Management Information and Communication Systems - Coursework Example

MANAGEMENT INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS 0 Overview The benefit that technology offers is one that can be referred to as being multi-disciplinary. This is because the benefits of technology cut across all sectors and all facets of human life. In terms of trade and commerce, businesses have taken advantage of advancements in the worldwide web and internet to build a new platform for the transaction of business. This platform comes in the through the enactment of business on an electronic medium, commonly known as electronic commerce or e-commerce (Brusilovsky and Cooper, 2002). As a transformational global phenomenon, e-commerce has been embraced by almost all industries in the global economic environment. This development notwithstanding, University of Warwick (2009) noted that using e-commerce does not automatically guarantee success for a company. For a company to be achieve the needed successes with e-commerce, that company must ensure that its medium for undertaking e-commerce carries a form of competitive advantage that is not present with other competitors (University of Warwick, 2009). Meanwhile, most of these global companies have attempted to engage in e-commerce, primarily by the use of their websites. By implication, the websites of companies must be presented in a manner that will carry every necessary quality needed in making it appealing to targeted audience. This report will therefore present two major websites, which are the websites of Vodafone and Ooredoo and subject these websites to critical analysis for their effectiveness in two major areas. The areas are quality and e-commerce operation. The report will be approached from a primary research perspective, where there will be actual collection of data from respondents to be analysed based on literature. 2.0 Purpose and Outlook of the Websites From a generalised perspective, the website of Vodafone can be said to be one that has been presented to bring the office of the company closer to its customers. This is because the website seeks to offer several forms of customer based services and products that would have naturally been found at the various customer care centres of the company. The website has three major divisions, which are consumer division, business division and company division. The customer division has four major panels, which are Smartphones, Plans and Numbers, Internet and Support. The Smartphones panel is aimed at presenting various offers of phones to the customer. The Plans and Numbers panel is dedicated to different call plan services and phone number related issues. The internet panel gives to the consumer various internet packages from the company. The support panel offers different forms of support to the consumer. The outlook of the website is presented in figure 1 below. Figure 1: Outlook of Vodafones Website Source: Vodafone Official Website The business division of the website is dedicated to corporate customers or businesses. Like the consumer division, there are panels for Plans, Internet and Data, and Support. There are other panels also for Services and Solutions, and Contact us. The services and solutions panel give three major services, which are roaming service, blackberry services and audio conferencing. The contact us panel gives various avenues to users to contact the company for various reasons and purposes. The last division is the About Us division, which educates users on the company’s investor relations, media issues, careers, and legal and regulatory issues. Apart from the three major divisions, several other panels and buttons exist that offer different services such as pay your bill, recharge online, shopping cart, search this site, and many more. The website of Ooredoo can also be said to be unique in its own way. Primarily, the purpose of the website is to bring the company closer to the customer and users of the website in general. Quite readily, a feature about the website of Ooredoo that is missing from that of Vodafone it an adaptation feature, that permits users to register to own special account that makes it possible for them to log into the website to receive customised and personalised service. But quite apart from this, general users have access to five major panels, which are Mobile, At Home, Nojoom, eShop, customer service. Under the Mobile panel, different services offered to mobile handset users such as prepaid, postpaid, promotions and other services are outlined. The At Home panel is dedicated to services that are offered by the company primarily at home. These services include internet, TV, landline and promotion services. Under the Nojoom panel, all that users need to know about Nojoom are presented. These include partners and promotions about Nojoom. eShop panel gives various shopping services and offers about mobile phones, internet devices and call plans. Lastly, the Customer Service panel is dedicated to giving customers one-on-one service from insiders of the company to the ordinary online user. Some of these services are online services, tools, help, and others. The detailed outlook of the website is presented in figure 2 below. Figure 2: Overview of Ooredoos Website At the far right side of the website, it will be noted that there is also an entirely new outlook for businesses. The business outlook at three major panels, which are mobile services, fixed services and managed services. For the mobile services, all forms of mobile services that are offered to corporate bodies are presented. The fixed services also deal with fixed connectivity services such as broadband, local connectivity, global connectivity, and voice services. The managed services have five major packages for corporate bodies, which are cloud, office in the box, managed router, managed security, and data security. 