Radio frequency identification (RFID) is one type of auto-identification technology that uses radio frequency (RF) waves to identify, track, and locate individual physical items. This technology has been used in many applications including manufacturing and distribution of product. While RFID is useful in improving several functions within a firm, the authors focus on the logistics function in this chapter. Applying RFID can help improve logistics in several ways. RFID can closely monitor and track positions of vehicles and assist companies to successfully manage their warehouses and supply chains. Additionally, cost savings, supply chain visibility, and new process creation have been identified as three key benefits of RFID adoption. In spite of significant number of research studies on RFID, there is a limited amount of published knowledge on the discussion of the drivers or influencing factors that lead logistics industry to consider RFID. Given the increasing importance of green issues, there is a need to understand how the perceived positive green characteristics are affecting the level of adoption of the RFID technology. The aim of this chapter is therefore to explore the factors affecting logistics service providers' intention to use RFID, with special emphasis on its environmental friendly green characteristics. The theory of diffusion of innovations is used to develop a conceptual model of factors influencing RFID adoption.

Purpose– As blogs have become an important information communication medium, selecting blog types that are appropriate and effective for the products they are to promote is now an important issue in corporate advertising. However, the impact of different blog types on consumers and their advertising effectiveness are issues seldom addressed in the existing literature. The purpose of this paper is to view product information that consumers post on blogs as advertisements and compares advertising effectiveness between different blog types to help enterprises properly employ blogs in their marketing campaigns.Design/methodology/approach– An experimental design was adopted, and 12 experimental contexts were designed. A valid sample of over 2,000 responses was collected to study between-group differences in advertising effectiveness.Findings– The analytical results showed between-group difference in advertising effectiveness, which indicated that blog advertising effectiveness varies with different combinations of product constructs and blog types.Research limitations/implications– The limitations of this study related to the price factor was not incorporated into the experimental model, and shopping channels were not limited. There might be a gap between the prices of the experimental products and the average expense of online shoppers.Originality/value– The study proposed a framework which can help enterprises to evaluate the type and brand awareness of a product to be promoted and to select the blog type that maximizes advertising effectiveness (perceived risk, ad attitude, brand attitude, and purchase intention) in diffusing product information.

Logistics is an integral part of the supply chain. Many logistics service providers have acknowledged that if they want to operate more efficiently and responsively, they must adopt technologies that help manufacturers, warehouses, and retailers to communicate with each other more efficiently. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology has been identified as an important application among many logistics technologies and is increasingly gaining both practitioners' and researchers' attention. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the factors affecting logistics service providers' intentions to use RFID technology, with special emphasis on its environmentally friendly green characteristics. The theoretical perspective diffusion of innovations is used for the purpose. The data is collected using a questionnaire survey among the UK logistics companies. The analysis shows that observability of green characteristics positively influences the intention to use RFID.

Social media has recently gained tremendous fame as a highly impactful channel of communication in these modern times of digitized living.It has been put on a pedestal across varied streams for facilitating participatory interaction amongst businesses, groups, societies, organizations, consumers, communities, forums, and the like.This subject has received increased attention in the literature with many of its practical applications including social media marketing (SMM) being elaborated, analysed, and recorded by many studies.This study is aimed at collating the existing research on SMM to present a review of seventy one articles that will bring together the many facets of this rapidly blooming media marketing form.The surfacing limitations in the literature on social media have also been identified and potential research directions have been offered.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to understand the factors which impact upon the consumers’ willingness to utilise company Facebook pages and e-word-of mouth by proposing and testing a conceptual framework which is inspired by theories in marketing and information systems fields. The authors believe that only by applying both theories will provide a more complete understanding of the relationship between brand experience and Facebook. The research model attempts to illustrate the factors according to customers’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivations and their impact on brand experience, brand Facebook page loyalty and e-word-of-mouth (E-WOM). Design/methodology/approach – The authors adopted an online survey method for data collection. The subjects the authors used were Facebook users. The data were collected in Taiwan over spring 2011. The authors then used the structural equation model to analyse the data collected. Findings – The findings suggest that users are influenced by the technical characterises of a brand Facebook page, such as ease of use and usefulness, which might be combated by attempting to reduce customer effort when accessing Facebook pages. The authors conclude that customer effort influenced brand experience and consequently loyalty to brand Facebook pages and E-WOM. Research limitations/implications – The limitations of this study relate to the investigation of consumer perspectives in a specific geographical context and time frame. Originality/value – The study's contributions are both theoretical and practical, as it offers new insights into brand experience attitudes in an online environment and useful insights to companies willing to market themselves on Facebook.

