Evaluating single sign-on security failure in cloud services

Business use of cloud computing services is motivated by ease of use and potential financial cost reductions. Service failure may occur when the service provider does not protect information or when the use of the services becomes overly complex and difficult. The benefits of cloud computing also bring optimization challenges for the information owners who must assess service security risks and the degree to which new human behaviors are required. In this research, we look at the risk of identity theft when ease of service access is provided through a single sign-on (SSO) authorization, asking: What are the optimal behavioral expectations for a cloud service information owner? Federated identity management provides well-developed design literature on strategies for optimizing human behaviors in relation to the new technologies. We briefly review the literature and then propose a working solution that optimizes the trade-off between disclosure risk, human user risk, and service security.     

How attachment affects user stickiness on live streaming platforms: A socio-technical approach perspective

User stickiness is an important factor in the development of live streaming shopping platforms, which describes the degree of users' attention to the platforms. Although some e-commerce websites have provided live streaming services to improve the purchase experience of consumers, few people know how the services affect user stickiness. Building upon attachment theory and socio-technical approach, we developed a theoretical model to understand how live streaming service affects the user stickiness through users' attachment, which is tested by using 425 live streaming shopping platform's users. The results showed that technical factors (synchronicity and vicarious expression) and social factors (interaction and identification) positively affect emotional attachment to streamers and platform attachment respectively, which in turn increase the user stickiness.     

A model and measure for quality service user involvement in health research

In the UK, researchers across the health professions are increasingly being encouraged by policymakers and research commissioners to ‘involve’ service users in research. A recent review shows there is some evidence that involving patients, carers, relatives, social or community groups directly and actively as part of the research process can improve the conduct of research studies and the impact of the findings. Yet, little is known about how involvement is played out within research studies and there is a need for more critical and consistent assessment of what constitutes quality involvement. The overall purpose of this paper is to support learning about quality service user involvement in health care research. The aim is to provide service users and researchers with a structured and consistent way to reflect and report on their experiences. A range of philosophical and social theories of power and empowerment were reviewed and synthesized to create a model of quality involvement. The analysis encompassed both service user factors (what a person feels able to do, whether they feel their potential is being fulfilled and their sense of being valued) alongside research factors (research relationships, ways of doing research, research structures). A model is presented (Quality Involvement Framework), which contributes theoretically informed perspectives about the meaning and assessment of quality service user involvement in research. The model is developed as a practical measure (a Quality Involvement Questionnaire) for researchers and service users to be more reflective about the constraints and possibilities of involvement. The tools presented here could help research teams to examine personal factors and the research contexts that influence the nature and quality of service user involvement in research. They may also help to identify reoccurring issues about quality which could inform future policy, practice and research.     

Separate or Integrate? Assessing the Impact of Separation Between Product and Service Business on Service Performance in Product Manufacturing Firms

Purpose: Investigating how the separation of the product and service business mediates the effect of management's commitment to the service strategy on service performance in product manufacturing firms.

Methodology: The authors surveyed 216 European manufacturers in the high-value durable equipment industry moving into the service business. After assessing adequacy of measurement scales, the authors tested statistically for mediation. Their results hold when replicating the study using a structural equation modeling approach and while testing for common method biases.

Findings: The authors find evidence that the creation of a separate service organization, organized as a profit center, has a significant positive mediating effect between managerial commitment and the services' financial performance. Although separation also has a positive mediating effect between commitment and non-financial performance, organizing services as a profit center had a negative effect on the service's non-financial indicators.

Research Limitations: Research limitations include (a) a sample limited to German-speaking firms in the high-value durable equipment industry, (b) measurements based on self-reported managerial perceptions of service performance, and (c) conceptualization of service as a single strategic response.

Practical Implications: Although the complementarity between products and services is high in the market, the authors' research suggests few synergies to leverage their integration inside the organization. Accordingly, management should, at least in transition efforts similar to the ones included in this sample, look into creating a separate and distinct service organization.

