The diffusion of mobile data services and applications: Exploring the role of habit and its antecedents

Given the prevalence of mobile data services and applications (MDSA) such as App Store, it is important to diffuse MDSA and understand user behavior toward it. Recent research on marketing and information systems (IS) has shed light on the habitual use of frequently used IS. This study attempts to develop a research model that clarifies the role of habit in the actual use of MDSA. Considering the unique and specific characteristics of MDSA, this study examines the antecedents of MDSA habit in an effort to elucidate key factors accelerating the development of MDSA habitual use. Data collected from 317 users who had prior experiences with MDSA were empirically tested against the research model using partial least squares (PLS). The analysis results indicate that both continuance intention and habit play an important role in the actual use of MDSA. Moreover, the findings reveal that habit is a more prevalent predictor of actual use compared to conscious intention. It was found that user satisfaction, perceived monetary value, and variety of use serve as the antecedents of MDSA habit. The theoretical and policy implications of the findings are described.     

Creating and maintaining an effective interdisciplinary research team

Any one area of interdisciplinary research is ephemeral: it either fails, or succeeds in solving a particular problem, or it expands until it develops into a new orthodoxy. As a style of tackling intractable problems it has unique value, but the costs can be high —both to individuals and to managers of R&D.
It is the perceived costs that raise difficulties for managers wishing to implement interdisciplinary research. For success, the situation requiring an interdisciplinary approach must be so perceived by all involved and they must believe that the requirement will last for some years.
Because it is a high risk activity where those taking part may find difficulty in returning to the mainstream of research, the rewards must be higher. The total benefits must be thought worthwhile both for those paying for the research, and for those who carry it out.
The present paper discusses when interdisciplinary research should be adopted, how to make it work, and how to cope with some problems it creates.     

A comparison of manufacturers and financial services suppliers' and buyers' use of relationship management methods

Suppliers and customers work within a network in which they have a vast array of diverse relationships they have to manage [Easton, G. (1992). Industrial networks: A new view of reality. London: Routledge; Turnbull, P. W., & Moustakatos, T. Int. J. Bank Mark. 14 (1996) 26]. Past research in relationship portfolio analysis [Turnbull, P. W., & Cunningham, M. T. (Eds.). (1981). International marketing and purchasing: A survey among marketing and purchasing executives in five European countries. London: Macmillan Press; Fioca, R. Ind. Mark. Manage. 11 (1982) 53; Campbell, N. C. G. & Cunningham, M. T. Strateg. Manage. J. 4 (1983) 369; Reicheld, F. F. & Sasser W. E. Harv. Bus. Rev. (1990) 105; Krapfel, R. E., Salmond, D., & Spekman R. Eur. J. Mark. 25 (1991) 72] has sought to enable companies to allocate resources efficiently and effectively to different kinds of relationships. However, little research has been carried out to investigate how this concept can be applied across sectors, across functions, across manufacturing and financial services, and across suppliers and buyers. This research explores three methods of managing relationships: formal, documented systems, personal judgement, and meetings. The perceived usefulness of each method and combination of methods used varied across industrial sectors and functions. All three methods were used by the majority of financial suppliers and buyers and manufacturing buyers while manufacturing suppliers tended to use personal judgement and meetings. Overall, meetings were perceived as the most useful method for managing relationships. Formal, documented systems were generally perceived as the least useful method by all of the groups except the financial services buyers. Since relationship portfolio analysis is generally perceived as being less useful than personal judgement and meetings, researchers must reexamine the models put forward to improve their applicability and usefulness in industrial settings.     

A framework of ERP systems implementation success in China: An empirical study

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is one of the most widely accepted choices to obtain competitive advantage for manufacturing companies. However, the successful implementation rate is low and many firms did not achieve intended goals in China. This study develops an ERP implementation success framework by adapting the Ives et al. information systems (ISs) research model and DeLone and McLean's IS success model to identify both critical success factors and success measures. Qualitative case study research methodology is used to collect data and Atlas/ti program is used to facilitate data analysis. Discussion is made finally and suggested ERP systems implementation methodology is given at the end.     

