Search results

Artificial intelligence (AI) customer service chatbots are a new application service, and little is known about this type of service. This study applies service quality, trust and satisfaction to predict users' continuance intention to use a food-ordering chatbot.

The proposed model and hypotheses are tested using online questionnaire responses to collect users' perceptions of such services. One hundred and eleven responses of actual users were received.

Empirical results show that anthropomorphism and service quality, such as problem-solving, are the antecedents of trust and satisfaction, while satisfaction has the most significant direct effect on the users' intention.

The results provide further useful insights for service providers and chatbot developers to improve services.

Although location-based augmented reality (AR) games are popular in recent years, the motivation of in-app purchases still needs further investigation. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the antecedents of the intention to make a purchase in location-based AR games.

This research develops a conceptual model and hypotheses based on the theory of perceived values and satisfaction to investigate the antecedents. An online questionnaire was developed and distributed on popular websites to collect data, and 662 usable responses were collected from the players of Pokémon Go in Taiwan.

In total, 22 hypotheses were validated by using partial least squares techniques. Among the antecedents of in-app purchases intention in the model, the perceived value and satisfaction were found to have strong direct effects. The antecedents of the perceived value (flow, design aesthetic, social self-expression and good price) have direct influences on the perceived value of all players. Design aesthetic, reward and the perceived value were found to have a direct impact on all players’ satisfaction. Moreover, the differences between paying users and non-paying users were discussed and verified.

The model demonstrated relatively good explanatory power for purchase intention in the context of location-based AR game. The proposed model can provide insights to location-based AR game developers to design their games and marketing strategies.

In recent years, the demand for garments has significantly increased, requiring manufacturers to speed up their production to attract customers. Cut order planning (COP) is one of the most important processes in the apparel manufacturing industry. The appropriate stencil arrangement can reduce costs and fabric waste. The COP problem focuses on determining the size combination for a pattern, which is determined by the length of the cutting table, width, demand order, and height of the cutting equipment.

This study proposes new heuristics: genetic algorithm (GA), symbiotic organism search, and divide-and-search-based Lite heuristic and a One-by-One (ObO) heuristic to address the COP problem. The objective of the COP problem is to determine the optimal combination of stencils to meet demand requirements and minimize the total fabric length.

A comparison between our proposed heuristics and other simulated annealing and GA-based heuristics, and a hybrid approach (conventional algorithm + GA) was conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed heuristics. The test results show that the ObO heuristic can significantly improve the solution efficiency and find the near optimal solution for extreme demands.

This paper proposes a new heuristic, the One-by-One (ObO) heuristic, to solve the COP problem. The results show that the proposed approaches overcome the long operation time required to determine the fitting arrangement of stencils. In particular, our proposed ObO heuristic can significantly improve the solution efficiency, i.e. finding the near optimal solution for extreme demands within a very short time.

With the advent of the digital era, the internet has gradually become an essential factor in people’s lives. Its increasing popularity has also caused e-commerce to thrive, and has increased the power of online marketing. In recent years, social commerce has emerged as a new mode of operation which can be distinguished from traditional e-commerce. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The main purpose of this study is to determine which factors influence a consumer’s behavioral intention in the context of social commerce websites, and to explore overall purchase intentions based on the consumer’s cognitive evaluation. The examination reveals that consumers’ multidimensional perceptions influence both their perceptions of value and their purchase intentions. Other related social awareness factors explored by this study are also shown to influence customers’ purchase intentions.

In summary, the results show that perceived value and social awareness factors influence customers’ purchasing decisions and behavioral intentions for different gender. These findings have significant theoretical and managerial implications.

Social commerce is a subset of e-commerce brought about by the development of social networking. Activities conducted on social networking websites can be considered as a form of social commerce. In Taiwan, social commerce is still in the early stages of development.

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) differ from non-MOOC e-learning platforms mainly in terms of degree of openness, with MOOCs designed to maximize learner access and interaction. The purpose of this paper is to propose a new research model to explore intention to continue to use MOOCs from the perspectives of openness and interactivity, based on related theories and dimensions from previous research.

In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the MOOC platform, two online survey questionnaires were developed and e-mailed to the all of the university students in Taichung, Taiwan. The first one and second one are the same except the construct openness. The first one was delivered in late 2015 while the second one was delivered in the middle 2016. After the authors eliminated incomplete responses and duplicates, 995 and 854 usable responses from platform users remained, respectively, and were used to test the relationships in the model.

The model can account for more than 75 percent of the variance in continuance intention. The research results affirm prior findings that satisfaction has a strong direct influence on intention. Among the three interaction factors, human-message interaction on the platform has the strongest effect on satisfaction. This study found that the effects of interactions and motivation on MOOC and non-MOOC platforms were consistent and similar. Moreover, perceived openness was found to influence usage intention but its effects were relative low.

The model demonstrated good explanatory power for continued intention in the context of MOOCs. This study provides a better understanding of the relationships among interactions, motivations, perceived openness, and continuance intention.

This study aims to explore switch intention of users’ reading behaviour. Amazon’s 2007 introduction of the Kindle e-book reader launched a new way of reading. The popularity of e-book readers has exploded over past several years. However, the Chinese e-book reader market is still relatively underdeveloped and underexploited when compared with North America or other regions. At the time, it remained unclear whether consumers could be persuaded to abandon conventional printed books for the new device in the Chinese market.

This research has gathered 352 valid questionnaire samples on an Internet survey from the general population. Path analysis was used to investigate the causal relationships which were hypothesized by the structural equation modelling methodology to identify key factors in intention to switch to the e-book reader.

The results indicate that convenience and social influence were found to have a significant effect on consumer switching intention, while switching cost was found to be a significant obstacle to switching. This research also found that convenience of carry and operation of new technological products will lower switching costs. Furthermore, it will lead consumers to have higher switching intention when surrounding friends and families have good experiences and impressions of using new products. Thus, the manufacturers and sellers of e-readers have to consider the easy-to-handle convenient-to-carry while designing products. And the concept of higher social influence and lower switching cost shall lead the marketing strategies.

Recently, some studies address what factors drive users’ willingness to use this new device for reading based on innovation diffusion theory or the technology acceptance model. Few studies have investigated adoption of e-readers for consumers’ perceived innovative and their perception of the costs. Hence, this paper studies the switching intention of readers through dimensions including new product attributes (compatibility, complexity, convenience and e-book content), social influence, price and switching costs and verifies the relationships among these dimensions on Chinese market.