There is a greater emphasis on improving voter participation in elections, and one way to improve voter participation is to implement electronic or online voting. However, many voters and voting administrators are still skeptical because of security concerns and a lack of trust in these systems. Traditional online voting represents the older version of internet-based technology as well as the use of paper ballots. Consequently, the use of the blockchain seems like a more suitable technical solution to ensure online voting is secure and to enable trust by the voters and administrators of voting. The latter would lead to increased voter participation in elections. This chapter per the author attempts to answer the following research questions: What is the impact of the blockchain on the political processes especially when constituents vote? What is the essence of online voting via the blockchain and what are its benefits? What are the vulnerabilities when applying the blockchain when used in online voting?

This chapter describes secondhand exchange in the context of the platform economy. Consumers have long engaged in reselling and buying used items as an alternative to purchasing firsthand items, but researchers have little understanding of how these exchanges are different theoretically from traditional consumption patterns. This chapter presents a clear definition of secondhand exchange and separates it from related concepts, including lateral exchange markets, the sharing economy, access-based consumption, and collaborative consumption. It is suggested that secondhand exchange and related consumer behavior in the platform economy can be understood by considering platform differences related to 1) when and how product ownership is transferred (i.e., direct and indirect), 2) the level of platform intermediation (i.e., low, moderate, or high), and 3) buyers' knowledge of reseller identity (i.e., unknown, obscured, and known). Research propositions are presented for these dimensions for each facet of the consumption process (i.e., buying, owning, and disposal).

The cross-border e-commerce platforms available to businesses today provide them with the ability to increase market share beyond their local market. However, in initiating such platforms, businesses face many challenges from local to global issues. Therefore, it is essential for cross-border e-commerce managers to have a comprehensive understanding of the risks, scope, dynamics, and determinants with regard to these challenges. Additionally, they must launch, run, and expand cross-border e-commerce operations. This chapter has highlighted a wide range of prospects, aspects, and factors with regard to cross-border e-commerce worldwide which can guide the thinking of decision makers. The authors conclude that more research and feasibility studies are necessary to increase consumer experience and devise global visions and policies to facilitate cross-border e-commerce.

The digital economy, undoubtedly, has contributed to the immense task of clearly identifying, ascertaining, and accounting for sources, rationales, and audit trails relating to tax transactions. This is not only evident owing to difficulties associated with cross-border transaction regulations which govern different jurisdictions as well as the enforcement of such regulations, but also in respect of risks associated with the present global financial environment – all having generated from the rise in automation, increased and improved sophisticated technologies, globalization, and conglomeration. This chapter not only seeks to highlight the extent, contribution, and significance of the digital economy in respect of those risks associated with base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) but also amongst other aims and objectives to recommend measures whereby regulations can be better enforced as a means of addressing practices associated with BEPS.

Cyberspace is such an enormous concept that trying to briefly explain the “rules” for E-Commerce or “cyberlaw” is next to impossible. For an E-Commerce, it is important to understand that there are business-to-business transactions and those involving consumers. In addition to requiring a mastery of many legal specialties, E-Commerce presents legal issues in a virtual environment. Many business practices in a cyberspace are untested in the courts. New and innovative methods of competition, as well as the effects of an international playing field change the playfield constantly. The legalities of this great new frontier pose an impressive and intellectually stimulating challenge. This chapter is a survey and summary of the legal environment in the E-Commerce and the virtual world.

Virtual worlds have long been a gleam in the visionary’s eye: the essential concept of a virtual world may have originated with Pliny (Biocca & Levy, 1995). Much has been written about the impact of virtual worlds, both socially and economically, on their users. This chapter offers an overview of the economies of virtual worlds and the business impact of managing them. Against logic, virtual economies are closer to true market economies than any real world economy. They are also rapidly growing in size and value. With increasing attention from real world governments and tax authorities, virtual economies are stimulating changes in the business of virtual worlds. Virtual world operators have an opportunity to, through their responses, either preserve their investments and their businesses by ensuring a secure role for the market economies they have created, or face serious threats to their business as the real world interferes with virtual fun.

