Pub Date : 2014-10-01DOI: 10.4018/IJVCSN.2014100102
Antonio Chamorro Mera, Francisco Javier Miranda González, Sergio Rubio
Social networks are one of the more notable sociological phenomena of the last years. Moreover, its apparition and acceptance by majority of the citizens also suppose an important challenge for the firms. Social networks are a new and relevant channel of communication and interaction with their consumers. For this, firms have to create their own place in the social network and actively manage the content that shares and the dialogue that is supported by their followers. In the first part of this paper, the authors explain the creation of an index to evaluate the presence of the companies in the social network more used to international level, Facebook. The Facebook Assessment Index FAI is formed by several indicators grouped in three dimensions: popularity, interactivity, and content. In the second part, the authors applied this index to the 150 largest firms according to Fortune 2011 ranking. At present, only 44% of these firms tested had an international official Facebook page. The results showed that the larger firms are those that in general terms best manage their presence on Facebook, have the greatest number of followers and a high degree of interactivity with them. However, the most interesting contribution of this work lies not in identifying firms that achieve higher scores on the FAI, but in comparing the pages with each other and making suggestions of ideas and practices that may improve a firm's Facebook presence as a marketing tool.
{"title":"Facebook as a Marketing Tool: An Analysis of the 100 Top-Ranked Global Brands","authors":"Antonio Chamorro Mera, Francisco Javier Miranda González, Sergio Rubio","doi":"10.4018/IJVCSN.2014100102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/IJVCSN.2014100102","url":null,"abstract":"Social networks are one of the more notable sociological phenomena of the last years. Moreover, its apparition and acceptance by majority of the citizens also suppose an important challenge for the firms. Social networks are a new and relevant channel of communication and interaction with their consumers. For this, firms have to create their own place in the social network and actively manage the content that shares and the dialogue that is supported by their followers. In the first part of this paper, the authors explain the creation of an index to evaluate the presence of the companies in the social network more used to international level, Facebook. The Facebook Assessment Index FAI is formed by several indicators grouped in three dimensions: popularity, interactivity, and content. In the second part, the authors applied this index to the 150 largest firms according to Fortune 2011 ranking. At present, only 44% of these firms tested had an international official Facebook page. The results showed that the larger firms are those that in general terms best manage their presence on Facebook, have the greatest number of followers and a high degree of interactivity with them. However, the most interesting contribution of this work lies not in identifying firms that achieve higher scores on the FAI, but in comparing the pages with each other and making suggestions of ideas and practices that may improve a firm's Facebook presence as a marketing tool.","PeriodicalId":90871,"journal":{"name":"International journal of virtual communities and social networking","volume":"27 1","pages":"14-28"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89827283","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2014-10-01DOI: 10.4018/IJVCSN.2014100101
S. Bhat, Shirin Alavi, Vandana Ahuja
Growth in technology has brought the world economy on a single platform which has deeply impacted the working pattern of organizations. It is the increase in usage of internet technology which facilitated the process of bringing individuals across the globe together and forming teams to help them achieve defined tasks. This change in corporate scenarios and shrinking of location barriers has led to the formation of special kinds of teams: virtual teams. The challenge before organizations is to effectively manage these teams because of their negligible physical contact. This research paper attempts to collect and analyze the literature available on the role played by trust in building an effective virtual team. A review of literature presented in the paper deals with the origin and working of virtual teams. This manuscript explores how trust has emerged as an important factor for the appropriate functioning of a virtual team and helps managers and employees in understanding the role of trust in the success of their team. The findings of the study are directed towards benefitting organizations who are involved in planning, developing, and administering programs for the smooth functioning of employees using a virtual paradigm to enhance employee productivity.