Value/Contribution: This research was driven by practical concern on how to organize service operations in a manufacturing firm. Initial framing of the research through the creation of the construct of separation of product and service business was used.     

Focusing Service Management Efforts: A Model for Non profit Organizations

ABSTRACT

In recent years, many nonprofit organizations have experienced significant cut-backs in support from traditional sources while demand for their services has continued to increase. Many of these organizations have attempted to bridge this growing chasm by increasing their fund raising efforts. While not without value, these activities alone will not resolve the dilemma faced by many of these organizations. The authors present a 12-step model to assist managers in nonprofit organizations in determining how to reallocate scarce human and financial resources from non-crucial to truly critical service offerings and in so doing, better meet the needs of their critical constituencies.     

Retail Store Loyalty Management via an Analysis of Heterogeneity of the Service Elements

This paper follows a line of research opened up by a series of authors who use a marketing approach for the study of retail service productivity. Without departing from the line of reasoning established by these authors, the main purpose of this paper is to detect possible differences in marketing productivity within and between different types of retailing services, using a research model that includes both the firm's effort and that of the customer. The two services selected for this purpose are grocery outlets and petrol stations.     

Platform quality factors influencing content providers’ loyalty

This study investigates what platform quality factors affect the contents of the loyalty of content providers to support the continued expansion and sustainability of online platforms. It analyses empirically the influence of platform quality on the satisfaction with and loyalty to the service as well as on the platform's ability to secure content providers from a survey of 222 platform users. It confirms five significant findings for platform quality and user loyalty. First, all five factors of SERVQUAL have meaningful effects on platform user satisfaction. Second, factors affecting service quality differ by gender. Third, while male users regard platform technology as most critical, female users are more concerned about platform events and interests. Fourth, female users care more about customer responses than male users do; however, the user interface is the most critical aspect for both genders. Finally, platform quality has a significant impact on satisfaction and loyalty among content providers. It identifies the importance of platform service quality as a factor to increase user (content providers) loyalty on the platform. And it also investigates differences according to user gender by subdividing platform service users and indicates how service quality effects can change according to user characteristics.     

University research and development activities: Intrusion into areas untended? A review of recent developments and ethical issues raised

The traditional and emerging roles of the major research entities in the United States are reviewed. Particularly controversial has been the university's emerging role of applied researcher in addition to its traditional role of basic researcher. Private, for-profit research laboratories have vociferously objected to the funding of university applied research by both the federal government and private industry. The funding of university research by these latter two entities is then reviewed and discussed. In addition to the ethical issue of whether university applied research should be funded, there is apparently another ethical issue regarding how the recipient universities are selected. In essence, if the universities intrusions are merely into untended areas, the first ethical issue seems less serious. Such may be the case if private laboratories are not equipped to perform the research. Of course, the second issue of which university should receive the funding remains. The apparently strengthening ties between universities and private industry are then reviewed. Direct ties between universities and industry still account for a very small part of university research. But impediments to cooperation are melting away as universities market their services to private industry. The authors contend that the government encourages cooperative ventures between universities and industry. They pose questions for all sides and suggest further areas of study should these joint ventures continue as they seem most likely to do. Much of the literature has leaned toward criticism of these joint efforts. Martin Kenney, in the February, 1987 issue of The Journal of Business Ethics, offered one of the more extensive efforts in his criticism of cooperative industrial/university research. Kenney concentrated on the area of biotechnology research. The present article avoids specific areas of research and takes a broad view of these cooperative research efforts. It is less critical than Kenney of the cooperation between industry and universities. David E. Blevins is Associate Professor of Management in the Department of Management and Marketing, University of Mississippi. From 1962–1971 he was employed by Caterpillar Tractor Co. in various management positions including District Representative for four European and Middle East countries. He received a Ph.D. and MBA from the University of Illinois and a BS in Industrial Engineering from the University of Missouri. He has published articles in the Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Product Innovation Management and Mississippi Business and has published three textbooks. Sid R. Ewer is Assistant Professor of Accountancy at Southwest Missouri State University. His areas of research interest involve public policy and ethics, and he has published in The Journal of System Management. He has spent eight years in state government as an executive for an educational agency, and, prior to state government Mr. Ewer was an executive for industry. He is a Certified Public Accountant, Certified Management Accountant and Certified Internal Auditor.     