Manufacturer–reseller e-business arrangements: The impact of inequity on relationship performance and the moderating role of dependence

Manufacturer–reseller e-business arrangements are changing the nature of channel relationships. When manufacturers supply e-business tools to their resellers, resellers may perceive that the benefits of technology are not shared equitably. This research explores this issue by examining two technology based antecedents of perceived inequity from the reseller perspective. We also examine the impact of perceived inequity on relationship performance, and the moderating role of reseller dependence on the proposed inequity–performance link. The results of the empirical test involving a sample of 224 resellers suggest that perceived inequity negatively impacts relationship performance, while reseller dependence plays a moderating role. Implications of these findings for researchers and managers are discussed.     

ERP system usage: the role of control and empowerment

Organisations have made significant investments in enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems with the strategic expectation that employees will utilise this technology to enhance organisational performance. However, research indicates that ERP systems are underutilised. In order to disentangle the challenge of underutilisation, this paper addresses the impact of organisational control and empowerment on infusion—the deep and comprehensive usage of an information system. Moreover, it also tests whether infusion will lead to higher levels of ERP system success. Data from a sample of 260 matched pairs of ERP system users and their supervisors were collected and analysed. Results indicate that empowerment is positively related with infusion, whereas an inverted u‐relationship has been found for organisational control. The critical link between infusion and ERP system success was found as well, meaning that the more users utilise the system to its fullest extent, the more likely the organisation is to attain ERP systems' promised benefits.     

利用ERP实现施工企业信息集成管理

信息技术对其他传统行业的改造使其生产效率得到显著提升,利用企业资源规划（ERP）实现建筑企业信息集成管理可以优化企业资源配置,提升企业竞争力。在阐述了建筑企业ERP的功能、内涵和软件体系结构之后,研究了ERP的实施,以达到实现施工企业数据集成、企业与项目信息集成,以及促进组织流程重组的目的。     

How buyers' expected benefits, perceived risks, and e-business readiness influence their e-marketplace usage

The main objective of this study was to investigate how buyers' usage of electronic marketplaces was influenced by their perceived risks and expected benefits associated with such markets. A large scale survey involving 359 professional buyers was performed. Results indicated that buyers' perceived risks and expected benefits had an influence on their usage extent of electronic marketplaces. In addition, buyers' e-business readiness moderated the relationship between expected benefits and usage of electronic marketplaces. Managerial and theoretical implications of these results are discussed.     

The drivers of success in new-product development

Why are some new products so successful and some companies outstanding performers in new-product development? The article identifies success factors from numerous research studies into NPD (new-product development) performance in industry. Three categories of success drivers have been defined. First, success drivers, that explain the success of individual new-product projects, are more tactical: They capture the characteristics of new product projects, such as certain executional best practices (building in voice-of-customer; doing the front-end homework; and adopting a global orientation for the project), and well as the nature of the product itself (a compelling value proposition, for example). A second category is drivers of success at the business level: They include organizational and strategic factors, such as the business's innovation strategy and how the firm makes its R&D investment decisions; how it organizes for NPD; climate and culture; and leadership The third category of success divers identified is the systems and methods the firm has in place for managing NPD, for example gating systems, Agile development approaches, and ideation methods. The details of each of these 20 success drivers, along with their managerial implications, are outlined in the article.     

基于计算机信息集成技术的房产管理信息系统

基于计算机信息集成技术的房产管理信息系统是房管部门实现房产管理现代化的一种重要途径。这种系统不但具有房产信息管理的输入、查询、检索、修改、计算、统计等一般功能，而且在信息集成技术的支持下还可以实现信息的数据集中、网络共享、并行处理、数据完整等优点。本详细探讨了这种基于计算机信息集成技术的房产信息管理系统系统分析、系统设计以及系统实施等几个重要开发过程的设计思想和作业内容，对计算机信息集成技术的相关内容也进行了一定介绍。     

Project marketing in multi-project organizations: A comparison of IS/IT and engineering firms

An emerging trend suggests that a project marketing approach could, or should, be merged into project management. Consequently, an exploratory study has been made of the project marketing and management functions in four firms in two different industries and analyzed with a project marketing overlay. Contrasts were noted. The engineering firms actually described their marketing activity as a sales activity and the function tended to be differentiated from project management. The IS/IT firms, on the other hand, appeared to be particularly oriented toward establishing mutual understanding of customer needs and marketing was closely integrated with project management. Major differences are associated with the relative environments in which the firms work.     

