Jeff Baker

American University of Sharjah | AUS · Department of Marketing

Virtual reality (VR) is a topic of growing interest. While many researchers have identified factors that influence satisfaction with VR, additional important factors remain uninvestigated. In our research model, system quality, presence, and authenticity influence two mediating variables of enjoyment and usefulness of information. Enjoyment (a hedo...

The tourism industry will be shaped by the growth and development of the metaverse in the coming decades. Virtual reality (VR) will enable the creation of virtual worlds, avatars, digital twins, and new social networks. These technologies can be utilized in tourism to enable travelers to preview real-world experiences, to enhance experiences while...

Virtual Reality (VR) is becoming an increasingly important technology in a host of industries, including tourism. VR can provide virtual experiences before, during, or in lieu of real-world visits to tourism sites. Hence, providing authentic experiences is essential to satisfy guests with the site and technology. This study analyzes survey data usi...

Electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) is a key source of information for consumers and is also a vitally important source of value to business and website owners. In this study, we investigate what causes consumers to trust or distrust a review website and how value is created (or destroyed) through online reviews, which are one type of eWOM. Building on...

While many studies focus on how electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) affects the readers of eWOM, this study examines what influences the writers of eWOM. We analyze survey results from 438 TripAdvisor hotel reviewers to reveal that two distinct types of expectation confirmation influence the writing of eWOM, as do satisfaction and consumers' personal c...

This essay advances the study of strategic alignment by explaining how and why misalignment occurs. We begin by summarizing why IT and business strategies evolve in unintended ways, a phenomenon known as strategic drift. Using the causal loop diagramming approach of system dynamics, we observe that several sources of drift, potentially resulting in...

Surprisingly, there exists a paucity of research examining the adoption of Internet-based technologies by luxury firms. This represents a major shortcoming in our understanding of how luxury firms maintain the image of their brand, sustain a personal link with customers, and retain an aura of exclusivity as they seek to provide their products and s...

This paper investigates the factors that influence the adoption of IT platforms by software developers and how those factors differ from those that influence IT adoption by end-users. We take a multi-methodological approach, beginning with an interpretive field study where we interview mobile application developers. In the initial interpretive phas...

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are a vital part of the global economy in that they compose the vast majority of all businesses worldwide. In spite of these firms’ importance, they remain understudied in strategic alignment research. In this paper, we consolidate and extend the IS literature on strategic alignment in SMEs. We develop a se...

Many operations managers have realized the potential of guanxi to facilitate business transactions. Likewise, operations management researchers have looked at the negative impact caused by the bullwhip effect on excess inventory and the impact of the bullwhip effect on business performance. To date, however, no empirical research has integrated the...

In spite of the fact that IT outsourcing has been repeatedly proven to improve firms' performance, few studies of the strategic importance of IT outsourcing have been undertaken in Eastern cultural contexts. To better understand IT outsourcing performance in an Eastern culture, the authors draw on the strategic orientation-performance framework as...

Budgets are shrinking in higher education, and greater financial accountability is simultaneously being demanded of universities. One of the consequences is that internal funding for research is more difficult to access than in years past. In such an environment, corporate sponsorship is an alternative that must be considered. In this article, we d...

Retailers’ websites are an important interface between retailers and their customers. The various features and elements that retailers include on their websites play a critical role in attracting customers and ensuring their satisfaction with the online shopping process. By conducting a three-phased study, we identify how the elements of a website...

Numerous studies in operations management have investigated alignment between business and functional level strategies. In spite of the considerable amount of research that has been conducted, little consensus exists regarding how the competitive environment affects the relationship between strategic alignment and organisational performance. In thi...

In this paper, we endeavor to make two specific contributions to research on the adoption of innovations. First, we propose a typology of innovations and suggest that theory-driven adoption research should strive to match innovation types with theories that have related explanatory emphases. We propose this overarching framework for innovation adop...

This chapter describes the Technology–Organization–Environment (TOE) framework. It begins by presenting a description of the TOE framework and its constructs. Next, a brief review of studies that have used the TOE framework is provided. In this review, an emphasis is placed on noting the type of innovation that is being adopted in each study. Also,...

This essay addresses the question, "How can strategic alignment that is sustained over time be conceptualized and quantified?" We build on the Dynamic Capabilities Framework and suggest that an organization's ability to achieve a high degree of alignment between its IT strategy and its business strategy is an enduring competency that is a source of...

What are the technologies that will transform business and drive the research agenda for the IS field in the years to come? Which innovations, platforms, and paradigms will become dominant, and which others will ultimately pass into obscurity? Thoughts on these questions are provided by those with a unique and unmatched perspective. The leaders who...

While Information Technology (IT) has been identified by researchers as a source of strategic advantage for businesses, commentators have argued that this reality may not endure. These commentators argue that the growing ubiquity of IT makes it a commodity input rather than a scarce and valuable resource. We examine CEOs' Letters to Shareholders, o...

