsourced and distributed probes. We also describe the architecture of DYSWIS and compare its performance with other tools. Finally, we demonstrate that the system successfully detects and diagnoses network failures which are difficult to diagnose using a single-user probe. Failures in lower layers of the protocol stack also have the potential to disrupt Internet access; for example, slow Internet connectivity is often caused by poor Wi-Fi performance. Channel contention and non-Wi-Fi interference are the primary reasons for this performance degradation. We investigate the characteristics of non-Wi-Fi interference that can severely degrade Wi-Fi performance and present WiSlow ("Why is my Wi-Fi slow?"), a software tool that diagnoses the root causes of poor Wi-Fi performance. WiSlow employs user-level network probes and leverages peer collaboration to identify the physical location of these causes. The software includes two principal methods: packet loss analysis and 802.11 ACK number analysis. When the issue is located near Wi-Fi devices, the accuracy of WiSlow exceeds 90%. Finally, we expand our collaborative approach to the Internet of Things (IoT) and propose a platform for network-troubleshooting on home devices. This platform takes advantage of built-in technology common to modern devices --- multiple communication interfaces. For example, when a home device has a problem with an interface it sends a probe request to other devices using an alternative interface. The system then exploits cooperation of both internal devices and remote machines. We show that this approach is useful in home networks by demonstrating an application that contains actual diagnostic algorithms.

This dissertation examines revisitation behaviour in the context of non-transactional websites. A holistic framework based on theories from repeat purchase behaviour and satisfaction was developed and tested. This study is among the first to consider revisitation as analogous to repeat purchase behaviour. The premise of the model is that revisitation is determined through an evaluation of prior visits and that the elements influencing revisitation included satisfaction, involvement (site, product category and medium) and social influences. Five non-transactional websites were examined with the selection based on the website typology developed in this thesis - a typology that will benefit website research as it provides a consistent and generic framework. Data were collected using a crosssectional web-based online survey via the homepage of the websites. Since satisfaction is considered to be a central factor in traditional repeat purchase behaviour and in website use, the antecedents of satisfaction were also examined. Overall the findings support the importance of content quality as a factor in satisfaction and even though website users are increasingly more proficient, ease of use is still an influential factor as is the attitude to the brand that the site supports. It was found that the users??? motives for using the site affected the relationship between the quality of the perceived benefits and satisfaction. If the motivation to use the site was for information, then the impact of information quality on satisfaction was weaker than the impact of entertainment quality on satisfaction. Alternatively, if the motivation was for entertainment, then once again the impact of information quality on satisfaction was weaker than that of entertainment quality. Initial model testing showed that the only factor to influence revisitation behaviour was enduring site involvement. Cognizant of the dangers of ???data driven theory???, the relationship of the elements was reassessed. The resultant model shows that product category involvement directly influences enduring site involvement and that enduring site involvement is a central construct operating as a direct and a mediating influence between each of satisfaction, social influence, medium involvement and website revisitation.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 182-192). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1999. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 196-200). Also available on the Internet.