No description available.

This dissertation is a compilation of three essays that analyze price dispersion in an online retail marketplace. Price dispersion is a measure of the variation in prices that sellers charge for products. Online price dispersion has been thoroughly analyzed in the past decade as it has numerous implications for firm pricing strategy as well as consumer welfare. Chapter 1 of this dissertation offers a literature review of price dispersion research, and discusses key explanations as to why this phenomenon exists on the web. Also, a literature review of shop-bots is presented as they are similar to online marketplaces and form the basis of the three studies. Chapter 2 is the first study, and it establishes the existence of price dispersion in online marketplaces and offers a comparison with price dispersion in shop-bots. It is determined that online marketplaces may have less variation than on shop-bots, yet the price dispersion is still high. Chapter 3 is the second study and it explains much of the dispersion found in the online marketplace through differences in seller service quality and seller reputation. A seller's reputation was found to be the key contributor to variation in the online marketplace hence, study 3, which is chapter 4 of this dissertation, employs an experimental approach designed to offer a perspective of buyers and sellers to determine why price varies with reputation and if consumers value the reputation score. It was determined that buyers prefer sellers with strong long run reputation scores more than sellers with strong short-term reputation scores. Based on these reputation scores sellers want to try to offer a higher price than consumers are willing to pay, and sellers think that a strong score conveys higher levels of trust than buyers believe. This mismatch between how sellers think consumers respond, and how the consumers actually respond could be another driver of price dispersion online. A discussion of the implications of these research studies is offered in Chapter 5. / Business Administration

published_or_final_version / Architecture / Master / Master of Architecture

Aus der Ausgangssituation. "In den letzten Jahren wurden dem eLearning-Markt überproportionale Wachstumsraten durch die verschiedenen Marktanalysen vorhergesagt. Die ersten Prognosen sind nicht eingetreten. Trotz der allgemeinen Vorsicht werden auch in aktuelleren Marktanalysen höhere Ausgaben für eLearning in den Unternehmen prognostiziert (vgl. z. B. DETECON 02, S. 6, WANG u. a. 02, S. 230 und BENTLAGE u. a. 02, S. 131f.). Je nach Studie ist mit einem weltweiten eLearning-Marktvolumen von ca. 20 bis 40 Mrd. Dollar für 2004 zu rechnen (GRAUMANN u. a. 03, S. 422). Weiterhin kann bei der Betrachtung der wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisse zu eLearning, sowohl aus methodischdidaktischer als auch aus technologischer Sicht, von positiven Rahmenbedingungen ausgegangen werden."

Online services such as e-marketplaces, social networking sites, online gaming environments etc have grown in popularity in the recent years. These services represent situation where participants do not get to negotiate face to face before interaction and most of the time parties to transaction remain anonymous. It is thus necessary to have a system that rightly assesses trustworthiness of the other party in order to maintain quality assurance in such systems. Recent works on Trust and Reputation in online communities have focused on identifying probable defaulters, but less effort has been put to come up with system that make cooperation attractive over defection in order to achieve cooperation without enforcement. Our work in this regard concerns design and investigation of trust assessment systems that not only filter defaulters but also promote evolution of cooperativeness in player society. Based on the concept of game theory and prisoner's dilemma, we model business games and design incentive method, compensation method, acquaintance based assessment method and decision theoretic assessment method as mechanisms to assure trustworthiness in online business environments. Effectiveness of each of these methods in promoting the evolution of cooperation in player society has been investigated. Our results show that these methods contribute positively in promoting cooperative evolution. We have further extended our trust assessment model to suit the needs of a mobile ad-hoc network setting. The effectiveness of this model has been tested against its capability to reduce packet drop rate and energy conservation. In both of these the results show promise.

published_or_final_version / Architecture / Master / Master of Landscape Architecture

M. Tech. Architecture Professional / This thesis presents the argument that the concept of urban farming can help resolve the problem of the displacement of agriculture in distant locations from consumers, which either results in the escalation of food costs or the loss of the farmer's profit, which inevitably results in less food producers. The market place addresses the lack of formalised trading space, providing job opportunities for an increasing urban population, along a busy pedestrian route. The thesis concludes through the illustration of a design project from the resulting research, on a triangular city block on the periphery of Central Pretoria.

Thesis (M.Sc. (Hons)) -- University of Western Sydney, 2003. / "February 2003" Bibliography: leaves 260 - 277.

The document deals with the topic of electronic procurement with emphasis on process of its electronization using electronic tool Softender. The text is divided in two main parts -- First, theoretical part focuses on Public Produce Act analysis in relation to its forthcoming amendment. The practical part aims at functional description of electronic tool Softender. Inovations of such software solution and usage models are also discussed such as the marketing plan for the tool.

Online services such as e-marketplaces, social networking sites, online gaming environments etc have grown in popularity in the recent years. These services represent situation where participants do not get to negotiate face to face before interaction and most of the time parties to transaction remain anonymous. It is thus necessary to have a system that rightly assesses trustworthiness of the other party in order to maintain quality assurance in such systems. Recent works on Trust and Reputation in online communities have focused on identifying probable defaulters, but less effort has been put to come up with system that make cooperation attractive over defection in order to achieve cooperation without enforcement. Our work in this regard concerns design and investigation of trust assessment systems that not only filter defaulters but also promote evolution of cooperativeness in player society. Based on the concept of game theory and prisoner¿s dilemma, we model business games and design incentive method, compensation method, acquaintance based assessment method and decision theoretic assessment method as mechanisms to assure trustworthiness in online business environments. Effectiveness of each of these methods in promoting the evolution of cooperation in player society has been investigated. Our results show that these methods contribute positively in promoting cooperative evolution. We have further extended our trust assessment model to suit the needs of a mobile ad-hoc network setting. The effectiveness of this model has been tested against its capability to reduce packet drop rate and energy conservation. In both of these the results show promise. / EU Asia-link project TH/Asia Link/004(91712) East-West and its local host Kantipur Engineering College in Nepal, and Kathmandu University.