Purpose – This paper aims to advance information and communication technologies (ICT) adoption research and practice by examining and understanding the emerging ICT adoption in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) from a dynamic process perspective using actor-network theory (ANT). Design/methodology/approach – This study employs a qualitative approach to investigate how services SMEs are constantly engaging in ICT adoption for improving business performance. Two rounds of interviews were conducted with 26 interviewees. Data collected from the unstructured and semi-structured interviews were analysed to understand the dynamic adoption process, actors involved and their interactions. Findings – The findings reveal the recursive and dynamic nature of the emerging ICT adoption process and the constant interactions and negotiations of various actors. Underpinned by the key concepts of ANT and validated by the empirical data, a framework is developed to depict the stages of dynamic process of emerging ICT adoption, the actors involved and the associated key activities. Research limitations/implications – Qualitative research is interpretive in nature and the size of the sample used is limited. These limitations require caution for the generalization of the findings. The framework can be further validated across a wider population using mixed methods combining qualitative and quantitative approaches. Practical implications – Emerging ICT adoption has moved from a simple adopters’ participation process to involving various actors that constantly interact and influence the process. SMEs manager can be influenced by and influence the technology advancement. As a result, SMEs need constantly interact with various human and non-human actors to keep up with the new ICT development and benefit from the emerging opportunities. Originality/value – The research focuses on the emerging ICT adoption in SMEs from the dynamic process perspective using ANT. It advances ICT adoption research and practice by developing a framework to depict the dynamic and interactive nature of ICT adoption process, and the actors involved and their interactions in the adoption process.

Environmental sustainability is one of the issues that organizations need to face today. Nevertheless, Green IT practices have their disadvantages, especially financial ones, which make the green logistic topic controversial to organizations. Achieving zero emissions while receiving financial benefits is idealistic thus companies need to adapt specific green strategies according to their particular needs. This study analyzes a specific company in terms of its green logistics strategy in order to discover any shortcomings and to depict how issues from literature review can influence the operation of the organization. This company is a super market chain dominant in the market of northern Greece. Focusing on the e-logistics of the firm, issues such as warehouse management system, inventory control, transportation, distribution and reverse logistics are examined in combination with the environmental consciousness. Our results could be useful to companies looking to exploit Green IT logistics.

Manufacturers are under pressure nowadays to better manage the supply chain and to improve manufacturing efficiency and logistics operations while remaining responsive to changing market conditions and customer demands. Organisations might need to integrate their information technology (IT) infrastructures to support the integration of their supply chains and increase their efficiency. Supply chain integration is considered as an important issue as nowadays the competition among enterprises is about the efficiency of supply chain, which emphasises on tighter cooperation relationship of overall supply-chain process. Thus, this paper explores the area of supply chain integration employed by 15 Taiwan IT manufacturing companies based on case study strategy to explore how the case companies and their suppliers integrate their supply chains. In doing so, practical implications for supply chain integration adoption are explained as a way to help researchers and organisations to better understand the supply chain integration in practice.

The majority of ICT adoption studies regards ICT adoption as a one-off practice and focuses on factors influencing adoption at one particular decision point. Most studies appear to have ignored the fact that ICT adoption is a dynamic and ongoing process and that factors influencing its adoption should be accounted for, as the decision to adopt proceeds from one stage to another. This paper reports our research attempt to examine the dynamic process of ICT adoption in SMEs using Actor Network Theory (ANT). This study employs a qualitative approach to investigate how UK services SMEs are constantly engaging in ICT adoption, by focusing on the dynamic adoption process and critical factors. A framework was derived based on ANT with the empirical evidence collected. The findings suggest that using ANT to examine the process of emerging ICT adoption helps to unveil the recursive and dynamic nature of the process and the key factors at each stage. This paper presents and discusses the key findings on critical factors affecting the dynamic process of emerging ICTs adoption.