3.0 Data Collection Method 3.1 Research Design In line with the purpose of this report to give a comprehensive analysis to the two websites which have been presented above, a primary data collection method, which was conducted in a quantitative manner was employed. As part of the quantitative approach to data collection, the researcher used a survey research design. The survey entailed the collection of responses from a group of people to represent the collective idea of all people within the research setting. The primary data collection was used because the researcher wanted to ensure that the findings of the report on the quality and e-commerce operation of the two websites were objective and evidence based. Most certainly, these characteristics would not have been achieved if the researcher limited data collection to the use of subjective opinions of the researcher. 3.2 Population and Sample The primary data collection was performed using a university setting, where a class of students were included in a data collection exercise. The selected class comprised of 50 students whose age ranged from 17 to 35. The class of university students were because they presented some greater level of assurance of understanding the various variables that needed to be tested in the study. This is because most of them were people who used activities on the websites on very frequent occasions. Moreover, the usage of the intended data collection was something that almost all these students were very familiar with as it was part of their regular academic work. In order to ensure that there was closer control over the respondents, it was decided that not all members within the population would be used. This resulted in the need to create a sample size made up of 20 respondents. In effect, the responses or judgement on the quality and e-commerce operation of the websites were sampled from 20 individuals, whose views were generalised as part of the survey. The sampling technique used in selecting the 20 respondents was a random sampling technique. What was done is that 50 pieces of papers were collected and cut into piece. 20 of the sheets were inscribed ‘yes’ and 30 were inscribed ‘no’. Each student was then made to select one of the papers at random without looking into the bowl that contained the sheets. All those that selected papers with ‘yes’ were included in the sample size. The random sampling was used to ensure fairness in the selection process and by extension, fairness with the entire data collection exercise. 3.3 Data Collection Tools To test the quality and e-commerce operation of the two websites, two different data collection tools were designed. The first data collection tool was the WebQual method, which was developed by Barnes and Vidgen (2001). For this study, the 4.0 edition of the WebQual was used. The WebQual 4.0 is an instrument that has been designed to make use of literature in rating the quality of websites. The tool presents a set of 23 questions that have been sub-divided into four sections. The sections are usability, information quality, interaction quality, and overall impression. For each question, respondents are to rate their answer in a scale from 1 to 7, where 1 represents ‘least agre’e and 7 represents ‘strongly agree’ (Barnes and Vidgen, 2001). For the purpose of this study, the analysis will be done based on the cumulate score given under each section. For example, under usability, there are 8 questions. The scores of all these questions will be averaged to represent the usability score of each website. The second tool is the Value Tool designed by Amitt and Zott (2001). This tool also has four sections, which are efficiency, novelty, lock-ins and complementarities. For each section, there will be a rating of 1 to 7 in the same manner as the WebQual. 3.4 Data Collection Process There were various stages of data collection, mainly pre-data collection and actual data collection. At the pre-data collection stage, the sampling procedures were taken. The respondents were also involved in a mini-conference where the rationale of the study and the use of the two data collection tools were explained to them. The actual collection of data did not however happen at the conference. It was only to explain to the respondents how to go about the answering of the tools. It was agreed at the conference that each respondent was going to have a maximum of five working days to finish answering the questionnaire on the WebQual and also finish scoring the value tool. Into the five days, the respondents were constantly contacted on phone and through text message to be reminded of the approaching deadline. On the fifth day, 15 respondents returned their completed tools. The day after, another 4 presented their tools, with the last person presenting it on the eighth day. By the tenth day, the analysis of the tools took place using a quantitative scoring mechanism. The analysis involved finding the average of scores given to each website by the respondents. The next section of the report thus presents a detailed presentation of the scoring and their analysis. 4.0 Findings on the Websites 4.1 Results on Quality using Webqual 4.11 Usability Under the usability section of the WebQual, there were eight major questions listed below: i. I find the site easy to learn to operate ii. My interaction with the site is clear and understandable iii. I find the site easy to navigate iv. I find the site easy to use v. The site has an attractive appearance vi. The design is appropriate to the type of site vii. The site conveys a sense of competency viii. The site creates a positive experience for me Each of these was to be scored from 1 to 7. At the end of the day, the cumulative scores were given by totalling all scores given under the usability. It means the possible cumulative scores available were 8 to 56. This meant that higher the score, the more important the quality of usability to the respondents. To simplify the presentation, the following divisions were made. Table 1: Interpretation of Scores on Usability Range of Score Interpretation 8 – 19 Least quality 20 – 29 Little quality 30 – 39 Average quality 40 - 49 High quality 50 - 56 Best quality Based on the interpretation table above, the following results were gathered about the usability of the websites of Vodafone and Ooredoo. Figure 3: Usability of Websites From the figure above, it can be noted that there is a clear indication among respondents that the website if Ooredoo has more quality in terms of its usability, as compared to that of Vodafone. This is because there were more respondents scoring the website of Ooredoo as high quality and best quality than those who did for Vodafone. Meanwhile, there were more people scoring Vodafone as little quality and average quality than those who did so for Ooredoo. None of the respondents scored any of the websites as least quality. 