Revealing the flaws in human decision making, this book explores how AI can be used to optimise decisions for improved business outcomes and efficiency, as well as looking ahead into the significant contributions Decision Intelligence (DI) can make to society and the ethical challenges it may raise. Offering an impressive framework of Decision Intelligence (DI), from the theories and concepts used to design autonomous intelligent agents to the technologies that power DI systems and the ways in which companies use decision-making building blocks to build DI solutions that enable businesses to democratise AI, this book provides a systematic approach to AI intelligence and human involvement. Replete with case studies on DI application, as well as wider discussions on the social implications of the technology, this book appeals to both students of AI and data solutions and businesses considering DI adoption.

This book focuses on the role of e-consumers and e-marketing in the era of new tourism. It addresses themes such as the tourism "prosumer" at work, the evolution of tourism services, the collaboration and co-creation, as well as the e-complaint behavior of e-consumers in tourism. It also discusses topics such as mobile marketing, gamification as a marketing communication tool, the impact of social media on tourism consumers, and the use of e-loyalty programs in the accommodation sector. Students taking e-marketing and market research courses in tourism can use this work as a source book for the principles of new marketing management. e-Consumers in the Era of New Tourism serves as a helpful resource for practitioners, as well as researchers and students of e-marketing.

"IN The eBay Billionaires' Club, you will read thestories of twelve professional eBay merchants whorecognized a great business opportunity on the Internetand pursued it--some at great personal financial risk.In every case, the gamble has paid off.

There are some powerful lessons to be learnedfrom these entrepreneurs, whose experiences truly runthe gamut. In the end, what they all have in common is that they started small--and some have purposely decided to stay that way. You'll quickly discover that eBay success really iswithin your reach, because every person in this bookbegan at the very bottom.

What's more, a number of them have achievedincredible growth in a relatively short period of time, which should motivate you to stop thinking aboutyour idea and get started on the road to becoming amember of this elite club yourself.

Get your highlighters out and fasten your seat belts for a journey that will put you on the road to building your own million-dollar--or perhaps even billion-dollar--eBay business!"
--From the Introduction toThe eBay Billionaires' Club

Fashion is a glamorous industry, one of beauty, money, fame, and huge profits. However, from the inside, it is clear the industry is suffering. An industry worth $3 Billion (USD), the fashion industry is characterized by products with a short shelf-life, wrong forecasts, low profits, and ever-increasing competition. On the periphery, technology is rapidly invading the fashion industry, with emerging forms such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Artificial Neural Networks, Human-Robot Interface, making their way into this industry in recent years. AI in Fashion Industry discusses recent developments in fashion forecasting, developing a 'framework of AI-based fashion forecasting' and validates the framework with a qualitative case study of the world's first fashion intelligence company based in Bengaluru, India. This book studies the relationship between fashion and social media engagement of consumers, before moving on to create a 'conceptual framework of fashion e-forecasting.' The case study addresses the forecasting-based business problem of a family-owned fashion retail business. This book is unique, suggesting a novel method of fashion product development in the light of data-driven intelligence; documenting some of the rapid developments in the field with the onset of technology and addressing some of the fundamental questions that are becoming more relevant in recent years.

The book is based on practical experience gained during the planning and execution of e-governance projects in India coupled with extensive research based on six national/multi-state-level agriculture related projects. It assesses e-governance projects in terms of desired project outcomes and analyzes performance from the viewpoints of three key groups - planners, implementers and beneficiaries. It highlights six constructs: extent of planning, comprehensiveness of strategy formulation, effectiveness of strategy implementation, changing situation, stakeholder competence levels and flexibility of processes, which are applied to reveal shortfalls in the existing planning and implementation system for e-governance projects in India. It also identifies a set of significant strategic variables influencing performance based on three independent opinion surveys of stakeholders located across the country, and uses these variables as the basis of strategic gap analyses of some major ongoing agriculture related projects. Furthermore it presents lessons learned from cross-case quantitative and qualitative analyses in the form of a generalized strategic framework for improving performance. Offering an overview of major e-governance projects, it uses several illustrative examples to address the underlying issues and to support the study findings and recommendations. It also presents a novel approach of building strategic alliances across related departments to achieve effective e-governance. The book will be of interest to the practitioners in government as well corporates who are engaged in planning and implementation of e-governance projects spanning across various layers of government. In Indian context, the learning issues are likely to trigger appropriate corrective measures for generating better value from the several flagship projects envisaged under the Digital India Programme. Further, it will interest the academic audience working on the strategic framework and constituting constructs. It will also benefit business students and application software architectures who aspire for a consulting career in the area of e-governance.