As the population of Facebook users is growing fast, companies are paying more attention to the influence of social networks to promote brands and are using this rising platform to carry out many marketing activities, such as operating a Facebook Page, and hosting on-line events via such pages. However, few studies have discussed the benefit, which brands could attain by operating on Facebook Pages. This study took place in Taiwan where Facebook has been very popular and aims to understand the motivation and results regarding brand experience of consumers when using social networks and the reasons affecting consumers’ willingness to use companies’ Facebook Pages. In doing so, we propose a model to discuss the influence from intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: brand experience and E-Word of Mouth (E-WOM). Our results show that perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness positively influence brand experience; brand love and customer effort both directly influence brand experience. Yet, brand experience influences E-WOM directly and through Facebook pages such as loyalty. We believe that our results could be useful for companies looking to exploit Facebook as a marketing tool.

The paper highlights the importance of the e-government initiative to support the supply chain integration among Small and Medium Size Enterprises (SMEs). It has been reported that organisations need to integrate their Information Technology (IT) infrastructures to support the integration of their supply chains to increase their efficiency. However, the current research suggests that Small and Medium Size Enterprises (SMEs), due to their lack of expertise and financial resources to invest in the necessary technologies, seem to need further support from the government in their efforts to adopt IT. Therefore, the role of the government is fundamental in supporting them to adopt supply chain management technologies, especially in geographical contexts such as this of Taiwan. A case study is therefore carried out in this paper to study an initiative taken in Taiwan by the government in order to help the supply chain integration of Taiwanese IT manufacturing companies. The findings suggest that the adoption of IT by SMEs (i.e. suppliers) is very much dependent on external forces (resource-dependency view), thus the government has a very important role to play when it comes to supporting SMEs to join supply chain networks. In doing so, this research provides a broader understanding of the phenomenon of e-government initiatives to support supply chain integration in practice.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology represents a common standard for data storage and retrieval that could improve collaboration and data sharing between non-competing organisations. With the advent of RFID, organisations have the opportunity to rethink how their organisation will operate and integrate in the supply chain. Especially for Small to Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs), that they have limited resources adopting such an innovative technology (i.e. RFID) the adoption decision can be daunting. Literature indicates that SMEs that decide to go on with implementation have so far only a few guidelines from either private companies or public authorities regarding awareness on specific opportunities and risks. This research is therefore trying to explore in detail the factors that affect SMEs' RFID adoption in the Taiwan Information Technology (IT) manufacturing industry. We are employing Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) techniques and utilising a questionnaire survey in order to collect and analyse our data. After classifying the responding SMEs into three different adopters categories named ready adopter, initiator adopter and unprepared adopter using EFA technique our results show that each category has some specific adoption factors related to their unique situation. These are for ready adopters: cost and management, for initiator adopters: competitiveness and process efficiency and unprepared adopters: IT management difficulties, IT implementation difficulties and cost of implementation. A SMEs RFID adoption model is then proposed. It is anticipated that the findings of this research will not only enhance the research in RFID adoption in SMEs, but can also act as a reference for practitioners in the industry and researchers in the academic field.

With the advent of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), organisations have the opportunity to rethink how their organisation will operate and integrate in the supply chain. Especially for Small to Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs), that they have limited resources adopting such an innovative technology (i.e. RFID) can be daunting. Literature indicates that SMEs that deal with implementation have so far only a few guidelines regarding specific opportunities and risks. This research is therefore trying to fill the gap by employing Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) techniques and utilising a questionnaire survey with the aim of exploring the factors that affect SMEs’ RFID adoption in the Taiwan Information Technology (IT) manufacturing industry. In doing so, the adoption factors which are classified into 3 different adopters categories named ready adopter (cost and management), initiator adopter (competitiveness and process efficiency) and unprepared adopter (IT management difficulties, IT implementation difficulties and cost of implementation) using EFA technique. A SMEs RFID adoption model is then proposed. It is anticipated that the findings of this research will not only enhance the research in RFID adoption in SMEs, but can also act as a reference for practitioners in the industry and researchers in the academic field.

