• Information Systems Review
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.131-159
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• 2023

Recently, amidst the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic shifting towards an endemic phase, there has been a rise in discussions and debates about the future of the metaverse. Simultaneously, major metaverse platforms like Roblox have been launching services integrated with generative AI, and Apple's mixed reality hardware, Vision Pro, has been announced, creating new expectations for the metaverse. In this situation where the outlook for the metaverse is divided, it is crucial to diagnose the metaverse from an ecosystem perspective, examine its key ecological features, driving forces for development, and future possibilities for advancement. This study utilized Wang's (2021) Information Ecology Theory (IET) framework, which is representative of ecosystem research in the field of Information Systems (IS), to derive the Metaverse Industrial Ecosystem (MIE). The analysis revealed that the MIE consists of four main domains: Tech Landscape, Category Ecosystem, Metaverse Platform, and Product/Service Ecosystem. It was found that the MIE exhibits characteristics such as digital connectivity, the integration of real and virtual worlds, value creation capabilities, and value sharing (Web 3.0). Furthermore, the interactions among the domains within the MIE and the four characteristics of the ecosystem were identified as driving forces for the development of the MIE at an ecosystem level. Additionally, the development of the MIE at an ecosystem level was categorized into three distinct stages: Narrow Ecosystem, Expanded Ecosystem, and Everywhere Ecosystem. It is anticipated that future advancements in related technologies and industries, such as robotics, AI, and 6G, will promote the transition from the current Expanded Ecosystem level of the MIE to an Everywhere Ecosystem level, where the connection between the real and virtual worlds is pervasive. This study provides several implications. Firstly, it offers a foundational theory and analytical framework for ecosystem research, addressing a gap in previous metaverse studies. It also presents various research topics within the metaverse domain. Additionally, it establishes an academic foundation that integrates concept definition research and impact studies, which are key areas in metaverse research. Lastly, referring to the developmental stages and conditions proposed in this study, businesses and governments can explore future metaverse markets and related technologies. They can also consider diverse metaverse business strategies. These implications are expected to guide the exploration of the emerging metaverse market and facilitate the evaluation of various metaverse business strategies.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.27-48
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• 2011

Single window has become a critical point of trade facilitation. While Korea has set up the first web based single window 'uTtradeHub', China has also been working on a seamless single window. As strong governmental support, advanced technology, leading agency and legal framework are success factors for single window, China already has solid foundation for this. For the leading agency, this research suggests the CIECC as a leading agency with linkage to E-Port service for seamless trade service for companies. We expect that Chinese single window will materialize in near future by a leading agency with the help of strong governmental support.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartD
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• v.11D no.1
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• pp.133-142
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• 2004

The next generation of web applications will need to be larger, more complex, and flexible Agent-oriented systems have great potential for these e-commerce applications. Agents can dynamically discover and compose e-services and mediate interactions. Development of software agents with CBD (Component Based Development) has proved to be successful in increasing speed to market of development Projects, lowering the development cost and providing better qualify. In this thesis, we propose a systemic development process for software agents using component and UML (Unified Modeling Language). We suggest a etA (e-business Agent) CBD reference architecture for layer the related components through identification and classification of general agent and e-business agent. We also propose the ebA-CBD process that is a guideline to consider the best features of existing agent oriented software engineering methodologies, while grounding agent-oriented concepts in the same underlying semantic framework used by UML. We first developed the agent components specification and modeled it with Goal, Role, Interaction, and Architecture Model. Based on this, we developed e-CPIMAS (e-Commerce Product Information Mailing Agent System) as a case study that provides the product information's mailing service according to proposed process formality. We finally describe how these concepts may assist in increasing the efficiency reusability, productivity and quality to develop the business application and e-business agent.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.1-31
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• 2009