While Information Technology (IT) has been identified by researchers as a source of strategic advantage for businesses, commentators have argued that this reality may not endure. These commentators argue that the growing ubiquity of IT makes it a commodity input rather than a scarce and valuable resource. We examine CEOs' Letters to Shareholders, o...

The amount of textual data that is available for researchers and businesses to analyze is increasing at a dramatic rate. This reality has led IS researchers to investigate various text mining techniques. This essay examines four text mining methods that are frequently used in order to identify their advantages and limitations. The four methods that...

We propose adding users' Media Access Control (MAC) addresses to standard X.509 certificates to provide more secure authentication. Recent patents demonstrate efforts on a X.509 certificate by adding security features in order to establish secure communications. The MAC address can be added by the issuing Certification Authority (CA) to the "extens...

In today's dynamic and hypercompetitive business environment, knowledge and innovation have emerged as bases for sustained competitive advantage. This paper addresses two specific research questions. First, we ask, "What is the effect that firm interactivity has on various types of innovation?" As we address this question, we explain that interacti...

What are the technologies that will transform business and drive the research agenda for the IS field in the years to come? Which innovations, platforms, and paradigms will become dominant, and which others will ultimately pass into obscurity? In this panel discussion, we will seek answers to these questions from those with a unique and unmatched p...

The recent growth of business-to-consumer (B2C) Internet auctions challenges researchers to develop empirically-sound explanations of critical factors that allow merchants to earn price premiums in these auctions. The absence of a comprehensive model of Internet auctions leads us to conduct an exploratory study to elucidate and rank critical factor...

This paper explains how visual representations of data enable individual sensemaking in data exploration tasks. We build upon theories of human perception and cognition, including Cognitive Fit Theory, to explain what aspects of visual representations facilitate sensemaking for the viewer. We make three primary contributions. First, we give a gener...

The recent growth of business-to-consumer (B2C) Internet auctions challenges researchers to develop empirically-sound explanations of critical factors that allow merchants to earn price premiums in these auctions. The absence of a comprehensive model of Internet auctions leads us to conduct an exploratory study to elucidate and rank critical factor...

The way in which information technology (IT) impacts firm productivity is an enduring question in organizational research and practice. Rather than adopting the common explanation that IT spending improves organizational performance, we hypothesize that IT spending determines the amount of IT assets, such as IT hardware, IT personnel, IT systems, a...

The recent growth of business-to-consumer (B2C) Internet auctions challenges researchers to develop empirically-sound explanations of critical factors that allow merchants to earn price premiums in these auctions. The absence of a comprehensive model of Internet auctions leads us to conduct an exploratory study to elucidate and rank critical factor...

Extant research into the business value of Information Technology (IT) explains that IT resources and complementary organizational resources impact organizational performance. This paper refines this explanation in three ways. We present theoretical arguments that (1) the direction of causality in the creation of IT business value may not be unidir...

Internet auctions have received a considerable amount of attention from researchers. We review recent empirical literature pertaining to single-item Internet auctions and observe that existing work has examined the roles of the auctioneer, bidder, and seller in Internet auctions. As this stream of research matures, research will necessarily move fr...

The recent growth of business-to-consumer (B2C) Internet auctions challenges researchers to develop empirically-sound explanations of critical factors that allow merchants to earn price premiums in these auctions. The absence of a comprehensive model of Internet auctions leads us to conduct an exploratory study to elucidate and rank critical factor...

Internet auctions have received a considerable amount of attention from researchers. We review recent empirical literature pertaining to single-item Internet auctions and observe that existing work has examined the roles of the auctioneer, bidder, and seller in Internet auctions. As this stream of research matures, research will necessarily move fr...

This paper presents the results of a field study conducted to elucidate criti- cal factors that determine sellers' net revenue in Internet auctions. Using two datasets of Internet auctions, one dataset for auctions of a DVD (N = 378) and one for auc- tions of an MP3 player (N = 412), we conduct multiple regression analysis to deter- mine the impact...

Internet auctions have received a considerable amount of attention from researchers. We review recent empirical literature pertaining to single-item Internet auctions and observe that existing work has examined the roles of the auctioneer, bidder, and seller in Internet auctions. As this stream of research matures, research will necessarily move fr...

Virtual communities that feature avatars are an emerging social software business model on the Internet. Avatars are Internet users' graphical representations of themselves in virtual environments. This study investigates how virtual community members' satisfaction with avatars is formed. We test a research model that proposes that social factors i...

This paper addresses the question, "How do organizations sustain alignment between organizational strategy and IT strategy over time?" We begin our investigation of this question by reviewing the literature on alignment. From this vantage point, we develop a model of sustained strategic alignment over time that integrates the two primary perspectiv...