The rapid rise of Virtual World technology poses exciting opportunities and complex challenges for businesses. Virtual World technology, for the purpose of business usage, can be defined as any 3D immersive and persistent environment that can be accessed concurrently by multiple people for the purposes of conducting E-Commerce. The purpose of this chapter will be to examine how Virtual Worlds are being used in business today. The authors will reflect on the first wave of companies entering Virtual Worlds, which has yielded some key lessons learned, as well as, evidence to its next phase. By defining the spectrum of different uses of Virtual Worlds, this chapter will cover key lessons learned and guidelines, current barriers to adoption, and the business value of using Virtual Worlds for business purposes. Lastly, the authors will examine future trends in Virtual World technology that relate to future Virtual World E-Commerce growth.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of e-commerce marketing focused on history, trends and future predictions for the field – leading into the development and application of virtual worlds and v-commerce. It begins with a discussion of the transition from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 and Web 3.0. Next is a survey of developments in marketing convergence, as businesses integrate their customer-centric online/offline marketing efforts and databases. The chapter continues with an overview of business-to-business Internet marketing, including the profit strategies businesses employ in the online world. A commentary on the evolution of browsers, portals and search engines is followed by a discussion of social networking’s movement toward a money-making model. To set the stage for the chapters to come, the piece concludes with a preview of what is on the horizon for “v-commerce” – with opportunities and applications that are capturing the imagination of consumers and marketers alike.

The combined military forces of the United States are over 3 million strong; currently command a defense budget of $540 billion with an additional allocation of $306 billion for the Global War on Terror; and has spending power of nearly $14 billion. In addition to the impact this strong military presence has on our country and the world, these numbers underscore the influence the military has on technology trends, tools, and vendor offerings through its acquisition of various technology software and hardware components. One particular area of interest to this publication is the $8 billion that the military spends on virtual training. Additionally, the military spends $4 billion on recruitment efforts which include an increased emphasis on the use of virtual worlds to interest potential new recruits to join one of the military forces. Team Orlando, a joint military branch project that collaborates on training and development efforts, is also focused on finding new and better ways to train its soldiers through virtual worlds and simulation. An idea of Team Orlando’s influence on the virtual world industry is reflected in the $17.5 billion in contracts awarded to vendors in 2009 alone. Intelligence agencies and Homeland Security have also demonstrated an increased interest in, and use of, virtual worlds evident through various requests for research and development proposals issued recently requesting ideas on ways to use virtual worlds for internal training and collaboration. The Intelligence community is also interested in exploring behavior of virtual world inhabitants and relating them to their real world counterparts. Even the CIA has a presence on Second Life®, albeit not for general public use. In total, the influence that the military, intelligence and homeland security agencies have on the virtual world industry is significant and extends the reach of virtual worlds beyond its commercial uses.

Christensen (2002) describes that new technologies and solutions replace established goods and services as a result of being “good enough” replacements. That is, the value of functions provided by a new solution outweighs any further incremental improvements to the entrenched product. The new value could be in terms of size, convenience, cost or other dimensions pertinent to many consumers. These attributes might be traded off for capacity or performance or other factors which are deemed less important than the new benefits. Virtual worlds are providing new value in many areas of commerce, business, health and recreation. They are not a fad. They are part of an ongoing change. Virtual worlds are in an opportunistic position to supplant many existing solutions and may be only one or two breakthroughs away from displacing more.

Virtual education is a multi-billion dollar business and maintains a firm place in the world of E-Commerce. It is a mode used by educational institutions, the military, professional organizations, commercial companies, and others to inform, educate and interact with students, consumers, and participants. Second Life® is the most well-known forum for virtual education for many colleges and universities, but it is not the only virtual environment used for educational purposes. Many organizations such as the military have developed their own virtual training and education frameworks (See Ciaramitaro and Jones, Chapter 7). Conferences and seminars offered by professional organizations and business consortiums are increasingly using the virtual environment to attract its participants. Even virtual worlds embraced by children provide many educational aspects such as the “working” experience in the Webkinz world. This chapter will discuss the varying ways that virtual worlds have been incorporated into education. The authors will examine several virtual worlds to see what they offer in terms of content and user experience. They will also examine virtual education from the faculty and student perspective, and investigate how it compares with traditional forms of teaching and learning. As is true in all virtual worlds, within the education domain there are issues and challenges that must be addressed before full-scale adoption is achieved and we will discuss several of these. The authors will conclude with an examination of what the future holds for virtual education.

This chapter looks at security and privacy concerns of virtual worlds by investigating the use and capabilities of current and emerging technologies such as gaming, blogging, podcasting, virtual meetings, and virtual worlds. Security and privacy concerns will be investigated in the context of exploits and IT-related security risks, access management and confidentiality, reputation and product risk management, resource management, financial considerations and accountability, and safety. Several technologies and personal practices are reviewed, as well as ways to mitigate or eliminate their associated risks. The core principles of information security -confidentiality, integrity, and availability - provide an overall framework for the chapter.

