Quan Z. Sheng, Jian Yu, Aviv Segev and Kewen Liao
In the last decade, web services have become a major technology to implement loosely coupled business processes and perform application integration. Through the use of context, a…
Abstract
Purpose
In the last decade, web services have become a major technology to implement loosely coupled business processes and perform application integration. Through the use of context, a new generation of web services, namely context‐aware web services (CASs), is currently emerging as an important technology for building innovative context‐aware applications. Unfortunately, CASs are still difficult to build. Issues like lack of context provisioning management approach and lack of generic approach for formalizing the development process need to be solved in the first place for easy and effective development of CASs. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the techniques on developing CASs.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper focuses on introducing a model‐driven platform, called ContextServ, and showcasing how to use this platform to rapidly develop a context‐aware web application, Smart Adelaide Guide. ContextServ adopts a model‐driven development (MDD) approach where a Unified Modeling Language (UML)‐based modeling language – ContextUML – is used to model web services and its context‐awareness features.
Findings
The paper presents novel techniques for efficient and effective development of CASs using a MDD approach. The ContextServ platform is the only one that provides a comprehensive software toolset that supports graphical modeling and automatic model transformation of CASs.
Practical implications
The proposed approach has been validated in practice by developing various CASs. The experimental study demonstrates the efficiency and effectiveness of the approach.
Originality/value
The paper presents a novel platform called ContextServ, which offers a set of visual editing and automation tools for easy and fast generating and deploying CASs.
Details
Keywords
Chia-Chen Chen, Kuo-Lun Hsiao and Shan-Jung Wu
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…
Abstract
Purpose
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.
Design/methodology/approach
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.
Findings
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.
Originality/value
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.