• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.113-127
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• 2016

Among the techniques for recommendation, collaborative filtering (CF) is commonly recognized to be the most effective for implementing recommender systems. Until now, CF has been popularly studied and adopted in both academic and real-world applications. The basic idea of CF is to create recommendation results by finding correlations between users of a recommendation system. CF system compares users based on how similar they are, and recommend products to users by using other like-minded people's results of evaluation for each product. Thus, it is very important to compute evaluation similarities among users in CF because the recommendation quality depends on it. Typical CF uses user's explicit numeric ratings of items (i.e. quantitative information) when computing the similarities among users in CF. In other words, user's numeric ratings have been a sole source of user preference information in traditional CF. However, user ratings are unable to fully reflect user's actual preferences from time to time. According to several studies, users may more actively accommodate recommendation of reliable others when purchasing goods. Thus, trust relationship can be regarded as the informative source for identifying user's preference with accuracy. Under this background, we propose a new hybrid recommender system that fuses CF and social network analysis (SNA). The proposed system adopts the recommendation algorithm that additionally reflect the result analyzed by SNA. In detail, our proposed system is based on conventional memory-based CF, but it is designed to use both user's numeric ratings and trust relationship information between users when calculating user similarities. For this, our system creates and uses not only user-item rating matrix, but also user-to-user trust network. As the methods for calculating user similarity between users, we proposed two alternatives - one is algorithm calculating the degree of similarity between users by utilizing in-degree and out-degree centrality, which are the indices representing the central location in the social network. We named these approaches as 'Trust CF - All' and 'Trust CF - Conditional'. The other alternative is the algorithm reflecting a neighbor's score higher when a target user trusts the neighbor directly or indirectly. The direct or indirect trust relationship can be identified by searching trust network of users. In this study, we call this approach 'Trust CF - Search'. To validate the applicability of the proposed system, we used experimental data provided by LibRec that crawled from the entire FilmTrust website. It consists of ratings of movies and trust relationship network indicating who to trust between users. The experimental system was implemented using Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) and UCINET 6. To examine the effectiveness of the proposed system, we compared the performance of our proposed method with one of conventional CF system. The performances of recommender system were evaluated by using average MAE (mean absolute error). The analysis results confirmed that in case of applying without conditions the in-degree centrality index of trusted network of users(i.e. Trust CF - All), the accuracy (MAE = 0.565134) was lower than conventional CF (MAE = 0.564966). And, in case of applying the in-degree centrality index only to the users with the out-degree centrality above a certain threshold value(i.e. Trust CF - Conditional), the proposed system improved the accuracy a little (MAE = 0.564909) compared to traditional CF. However, the algorithm searching based on the trusted network of users (i.e. Trust CF - Search) was found to show the best performance (MAE = 0.564846). And the result from paired samples t-test presented that Trust CF - Search outperformed conventional CF with 10% statistical significance level. Our study sheds a light on the application of user's trust relationship network information for facilitating electronic commerce by recommending proper items to users.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.75-99
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• 2012

Innovation can come from inside or outside organizations. Recently, organizations have begun turning to external knowledge more often, through various forms of collective intelligence (CI) as collaborative platform to solve complex problems. Several factors facilitate this CI utilization phenomenon. First, with the rapid development of Internet and social media, numerous web applications have become available to millions of the Internet users over the past few decades. Web 2.0 and social media have become innovative web applications that provide an environment for human social interaction and collaboration. Second, the diffusion of simple and easy-to-use technologies that enable users to interact and design web applications without programming skills have led to vast, previously unknown amounts of user-generated content. Finally, the Internet has enabled communities to connect and collaborate, creating a virtual world of CI. In this study, web enabled CI is defined as a composed ability of individuals who are acting as a single cognitive unit to achieve common goals, think reasonably, solve problems, make decisions, carry out complex tasks, and develop creative ideas collectively through participation and collaboration on the web. Although CI plays a critical role in organizational innovation and collaboration, the dubious quality of CI is still problem that is difficult to solve. In general, the quality level of content collected from the crowd is lower than that from professionals. Thus, it is important to identify determinants of CI quality and to analyze the relationship between CI quality and its usefulness. However, there is a lack of empirical study on the quality factors of web-enabled CI. There exist a variety of web enabled CI sites such as Threadless, iStockphoto or InnoCentive, Wikipedia, and Youtube. One of the most successful forms of web-enabled CI is the Wikipedia online encyclopedia, accessible all over the world. Another one example is Naver KnowledgeiN, a typical and popular CI site offering question and answer (Q&A) services. It is necessary to study whether or not different types of CI have a different effect on CI quality and its usefulness. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to answer to following research questions: ${\bullet}$ What determinants are important to CI quality? ${\bullet}$ What is the relationship between CI quality factors and the usefulness of web-enabled CI? ${\bullet}$ Does CI type have a moderating effect on the relationship between CI quality, its determinants, and CI usefulness? Online survey using Google Docs with email and Kakao Talk was conducted for collecting data from Wikipedia and Naver KnowledgeiN users. A totoal of 490 valid responses were collected, where users of Wikipedia were 220 while users of Naver KnowledgeiN were 270. Expertise of contributors, community size, and diversity of contributors were identified as core determinants of perceived CI quality. Perceived CI quality has significantly influenced perceived CI usefulness from a user's perspective. For improving CI quality, it is believed that organizations should ensure proper crowd size, facilitate CI contributors' diversity and attract as many expert contributors as possible. Hypotheses that CI type plays a role of moderator were partially supported. First, the relationship between expertise of contributors and perceived CI quality was different according to CI type. The expertise of contributors played a more important role in CI quality in the case of Q&A services such as Knowledge iN compared to wiki services such as Wikipedia. This implies that Q&A service requires more expertise and experiences in particular areas rather than the case of Wiki service to improve service quality. Second, the relationship between community size and perceived CI quality was different according to CI type. The community size has a greater effect on CI quality in case of Wiki service than that of Q&A service. The number of contributors in Wikipeda is important because Wiki is an encyclopedia service which is edited and revised repeatedly from many contributors while the answer given in Naver Knowledge iN can not be corrected by others. Finally, CI quality has a greater effect on its usefulness in case of Wiki service rather than Q&A service. In this paper, we suggested implications for practitioners and theorists. Organizations offering services based on collective intelligence try to improve expertise of contributeros, to increase the number of contributors, and to facilitate participation of various contributors.

• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.33-60
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• 2020

Along with the rapid advance in internet technologies, ubiquitous mobile device usage has enabled consumers to access real-time information and increased interaction with others through various social media. Consumers can now get information more easily when making purchase decisions, and these changes are affecting the brand landscape. In a digitally connected world, brand image is not communicated to the consumers one-sidedly. Rather, with consumers' growing influence, it is a result of co-creation where consumers have an active role in building brand image. This explains a reality where people no longer purchase products just because they know the brand or because it is a famous brand. However, there has been little discussion on the matter, and many practitioners still rely on the traditional measures of brand indicators. The goal of this research is to present the limitations of traditional definition and measurement of brand and brand image, and propose a more direct and adequate measure that reflects the nature of a connected world. Inspired by the proverb, "A man is known by the company he keeps," the proposed measurement offers insight to the position of brand (or brand image) through co-purchased product networks. This paper suggests a framework of network analysis that clusters brands of cosmetics by the frequency of other products purchased together. This is done by analyzing product networks of a brand extracted from actual purchase data on Amazon.com. This is a more direct approach, compared to past measures where consumers' intention or cognitive aspects are examined through survey. The practical implication is that our research attempts to close the gap between brand indicators and actual purchase behavior. From a theoretical standpoint, this paper extends the traditional conceptualization of brand image to a network perspective that reflects the nature of a digitally connected society.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.175-193
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• 2018

As a new type of business model in the market competition situation of tour companies, this study has developed to the online form of the travel industry to the business form which is the combination of the electronic commerce function and the mobile service process in the provision of the simple web-site, This study explores the difficulties of change for the development of the travel industry from the point of view that recognition is not a simple marketing strategy diversification means but a change of recognition as a business model for expanding new markets or creating new markets. The factors affecting the choice of online travel agent (OTA) and the factors that influence the choice of online travel agency were analyzed. Were used for the empirical survey. The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors influencing the choice of online travel agents who have experience with or experience using online travel agency (OTA), what factors are important to them, and how they differ in importance when visiting again. The results of this study are as follows: First, there was a significant difference between the first and second visitors of online travel agencies. The results of this study were as follows: Attitude toward resolving complaints, convenience of change and cancellation, delivery of tickets and documents, convenience of complaints, The emphasis should be on establishing and strengthening service environments such as the speed of updating the latest information, the simplicity of the booking procedure, the degree of satisfaction of the past, the ability of employees to handle their work, the safety of various payment methods and settlement, The results of this study are as follows: First, the satisfaction of the online travel agency is influenced by the selection factors of the selected online tour agency, and the A/S such as the convenience of prompt delivery, Environmental factors contributed to satisfaction. It is suggested that the systematic service structure such as customer satisfaction and ease of use is a necessary marketing strategy for survival and development of online travel agencies. It is suggested that the marketing concentration strategy with the first visitors as the target market is effective and this is a part of the marketing strategy for the survival of online travel agencies.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.29-52
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• 2012