Praise for Executive’s Guide To Web Services

"Finally, a very readable book about how Web services operate in the real world. This is a must-read primer for all C level executives who want to understand how Web services are fundamentally changing how enterprises integrate, collaborate, innovate, and dominate."
–Peter Dupre, Chief Technical Strategist, Edgewater Technology, Inc.

"Following along the brilliant analytical path that he blazed with the release of his first book on IT, Business Darwinism: Evolve or Dissolve, Marks, with coauthor Mark Werrell, continues to observe, digest, analyze, and clearly explain the latest trends in IT innovation. The Executive’s Guide to Web Services is a must-read companion for any IT manager, technology innovator, or corporate executive committed to successfully navigating through the maze of technology change. With this book, Marks and Werrell deliver a timely and valuable analysis of an important IT innovation at the ideal moment–just as the necessary confluence of technology, standards, and industry acceptance is starting to make the Web services vision a reality."
–Barry Zellen, CEO and Founder, TechnologyReports.net

"Marks and Werrell have captured the true essence of Web services in their provocative new book Executive’s Guide to Web Services. Their overarching emphasis on business issues over technology issues makes Executive’s Guide essential reading for any business executive looking for new sources of competitive advantage."
–David R. Brousell, Editor-in-Chief, Managing Automation Magazine

The internationalization of Chinese enterprises is one of the most notable aspects of economic globalization in the 21st century. Despite the 2008 financial crisis and weak global outbound investment, under the "go global" initiative, Chinese outbound investment has gone from strength to strength, while also diversifying in terms of investment modalities, destinations, and industries. However, growing anti-globalization sentiment in some countries has also created new challenges for Chinese firms expanding internationally. Drawing on nearly 3000 data samples, using both quantitative and qualitative research methods, this book presents unique insights into the features and patterns of Chinese enterprises' globalization. The analysis provides a useful reference for enterprises that have already gone global and those that plan to. In particular, this book investigates challenges confronted by Chinese companies when doing business in foreign countries. It summarizes research covering three angles, namely: the current situation, causation analysis and corresponding solutions, and recommendations for firms, government agencies and other institutions. This book provides a comprehensive overview to help readers to grasp the broad picture of the international expansion of Chinese enterprises. It has important reference value for enterprises to help devise foreign investment strategy, seize opportunities, and navigate challenges in the course of globalization.

Digital transformation is no longer news. It is a necessity. Sunil Gupta, head of the digital transformation practice at Harvard Business School, provides a framework for large organizations to think through where and how to begin their transformation.

Traditional boundaries of industries no longer define competition; businesses have to deal with partners who are both friends and enemies; competitive advantage does not come from low-cost or product differentiation strategies; how companies create and capture value is dramatically changing. This book shows how to rethink the four fundamental pillars of business to reinvent business for this new world. Business leaders, Gupta argues, need to reexamine four fundamental aspects of their business to thrive in the digital era--their business strategy, their value chain, their customers, and their organization.

The book addresses questions that arise as companies navigate through this transition and provides a road map for this transformation. Filled with rich case studies and deep analysis, it shows how established firms can mitigate the threat as well as leverage the opportunities in the digital era.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a very strong reminder that the future economic development of any country is more than ever influenced by its ability to ramp-up digital competitiveness. Consequently, enterprises were pushed to assess and develop the possibilities offered by e-commerce and online marketing tools. In this book, experts outline the prerequisites for such online marketing competitiveness and compare the current level of digital marketing competitiveness in Europe by using publicly available macro and micro-level data. The authors present their analyses and recommendations including interviews with over 125 online marketers and e-commerce specialists and present the lessons from digitalization of over 600 SMEs.