{"title":"Meta-Analysis of Virtual Teams","authors":"S. Bhat, Shirin Alavi, Vandana Ahuja","doi":"10.4018/IJVCSN.2014100101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/IJVCSN.2014100101","url":null,"abstract":"Growth in technology has brought the world economy on a single platform which has deeply impacted the working pattern of organizations. It is the increase in usage of internet technology which facilitated the process of bringing individuals across the globe together and forming teams to help them achieve defined tasks. This change in corporate scenarios and shrinking of location barriers has led to the formation of special kinds of teams: virtual teams. The challenge before organizations is to effectively manage these teams because of their negligible physical contact. This research paper attempts to collect and analyze the literature available on the role played by trust in building an effective virtual team. A review of literature presented in the paper deals with the origin and working of virtual teams. This manuscript explores how trust has emerged as an important factor for the appropriate functioning of a virtual team and helps managers and employees in understanding the role of trust in the success of their team. The findings of the study are directed towards benefitting organizations who are involved in planning, developing, and administering programs for the smooth functioning of employees using a virtual paradigm to enhance employee productivity.","PeriodicalId":90871,"journal":{"name":"International journal of virtual communities and social networking","volume":"157 1","pages":"1-13"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83804315","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2014-10-01DOI: 10.4018/IJVCSN.2014100104
A. Ahmed
This research aimed to explore types of online social capital bridging and bonding that the Emiratis perceive in the context of social networking site SNS usage. A snow-ball sample of 230 Emiratis from two Emirates, Abu Dhabi and Dubai was used. The results showed that WhatsApp was the most frequent SNS used by the respondents. Also, a significant correlation of the intensity of social networking usage and bridging social capital was found, while there was no significant association between SNS usage and bonding social capital. The factors determined the SNSs usage motivations among the respondents were: Exchange of information, Sociability, Accessibility, and Connections with overseas friends and families. Males were more likely than females to connect with Arab non-Emiratis and online bonding social capital. Both genders were the same in their SNSs motivations and online bridging social capital.
{"title":"Online Bonding and Bridging Social Capital via Social Networking Sites","authors":"A. Ahmed","doi":"10.4018/IJVCSN.2014100104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/IJVCSN.2014100104","url":null,"abstract":"This research aimed to explore types of online social capital bridging and bonding that the Emiratis perceive in the context of social networking site SNS usage. A snow-ball sample of 230 Emiratis from two Emirates, Abu Dhabi and Dubai was used. The results showed that WhatsApp was the most frequent SNS used by the respondents. Also, a significant correlation of the intensity of social networking usage and bridging social capital was found, while there was no significant association between SNS usage and bonding social capital. The factors determined the SNSs usage motivations among the respondents were: Exchange of information, Sociability, Accessibility, and Connections with overseas friends and families. Males were more likely than females to connect with Arab non-Emiratis and online bonding social capital. Both genders were the same in their SNSs motivations and online bridging social capital.","PeriodicalId":90871,"journal":{"name":"International journal of virtual communities and social networking","volume":"113 1","pages":"42-63"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79776207","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2014-07-01DOI: 10.4018/ijvcsn.2014070103
S. Bhat, Neerja Pande, Vandana Ahuja
Advancement and progression are the key constituents of the success in global business. Virtual team and its members are now the virtue of the organizations that work across the countries. There is no doubt that virtual team's give a competitive advantage to the organization but simultaneously faces challenge in its working. Working in virtual team becomes complex as its members have language difficulties, time -and -distance challenges, absence of face-to-face contact, and cultural differences. The important factor that has been emerged and examined in the preceding studies which builds a virtual team is trust. Only depending on emails and telephones doesn't merely build the trust, especially when members are far apart and belong to totally different culture. Even though a large repository of literature is available on virtual teams and trust but still many of the questions are still left unanswered. The paper focus on identifying the factors those are important for the functioning of the virtual team. A set of 45 questions from the available literature were prepared and responses on likert scale are collected, analysed and summarized in the paper.
{"title":"Factors Impacting Effectiveness in Virtual Teams","authors":"S. Bhat, Neerja Pande, Vandana Ahuja","doi":"10.4018/ijvcsn.2014070103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/ijvcsn.2014070103","url":null,"abstract":"Advancement and progression are the key constituents of the success in global business. Virtual team and its members are now the virtue of the organizations that work across the countries. There is no doubt that virtual team's give a competitive advantage to the organization but simultaneously faces challenge in its working. Working in virtual team becomes complex as its members have language difficulties, time -and -distance challenges, absence of face-to-face contact, and cultural differences. The important factor that has been emerged and examined in the preceding studies which builds a virtual team is trust. Only depending on emails and telephones doesn't merely build the trust, especially when members are far apart and belong to totally different culture. Even though a large repository of literature is available on virtual teams and trust but still many of the questions are still left unanswered. The paper focus on identifying the factors those are important for the functioning of the virtual team. A set of 45 questions from the available literature were prepared and responses on likert scale are collected, analysed and summarized in the paper.","PeriodicalId":90871,"journal":{"name":"International journal of virtual communities and social networking","volume":"241 1","pages":"42-52"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76925480","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Social networks are one of the more notable sociological phenomena of the last years. Moreover, its apparition and acceptance by majority of the citizens also suppose an important challenge for the...
