An issue devoted to the Second International Conference on Electronic Business, in December 2002, in Taiwan. Included are six papers, taken from a total of 205 papers that were originally submitted, accepted and included in the conference proceedings.
The advent of Internet and the World Wide Web has enabled an organization to transform many of its services from physical processes to electronic processes, such as e‐tailing, e‐banking, e‐procurement, e‐shopping, etc. The theme of this special issue of International Journal of Service Industry Mangement is therefore “From p‐services to e‐services”. We have devoted this special issue to The Second International Conference on Electronic Business (ICEB, 2002), held 10‐13 December 2002 at the Grand Hotel in Taipei, Taiwan. The theme of the conference was “Global e‐business in knowledge‐based economy: management, practice and opportunities”.
In this conference, we received over 230 paper submissions and accepted and included 205 papers in the conference proceedings. These papers and presentations contributed significantly to the field of e‐business. Many of these papers are related to e‐business applications in the service industries. For this special issue, we selected ten best papers from the conference that are related to the theme of “From p‐services to e‐services” for reviews. After a comprehensive review process, the referees have recommended six papers for publication in this special issue.
In the first paper, “Internet retail customer loyalty: the mediating role of relational benefits”, HsiuJu Rebecca Yen and Kevin P. Gwinner propose a conceptual framework that utilizes the construct of relational benefits to explain the link between Internet‐based self‐service technology attributes and customer loyalty and satisfaction. The framework posits that confidence and special treatment benefits mediate the impact of Internet self‐service technology attributes on customer loyalty and satisfaction. The results of an empirical study show that confidence benefits mediate the impact of perceived control and performance on customer loyalty and satisfaction, while special treatment benefits mediate the relationship of efficiency and convenience with customer loyalty and satisfaction.
In the second paper, “Determinants of user acceptance of Internet banking: an empirical study”, Yi‐Shun Wang, Yu‐Min Wang, Hsin‐Hui Lin and Tzung‐I Tang extend the technology acceptance model (TAM) by introducing “perceived credibility” and computer self‐efficacy factors to predict the intention of users to adopt Internet banking.
In the third paper, “Characteristics of product/service process and customer needs of geographical accessibility in electronic commerce”, Professors Sung‐Eui Cho and Kwangtae Park identify factors that represent characteristics of product/service processes and investigate the impact of these factors on the reasons for customer needs of geographical accessibility.
In the fourth paper, “E‐service: enhancing internal customer service through e‐procurement”, Dr Simon Croom and Professor Robert Johnston address issues relating to the impact of e‐business developments on internal customer service with a focus on electronic procurement introduction. They report findings relating to internal e‐service obtained from an extensive, primarily qualitative and exploratory, research programme incorporating 97 organizations. They conclude that internal customer satisfaction is central to the success of e‐procurement deployment and is a significant determinant of the cost benefits to be gained from its adoption.
In the fifth paper, “A descriptive model of online shopping process: some empirical results”, Su‐Jane Chen and Tung‐Zong Chang depict a common online shopping process and identify three common online shopping components: interactivity, transaction, and fulfillment. These components and their respective factors form one's online shopping experience. They also offer managerial implications and future research directions.
In the last paper, “Cost benefit factor analysis in e‐services”, Jie Lu and Guangquan Zhang, present a research framework for e‐service evaluation within four categories: cost, benefit, functions and development. Through data analysis and hypotheses testing, they examine inter‐relationships among the factors of the four categories. It was found that the development type of an e‐service has a significant effect on the degree of user satisfaction and expertise, and that technique and expense are the principle factors limiting current e‐service adoption.
Although the review and editorial processes have taken much longer than we have anticipated, we have learnt a lot from the processes and from the contents of all the papers submitted. We hope you will enjoy reading the papers in this issue as we did.
We want to take this opportunity to thank all the authors who contributed their works to this special issue. Without them, the debut of this special issue would not be possible. We also want to thank over 30 reviewers who have put in a tremendous amount of time to review the papers and provide constructive comments for improving the quality of the papers. Furthermore, our sincere gratitude goes to Professor Jos Lemmink, Editor of IJSIM,for his support and wisdom of dedicating this special issue to the outstanding papers presented in this conference.
Finally, we would like to express our sincere thanks to our conference co‐organizers: The Institute of Information Management, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan, China; Department of Decision Sciences and Managerial Economics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong; The Center for E‐business, National University of Singapore, Singapore; and the Research Center for Contemporary Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. Special thanks should go to Professor Chi‐Chun Lo for serving as the Conference Chair; Professor Duen‐Ren Liu for serving as the Associate Conference Chair; and all the other committee members at the National Chiao Tung University for their teamwork in making the conference a wonderful and invigorating experience for all the participants.
