• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.49-65
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• 2014

Word of Mouth (WOM) is a behavior used by consumers to transfer or communicate their product or service experience to other consumers. Due to the popularity of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and online communities, electronic WOM (e-WOM) has become important to the success of products or services. As a result, most enterprises pay close attention to e-WOM for their products or services. This is especially important for movies, as these are experiential products. This paper aims to identify the network factors of an online movie community that impact box office revenue using social network analysis. In addition to traditional WOM factors (volume and valence of WOM), network centrality measures of the online community are included as influential factors in box office revenue. Based on previous research results, we develop five hypotheses on the relationships between potential influential factors (WOM volume, WOM valence, degree centrality, betweenness centrality, closeness centrality) and box office revenue. The first hypothesis is that the accumulated volume of WOM in online product communities is positively related to the total revenue of movies. The second hypothesis is that the accumulated valence of WOM in online product communities is positively related to the total revenue of movies. The third hypothesis is that the average of degree centralities of reviewers in online product communities is positively related to the total revenue of movies. The fourth hypothesis is that the average of betweenness centralities of reviewers in online product communities is positively related to the total revenue of movies. The fifth hypothesis is that the average of betweenness centralities of reviewers in online product communities is positively related to the total revenue of movies. To verify our research model, we collect movie review data from the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), which is a representative online movie community, and movie revenue data from the Box-Office-Mojo website. The movies in this analysis include weekly top-10 movies from September 1, 2012, to September 1, 2013, with in total. We collect movie metadata such as screening periods and user ratings; and community data in IMDb including reviewer identification, review content, review times, responder identification, reply content, reply times, and reply relationships. For the same period, the revenue data from Box-Office-Mojo is collected on a weekly basis. Movie community networks are constructed based on reply relationships between reviewers. Using a social network analysis tool, NodeXL, we calculate the averages of three centralities including degree, betweenness, and closeness centrality for each movie. Correlation analysis of focal variables and the dependent variable (final revenue) shows that three centrality measures are highly correlated, prompting us to perform multiple regressions separately with each centrality measure. Consistent with previous research results, our regression analysis results show that the volume and valence of WOM are positively related to the final box office revenue of movies. Moreover, the averages of betweenness centralities from initial community networks impact the final movie revenues. However, both of the averages of degree centralities and closeness centralities do not influence final movie performance. Based on the regression results, three hypotheses, 1, 2, and 4, are accepted, and two hypotheses, 3 and 5, are rejected. This study tries to link the network structure of e-WOM on online product communities with the product's performance. Based on the analysis of a real online movie community, the results show that online community network structures can work as a predictor of movie performance. The results show that the betweenness centralities of the reviewer community are critical for the prediction of movie performance. However, degree centralities and closeness centralities do not influence movie performance. As future research topics, similar analyses are required for other product categories such as electronic goods and online content to generalize the study results.

• The Korean Journal of Petroleum Geology
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 2008

As conventional oil and gas reservoirs become depleted, interests for oil sands has rapidly increased in the last decade. Oil sands are mixture of bitumen, water, and host sediments of sand and clay. Most oil sand is unconsolidated sand that is held together by bitumen. Bitumen has hydrocarbon in situ viscosity of >10,000 centipoises (cP) at reservoir condition and has API gravity between $8-14^{\circ}$. The largest oil sand deposits are in Alberta and Saskatchewan, Canada. The reverves are approximated at 1.7 trillion barrels of initial oil-in-place and 173 billion barrels of remaining established reserves. Alberta has a number of oil sands deposits which are grouped into three oil sand development areas - the Athabasca, Cold Lake, and Peace River, with the largest current bitumen production from Athabasca. Principal oil sands deposits consist of the McMurray Fm and Wabiskaw Mbr in Athabasca area, the Gething and Bluesky formations in Peace River area, and relatively thin multi-reservoir deposits of McMurray, Clearwater, and Grand Rapid formations in Cold Lake area. The reservoir sediments were deposited in the foreland basin (Western Canada Sedimentary Basin) formed by collision between the Pacific and North America plates and the subsequent thrusting movements in the Mesozoic. The deposits are underlain by basement rocks of Paleozoic carbonates with highly variable topography. The oil sands deposits were formed during the Early Cretaceous transgression which occurred along the Cretaceous Interior Seaway in North America. The oil-sands-hosting McMurray and Wabiskaw deposits in the Athabasca area consist of the lower fluvial and the upper estuarine-offshore sediments, reflecting the broad and overall transgression. The deposits are characterized by facies heterogeneity of channelized reservoir sands and non-reservoir muds. Main reservoir bodies of the McMurray Formation are fluvial and estuarine channel-point bar complexes which are interbedded with fine-grained deposits formed in floodplain, tidal flat, and estuarine bay. The Wabiskaw deposits (basal member of the Clearwater Formation) commonly comprise sheet-shaped offshore muds and sands, but occasionally show deep-incision into the McMurray deposits, forming channelized reservoir sand bodies of oil sands. In Canada, bitumen of oil sands deposits is produced by surface mining or in-situ thermal recovery processes. Bitumen sands recovered by surface mining are changed into synthetic crude oil through extraction and upgrading processes. On the other hand, bitumen produced by in-situ thermal recovery is transported to refinery only through bitumen blending process. The in-situ thermal recovery technology is represented by Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage and Cyclic Steam Stimulation. These technologies are based on steam injection into bitumen sand reservoirs for increase in reservoir in-situ temperature and in bitumen mobility. In oil sands reservoirs, efficiency for steam propagation is controlled mainly by reservoir geology. Accordingly, understanding of geological factors and characteristics of oil sands reservoir deposits is prerequisite for well-designed development planning and effective bitumen production. As significant geological factors and characteristics in oil sands reservoir deposits, this study suggests (1) pay of bitumen sands and connectivity, (2) bitumen content and saturation, (3) geologic structure, (4) distribution of mud baffles and plugs, (5) thickness and lateral continuity of mud interbeds, (6) distribution of water-saturated sands, (7) distribution of gas-saturated sands, (8) direction of lateral accretion of point bar, (9) distribution of diagenetic layers and nodules, and (10) texture and fabric change within reservoir sand body.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.141-170
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• 2010

