Ram Misra, Avinandan Mukherjee and Richard Peterson
With the advent of the internet café, chat sessions, instant messengers, special interest e‐groups and now blogs, people do not need to be physically close together to exchange…
Abstract
Purpose
With the advent of the internet café, chat sessions, instant messengers, special interest e‐groups and now blogs, people do not need to be physically close together to exchange their ideas. The participants can have shared experiences that are instantaneous and pretty much of the same nature that is usually realized by the traditional collection of special interest people in close proximity. The members of these virtual communities share their knowledge, cooperate with each other to solve problems, and feel responsibility for each other. Internet based technologies have been the great enablers of virtual communities. In the high‐involvement healthcare sector, patients are increasingly seeking online advice and information by participating in virtual communities. The purpose of this paper is to understand the process of consumer value creation in virtual communities.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper first adopts Cothrel's framework for the creation of value in virtual communities followed by an application of Kozinets' segmentation model of online consumers to explore the process of consumer value creation by a healthcare virtual community. “Netnography” was used as the research technique for this study. Netnography is an ethnographic research method adapted to the online environment. Discourse analysis is applied to interpret the huge volume of online postings.
Findings
The paper identifies four segments of virtual community users – tourists, minglers, devotees, and insiders, and studies their online activities and discussion topics to demonstrate their differential roles as members of healthcare virtual communities.
Originality/value
Most of the earlier works that are focused on virtual communities have been conducted at the conceptual level. In this paper a priori user segments in healthcare virtual communities are empirically profiled. Based on the findings, managerial implications for healthcare virtual communities are formulated.
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The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the development and progression of the International Journal of Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Marketing and include comments on its…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the development and progression of the International Journal of Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Marketing and include comments on its future direction.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper takes the approach of an essay format.
Findings
The journal has published key papers in pharmaceutical and healthcare research and continues to develop an interdisciplinary character with contributions from scholarly and practice‐oriented sources.
Originality/value
The paper provides a contemporary appraisal of the status and positioning of the journal.
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The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of RAMS engineering in industry and research.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of RAMS engineering in industry and research.
Design/methodology/approach
A range of research articles (1988‐2005) covering RAMS engineering is discussed to provide a practical and theoretical overview of RAMS engineering in industry and research.
Findings
The paper provides information about the current scenario and also about the past scenario of RAMS engineering in research and industry. Research limitations/implications – This paper reviews much of the literature on RAMS engineering. The literature is collected from major journals and conference proceedings, the period covered is from 1988 to 2005. The authors have tried to make it reasonably comprehensive, but those papers which are not included were either inadvertently overlooked or considered peripheral to this survey. In the present work the authors have only considered those articles which have included two or more aspects of RAMS. Practical implications – The paper is a very useful source of information for researchers working in the area of RAMS engineering. Originality/value – This paper offers help to researchers in understanding the current and past status of RAMS.
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Shivam Gupta, Subhas C. Misra, Ned Kock and David Roubaud
Use of cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) services equips an SME to forego the requirements of high financial budget, IT infrastructure, and trained IT personnel as it…
Abstract
Purpose
Use of cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) services equips an SME to forego the requirements of high financial budget, IT infrastructure, and trained IT personnel as it is required for on-premise ERP solution. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the organizational and technological factors as well as the factors that concern the performance of cloud service provider. These concerns are known as extrinsic factors and they are compliance, network, and information security. This study links the organizational and technological factors of SMEs and the extrinsic factors of cloud vendor for the successful implementation of cloud ERP.
Design/methodology/approach
Resource dependence theory (RDT) was used to understand the relationship of SMEs and cloud service provider. Structural equation modeling was employed in analyzing the data of 208 SMEs that were collected through a survey.
Findings
The empirical analysis supports the RDT as the critical success factors of the SMEs have a positive relationship with the extrinsic factors (compliance, network, and information security) during the cloud ERP implementation.
Research limitations/implications
The data collected in this study is from India and this acts as a limitation as the result might not hold true for other countries and regions. Also, the data collected are cross-sectional and only represent the perspective of the respondents at the time of filling the questionnaire.
Originality/value
This paper attempts to bring out a relationship between SMEs and cloud service provider for the successful implementation of cloud ERP.