社交网络是近年来较为显著的社会学现象之一。此外，它的出现和被大多数公民接受也对……提出了重大挑战。
{"title":"Evaluation of Social Network Sites","authors":"Chamorro-MeraAntonio, MirandaF. Javier, RubioSergio","doi":"10.5555/2738729.2738730","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5555/2738729.2738730","url":null,"abstract":"Social networks are one of the more notable sociological phenomena of the last years. Moreover, its apparition and acceptance by majority of the citizens also suppose an important challenge for the...","PeriodicalId":90871,"journal":{"name":"International journal of virtual communities and social networking","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71132381","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2014-07-01DOI: 10.4018/ijvcsn.2014070104
A. Wahi, Kunal Verma, Rati Vadehra
This paper focuses mainly on the entrepreneurial aspect of using Facebook pages as a platform for business development and customer engagement through it. It also discusses various Facebook pages features, its powerful analytics tool called insights and how entrepreneurs are leveraging this social media platform for their ventures and ultimately how social media marketing is largely impacting the integrated marketing of the entrepreneurs.
{"title":"Extensive Use of Facebook Marketing by Entrepreneurs in Gaining a Wider Reach","authors":"A. Wahi, Kunal Verma, Rati Vadehra","doi":"10.4018/ijvcsn.2014070104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/ijvcsn.2014070104","url":null,"abstract":"This paper focuses mainly on the entrepreneurial aspect of using Facebook pages as a platform for business development and customer engagement through it. It also discusses various Facebook pages features, its powerful analytics tool called insights and how entrepreneurs are leveraging this social media platform for their ventures and ultimately how social media marketing is largely impacting the integrated marketing of the entrepreneurs.","PeriodicalId":90871,"journal":{"name":"International journal of virtual communities and social networking","volume":"8 1","pages":"53-62"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85189573","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2014-07-01DOI: 10.4018/ijvcsn.2014070102
Z. M. Zain, Abdul Azim Abdul Ghani
A blog quality model has been proposed for bloggers to promote readers satisfaction. However, the model does not determine whether readers consider some quality criteria important, particularly with respect to different blog categories. In this paper, we employed a Rasch analysis to rank the importance of blog quality criteria for the Personal Diary, Socio-political Commentary, Humor/Entertainment, Lifestyle, and Technology blog categories. The authors identified the most important quality criteria and families for each category. The authors discovered that 1 the importance of quality criteria and/or families depends on the particular category with which a reader engages; 2 some quality criteria and/or families are more important for some categories but less important for others; and 3 certain quality criteria and/or families are equally important for some categories but not for others. The authors provide empirical evidence of the most important criteria bloggers and evaluators can focus on when they examine different blog categories. A blog quality model has been proposed for bloggers to promote readers satisfaction. However, the model does not determine whether readers consider some quality criteria important, particularly with respect to different blog categories. In this paper, a Rasch analysis to rank the importance of blog quality criteria for the Personal Diary, Socio-political Commentary, Humor/Entertainment, Lifestyle, and Technology blog categories. The authors identified the most important quality criteria and families for each category. The authors discovered that 1 the importance of quality criteria and/or families depends on the particular category with which a reader engages; 2 some quality criteria and/or families are more important for some categories but less important for others; and 3 certain quality criteria and/or families are equally important for some categories but not for others. The authors provide empirical evidence of the most important criteria bloggers and evaluators can focus on when they examine different blog categories.