The originating article of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) has been cited by a large number of studies. However, a detailed examination of such citations revealed that only small proportion (43 articles) of these citations actually utilized the theory or its constructs in their empirical research for examining IS/IT related issues. In order to examine whether the theory is performing consistently well across various studies, this research aims to undertake a statistical meta-analysis of findings reported in 43 published studies that have actually utilized UTAUT or its constructs in their empirical research. Findings reveal the underperformance of theory in subsequent studies in comparison to the performance of UTAUT reported in the originating article. The limitations experienced while conducting the meta-analysis, recommendations, and the future scope for the further research in this area have also been briefly explained in concluding section.

The existing works point out that smaller organisations have been shown to have different technology adoption patterns than large ones. However, it is unclear whether Small to Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) and large organisations take decisions for the adoption of integration technologies by focusing on different factors. Moreover, the literature also shows that there is an absence of theoretical models that explain the adoption of Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) and Web Services in SMEs. These research issues, derived from the literature review, are taken into consideration and addressed in this paper, aiming at highlighting any significant difference in the way SMEs and large companies adopt integration technologies. In doing so, the parameters that can be used to explain the adoption of integration technologies in organizations are identified, as nature of organisations, company size, integration needs and time. These are tested through four case studies: a large organization and three SMEs.

Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are known to lack behind in terms of the adoption and exploitation of information and communication technology (ICT). In this paper, we explore the area of ICT adoption in the Taiwanese information technology manufacturing sector within SMEs based on a multiple case study research. The findings suggest that small enterprises were in the initial stages of the process maturity of their supply chain. Seven types of ICT connections used by the case companies to support their supply chains were identified which show that most of the companies stayed in the lower level of supplier chain management integration without exploiting the benefits of ICT in full. Our results provide a better understanding on ICT adoption for supply chain integration by SMEs in practice.

SMEs today are under pressure to better manage the supply chain and to improve efficiency and logistics operations while remaining responsive to changing market conditions and customer demands. As a result, organisations might need to adopt Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to support their supply chains and increase their efficiency by achieving tighter cooperation relationship over the supply-chain. This paper explores the area of ICT adoption in The Taiwanese IT manufacturing sector based on multiple case study research. The findings suggest that SMEs are still not able to achieve a high degree of ICT automation over the supply chain. One the reason is their inability to recognise the benefits of supply chain automation thus we list an exhaustive list of benefits as they derive from our findings. In addition, seven types of ICT connections used by case companies to support their supply chains were identified and showed that the most of the companies stayed in the lower level of SCM adoption without exploiting the benefits of ICT in full. We support that our results can help organisations and researchers to better understand the ICT adoption for supply chain integration by SMEs in real practice.

The aim of this study is to provide an understanding of the factors affecting the adoption of broadband Internet in a developing country context in this instance Pakistan. In order to achieve the stated aim this study, identified and examined various attitudinal, normative and control factors to provide insights of broadband adoption. The data on these variables was collected using a survey approach. A self-administered questionnaire was sent between October and December 2006 to 275 consumers with a total of 237 responses obtained from the respondents. The findings of this paper suggest that primary influence, facilitating conditions resources, cost and perceived ease of use are significant factors for explaining behavioral intentions to adopt broadband in Pakistan. The paper also outlines the theoretical contributions, implications for practice and limitations of this research.

This paper proposes a novel conceptual model that (1) it identifies in what ways does SMEs' integration needs differ from large companies, and (2) it explores how the relationship between SMEs' and large organisations' integration needs affect their integration technologies adoption decisions-making. This model is significant' as it (1) extends existing integration technologies adoption literature by incorporating the different integration needs between SMEs and large counterparts, and (2) enhances the decision making in this area, by supporting a more detailed level of analysis of the integration technologies adoption between SMEs and large organisations.