Editorial 19/1

Authors: Hubert Österle Volker Schmelich

Publish Date: 2009/02/21

Volume: 19, Issue: 1, Pages: 1-2

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Abstract

Last year’s Bled Conference covered the topic “eCollaboration Overcoming Boundaries through MultiChannel Interaction” Selected best papers of the conference have been invited and underwent the same rigorous review process like all submissions to Electronic Markets do Both accepted papers deal with the topic of eCollaborationThe first paper Mobile business models organizational and financial design issues that matter was authored by Mark de Reuver Harry Bouwman and Timber Haaker In their research they focus on how to design balanced business models for organizations that collaborate to provide mobile Internet services They propose a framework for relating critical design issues to success factors and test the relationship between these organizational and financial aspects of mobile business models An international survey was conducted among 120 practitioners and experts in the mobile Internet services domain most of them from EU countries The findings show that organizational design issues deal with an acceptable division of roles among actors while financial design issues focus on different risk levels that are perceived to be acceptable The level of profitability that is perceived to be acceptable is influenced indirectly by these design issues because the relationships are mediated through the risk level that the participants perceive to be acceptable and through the way the roles are divided among the actorsJasminko Novak and Gerhard Schwabe investigate collaboration in the tourism industry In their article titled Designing for Reintermediation in the BrickandMortar World Towards the Travel Agency of the Future the authors present a reintermediation approach for traditional travel agencies based on a novel way of ITenabled travel advisory It integrates the advantages of interactive technologies and Internet channels with the advantages of direct customer interaction in the physical agency setting Their proposed framework is based on the integration of theories from information seeking behavior interactive value creation relationship marketing and the design of hedonic information systems The findings show that physically collocated travel advisory services can create a significant added value if they succeed in uncovering customers’ hidden needs heightening trust and relationship building in the advisory process and creating a better user experienceInvolving users early on in the design process closing the gap between mobile information services and their users an article authored by Elisabeth van de Kar and Marielle den Hengst was the first general research article we have for Volume 19 It stresses the important role users play or should play in designing mobile information services The groupbased approach includes the user in an efficient way and has been applied in three cases mobile services for campus visitors wireless applications for the process industry and services for crisis management In all cases it has led to an improved design processIn his article Types of Structural Assurance and Their Relationships with Trusting Intentions in BusinessToConsumer ECommerce the author Wei Sha examines the impact of structural assurance mechanisms on trusting intention in B2B ecommerce The study was motivated by inconsistent results from prior research on structural assurance The author proposes that different types of structural assurance mechanisms may have unique effects on trusting intentions The results indicate that customer perceptions about seals of approval and vendorspecific guarantees can significantly influence trusting intentions while perceptions about protections from credit card companies legal systems and technology infrastructures do not

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