This book explores the impact of design science and design thinking on tourism planning, gathering contributions from leading authorities in the field of tourism research and providing a comprehensive and interconnected panorama of cutting-edge results that influence the current and future design of tourist destinations. The book builds on recent findings in psychology, geography and urban and regional planning, as well as from economics, marketing and communications, and explores the opportunities arising from recent advances in the Internet and related technologies like memory, storage, RFID, GIS, mobile and social media in the context of collecting and analyzing traveler-related data. It presents a broad range of insights and cases on how modern design approaches can be used to develop new and better touristic experiences, and how they enable the tourism industry to track and communicate with visitors in a more meaningful way and more effectively manage visitor experiences.

This book delves into the essential concepts and technologies of acquiring systems. It fills the gap left by manuals and standards and provides practical knowledge and insight that allow engineers to navigate systems as well as the massive tomes containing standards and manuals. Dedicated to card acquiring exclusively, the book covers: Payment cards and protocols EMV contact chip and contactless transactions Disputes, arbitration, and compliance Data security standards in the payment card industry Validation algorithms Code tables Basic cryptography Pin block formats and algorithms When necessary the book discusses issuer-side features or standards insomuch as they are required for the sake of completeness. For example, protocols such as EMV 3-D Secure are not covered to the last exhaustive detail. Instead, this book provides an overview, justification, and logic behind each message of the protocol and leaves the task of listing all fields and their formats to the standard document itself. The chapter on EMV contact transactions is comprehensive to fully explain this complex topic in order to provide a basis for understanding EMV contactless transaction. A guide to behind-the-scenes business processes, relevant industry standards, best practices, and cryptographic algorithms, Acquiring Card Payments covers the essentials so readers can master the standards and latest developments of card payment systems and technology

There has been growing interest on business models among academics and practitioners in recent years, as business model describes how an organization creates, distributes and captures value and, therefore, can be considered the DNA of the organization. Recently, factors related to digital transformation, the vital role of sustainability and social aspects, along with an increasing globalization, have pushed towards radical transformations in business models. This book aims to further our knowledge on business model innovation in new contexts of analysis and with new perspectives of investigation. Insights from business model innovation are presented from studies focusing on start-ups, small businesses and large businesses to provide a bigger picture on new dynamics connected to digital transformation, sustainability, new global relationships. As such, the scope is on new ways to create value, new components and dynamics (such as digitalization and sustainability) concerning the key elements of the business model (value creation, value configuration and value capture), and new relationships between actors that may foster business model innovation. It represents a valuable resource for practitioners willing to innovate business models, academics aiming at finding new research lines, and students keen to learn more about business models.

This book presents detailed case studies of the first commercial internet digital currency systems developed between 1996 and 2004. Transactions completed with the new technology circumvented all US financial regulations, an opening that transnational criminals exploited. Mullan explains how an entire industry of companies, agents, and participants turned a blind eye to crimes being committed in this unsupervised environment. He then tracks the subsequent changes made to US regulations that now prevent such unlicensed activity, illustrating the importance of supervising products and industries that arise from new disruptive technology. This book distills hundreds of hours of interviews with the creators and operators of early digital currency businesses to create detailed case studies of their practices.

Product Information Management is the latest topic that companies across the world are deliberating upon. As companies sell online, they are confronted with the fact that not all information necessary to sell their products is available. Where marketing, sales and finance have been core processes of the corporate world for a long time, PIM is a new business process with its own unique implementation and management challenges. The book describes the core PIM processes; their strategic, tactical and operational benefits and implementation challenges. The book has been written for managers, business users as well as students, and illustrates the different concepts with practical cases from companies like Coca Cola, Nikon and Thomas Cook.

Electronic commerce has overcome the tech-wrecks of recent times and is now accepted as the future of business, yet a major barrier to its more widespread and successful implementation remains - the continuing uncertainty among organizations of how best to put e-commerce principles into practice.