This paper empirically examines factors that potentially influence the success of a Web-based semantic search engine. A research model has been proposed that shows the impact of quality-related factors upon the effectiveness of a semantic search engine, based on DeLone and McLean's(2003) information systems success model. An empirical study has been conducted to test hypotheses formulated around the research model, and statistical methods were applied to analyze gathered data and draw conclusions. Implications for academics and practitioners are offered based on the findings of the study. The proposed model includes three quality dimensions of a Web-based semantic search engine-namely, information quality, system quality and service quality. These three dimensions each have measures designed to collectively assess the respective dimension. The model is intended to examine the relationship between measures of these quality dimensions and measures of two dependent constructs, including individuals' net benefit and user satisfaction. Individuals' net benefit was measured by the extent to which the user's information needs were adequately met, whereas user satisfaction was measured by a combination of the perceived satisfaction with search results and the perceived satisfaction with the overall system. A total of 23 hypotheses have been formulated around the model, and a questionnaire survey has been conducted using a functional semantic search website created by KT and Hakia, so as to collect data to validate the model. Copies of a questionnaire form were handed out in person to 160 research associates and employees working in the area of designing and developing semantic search engines. Those who received the form, 148 respondents returned valid responses. The survey form asked respondents to use the given website to answer questions concerning the system. The results of the empirical study have indicated that, of the three quality dimensions, information quality was found to have the strongest association with the effectiveness of a Web-based semantic search engine. This finding is consistent with the observation in the literature that the aspects of the information quality should serve as a basis for evaluating the search outcomes from a semantic search engine. Measures under the information quality dimension that have a positive effect on informational gratification and user satisfaction were found to be recall and currency. Under the system quality dimension, response time and interactivity, were positively related to informational gratification. On the other hand, only one measure under the service quality dimension, reliability was found to have a positive relationship with user satisfaction. The results were based on the seven hypotheses that have been accepted. One may wonder why 15 out of the 23 hypotheses have been rejected and question the theoretical soundness of the model. However, the correlations between independent variables and dependent variables came out to be fairly high. This suggests that the structural equation model yielded results inconsistent with those of coefficient analysis, because the structural equation model intends to examine the relationship among independent variables as well as the relationship between independent variables and dependent variables. The findings offer some useful implications for owners of a semantic search engine, as far as the design and maintenance of the website is concerned. First, the system should be designed to respond to the user's query as fast as possible. Also it should be designed to support the search process by recommending, revising, and choosing a search query, so as to maximize users' interactions with the system. Second, the system should present search results with maximum recall and currency to effectively meet the users' expectations. Third, it should be capable of providing online services in a reliable and trustworthy manner. Finally, effective increase in user satisfaction requires the improvement of quality factors associated with a semantic search engine, which would in turn help increase the informational gratification for users. The proposed model can serve as a useful framework for measuring the success of a Web-based semantic search engine. Applying the search engine success framework to the measurement of search engine effectiveness has the potential to provide an outline of what areas of a semantic search engine needs improvement, in order to better meet information needs of users. Further research will be needed to make this idea a reality.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.117-144
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• 2008

Lots of virtual communities and online businesses presently derive their primary sources of revenues through advertising, but nevertheless are plagued with marginal profitability though they might possess a significant user base. In the light of the need for an efficacious business model, there have been recent insights of an online community in particular reaping profits through an innovative and lucrative revenue generation method that earns by selling digital items. There have been some obvious evidences (e.g., Cyworld, SecondLife, Habo Hotel, etc.) that online communities can be profitable through their unique business model of selling digital items. However, there is lack of understanding about the motivation of purchasing digital items. This study tries to identify the main motivators of digital item purchases based on social/individual identity theory and self-presentation theory. "Digital items", otherwise known as "virtual assets", may include online avatars, accessories for the avatars, decorative ornaments like furniture, digital wallpapers, skins, background music and virtual weapons used for Internet games. These digital items are employed by users for representation and articulation in the online space, especially to create and enhance their online profiles in web pages and games. Prices for digital items typically range from a few cents to a few dollars each. Based on the theoretical framework like social identity theory and self-presentation theory, we developed the research model and proposed seven hypotheses. An analysis of 225 members of Cyworld found that digital item purchase intention in virtual world is affected by both members' need for self-presentation and need for affiliation. We also found that the need for self-presentation is significantly increased by innovativeness of members, community group norm, and community involvement. We concluded that the need for self-presentation could be a key variable for profitable business model in online community service industry. However, neither individual self-efficacy nor the need for affiliation significantly influenced the need for self-presentation which triggers purchase intention of digital items. In term of the theoretical and practical contribution, this study can be a pioneering empirical research that investigates the purchase intention of digital items based on social identity theory and self-presentation theory in the online context. Also, the findings of our study are valuable and practical for practitioners in the market who wish to adopt or improve the business model of selling digital items in an online community. From the findings, it can be seen that innovativeness of users, community group norm, and community involvement are three significant factors that influence need for self-presentation of users which ultimately leads to their intentions to buy digital items. These findings put forth that virtual community providers and online businesses selling digital items should prioritize their efforts and focus on these three factors if they want to increase the sales of these digital items and generate greater revenues. This study provides important implications for academic researchers and practitioners to understand why the community members pay money for their digital items in virtual world and how the practitioners can increase the sales of digital items in an online community. A couple of limitations of the study and future research directions are also discussed.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartD
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• v.11D no.5
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• pp.1063-1072
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• 2004