4.12 Information Quality On information quality, there were seven questions that respondents scored from 1 to 7. The questions were as follows: i. Provides accurate information ii. Provides believable information iii. Provides timely information iv. Provides relevant information v. Provides easy to understand information vi. Provides information at the right level of detail vii. Presents the information in an appropriate format This means that as clarified above, the accumulated scores were going to be from 7 to 49. The higher the score, the more quality the website is in terms of information quality. Using the same format as used earlier, the interpretation of accumulated scores were going to be as given in the table below. Table 2: Interpretation of Scores on Information Quality Range of Score Interpretation 7 – 15 Least quality 16 – 24 Little quality 25 – 34 Average quality 35 - 40 High quality 41 - 47 Best quality Based on the interpretation of scores on the information quality, the following results were gathered among the 20 respondents. Figure 4: Information Quality of Websites From figure 4, it would be noted that there was some level of quality rating for all the two websites. This is because none of the websites scored least quality or little quality. In terms of average quality, more respondents viewed the website of Ooredoo to be average quality in terms of information quality than that of Vodafone. On the score of high quality, there were more respondents, giving the website of Vodafone as high quality in terms of information quality than those that did for Ooredoo. There were also the same numbers of respondents giving scores of best quality to both websites. From a quantitative perspective and based on the results, it can be said that the website of Vodafone is of higher quality in terms of the information it offers to users than that of Ooredoo. 4.13 Interaction Quality Respondents were also asked to rate the websites in terms of the quality it offers with interaction. This means the adaptation features of the two websites were measured. The questions that were used in rating the interaction quality of the website were seven in all and given as follows: i. Has a good reputation ii. It feels safe to complete transactions iii. My personal information feels secure iv. Creates a sense of personalization v. Conveys a sense of community vi. Makes it easy to communicate with the organization vii. I feel confident that goods/services will be delivered as promised Each question was to be scored from 1 to 7. This means that the accumulated scores for interaction quality were going to be from 7 to 49. This also means that the same interpretation of scores as in table 2 were used to rate the interaction quality of the websites. Results collected from respondents are represented in the figure below. Figure 5: Interaction Quality of the Websites Based on the quantitative results presented in figure 5, there is a very clear indication that the website of Ooredoo is of high quality in terms of interactivity than that of Vodafone. This is because no respondent scored the website of Ooredoo to be of little quality but 1 respondent did for Vodafone. 8 respondents saw the website of Vodafone to be of average quality but there were only 5 respondents who said same for Ooredoo. On high and best quality, there were more respondents scoring the website of Ooredoo to be high quality and best quality than those that did for Vodafone. 4.14 Overall impression Having scored the websites through various stages, they were asked to give their overall impression about the two websites in terms of quality. This time, there was only one question that needed to be scored. The question was posted as “My overall view of this Web-site”. This question was supposed to be scored using three major remarks. These remarks were “best quality”, “average quality” and “low quality”. At the end of the scoring among 20 respondents, the following were attained. Figure 6: Overall Impression on Websites Based on the responses above, there is an indication that in terms of overall quality, several respondents envision the website of Ooredoo to be of best quality as compared to Vodafone. This is because with Vodafone there were 10 respondents scoring the site as best quality and 13 scoring Ooredoo as best quality. As with average quality, there were 9 respondents regarding the website of Vodafone to be average quality, as 7 people did same for Ooredoo. No respondent scored the website of Ooredoo to be low quality but one person did for Vodafone. 4.2 Results on e-commerce operation 4.21 Efficiency Basing on the transaction cost theory, the respondents were asked to rate the two websites according to how transaction efficient each of them was. Transaction efficiency was explained to the respondents as situation where the cost per transaction decreases with increasing transaction activity on the website (Amitt and Zott (2001). The ratings that were to be given were highly efficient, efficient and less efficient. This was to be based on the various transaction activities on the websites and how these transactions saved cost for users of the website as against having to perform the same transactions offline. The ratings that were given between Vodafone and Ooredoo are presented below. Figure 7: Efficiency of Websites for E-Commerce From figure 7, it can be noted that there were a lot of respondents who viewed the website of Vodafone as being transaction efficient than those who did same for Ooredoo. This is because Vodafone had a lot of score for highly efficient than Ooredoo. On the rating of moderately efficient however, the two websites scored the same. When it came to be view of less efficient, Ooredoo scored more than Vodafone. The interpretation of the results is that once the respondents used the two websites to perform transaction related commerce, they saw themselves reducing the cost of doing business with Vodafone than they did for Ooredoo. In the next section, a discussion of why this situation might be so is presented in detail. 