Based on research in six economies - the UK, USA, Denmark, Greece, Hong Kong (China) and Australia - the book addresses the documented uncertainties of business and consumers with Internet retailing by presenting the experiences of leading examples of B2C electronic commerce in each economy.

Demonstrating 'best practice' by examining and comparing these international examples of success, the book provides entrepreneurs and senior managers with insights that will help them plan and implement strategy for successful internet-based business innovation.

Consumers make purchasing decisions every day, taking into account their needs, preferences and beliefs which may change due to various determinants; some depending on the consumers themselves and others on the organizations acting in the market. What determinants are inducing these changes in consumers` needs, perceptions, attitudes, values, and finally, purchasing behavior? This edited collection offers a comprehensive description of the consumer behavior process and the determinants that affect it in the era of digitalization. This book offers a holistic perspective of consumer behavior in the 21st century in different European cultures that are characterized by new technologies, including smartphones, AR, IoT, AI, and social media, as well as cultural changes and the Covid-19 pandemic. The first part of the book is devoted to characteristic phenomena in consumer behavior in the era of digitalization, such as changes in the consumer buying decision-making processes, e-commerce, prosumers' and consumers` attitudes towards innovations. The second part will describe the consumers, their decision-making processes, with examples from almost all geographical regions in Europe, including Germany, Spain, Italy, Finland, Poland and Russia. Both individually and collectively, the contributors provide discussion points and practical implications resulting from the changes observed in consumer behavior in each country. European Consumers in the Digital Era provides a comprehensive overview of digital consumer behavior, offering timely insights for scholars and researchers. It will also appeal to postgraduate students of related fields, including marketing, innovation and sociology.

The subject of wine marketing is widely treated by practitioners and marketing experts in many countries. But we are now entering a new era for marketers: peers trust peers. Top-down messaging is losing ground, while bottom-up buzz is gaining power. How can marketers and academics respond to this challenge in the wine industry? Every few months new technologies, new devices, and new practices require analysis, creative processes, and adaptation. E-marketing is a global strategy allowing the industry to reach niche markets. For the first time in history we are able to measure the consumption patterns of an entire market and adjust quickly to their behaviours. We are now leaving the Information Age and entering the Recommendation Age through opinion leaders and various trenders. This practical new book is written by a leading wine industry expert, in an easy and accessible style. Illustrated with many case studies from around the word, this book is an invaluable guide to anyone working in, or interested in the wine industry.

This book introduces platform firms as unique business models. Leveraging on the early literature on network economics and strategy frameworks, this book explores how platform business firms evolve in the modern business world. Taking a strategic perspective, this book engages the reader with core concepts, case studies, and frameworks for analyzing platform business firms. This book differentiates platform business firms from traditional pipeline firms; explores engagement with different actors, value creation, and operations of platforms; elucidates resources and capabilities of platform firms that provide them sustained competitive advantage; analyzes performance levers in operating platform business models, including complementarities with other business models; and discusses the sustainability of platform business models, in the face of regulatory and societal challenges, among others. The book is designed as a primer for entrepreneurs setting up and operating platform business firms, senior managers in large corporations repurposing their resources to initiate network dynamics in their businesses, early career managers, and professionals engaging with myriad platform firms for their professional and personal needs. This book intends to provide a decision-maker with a portfolio of decisions to make to create, operate, sustain, and generate value out of a platform business firm. It is also useful for policy professionals to appreciate the economics and policy implications of regulating and governing platforms in a post-digital world.