Consumers differ in the way they make a purchase. An audio mania would willingly make a bold, yet serious, decision to buy a top-of-the-line home theater system, while he is not interested in replacing his two-decade-old shabby car. On the contrary, an automobile enthusiast wouldn't mind spending forty thousand dollars to buy a new Jaguar convertible, yet cares little about his junky component system. It is product involvement that helps us explain such differences among individuals in the purchase style. Product involvement refers to the extent to which a product is perceived to be important to a consumer (Zaichkowsky, 2001). Product involvement is an important factor that strongly influences consumer's purchase decision-making process, and thus has been of prime interest to consumer behavior researchers. Furthermore, researchers found that involvement is closely related to perceived risk (Dholakia, 2001). While abundant research exists addressing how product involvement relates to overall perceived risk, little attention has been paid to the relationship between involvement and different types of perceived risk in an electronic commerce setting. Given that perceived risk can be a substantial barrier to the online purchase (Jarvenpaa, 2000), research addressing such an issue will offer useful implications on what specific types of perceived risk an online firm should focus on mitigating if it is to increase sales to a fullest potential. Meanwhile, past research has focused on such consumer responses as information search and dissemination as a consequence of involvement, neglecting other behavioral responses like online merchant selection. For one example, will a consumer seriously considering the purchase of a pricey Guzzi bag perceive a great degree of risk associated with online buying and therefore choose to buy it from a digital storefront rather than from an online marketplace to mitigate risk? Will a consumer require greater trust on the part of the online merchant when the perceived risk of online buying is rather high? We intend to find answers to these research questions through an empirical study. This paper explores the impact of enduring product involvement and perceived risks on required trust level, and further on online merchant choice. For the purpose of the research, five types or components of perceived risk are taken into consideration, including financial, performance, delivery, psychological, and social risks. A research model has been built around the constructs under consideration, and 12 hypotheses have been developed based on the research model to examine the relationships between enduring involvement and five components of perceived risk, between five components of perceived risk and required trust level, between enduring involvement and required trust level, and finally between required trust level and preference toward an e-tailer. To attain our research objectives, we conducted an empirical analysis consisting of two phases of data collection: a pilot test and main survey. The pilot test was conducted using 25 college students to ensure that the questionnaire items are clear and straightforward. Then the main survey was conducted using 295 college students at a major university for nine days between December 13, 2010 and December 21, 2010. The measures employed to test the model included eight constructs: (1) enduring involvement, (2) financial risk, (3) performance risk, (4) delivery risk, (5) psychological risk, (6) social risk, (7) required trust level, (8) preference toward an e-tailer. The statistical package, SPSS 17.0, was used to test the internal consistency among the items within the individual measures. Based on the Cronbach's ${\alpha}$ coefficients of the individual measure, the reliability of all the variables is supported. Meanwhile, the Amos 18.0 package was employed to perform a confirmatory factor analysis designed to assess the unidimensionality of the measures. The goodness of fit for the measurement model was satisfied. Unidimensionality was tested using convergent, discriminant, and nomological validity. The statistical evidences proved that the three types of validity were all satisfied. Now the structured equation modeling technique was used to analyze the individual paths along the relationships among the research constructs. The results indicated that enduring involvement has significant positive relationships with all the five components of perceived risk, while only performance risk is significantly related to trust level required by consumers for purchase. It can be inferred from the findings that product performance problems are mostly likely to occur when a merchant behaves in an opportunistic manner. Positive relationships were also found between involvement and required trust level and between required trust level and online merchant choice. Enduring involvement is concerned with the pleasure a consumer derives from a product class and/or with the desire for knowledge for the product class, and thus is likely to motivate the consumer to look for ways of mitigating perceived risk by requiring a higher level of trust on the part of the online merchant. Likewise, a consumer requiring a high level of trust on the merchant will choose a digital storefront rather than an e-marketplace, since a digital storefront is believed to be trustworthier than an e-marketplace, as it fulfills orders by itself rather than acting as an intermediary. The findings of the present research provide both academic and practical implications. The first academic implication is that enduring product involvement is a strong motivator of consumer responses, especially the selection of a merchant, in the context of electronic shopping. Secondly, academicians are advised to pay attention to the finding that an individual component or type of perceived risk can be used as an important research construct, since it would allow one to pinpoint the specific types of risk that are influenced by antecedents or that influence consequents. Meanwhile, our research provides implications useful for online merchants (both online storefronts and e-marketplaces). Merchants may develop strategies to attract consumers by managing perceived performance risk involved in purchase decisions, since it was found to have significant positive relationship with the level of trust required by a consumer on the part of the merchant. One way to manage performance risk would be to thoroughly examine the product before shipping to ensure that it has no deficiencies or flaws. Secondly, digital storefronts are advised to focus on symbolic goods (e.g., cars, cell phones, fashion outfits, and handbags) in which consumers are relatively more involved than others, whereas e- marketplaces should put their emphasis on non-symbolic goods (e.g., drinks, books, MP3 players, and bike accessories).