User created content (UCC) is created and shared by common users on line. From the user's perspective, the increase of UCCs has led to an expansion of alternative means of communications, while from the business perspective UCCs have formed an environment in which an abundant amount of new contents can be produced. Despite outward quantitative growth, however, many aspects of UCCs do not meet the expectations of general users in terms of quality, and this can be observed through pirated contents and user-copied contents. The purpose of this research is to investigate effective methods for fostering production of creative user-generated content. This study proposes two core elements, namely, reward and motivation, which are believed to enhance content creativity as well as the mediating factor and users' committement, which will be effective for bridging the increasing motivation and content creativity. Based on this perspective, this research takes an in-depth look at issues related to constructing the dimensions of reward and motivation in UCC services for creative content product, which are identified in three phases. First, three dimensions of rewards have been proposed: task dimension, social dimension, and organizational dimention. The task dimension rewards are related to the inherent characteristics of a task such as writing blog articles and pasting photos. Four concrete ways of providing task-related rewards in UCC environments are suggested in this study, which include skill variety, task significance, task identity, and autonomy. The social dimensioni rewards are related to the connected relationships among users. The organizational dimension consists of monetary payoff and recognition from others. Second, the two types of motivations are suggested to be affected by the diverse rewards schemes: intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation occurs when people create new UCC contents for its' own sake, whereas extrinsic motivation occurs when people create new contents for other purposes such as fame and money. Third, commitments are suggested to work as important mediating variables between motivation and content creativity. We believe commitments are especially important in online environments because they have been found to exert stronger impacts on the Internet users than other relevant factors do. Two types of commitments are suggested in this study: emotional commitment and continuity commitment. Finally, content creativity is proposed as the final dependent variable in this study. We provide a systematic method to measure the creativity of UCC content based on the prior studies in creativity measurement. The method includes expert evaluation of blog pages posted by the Internet users. In order to test the theoretical model of our study, 133 active blog users were recruited to participate in a group discussion as well as a survey. They were asked to fill out a questionnaire on their commitment, motivation and rewards of creating UCC contents. At the same time, their creativity was measured by independent experts using Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. Finally, two independent users visited the study participants' blog pages and evaluated their content creativity using the Creative Products Semantic Scale. All the data were compiled and analyzed through structural equation modeling. We first conducted a confirmatory factor analysis to validate the measurement model of our research. It was found that measures used in our study satisfied the requirement of reliability, convergent validity as well as discriminant validity. Given the fact that our measurement model is valid and reliable, we proceeded to conduct a structural model analysis. The results indicated that all the variables in our model had higher than necessary explanatory powers in terms of R-square values. The study results identified several important reward shemes. First of all, skill variety, task importance, task identity, and automony were all found to have significant influences on the intrinsic motivation of creating UCC contents. Also, the relationship with other users was found to have strong influences upon both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Finally, the opportunity to get recognition for their UCC work was found to have a significant impact on the extrinsic motivation of UCC users. However, different from our expectation, monetary compensation was found not to have a significant impact on the extrinsic motivation. It was also found that commitment was an important mediating factor in UCC environment between motivation and content creativity. A more fully mediating model was found to have the highest explanation power compared to no-mediation or partially mediated models. This paper ends with implications of the study results. First, from the theoretical perspective this study proposes and empirically validates the commitment as an important mediating factor between motivation and content creativity. This result reflects the characteristics of online environment in which the UCC creation activities occur voluntarily. Second, from the practical perspective this study proposes several concrete reward factors that are germane to the UCC environment, and their effectiveness to the content creativity is estimated. In addition to the quantitive results of relative importance of the reward factrs, this study also proposes concrete ways to provide the rewards in the UCC environment based on the FGI data that are collected after our participants finish asnwering survey questions. Finally, from the methodological perspective, this study suggests and implements a way to measure the UCC content creativity independently from the content generators' creativity, which can be used later by future research on UCC creativity. In sum, this study proposes and validates important reward features and their relations to the motivation, commitment, and the content creativity in UCC environment, which is believed to be one of the most important factors for the success of UCC and Web 2.0. As such, this study can provide significant theoretical as well as practical bases for fostering creativity in UCC contents.