Open-Simulator (Open-Sim) refers to a three dimensional application environment that can be used to develop virtual worlds similar to those that exist in Second Life®. Open-Sim is considered open source software, i.e., software that is developed by a community of volunteers and is available for use by the public free of charge (Open Simulator, 2009). Although participants in virtual worlds are generally considered by law to be the owner of any Intellectual Property (IP) they create, content creators and owners of OpenSim-based virtual worlds struggle with issues surrounding licensing, content delivery, and usage in these immersive spaces. The Fashion Research Institute (FRI) is specifically exploring these issues in a case study involving the licensing its Shengri La virtual world creations to external users. This case study is the basis of ongoing legal research by FRI’s legal steering committee of attorneys from the American Bar Association’s Virtual Worlds and Online Gaming committee who are working on a pro bono (volunteer) basis. This chapter presents the result of the ongoing case study. It offers a practitioner’s view of issues related to licensing and distribution of content in virtual worlds.

The future of the evolving, collaborative communications structure will be impacted to an enormous and ever increasing degree by the merging of e-commerce and virtual worlds. Such media outlets will bring new and innovative methods by which to interact with clients and customers, as well as business to business. As these technologies continue to evolve, bringing higher definition, realism, and the power to manipulate potential customer experiences, increasing numbers of people will come to the realization that virtual worlds and similar environments are an essential part of an online communications experience. Evidence of this paradigm shift can be noted in the multitudes of brand names which also inhabit these virtual environments through countless offerings and marketing campaigns.

Virtual business as defined in this chapter is any business interaction that takes place in an immersive digital space in which individuals are represented by “avatars” in three-dimensional, user-created environments. While there are hundreds of virtual worlds and hundreds of millions of people globally participating in them, this chapter focuses on Second Life®, owned by Linden Lab. At the time of this writing, eighteen million Second Life® accounts have been registered and participants have spent a billion hours in-world. US $1 billion has changed hands in Second Life® between people in more than 100 countries representing hundreds of cultures. Thousands of universities, companies, institutions and organizations have Second Life® bureaus. This chapter will examine the evolution of some of the most remarkable projects taking place within this virtual world, featuring the passion of early adopters, the role of the media, current examples of virtual work, the evolution of the virtual workforce, the shift in the role of managers toward a collaborative virtual model, the relationship between education and virtual work, and virtual goods and services.

The growth of business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce has gained a lot of attention among SMEs. Most B2C firms are turning their attention on how to retain new customers and are left in a situation to compete with larger firms. This chapter aims to examine the evolution and impact of online relationships in B2C firms. Drawing upon the theories of customer relationship management, e-commerce, trust and loyalty, the author develops an integrated model to illustrate the stages customers go through when shopping online and its impact on trust, hard and soft factors that reflect the level of transactional and relational components of communication thereby impacting the customers shopping time lifecycle experiences. This chapter develop a number of hypotheses to facilitate testing of the model. The author then provides a discussion of the model leading to the theoretical and practical implications of this study and directions for future research.

The emergence of wireless and mobile networks has made possible the introduction of electronic commerce to a new application and research subject: mobile commerce. Mobile commerce is a promising trend of commerce because Internet-enabled smartphones such as iPhones are becoming very popular these days. People use smartphones to perform daily tasks like browsing the mobile Internet and making phone calls anytime and anywhere. However, understanding or constructing a mobile or an electronic commerce system is not easy because the system involves a wide variety of disciplines and technologies and the technologies are constantly changed. To facilitate understanding and constructing such a system, this chapter divides the system into six components: (i) applications, (ii) client devices or computers, (iii) mobile middleware, (iv) wireless networks, (v) wired networks, and (vi) host computers. Elements in these components specifically related to the subject are described in detail and lists of current technologies for component construction are discussed.

Based on customer cognitive, affective and conative experiences in Internet online shopping, this study, from customers’ perspectives, develops a conceptual framework for e-CRM to explain the psychological process that customers maintain a long-term exchange relationship with specific online retailer. The conceptual framework proposes a series of causal linkages among the key variables affecting customer commitment to specific online retailer, such as perceived value (as cognitive belief), satisfaction (as affective experience) and trust (as conative relationship intention). Three key exogenous variables affecting Internet online shopping experiences, such as perceived service quality, perceived product quality, and perceived price fairness, are integrated into the framework. This study empirically tested and supported a large part of the proposed framework and the causal linkages within it. The empirical results highlight some managerial implications for successfully developing and implementing a strategy for e-CRM.