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.33-56
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• 2017

As Internet usage is becoming more common worldwide and smartphone become necessity in daily life, technologies and applications related to mobile Internet are developing rapidly. The results of the Internet usage patterns of consumers around the world imply that there are many potential new business opportunities for mobile Internet technologies and applications. The location-based service (LBS) is a service based on the location information of the mobile device. LBS has recently gotten much attention among many mobile applications and various LBSs are rapidly developing in numerous categories. However, even with the development of LBS related technologies and services, there is still a lack of empirical research on the intention to use LBS. The application of previous researches is limited because they focused on the effect of one particular factor and had not shown the direct relationship on the intention to use LBS. Therefore, this study presents a research model of factors that affect the intention to use and actual use of LBS whose market is expected to grow rapidly, and tested it by conducting a questionnaire survey of 330 users. The results of data analysis showed that service customization, service quality, and personal innovativeness have a positive effect on the intention to use LBS and the intention to use LBS has a positive effect on the actual use of LBS. These results implies that LBS providers can enhance the user's intention to use LBS by offering service customization through the provision of various LBSs based on users' needs, improving information service qualities such as accuracy, timeliness, sensitivity, and reliability, and encouraging personal innovativeness. However, privacy concerns in the context of LBS are not significantly affected by service customization and personal innovativeness and privacy concerns do not significantly affect the intention to use LBS. In fact, the information related to users' location collected by LBS is less sensitive when compared with the information that is used to perform financial transactions. Therefore, such outcomes on privacy concern are revealed. In addition, the advantages of using LBS are more important than the sensitivity of privacy protection to the users who use LBS than to the users who use information systems such as electronic commerce that involves financial transactions. Therefore, LBS are recommended to be treated differently from other information systems. This study is significant in the theoretical point of contribution that it proposed factors affecting the intention to use LBS in a multi-faceted perspective, proved the proposed research model empirically, brought new insights on LBS, and broadens understanding of the intention to use and actual use of LBS. Also, the empirical results of the customization of LBS affecting the user's intention to use the LBS suggest that the provision of customized LBS services based on the usage data analysis through utilizing technologies such as artificial intelligence can enhance the user's intention to use. In a practical point of view, the results of this study are expected to help LBS providers to develop a competitive strategy for responding to LBS users effectively and lead to the LBS market grows. We expect that there will be differences in using LBSs depending on some factors such as types of LBS, whether it is free of charge or not, privacy policies related to LBS, the levels of reliability related application and technology, the frequency of use, etc. Therefore, if we can make comparative studies with those factors, it will contribute to the development of the research areas of LBS. We hope this study can inspire many researchers and initiate many great researches in LBS fields.

• Korean Security Journal
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• no.39
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• pp.319-353
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• 2014