{"title":"Importance Analysis of a Blog Quality Model for Criteria and Families in Different Blog Categories","authors":"Z. M. Zain, Abdul Azim Abdul Ghani","doi":"10.4018/ijvcsn.2014070102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/ijvcsn.2014070102","url":null,"abstract":"A blog quality model has been proposed for bloggers to promote readers satisfaction. However, the model does not determine whether readers consider some quality criteria important, particularly with respect to different blog categories. In this paper, we employed a Rasch analysis to rank the importance of blog quality criteria for the Personal Diary, Socio-political Commentary, Humor/Entertainment, Lifestyle, and Technology blog categories. The authors identified the most important quality criteria and families for each category. The authors discovered that 1 the importance of quality criteria and/or families depends on the particular category with which a reader engages; 2 some quality criteria and/or families are more important for some categories but less important for others; and 3 certain quality criteria and/or families are equally important for some categories but not for others. The authors provide empirical evidence of the most important criteria bloggers and evaluators can focus on when they examine different blog categories. A blog quality model has been proposed for bloggers to promote readers satisfaction. However, the model does not determine whether readers consider some quality criteria important, particularly with respect to different blog categories. In this paper, a Rasch analysis to rank the importance of blog quality criteria for the Personal Diary, Socio-political Commentary, Humor/Entertainment, Lifestyle, and Technology blog categories. The authors identified the most important quality criteria and families for each category. The authors discovered that 1 the importance of quality criteria and/or families depends on the particular category with which a reader engages; 2 some quality criteria and/or families are more important for some categories but less important for others; and 3 certain quality criteria and/or families are equally important for some categories but not for others. The authors provide empirical evidence of the most important criteria bloggers and evaluators can focus on when they examine different blog categories.","PeriodicalId":90871,"journal":{"name":"International journal of virtual communities and social networking","volume":"112 1","pages":"1-41"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79357370","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2014-04-01DOI: 10.4018/ijvcsn.2014040102
F. Bertacchini, Assunta Tavernise
The word “prosumer†indicates the mixture of the terms “producer†and “consumer†: even if the term is almost recent, prosumers were already present in the historical period of ancient Greece and Magna GrA¦cia (between the VII century b.C. and the I century A.D.). In this view, the platform Cultural Heritage 2.0 can be considered a digital “agora†: like the Greek square-marketplace, where there was exchange of goods and ideas, the system allows the gathering of an extensive amount of digital data and an interesting exchange of culture. The aim of this paper is to present Cultural Heritage 2.0, that offers the opportunity to mix heterogeneous contents in unusual amalgams, according to the imagination and design of the users-prosumers in the Web community.
{"title":"Knowledge Sharing for Cultural Heritage 2.0: Prosumers in a Digital Agora","authors":"F. Bertacchini, Assunta Tavernise","doi":"10.4018/ijvcsn.2014040102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/ijvcsn.2014040102","url":null,"abstract":"The word “prosumer†indicates the mixture of the terms “producer†and “consumer†: even if the term is almost recent, prosumers were already present in the historical period of ancient Greece and Magna GrA¦cia (between the VII century b.C. and the I century A.D.). In this view, the platform Cultural Heritage 2.0 can be considered a digital “agora†: like the Greek square-marketplace, where there was exchange of goods and ideas, the system allows the gathering of an extensive amount of digital data and an interesting exchange of culture. The aim of this paper is to present Cultural Heritage 2.0, that offers the opportunity to mix heterogeneous contents in unusual amalgams, according to the imagination and design of the users-prosumers in the Web community.","PeriodicalId":90871,"journal":{"name":"International journal of virtual communities and social networking","volume":"44 1","pages":"24-36"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80824514","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2014-04-01DOI: 10.4018/ijvcsn.2014040101
D. Saluja, Shamsher Singh
In the information age, social media is growing rapidly and at a faster pace. Social media is playing an important role in the day to day life of individuals. Using social media has become the everyday routine. Many social media sites display different type of advertisement by which decision making process is generally getting affected. Social Media is much more than just a medium of sharing information. The present study is an attempt to understand how the social media affect the decision making process of consumers and impact of various marketing strategies used by firms on social media. The study employs the surveys methods to collect primary data from 200 customers who have been regularly using social media. Factor Analysis and ANOVA has been used for having insights in the study. The selected respondents are assumed to represent the population in the urban areas of Delhi.