In the ASP(Application Service Provider) business, applications using database sometimes require some data from clients' databases. These days such data are extracted from client database using manual database operations as an EXCEL file and the ASP, once receiving this file, transfers it into the application's database using manual database operations. This paper describes how to deal with data transmitting between the client database and ASP database on the web without using database manual operations for data extraction and insertion. We propose a framework which enables to transmit client data in a systematical way, to match different attribute names of each database for sharing same attribute values, and to avoid exposing information about the network path of client database to the ASP. This approach consists of two steps of data processing. The first is extracting data from client database as XML format by using a downloaded client program from ASP site, the second is uploading and storing the XML file into the ASP database. The implemented prototype system shows the suggested data integration paradigm is valid and ASP business needing integration of client database can be activated using it.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.113-125
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• 2013

Every company wants to know customer's requirement and makes an effort to meet them. Cause that, communication between customer and company became core competition of business and that important is increasing continuously. There are several strategies to find customer's needs, but VOC (Voice of customer) is one of most powerful communication tools and VOC gathering by several channels as telephone, post, e-mail, website and so on is so meaningful. So, almost company is gathering VOC and operating VOC system. VOC is important not only to business organization but also public organization such as government, education institute, and medical center that should drive up public service quality and customer satisfaction. Accordingly, they make a VOC gathering and analyzing System and then use for making a new product and service, and upgrade. In recent years, innovations in internet and ICT have made diverse channels such as SNS, mobile, website and call-center to collect VOC data. Although a lot of VOC data is collected through diverse channel, the proper utilization is still difficult. It is because the VOC data is made of very emotional contents by voice or text of informal style and the volume of the VOC data are so big. These unstructured big data make a difficult to store and analyze for use by human. So that, the organization need to automatic collecting, storing, classifying and analyzing system for unstructured big VOC data. This study propose an intelligent VOC analyzing system based on opinion mining to classify the unstructured VOC data automatically and determine the polarity as well as the type of VOC. And then, the basis of the VOC opinion analyzing system, called domain-oriented sentiment dictionary is created and corresponding stages are presented in detail. The experiment is conducted with 4,300 VOC data collected from a medical website to measure the effectiveness of the proposed system and utilized them to develop the sensitive data dictionary by determining the special sentiment vocabulary and their polarity value in a medical domain. Through the experiment, it comes out that positive terms such as "칭찬, 친절함, 감사, 무사히, 잘해, 감동, 미소" have high positive opinion value, and negative terms such as "퉁명, 뭡니까, 말하더군요, 무시하는" have strong negative opinion. These terms are in general use and the experiment result seems to be a high probability of opinion polarity. Furthermore, the accuracy of proposed VOC classification model has been compared and the highest classification accuracy of 77.8% is conformed at threshold with -0.50 of opinion classification of VOC. Through the proposed intelligent VOC analyzing system, the real time opinion classification and response priority of VOC can be predicted. Ultimately the positive effectiveness is expected to catch the customer complains at early stage and deal with it quickly with the lower number of staff to operate the VOC system. It can be made available human resource and time of customer service part. Above all, this study is new try to automatic analyzing the unstructured VOC data using opinion mining, and shows that the system could be used as variable to classify the positive or negative polarity of VOC opinion. It is expected to suggest practical framework of the VOC analysis to diverse use and the model can be used as real VOC analyzing system if it is implemented as system. Despite experiment results and expectation, this study has several limits. First of all, the sample data is only collected from a hospital web-site. It means that the sentimental dictionary made by sample data can be lean too much towards on that hospital and web-site. Therefore, next research has to take several channels such as call-center and SNS, and other domain like government, financial company, and education institute.

• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.69-93
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• 2012

Various influence-related relationships in Social Network Services (SNS) among users, posts, and user-and-post, can be expressed using links. The current research evaluates the influence of specific users or posts by analyzing the link structure of relevant social network graphs to identify influential users. We applied the concept of mutual interactions proposed for ranking semantic web resources, rather than the voting notion of Page Rank or HITS, to blogosphere, one of the early SNS. Through many experiments with network models, where the performance and validity of each alternative approach can be analyzed, we showed the applicability and strengths of our approach. The weight tuning processes for the links of these network models enabled us to control the experiment errors form the link weight differences and compare the implementation easiness of alternatives. An additional example of how to enter the content scores of commercial or spam posts into the graph-based method is suggested on a small network model as well. This research, as a starting point of the study on identifying influential users in SNS, is distinctive from the previous researches in the following points. First, various influence-related properties that are deemed important but are disregarded, such as scraping, commenting, subscribing to RSS feeds, and trusting friends, can be considered simultaneously. Second, the framework reflects the general phenomenon where objects interacting with more influential objects increase their influence. Third, regarding the extent to which a bloggers causes other bloggers to act after him or her as the most important factor of influence, we treated sequential referencing relationships with a viewpoint from that of PageRank or HITS (Hypertext Induced Topic Selection).

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.157-194
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• 2008

The popularity of communities on the internet has captured the attention of marketing scholars and practitioners. By adapting to the culture of the internet, however, and providing consumer with the ability to interact with one another in addition to the company, businesses can build new and deeper relationships with customers. The economic potential of online communities has been discussed with much hope in the many popular papers. In contrast to this enthusiastic prognostications, empirical and practical evidence regarding the economic potential of the online community has shown a little different conclusion. To date, even communities with high levels of membership and vibrant social arenas have failed to build financial viability. In this perspective, this study investigates the role of various kinds of influencing factors to online community loyalty and basically suggests the framework that explains the process of building purchase loyalty. Even though the importance of building loyalty in an online environment has been emphasized from the marketing theorists and practitioners, there is no sufficient research conclusion about what is the process of building purchase loyalty and the most powerful factors that influence to it. In this study, the process of building purchase loyalty is divided into three levels; characteristics of community site such as content superiority, site vividness, navigation easiness, and customerization, the mediating variables such as self congruency, consumer experience, and consumer to consumer interactivity, and finally various factors about online community loyalty such as visit loyalty, affect, trust, and purchase loyalty are those things. And the findings of this research are as follows. First, consumer-to-consumer interactivity is an important factor to online community purchase loyalty and other loyalty factors. This means, in order to interact with other people more actively, many participants in online community have the willingness to buy some kinds of products such as music, content, avatar, and etc. From this perspective, marketers of online community have to create some online environments in order that consumers can easily interact with other consumers and make some site environments in order that consumer can feel experience in this site is interesting and self congruency is higher than at other community sites. It has been argued that giving consumers a good experience is vital in cyber space, and websites create an active (rather than passive) customer by their nature. Some researchers have tried to pin down the positive experience, with limited success and less empirical support. Web sites can provide a cognitively stimulating experience for the user. We define the online community experience as playfulness based on the past studies. Playfulness is created by the excitement generated through a website's content and measured using three descriptors Marketers can promote using and visiting online communities, which deliver a superior web experience, to influence their customers' attitudes and actions, encouraging high involvement with those communities. Specially, we suggest that transcendent customer experiences(TCEs) which have aspects of flow and/or peak experience, can generate lasting shifts in beliefs and attitudes including subjective self-transformation and facilitate strong consumer's ties to a online community. And we find that website success is closely related to positive website experiences: consumers will spend more time on the site, interacting with other users. As we can see figure 2, visit loyalty and consumer affect toward the online community site didn't directly influence to purchase loyalty. This implies that there may be a little different situations here in online community site compared to online shopping mall studies that shows close relations between revisit intention and purchase intention. There are so many alternative sites on web, consumers do not want to spend money to buy content and etc. In this sense, marketers of community websites must know consumers' affect toward online community site is not a last goal and important factor to influnece consumers' purchase. Third, building good content environment can be a really important marketing tool to create a competitive advantage in cyberspace. For example, Cyworld, Korea's number one community site shows distinctive superiority in the consumer evaluations of content characteristics such as content superiority, site vividness, and customerization. Particularly, comsumer evaluation about customerization was remarkably higher than the other sites. In this point, we can conclude that providing comsumers with good, unique and highly customized content will be urgent and important task directly and indirectly impacting to self congruency, consumer experience, c-to-c interactivity, and various loyalty factors of online community. By creating enjoyable, useful, and unique online community environments, online community portals such as Daum, Naver, and Cyworld are able to build customer loyalty to a degree that many of today's online marketer can only dream of these loyalty, in turn, generates strong economic returns. Another way to build good online community site is to provide consumers with an interactive, fun, experience-oriented or experiential Web site. Elements that can make a dot.com's Web site experiential include graphics, 3-D images, animation, video and audio capabilities. In addition, chat rooms and real-time customer service applications (which link site visitors directly to other visitors, or with company support personnel, respectively) are also being used to make web sites more interactive. Researchers note that online communities are increasingly incorporating such applications in their Web sites, in order to make consumers' online shopping experience more similar to that of an offline store. That is, if consumers are able to experience sensory stimulation (e.g. via 3-D images and audio sound), interact with other consumers (e.g., via chat rooms), and interact with sales or support people (e.g. via a real-time chat interface or e-mail), then they are likely to have a more positive dot.com experience, and develop a more positive image toward the online company itself). Analysts caution, however, that, while high quality graphics, animation and the like may create a fun experience for consumers, when heavily used, they can slow site navigation, resulting in frustrated consumers, who may never return to a site. Consequently, some analysts suggest that, at least with current technology, the rule-of-thumb is that less is more. That is, while graphics etc. can draw consumers to a site, they should be kept to a minimum, so as not to impact negatively on consumers' overall site experience.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.45-62
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• 2011