Cyber-based technologies are now ubiquitous around the glob and are emerging as an "instrument of power" in societies, and are becoming more available to a country's opponents, who may use it to attack, degrade, and disrupt communications and the flow of information. The globe-spanning range of cyberspace and no national borders will challenge legal systems and complicate a nation's ability to deter threats and respond to contingencies. Through cyberspace, competitive powers will target industry, academia, government, as well as the military in the air, land, maritime, and space domains of our nations. Enemies in cyberspace will include both states and non-states and will range from the unsophisticated amateur to highly trained professional hackers. In much the same way that airpower transformed the battlefield of World War II, cyberspace has fractured the physical barriers that shield a nation from attacks on its commerce and communication. Cyberthreats to the infrastructure and other assets are a growing concern to policymakers. In 2013 Cyberwarfare was, for the first time, considered a larger threat than Al Qaeda or terrorism, by many U.S. intelligence officials. The new United States military strategy makes explicit that a cyberattack is casus belli just as a traditional act of war. The Economist describes cyberspace as "the fifth domain of warfare and writes that China, Russia, Israel and North Korea. Iran are boasting of having the world's second-largest cyber-army. Entities posing a significant threat to the cybersecurity of critical infrastructure assets include cyberterrorists, cyberspies, cyberthieves, cyberwarriors, and cyberhacktivists. These malefactors may access cyber-based technologies in order to deny service, steal or manipulate data, or use a device to launch an attack against itself or another piece of equipment. However because the Internet offers near-total anonymity, it is difficult to discern the identity, the motives, and the location of an intruder. The scope and enormity of the threats are not just focused to private industry but also to the country's heavily networked critical infrastructure. There are many ongoing efforts in government and industry that focus on making computers, the Internet, and related technologies more secure. As the national intelligence institution's effort, cyber counter-intelligence is measures to identify, penetrate, or neutralize foreign operations that use cyber means as the primary tradecraft methodology, as well as foreign intelligence service collection efforts that use traditional methods to gauge cyber capabilities and intentions. However one of the hardest issues in cyber counterintelligence is the problem of "Attribution". Unlike conventional warfare, figuring out who is behind an attack can be very difficult, even though the Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has claimed that the United States has the capability to trace attacks back to their sources and hold the attackers "accountable". Considering all these cyber security problems, this paper examines closely cyber security issues through the lessons from that of U.S experience. For that purpose I review the arising cyber security issues considering changing global security environments in the 21st century and their implications to the reshaping the government system. For that purpose this study mainly deals with and emphasis the cyber security issues as one of the growing national security threats. This article also reviews what our intelligence and security Agencies should do among the transforming cyber space. At any rate, despite of all hot debates about the various legality and human rights issues derived from the cyber space and intelligence service activity, the national security should be secured. Therefore, this paper suggests that one of the most important and immediate step is to understanding the legal ideology of national security and national intelligence.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.157-175
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• 2012

It is difficult to evaluate the performance of process innovation of e-procurement which has large scale and complex processes. The existing evaluation methods for measuring the effects of process innovation have been mainly done with statistically quantitative methods by analyzing operational data or with qualitative methods by conducting surveys and interviews. However, these methods have some limitations to evaluate the effects because the performance evaluation of e-procurement process innovation should consider the interactions among participants who are active either directly or indirectly through the processes. This study considers the e-procurement process as a complex system and develops a simulation model based on MAS(Multi-Agent System) to evaluate the effects of e-procurement process innovation. Multi-agent based simulation allows observing interaction patterns of objects in virtual world through relationship among objects and their behavioral mechanism. Agent-based simulation is suitable especially for complex business problems. In this study, we used Netlogo Version 4.1.3 as a MAS simulation tool which was developed in Northwestern University. To do this, we developed a interaction model of agents in MAS environment. We defined process agents and task agents, and assigned their behavioral characteristics. The developed simulation model was applied to G2B system (KONEPS: Korea ON-line E-Procurement System) of Public Procurement Service (PPS) in Korea and used to evaluate the innovation effects of the G2B system. KONEPS is a successfully established e-procurement system started in the year 2002. KONEPS is a representative e-Procurement system which integrates characteristics of e-commerce into government for business procurement activities. KONEPS deserves the international recognition considering the annual transaction volume of 56 billion dollars, daily exchanges of electronic documents, users consisted of 121,000 suppliers and 37,000 public organizations, and the 4.5 billion dollars of cost saving. For the simulation, we analyzed the e-procurement of process of KONEPS into eight sub processes such as 'process 1: search products and acquisition of proposal', 'process 2 : review the methods of contracts and item features', 'process 3 : a notice of bid', 'process 4 : registration and confirmation of qualification', 'process 5 : bidding', 'process 6 : a screening test', 'process 7 : contracts', and 'process 8 : invoice and payment'. For the parameter settings of the agents behavior, we collected some data from the transactional database of PPS and some information by conducting a survey. The used data for the simulation are 'participants (government organizations, local government organizations and public institutions)', 'the number of bidding per year', 'the number of total contracts', 'the number of shopping mall transactions', 'the rate of contracts between bidding and shopping mall', 'the successful bidding ratio', and the estimated time for each process. The comparison was done for the difference of time consumption between 'before the innovation (As-was)' and 'after the innovation (As-is).' The results showed that there were productivity improvements in every eight sub processes. The decrease ratio of 'average number of task processing' was 92.7% and the decrease ratio of 'average time of task processing' was 95.4% in entire processes when we use G2B system comparing to the conventional method. Also, this study found that the process innovation effect will be enhanced if the task process related to the 'contract' can be improved. This study shows the usability and possibility of using MAS in process innovation evaluation and its modeling.