加入WTO对中国钢铁企业的影响及策略分析

中国加入WTO，使国内钢铁企业的生存环境发生新的变化，本文通过引用大量数据资料，结合WTO的相关条款，认真分析了加入WTO给国内钢铁企业带来的机遇和挑战，根据国内钢铁企业发现状以及与国外先进企业的差距，就如何推进企业管理，机制和技术创新，实施联合重组，提高竞争实力，阐述了自己的观点。     

How business customers judge customer success management

In business-to-business markets, customer success management is gaining growing practical importance. The concept comprises customer-related activities that aim at monitoring, securing and enhancing customer success as well as the implementation of the corresponding organizational structures and processes within the supplier firm. In contrast to existing research, this article takes a customer perspective to customer success management and investigates how business customers judge respective supplier activities; first, to reveal the quality dimensions business customers apply when assessing suppliers' customer success management activities, and second, to investigate how the quality of suppliers' customer success management activities leads to business customers' perceived value. Addressing these questions, this research contributes to literature by exploring customer success management from a customer perspective. The findings elucidate that customers' perceived value in use does not simply develop over time. Rather, through the implementation of customer-related activities of customer success management, suppliers can actively influence customers' value-in-use experiences thus fostering customers' rebuy decisions. From managerial perspective, the findings support suppliers in successfully shape their customer-oriented customer success management activities as well as the necessary internal structures and processes.     

A classification of business-to-business buying decisions: risk importance and probability as a framework for e-business benefits

Business-to-business (B2B) markets have been considered an attractive e-business venue for the realization of cost reduction and exchange creation utilities. However, as marketers have long argued, there are different types of buying situations, and the benefits sought in each may vary substantially. The present work builds on the thinking of previous industrial buying typologies by integrating perceived risk concepts into the business buying decision. Specifically, we develop a classification grid of industrial buying situations and then explicitly link likely e-business benefits to the various situations. The proposed framework holds implications for management and research related to supply chain relationships.     

The Role of Market and Technical Information Generation in New Product Development

Firms are investing an increasing amount of time and resources to gather information about market and technology in new product development (NPD). Yet there is a lack of consistent understanding of whether such costly information generation activities can improve product outcomes. More importantly, it is unclear how the benefit of market information and technical information generation may differ and how they may jointly impact new product performance. This study examines the role of market and technical information generation in NPD in three ways: (1) It contrasts the effects of market and technical information generation on product outcomes; (2) it identifies conditions that moderate the effects of market and technical information generation and further investigates how the moderating effects differ for these two types of activities; and (3) it examines the joint effect of market and technical information generation to understand potential synergies between them. Using survey data at the NPD project level, we find that market information generation has an inverted U‐shaped effect on new product advantage, whereas the effect of technical information generation follows a U‐shape. Furthermore, these effects are moderated differently by two conditions: a firm’s R&D intensity that influences NPD projects’ need for different types of information, and the use of multidisciplinary teams that affects the degree to which information can be shared and utilized to improve product design. The findings provide important implications for organizational learning and shed light on how to manage information generation activities to achieve NPD success.     

信息中介参与电子商务系统的系统动力学分析

信息中介通过一定的营销手段推荐用户购买其感兴趣的产品或服务,这不仅使信息中介获利,还增加了第三方平台产品或服务的销量。本文研究了一个考虑信息中介参与的电子商务系统,首先对信息中介参与的电子商务系统的流程和功能进行了分析;然后,分析了信息中介个性化推荐的因果关系图和第三方电子商务平台的因果关系图;其次,根据因果关系图构建了有信息中介参与的电子商务系统动力学模型;最后,利用Vensim PLE对构建的系统动力学模型进行模拟,结果表明：若要增加整个系统收益和发展水平,应增加信息中介的用户数量,增加用户对推荐的信任,并提高信息中介、第三方电商平台和卖家的服务水平。     

Agile-Stage-Gate: New idea-to-launch method for manufactured new products is faster,more responsive

New evidence reveals that Agile methods, until now used primarily for IT developments, can be integrated with traditional gating approaches to yield significant potential benefits for manufacturers of B2B physical products. Indeed, this new Agile-Stage-Gate hybrid approach represents a significant change to our thinking about how new-product development should be done since the introduction of today's popular gating systems thirty years ago!The article shows how Agile emerged in the IT industry and early attempts to integrate it with gating models, also in the IT world. The article moves on to the recent use of this hybrid model by manufacturers, and the results achieved by early adopters when implementing this new system in industries from food to heavy equipment. In terms of implementation, the details of the new Agile-Stage-Gate system are presented, including the “Power of Nine” – the three key artefacts (such as sprints and scrums); three important tools (such as sprint backlogs and burndown charts), and the three vital roles (such as the product owner and the scrum master) needed to make it work.Agile from the IT world cannot be directly integrated into Stage-Gate for physical products without some important modifications, however. These needed adjustments – such as redefining a “done sprint” and how to present versions of the product or “protocepts” for continuous customer feedback – are outlined, complete with a case study from an equipment manufacturer. Additionally, the article identifies and deals with ten important issues and apparent inconsistencies that arise when implementing this new system for B2B products.     