The fast progress in computer networks and their wide availability is complemented with on one hand the "explosion" of mobile computing and on the other hand the trends in the direction of ubiquitous computing. The merger of these technologies acts as a powerful enabler for new forms of highly dynamic collaborative organizations and the emergence of new business practices. Early efforts in the area of virtual enterprises (VE) were strongly constrained by the need to design and develop horizontal infrastructures aimed at supporting the basic collaboration needs of consortia of enterprises. Current trends, however, are more and more directed to the development of new vertical business models and corresponding support tools. In parallel to these efforts, after the first euphoria of the E-commerce wave and the disappointments caused by some simplistic approaches then adopted, there is a shift towards Business-to-Business solutions, as a way to effectively enable E-commerce. This is therefore a time of convergence of the virtual enterprise and e-business developments. This book contains selected articles from PRO-VE 2000, the second working conference on Infrastructures for Virtual Enterprises, which was sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) and held in FlorianA3polis, Brazil in December 2000. The included articles represent relevant examples of the current state of the art in virtual enterprises and support for electronic business. Together with a diversity of application domains, the emphasis is mostly on: the new forms of virtual organizations, support for agility, modeling and execution of distributed business processes, management of enterpriseclusters, distributed/federated information management, knowledge management, logistics for electronic commerce, and safe communication. In other words, the book is mainly focused on the management of business-to-business cooperation in virtual and smart organizations. The implantation of electronic business and the virtual enterprise area is not only a technological problem. Therefore, aspects such as socio-organizational transformations, training needs, legal and ethical issues, and intellectual property rights, are also addressed in the book. E-Business and Virtual Enterprises is essential reading for researchers, engineers, practitioners, and engineering students in production engineering, computer science, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, organizational science, and industrial sociology.

Incorporating currencies, payment methods, and protocols that computers use to talk to each other, digital currencies are poised to grow in use and importance. The Handbook of Digital Currency gives readers a way to learn about subjects outside their specialties and provides authoritative background and tools for those whose primary source of information is journal articles. Taking a cross-country perspective, its comprehensive view of the field includes history, technicality, IT, finance, economics, legal, tax and regulatory environment. For those who come from different backgrounds with different questions in mind, The Handbook of Digital Currency is an essential starting point.

In this volume, the authors apply insights from a variety of perspectives to explore the alignment among strategy, organization design, process and human resource management, and e-business practices on developing successful social networking programs-with particular regard to applying such initiatives against the backdrop of the global financial crisis and challenges to traditional business models. Showcasing in-depth case studies, the authors present emerging approaches to analyze the impact of investment in social networking sites, aligning internal resources, and measuring effects on positioning, branding, and new business creation. The fact that a growing proportion of the world population has a relationship with social networking sites could prove very valuable for companies. The question is whether this represents a business opportunity, whether companies know how to make the most of it and if they will make the necessary efforts to adapt to these new platforms. In the modern world, social networking sites have enormous potential for large as well as small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs); most companies are aware of the need for a presence on social networking sites, but at present their e-business strategies are part of their medium and long-term strategic planning and only a small percentage have been put into practice. In short, this book attempts to answer the following questions: Is there a business opportunity for companies on social networking sites? Do they know how to make the most of it? Are they willing to make the necessary effort to adapt? Can e-business strategies contribute to company creation and the success of already existing businesses? And if so, how?

Preface Social media marking has been heralded as a sea change in the market- consumer relationship, but its rapid growth and rabid following among m- keters has also produced a sea of confusion. Lacking any durable framework for understanding how, why, and on what terms the consumer relationship has changed under social media, marketers pursue new venues for their newness alone - with decidedly mixed results. This book finds a theoretical framework for social media marketing in the science of game theory, with its focus on adversarial but mutually dependent relationships. Originally developed to guide nuclear brinksmanship policy during the Cold War, game theory provides the foundation for an evoluti- ary view of social media marketing. Through fascinating game theory c- cepts like the Prisoner's Dilemma, the Stag Hunt, Self-Command, and Job Market Signaling, this study uncovers the cooperative trends that brought marketing to its present state and points the way toward marketing's future course. I. Der Drehbuchautor und seine Rechte VII VII Vorwort Contents Chapter 1: Surviving the Customer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1. 1 The Origins of Game Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1. 2 Game Theory, the New Media, and the NEW New Media . . . . . . . . . 7 1. 3 The Payoff Matrix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Chapter 2: Zero-Sum Games in Traditional Marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 2. 1 Zero-Sum Games and the Problem of Transparency . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 2. 2 The Zero-Sum of Pricing Strategies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 2. 3 The Wisdom of Randomization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 2. 4 Randomization and A/B Testing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 2. 5 The Hazards of Entrenchment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .