Decision, Operations & Information Technologies Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2761
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Item IT is Risky Business: Three Essays on Ensuring Reliability, Security and Privacy in Technology-Mediated Settings(2010) Anderson, Catherine Long; Agarwal, Ritu; Business and Management: Decision & Information Technologies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Today's interconnected technical environment creates unprecedented opportunities while simultaneously introducing risks. With economic, social and personal interactions increasingly occurring in technology-mediated settings new vulnerabilities are continually being introduced. In this dissertation, I develop 3 essays which seek to improve extant understanding of how organizations and individuals respond to such risks and manage the new vulnerability. The common thread underlying the studies is that the focal risk is inherently caused by the rapid digitization and dependence on information technology that has permeated economic and social activity. Essay 1 addresses the increasing dependence of organizations on the reliability of their information technology (IT) infrastructure. I draw on organizational reliability literature to classify IT infrastructure failures and theorize how collective mindfulness can change the way organizations respond to each type of failure. The results support the necessity of examining collective mindfulness at the level of its processes (versus using the omnibus measure) and provide insights into the value of collective mindfulness depending on the failure type. Essay 2 synthesizes research from information systems, communication, and psychology to form a conceptual model explicating the role played by type of information requested, the purpose for which it is to be used, and the requesting stakeholder in an individual's willingness to disclose personal health information. Further, the model incorporates the impact of emotion linked to one's health condition on willingness to disclose. Results show that emotion plays a significant role in the disclosure decision and suggest that contextual factors related to the requesting stakeholder and the intended purpose of use moderate the relationships between concern and trust on willingness to disclose personal health information. Essay 3 explores ways to minimize the perception that one is invulnerable to a security violation through an examination of the influence of message cues on computer user security-related optimistic bias and security behavior intentions. Results from experiment 1 confirm an interactive influence of self-view and risk domain frame (social or financial) on security-related intentions. Experiment 2 suggests an interactive relationship between self-view and goal frame on optimistic bias but that influence did not translate into similar changes to intentions.Item The Impact Of Online Sponsored Search Advertising On Consumer And Seller Strategies(2007-08-07) Animesh, Animesh; Agarwal, Ritu; Viswanathan, Siva; Business and Management: Decision & Information Technologies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Sponsored search advertising has emerged as an important and significant forum for advertisers, accounting for 40% of all advertising spending online. The unique features of sponsored search advertising - the nature of consumer search as well as the pricing mechanisms employed - differentiate it from traditional advertising formats, and raise many interesting questions regarding consumers' search and purchase behavior, sellers' advertising strategies, and the ensuing market dynamics. However, despite the robust growth in sponsored search advertising, research on its implications is limited. My dissertation, comprising three essays, seeks to fill this gap. In addition to examining the effects of sponsored search advertising on consumers and sellers, I also investigate the validity of theories developed for traditional media in an emerging online sponsored search context. The first essay focuses on the impact of a seller's sponsored search advertising strategies, including its rank in the sponsored listing, the unique selling proposition (USP) employed in its advertisement text/creative, and competitive market dynamics on the performance of the focal seller's advertisement. Drawing upon prior research on consumer search and directional markets, I propose a model of the consumer search process in the sponsored search context and conduct an empirical study to test the research model. The results validate the research hypothesis that the search listing can act as a consumer filtering mechanism and competitive intensity within adjacent ranks has a significant impact on the seller's performance. The second essay employs consumer search and quality signaling theories from information systems, marketing, and economics to understand the impact of the informational cues contained in the sponsored search listing about sellers' relative advertising expenditure on consumer search and purchase behavior. Contrary to conventional wisdom, I find that the unique format of the sponsored search listing significantly increases the strength of the advertising signal vis-à-vis the price signal. In addition, I find that the risk attitude of consumers has a significant impact on the valence of these different information cues in the online setting. The third essay examines market outcomes in directional markets such as sponsored search and comparison shopping advertising. Specifically, I focus on comparison shopping advertising where advertising not only informs consumers about price and quality but also directs consumer search. I find that the relationship between a firm's price, quality, and advertising intensity in this market is strikingly different from that in traditional markets, a result attributable to the differential impact of price and quality on an advertiser's conversion rates and profit margins. Overall, these studies provide crucial insights into consumer behavior in online sponsored search markets. These findings have significant implications for firms, as well as for the market makers. Insights from these studies will enable practitioners to develop appropriate advertising strategies and online intermediaries to optimize the design of online sponsored search markets.Item The Value of IT-Enabled Retailer Learning: Can Personalized Product Recommendations (PPRs) Improve Customer Store Loyalty in Electronic Markets?(2005-08-24) Zhang, Tongxiao; Agarwal, Ritu; Lucas, Hank; Decision and Information Technologies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Personalization is a strategy that has been widely adopted by online retailers to enhance their customers' shopping experience, with the ultimate goal of building a strong and enduring customer relationship. Personalized product recommendations (PPRs) are product recommendations adapted to individual customers' preferences and taste. So far, very few empirical studies have ever investigated the impact of PPRs from a consumer behavior perspective. Whether PPRs generate any value for consumers and ultimately, retailers, is still an open question. To fill this gap in the literature, in this study, drawing upon the household production function model in the consumer economics literature, I develop a theoretical framework that explains the mechanism through which PPRs influence customer store loyalty in electronic markets. Online shopping can be viewed as a household production process and customer store loyalty is driven by shopping efficiency. Building upon retailer learning, higher quality PPRs can increase consumers' online product brokering efficiency, which in turn increases their repurchase intention. A two-phase lab experiment was conducted among 253 undergraduate students in the business school. The subjects completed a simulated purchase at Amazon.com and the quality of PPRs they received was manipulated. Empirical analyses indicate that higher quality PPRs improve consumers' online product brokering quality, which in turn increases their repurchase intention. Consumers make higher quality purchase decisions and experience more fun during the online product brokering process. A surprising finding is that higher quality PPRs increase consumer online product brokering cost. Consumers spend more time on decision making and have more difficulty reaching a purchase decision. Implications, limitations, and contributions of this study are discussed and areas for future research are suggested.