Leadership with 5G in Europe: Two contrasting images of the future,with policy and regulatory implications

European policy makers have shown a keen interest in the success of 5G because ubiquitous and high capacity electronic communication infrastructure is recognized as a cornerstone of economic development and productivity growth. The second generation, GSM, is considered the leading example, reaching its peak of deployment in 2015 with 3.83 billion subscribers served by over 700 operators in 219 countries and territories.With 5G rapidly shaping up in the R&D and standardization environments, and a call for leadership with 5G in Europe by policy makers, it is timely to investigate what lessons can be learned from the success of 2G that can be applied to 5G. More broadly, this calls for research into the commonalities and differences between successive generations of mobile technology, their introduction and the market adoption that followed. This also calls for an investigation into the possibility of multiple futures of 5G and how that impacts the opportunity for leadership. As one future may be more desirable than the other, depending on the perspective of the actor involved, a policy debate will be required to determine the most desirable future. As well as a discussion of the policy and regulatory actions required to enable a particular future.Hence, the two-part research question being addressed in this paper is: What explains the success of 2G-GSM and how can it be applied to create success with 5G in the European Union?To respond to the research question this paper first identifies the leadership lessons to be drawn from the success of 2G-GSM in relation to its successors 3G and 4G. Secondly, the contribution describes two stylized images of possible futures of 5G, called “Evolution” and “Revolution”, as input to the policy debate on the options for leadership with 5G. These images reflect two extremes in terms of possible futures of 5G. “Evolution” follows the pattern of previous generations and current trends. “Revolution” represents a clear break with these trends and a path towards leadership with 5G, as it exploits the opportunities of standardized APIs for service creation, being enabled by network virtualization as an architectural foundation of 5G. These open and uniformly applied APIs allow the market entry of a multitude of virtual mobile network operators (VMNOs) serving particular industry verticals or economic sectors with tailored feature sets and qualities of services. They allow a market momentum to be built that constitutes leadership with 5G in Europe.     

Web-Based Product Development Systems Integration and New Product Outcomes: A Conceptual Framework

In hopes of improving the effectiveness of their new product development (NPD) processes, many firms increasingly are eager to adopt integrated web‐based NPD systems for NPD. However, few would argue that the mere use of web‐based NPD systems substantially will improve the NPD process. But we know little about how and when these systems can be used for enhancing NPD. An organization desiring to employ the web in its NPD process can use it at varying levels of functionality and sophistication, ranging from a tool for automating manual tasks and exchanging data to a means of integrating various intra‐ and interorganizational NPD functions and processes. At higher levels of technology sophistication or integration, an organization's NPD processes will get more integrated internally, i.e., between different stages of the NPD process and with the processes of its suppliers, technology providers, etc. Such integration of both internal and external NPD processes is considered important for successful innovation. Thus, on the surface, higher levels of web‐based systems integration may seem universally desirable. However, each increasing level of integration brings with it higher costs—not only the costs of expensive technology but also costs of implementing a complicated system, redesigning intra‐ and interorganizational processes, disrupting the status quo, and spending management time and energy during implementation. Therefore, it may not be wise for firms to jump blindly on the web‐based NPD bandwagon. High levels of web‐based NPD systems integration may be created when low levels of integration may not deliver the desired results. Further, if such systems are installed without appropriate conditions within and outside the firm, it may not be possible to exploit their full potential. As such, it is important to know how much web‐based NPD systems integration is suitable for different conditions. In this article, we develop a conceptual framework that focuses on how web‐based NPD systems integration can influence the outcome of NPD and how the relationship between systems integration and outcomes can be affected by various contextual factors. For this purpose, we draw on research in areas such as NPD, web‐based information systems, and organization theory and on many discussions we had with professionals and software vendors who deal with NPD and web‐based NPD systems. The contextual factors of interest in this framework are strategic orientation of the firm, product‐related factors, business environment, organizational factors, information technology factors, and partner‐characteristics. Managerial and research implications of the framework are discussed.