{"title":"Impact of Social Media Marketing Strategies on Consumers Behaviour in Delhi","authors":"D. Saluja, Shamsher Singh","doi":"10.4018/ijvcsn.2014040101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/ijvcsn.2014040101","url":null,"abstract":"In the information age, social media is growing rapidly and at a faster pace. Social media is playing an important role in the day to day life of individuals. Using social media has become the everyday routine. Many social media sites display different type of advertisement by which decision making process is generally getting affected. Social Media is much more than just a medium of sharing information. The present study is an attempt to understand how the social media affect the decision making process of consumers and impact of various marketing strategies used by firms on social media. The study employs the surveys methods to collect primary data from 200 customers who have been regularly using social media. Factor Analysis and ANOVA has been used for having insights in the study. The selected respondents are assumed to represent the population in the urban areas of Delhi.","PeriodicalId":90871,"journal":{"name":"International journal of virtual communities and social networking","volume":"54 1","pages":"1-23"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80871605","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2014-04-01DOI: 10.4018/ijvcsn.2014040104
Siddharth Khanna, A. Wahi
Website attractiveness has become the essence of online business and bringing in more customer base. Website attracting variables play a key role enhancing the online purchase among the consumers. Key website attracting variables influencing consumer purchase decision include: Services & Offers, Ease of Use (Usability) and Concerns & Issues. Services & Offers: The consumers are attracted by the services and offers that a website provides to its users. The higher the services and offers provided by a website, the more will be the attractiveness to its users. The services and offers play a vital role as an attracting force to influence consumers in their purchasing decision. Ease of Use (Usability) is redefined as trade-off between increasing the user's motivation to encourage exploration and purchasing in e-commerce, and the costs of usability errors (Sutcliffe, 2002). The perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use are the two main factors on which usability counts. The quality of the website is also determined by its usability i.e. the perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use to the customer. Concerns & Issues: The eradication of trust in Internet commerce applications may cause prudent business operators and clients to forgo use of the Internet for now and revert back to traditional methods of doing business. This loss of trust is being fueled by continued stories of hacker attacks on e-commerce sites and consumer data privacy abuse. Credibility can be defined as believability. Credible information is believable information. In discussing the credibility of an e-commerce site we will aim at the reliability of the information given about the products and services. The following study aims at analyzing the website attractiveness factors of Concerns & Issues, Services & Offers and Ease of Use (Usability) influencing the consumer purchasing decision. It also aims at finding the importance of these afro mentioned variables in attracting and winning over the consumer in the highly competitive Internet marketplace. A survey of focus group of participants who were regular users of E-commerce websites like E-Bay, Yebhi, and Snapdeal etc. helped in creating a web management score.
{"title":"Website Attractiveness in E-Commerce Sites: Key Factors Influencing the Consumer Purchase Decision","authors":"Siddharth Khanna, A. Wahi","doi":"10.4018/ijvcsn.2014040104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/ijvcsn.2014040104","url":null,"abstract":"Website attractiveness has become the essence of online business and bringing in more customer base. Website attracting variables play a key role enhancing the online purchase among the consumers. Key website attracting variables influencing consumer purchase decision include: Services & Offers, Ease of Use (Usability) and Concerns & Issues. Services & Offers: The consumers are attracted by the services and offers that a website provides to its users. The higher the services and offers provided by a website, the more will be the attractiveness to its users. The services and offers play a vital role as an attracting force to influence consumers in their purchasing decision. Ease of Use (Usability) is redefined as trade-off between increasing the user's motivation to encourage exploration and purchasing in e-commerce, and the costs of usability errors (Sutcliffe, 2002). The perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use are the two main factors on which usability counts. The quality of the website is also determined by its usability i.e. the perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use to the customer. Concerns & Issues: The eradication of trust in Internet commerce applications may cause prudent business operators and clients to forgo use of the Internet for now and revert back to traditional methods of doing business. This loss of trust is being fueled by continued stories of hacker attacks on e-commerce sites and consumer data privacy abuse. Credibility can be defined as believability. Credible information is believable information. In discussing the credibility of an e-commerce site we will aim at the reliability of the information given about the products and services. The following study aims at analyzing the website attractiveness factors of Concerns & Issues, Services & Offers and Ease of Use (Usability) influencing the consumer purchasing decision. It also aims at finding the importance of these afro mentioned variables in attracting and winning over the consumer in the highly competitive Internet marketplace. A survey of focus group of participants who were regular users of E-commerce websites like E-Bay, Yebhi, and Snapdeal etc. helped in creating a web management score.","PeriodicalId":90871,"journal":{"name":"International journal of virtual communities and social networking","volume":"11 1","pages":"49-59"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77385900","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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