The notion of information systems (IS) continuance has recently emerged as one of the most important research issues in the field of IS. A great deal of research has been conducted thus far on the basis of theories adapted from various disciplines including consumer behaviors and social psychology, in addition to theories regarding information technology (IT) acceptance. This previous body of knowledge provides a robust research framework that can already account for the determination of IS continuance; however, this research points to other, thus-far-unelucidated determinant factors such as habit, which were not included in traditional IT acceptance frameworks, and also re-emphasizes the importance of emotion-related constructs such as satisfaction in addition to conscious intention with rational beliefs such as usefulness. Experiences should also be considered one of the most important factors determining the characteristics of information system (IS) continuance and the features distinct from those determining IS acceptance, because more experienced users may have more opportunities for IS use, which would allow them more frequent use than would be available to less experienced or non-experienced users. Interestingly, experience has dual features that may contradictorily influence IS use. On one hand, attitudes predicated on direct experience have been shown to predict behavior better than attitudes from indirect experience or without experience; as more information is available, direct experience may render IS use a more salient behavior, and may also make IS use more accessible via memory. Therefore, experience may serve to intensify the relationship between IS use and conscious intention with evaluations, On the other hand, experience may culminate in the formation of habits: greater experience may also imply more frequent performance of the behavior, which may lead to the formation of habits, Hence, like experience, users' activation of an IS may be more dependent on habit-that is, unconscious automatic use without deliberation regarding the IS-and less dependent on conscious intentions, Furthermore, experiences can provide basic information necessary for satisfaction with the use of a specific IS, thus spurring the formation of both conscious intentions and unconscious habits, Whereas IT adoption Is a one-time decision, IS continuance may be a series of users' decisions and evaluations based on satisfaction with IS use. Moreover. habits also cannot be formed without satisfaction, even when a behavior is carried out repeatedly. Thus, experiences also play a critical role in satisfaction, as satisfaction is the consequence of direct experiences of actual behaviors. In particular, emotional experiences such as enjoyment can become as influential on IS use as are utilitarian experiences such as usefulness; this is especially true in light of the modern increase in membership-based hedonic systems - including online games, web-based social network services (SNS), blogs, and portals-all of which attempt to provide users with self-fulfilling value. Therefore, in order to understand more clearly the role of experiences in IS continuance, analysis must be conducted under a research framework that includes intentions, habits, and satisfaction, as experience may not only have duration-based moderating effects on the relationship between both intention and habit and the activation of IS use, but may also have content-based positive effects on satisfaction. This is consistent with the basic assumptions regarding the determining factors in IS continuance as suggested by Oritz de Guinea and Markus: consciousness, emotion, and habit. The principal objective of this study was to explore and assess the effects of experiences in IS continuance, with special consideration given to conscious intentions and unconscious habits, as well as satisfaction. IN service of this goal, along with a review of the relevant literature regarding the effects of experiences and habit on continuous IS use, this study suggested a research model that represents the roles of experience: its moderating role in the relationships of IS continuance with both conscious intention and unconscious habit, and its antecedent role in the development of satisfaction. For the validation of this research model. Korean university student users of 'Cyworld', one of the most influential social network services in South Korea, were surveyed, and the data were analyzed via partial least square (PLS) analysis to assess the implications of this study. In result most hypotheses in our research model were statistically supported with the exception of one. Although one hypothesis was not supported, the study's findings provide us with some important implications. First the role of experience in IS continuance differs from its role in IS acceptance. Second, the use of IS was explained by the dynamic balance between habit and intention. Third, the importance of satisfaction was confirmed from the perspective of IS continuance with experience.