E-government service delivery performance has been discussed in literature as a way governments use information technologies (IT) to deliver valuable services to their citizens at a lower cost. This article examines the effectiveness of Web site-supported Balanced Scorecard’s four dimensions (innovation and learning, internal process, veteran value proposition, and financial) in improving e-government service delivery performance. The study used content analysis to analyze the data obtained from a sample of 19 county veteran service officers (CVSOs) to test the hypotheses. CVSOs use Web sites to serve veterans on a Government-to-Citizen (G2C) basis.

The increasingly global sourcing of IT work and other socio-economic trends are prompting fundamental changes in the availability of IT skills needed in both client and vendor organizations. This article analyzes the results of a survey conducted in 2005, in which IT executives were asked to describe the skills they felt were critical to keep in house now and in 2008. The top ten current skills included three in project management, five in business domain and three in technical. In 2008, the top five emerging skills are almost all business domain while the top five exiting skills are all technical. Our findings indicate that the critical skills to keep in-house are primarily client-facing skills, even when they are technical. Respondents are moving away from traditional IT skills except when their business model continues to value them. However, traditional technical skills are still important for all new hires while project management skills are the most often cited for mid level hires. The projected number of full time employees is expected to remain approximately the same by 2008 but there will be an increase in sourcing to third party providers (3PP) and a shift from domestic to offshore 3PP staff. The patterns in the data indicate that technical skills that are not client facing and can be done anywhere are the most likely to be sourced. Findings indicate that IT professionals need to have a balance that demonstrates a foundation in the traditional “hard skills” and experience with “softer” business-oriented skills.

The world is witnessing a continuous expansion of electronic commerce into the global digital economy. As an enabler of new businesses, Web-based shopping systems (WBSS) are at the heart of the major issues surrounding electronic commerce growth. Their wide use has profoundly altered the ways in which businesses and customers, and businesses and businesses interact on the basis of digital transactions. Despite the importance of WBSS, the theoretical study of their strategies has been sparse. This article offers a theoretical analysis of evolutionary processes in WBSS strategies. For that purpose, we propose a classification model of WBSS. Based upon the model, WBSS are classified into four types: (1) general-direct-sales (GDS); (2) general-intermediary-sales (GIS); (3) specialized-direct-sales (SDS); and (4) specialized-intermediary-sales (SIS). On the basis of these four categories of WBSS, we analyze the characteristics of WBSS and suggest five evolution strategies for WBSS, which have implications for both theory and practice. Amazon.com’s strategic movements, such as product line expansion through alliance and acquisition, provide an exemplary case of the evolution of WBSS strategy. We expect that this article will serve as a guide for Internet businesses and as a catalyst for new research agendas relevant to web-based shopping and electronic commerce.

Koreans envision a world in which anyone can access information and the tools to explore it anytime, anywhere. Korea has been one of the leaders in the mobile industry and this chapter explores the past, present and future of mobile technology and markets in Korea. Starting with background and a brief overview of the current situation, this chapter uses the CLIP framework to describe mobile services in Korea. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of challenges and future strategies.

This article has investigated the insurance industry and provided insights into the relationships of organizational size and age with outsourcing and organizational structure. Also, this study investigated the relationship between Web site age, outsourcing, and organizational structure. The main findings are that firm size and maturity is related to the decision of Web-based development approach and the best organizational structure to support online activity. The insights obtained by a new variable: Web site age suggests that insurance companies are trying to develop their Web-based activities within their existing organizational structures, rather than creating new e-commerce divisions.

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 from concept discovery and process explanation to theory deepening. As a first step towards synthesis of findings in Internet auctions, we compile a comprehensive list of the various factors that have been examined in empirical studies and note their general impact upon auction outcome. Based upon this extant research, we propose a conceptual model of Internet auctions as a framework for structuring future work into Internet auctions. We then note the existing economic, psychological, sociological, and cognitive theoretical bases for work on Internet auctions. We conclude by highlighting the potential for behavioral economics to bring unity to Internet auction research and by calling researchers to engage in the work of forging a comprehensive theory of Internet auctions.