Antecedents of mobile payment loyalty: An extended perspective of perceived value and information system success model

Drawing on the information system success model and perceived value theory, we develop a research model to examine factors that may affect user satisfaction and loyalty of mobile payment platforms. Empirical data was collected from users using Alipay and WeChat Pay in China, and a total of 410 valid responses were gathered for data analysis. The results show that the multi-dimensional formative perceived value including benefits and sacrifice is important determinant of mobile payment user satisfaction and loyalty. The three benefit dimensions of functional value, experiential value and social value are more important value components than the two sacrifice dimensions of risk and cost, and experiential value is the dominant component of mobile payment users' value perception. As for the antecedents of perceived value, system quality and service quality mainly affect perceived benefits, while information quality has a greater impact on risk. The research results provide the contribution of specific value dimensions to users' perceived value and the impact of quality characteristics on specific perceived value for mobile payment platform providers, thus helping them to adopt effective strategies to strengthen market competitiveness and retain existing users.     

Platform thinking for services: the case of human resources

This paper tests the utility of platform thinking, a design principle that has so far been applied to product development yet under-researched in service settings, for improving the value of services. A key principle of platform thinking is to balance the reuse of service components with the heterogeneity in user needs. Tuning services to specific user needs is valuable, but differentiating services when user needs are homogeneous may decrease service quality and increase cost. Using data from 676 human resource management services, this study finds that the service value is highest when the service provision is matched with the commonality potential of the services. The results indicate that using the wrong delivery channel decreases the service value which eventually could decrease the service value for an organization's external customers. These empirical findings demonstrate the relevance of platform thinking for service design and challenges conventional design criteria used for optimizing service delivery.     

An assessment of value creation in mobile service delivery and the moderating role of time consciousness

This study focuses on the perceived utilitarian value of a new service delivery mode, the mobile channel. The authors develop a framework that incorporates three mode-specific benefits - time convenience, user control, and service compatibility - as well as two costs - perceived risk and cognitive effort - as antecedents of perceived value. Because of the pervasiveness of time criticality as a value-added characteristic of the mobile channel, they also investigate the moderating influence of consumers’ time consciousness. They empirically investigate the model using mobile brokerage services as an illustrative application. The results reveal that the identified antecedents, with the exception of service compatibility, have a strong impact on mobile channel value perceptions, which in turn influence behavioral intentions. The authors also find that time consciousness moderates the aforementioned relationships.     

Determinants of collective intelligence quality: comparison between Wiki and Q&A services in English and Korean users

Although web-enabled collective intelligence (CI) plays a critical role in organizational innovation and collaboration, the dubious quality of CI is still a substantial problem faced by many CI services. Thus, it is important to identify determinants of CI quality and to analyze the relationship between CI quality and its usefulness. One of the most successful services of web-enabled CI is Wikipedia accessible all over the world. Another type of CI service is Naver KnowledgeiN, a typical and popular CI site offering question and answer (Q&A) services in Korea. Wikipedia is a multilingual and web-based encyclopedia. Thus, it is necessary to study the influence relationships among CI quality, its determinants, and CI usefulness according to different CI type and languages. In this paper, we propose a new research model reflecting multi-dimensional factors related to CI quality from user’s perspective. To test a total of 15 hypotheses drawn from the research model, a total of 691 responses were collected from Wikipedia and KnowledgeiN users in South Korea and US. Expertise of contributors, community size, and diversity of contributors were identified as determinants of perceived CI quality. Perceived CI quality has significantly influenced on perceived CI usefulness from user’s perspective. CI type and different language partially play a role of moderators. The expertise of contributors plays a more important role in CI quality in the case of Q&A services such as KnowledgeiN compared to Wiki services such as Wikipedia. This implies that Q&A service requires more expertise and experiences in particular areas rather than the case of Wiki service to improve service quality. The relationship between community size and perceived CI quality was different according to CI type. The community size has a greater effect on CI quality in case of Wiki service than that of Q&A service. The number of contributors in Wikipedia is important because Wiki is an encyclopedia service which is edited and revised repeatedly from many contributors while the answer given in Naver KnowledgeiN cannot be edited by others. Finally, CI quality has a greater effect on its usefulness in case of Wiki service rather than Q&A service. In this paper, we suggested implications for practitioners and theorists.     

Mediating effects on the relationship between perceived service quality and public library app loyalty during the COVID-19 era

The demand for using library apps to search for information has been increasing after the COVID-19 outbreak. To look into how the pandemic affects the users’ perception of the loyalty of using library apps, we designed this research by amalgamating the updated IS success model and S–O-R model to evaluate the service quality of a public library app under the Hong Kong Government mobile applications initiative. A third-order model is established to demonstrate the multi-faceted aspects of service quality and mediating effects of perceived brand image, satisfaction, and e-word of mouth. Using structural equation modeling, data collected from Hong Kong, a metropolis where mobile services empower its citizens, showed the interrelationships among service quality and possible outcomes (i.e., perceived brand image, user satisfaction, e-word of mouth, and user loyalty). Findings also indicate that the influence of perceived service quality on user loyalty could only be achieved through perceived brand image and user satisfaction. This is a timely study during the COVID-19 pandemic, as the lockdown and social distancing arrangements created challenges for citizens to search for information in public libraries in person. Our findings and suggestions reiterate the importance of considering the usability concepts when analyzing the service quality of each unique app. They also provide insights for practitioners in developing the next generation of apps for smart public information services and call for further investigation into the proposed hierarchical model and other potential factors related to service quality.     

How to Coordinate Value Generation in Service Networks

The fundamental paradigm shift from traditional value chains to agile service value networks implies new economic and organizational challenges. As coordination mechanisms, auctions have proven to perform quite well in situations where intangible and heterogeneous goods are traded. Nevertheless, traditional approaches in the area of multidimensional combinatorial auctions are not quite suitable to enable the trade of composite services. A flawless service execution and therefore the requester’s valuation highly depends on the accurate sequence of the functional parts of the composition, meaning that in contrary to service bundles, composite services only generate value through a valid order of their components. The authors present an abstract model as a formalization of service value networks. The model comprehends a graph-based mechanism implementation to allocate multidimensional service offers within the network, to impose penalties for non-performance and to determine prices for complex services. The mechanism and the bidding language support various types of QoS attributes and their (semantic) aggregation. It is analytically shown that this variant is incentive compatible with respect to all dimensions of the service offer (quality and price). Based on these results, the authors numerically analyze strategic behavior of participating service providers regarding possible collusion strategies.     

Toward a deeper understanding of service marketing: The past, the present, and the future

The authors investigate the intellectual pillars of service marketing and its evolution through key subareas during 1992-2009 using a citation-based approach. They derive insights for the most promising research directions. The results reveal the dynamic influences of different research topics on service marketing. In a graphical representation, the authors further show that the main topics have changed their research orientations over time. For example, the literature on online service & technology infusion reveals an increasingly operational and customer-focused orientation. A citation-based measure of the significance of research opportunities and a comparison with the topics found in recent literature reviews indicate that research on managing business-to-business services & service infusion, complaint handling & service recovery, and enhancing and managing the service value chain are promising topics. These results assist academics and practitioners by revealing what we know about service research and what we need to know in the future.     

A Reconceptualization of Manufacturers' Service Strategies

Purpose: As part of service infusion, manufacturers use services to differentiate their products and provide growth. Although several attempts have been made to classify manufacturers' service strategies and offerings, most have been based on small purposive samples. The purpose of this article is to create a generic typology of manufacturers' service strategies.

Methodology/approach: The unit of analysis was the manufacturer or strategic business unit. The data collection was based on a survey of 145 B2B manufacturers in the United Kingdom.

Findings: Three categories of service offerings were identified: product-attached services, operations services on own products, and vendor independent operations services. These categories are used to specify three generic service strategies: Services Doubters, for whom services are not a strong differentiator with no focus on any category of service offerings; Services Pragmatists, for whom product-attached services are a key differentiator; Services Enthusiasts, for whom services are both a product differentiator and an enabler of growth, with all three categories of service offerings important.

Research implications: Whereas prior studies tend to use the concepts of service strategies and categories of service offerings interchangeably, we find empirical support for the importance of making a clear distinction between the two concepts.

Practical implications: Manufacturers can be classified according to their services strategies. For Services Doubters service infusion is unlikely to be an appropriate approach to creating differentiation. For Services Pragmatists services play a crucial role in creating product differentiation. Services Enthusiasts use services to both differentiate their own products and also develop services-led growth.

Originality/value/contribution: The paper exposes an ambiguity in the extant literature, with a manufacturer's categories of service offerings used as proxies for service strategies. A new typology of service strategies is presented based on categories of service offerings, which provides insight into how manufacturers infuse services.     

The effect of variety-seeking on customer retention in services

Intrinsic variety-seeking has been analyzed as an individual consumer trait affecting consumer's varied behavior. However, very little research has been done on the consumer service sector. In this paper, the authors explore the negative role of variety seeking on customer retention for services. This basic hypothesis is tested through structural equation modeling applied to an empirical study of food-service at three Universities. The results support the hypothesis: variety-seeking negatively affects customer retention and lessens the impact of the management efforts to improve service quality and customer satisfaction.     

Factors that Influence Consumer Adoption of E-government Services in the UAE: A UTAUT Model Perspective

The objective of this research study is to identify the constructs and factors important to the user-centric transformation of e-governments. The research design follows the comprehensive Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology model. The primary data for the research were collected from potential and current users of e-government services in the United Arab Emirates. Exploratory factor analysis was used to extract the important constructs from the 19 factors identified from the literature. Regression analysis was used to identify the influence of individual constructs on overall satisfaction, while correlation analysis was used to identify the relationship between Internet usage and user satisfaction. Analysis of variance and t-test were used to identify potential differences among demographic factors and their overall satisfaction with e-government services. This study identifies confidentiality and users’ trust and attitudes toward using technology as key determinants of overall satisfaction and the subsequent adoption of e-government services. The study also identifies significant differences in how different genders adopt the use of e-government services.     

Exploring information technology success of Augmented Reality Retail Applications in retail food chain

Augmented reality retail applications (ARRAs) have emerged as rapidly developing innovative and futuristic retail innovation used in both physical store and online shops to improve the retail settings and customer experience. So, the objective of this research was to identify predictors of user benefits of ARRA in the retail food chain. By integrating the theory of information system success model, this study proposes a model to investigate the mediating effect of two values: (1) user satisfaction and (2) user continuance intention between quality perspective as explanatory variables (system, service, and information quality) and user benefits as the outcome variable. Both the mediating factors are found positively playing mediating roles among all proposed relationships. This paper provides valuable course of action for retailers and marketers on assessing customers satisfaction and using ARRA to create marketing strategies effectively.     

Towards an Improved Understanding of Industrial Services: Quality Dimensions and Their Impact on Buyer-Seller Relationships

ABSTRACT

The rapidly growing field of services marketing has had a strong focus on consumer services. This article deals with industrial services, i.e., services provided by a manufacturing company to organizational customers. The authors suggest a triangular model of industrial service quality involving a distinction between structural, process-related, and outcome-related aspects. These three quality dimensions are shown to have strong impacts on the customer's trust, satisfaction, and commitment. The authors discuss theoretical and managerial implications of their findings.