4.22 Novelty Novelty was one other area that the e-commerce operation of the websites was judged by the respondents. According to Amitt and Zott (2001), novelty of a website engaged in e-commerce largely refers to the ability of the website to have new features that are peculiar to it. Such novelty ideas add value to the website and serve as competitive advantage because they attract users to the website (Brusilovsky and Cooper, 2002). Because of this, respondents were asked to view the new transactional structures, new transactional content and new participation of the two websites and rate them as highly novel, moderately novel or less novel. The results that were produced are presented in the figure below. Figure 8: Novelty of the Websites in Creating Value From the figure, it can be noted that the scores between the two websites was a mirror reflection of the other. This is because the same number of respondents scored the websites as being moderately novel. In terms of high novelty however, there were 5 people that scored this for Vodafone. The same 5 people had scored Ooredoo to have little novelty. 8 people however scored Ooredoo to have high novelty, as 8 people scored Vodafone to have little novelty. This makes it very easy to conclude that Ooredoo adds more value in terms of novelty with transactions than Vodafone offers to its users. 4.23 Lock-ins Amitt and Zott (2001) explained again that once websites are meant for e-commerce, it is important for such websites to recognise the need to appreciate its customers. Such recognition can come in several forms, including the use of loyalty reward programmes, customisation and positive network externalities. Based on these key variables and how well the various websites attempted to provide these, the respondents were asked to rate the two websites for their lock-ins. The rating was to be based on a general description of the adaptability of the websites. They were therefore to rank the websites as highly adaptable, moderately adaptable and less adaptable. The following scores were produced from the data collection. Figure 9: Using Lock-ins to create value According to the results, the website of Ooredoo was more adaptive, personalised and people centred in its bid to create value and engage in e-commerce than that of Vodafone. This is because whiles 10 respondents rated the website of Ooredoo to be highly adaptive, only 4 said same for Vodafone. In terms of little adaptation, the score was 9 for Vodafone and 4 for Ooredoo. There were more respondents seeing the website of Vodafone to be moderately adaptive. 4.24 Complementarities The degree to which the website is able to show complementary outcomes between products and services, online and offline assets, technologies, and activities has been described as an important variable to creating value for successful e-commerce. By extension, it is important that the website will show very high levels of similarities between what the customer experiences in real world scenario and what is experienced on the website. Using this perspective, the respondents were to rate the websites as being highly complementary, moderately complementary and less complementary. Figure 10: Complementarities of Websites The results show that respondents rate Vodafone as showing much similarities between what is offered in real world to what happens on its website than Ooredoo does. There were however very close ratings on these scores between the two websites. This is because the same number of respondents scored the two websites as moderately complementary. In terms of high and low complementariness however, there difference between the two websites was only 1. Whiles 11 said Vodafone was highly complementary, 10 said same for Ooredoo. Whiles 4 respondents said Ooredoo was less complementary, 3 said same for Vodafone. 5.0 Discussion [weaknesses and strengths] 5.1 Discussion on Quality 250 On the quality of the websites, four major variables were tested namely usability, information quality, interaction quality and overall impression. The strength of Ooredoo was in three out of the four areas namely usability, interaction quality and overall impression. The strength of Vodafone was in only one area, which is information quality. In literature, Myers, Hudson and Pausch (2001) emphasised how important it is for a website to show high levels of quality in all these four areas of quality measurement if the website can be adequately accepted by the general public. Until, it can be said that Ooredoo has made a lot of effort in ensuring that it makes the quality of its website standout, based on the scores that were given by the respondents. The fact that information quality is the weakness of the website however requires attention from management. This is because Ghali, Cristea and Stewart (2009) likened the website of any modern day corporation to a one stop shop where it should be possible to access any form of information. From the individual questions that constituted the information quality of the websites, it can be said that there may be some level of inaccuracy in the information of Ooredoo’s website. The believability of the information on the website could also be called to question, as well as the timeliness of information update. As with Vodafone, there remains so much for the company to do if it can really match up the expectations of a modern day website. This is because the website was weak in three major areas. Taking the individual scores that were produced, the area that Vodafone may want to pay particular attrition to is interaction quality. This is because that was where the least scores were produced, even though Koffman and Perry (2006) have emphasised the need for interactivity in a modern website. Interactivity has been referred to as the new dimension to website experience because once users visit a website they would want to be a part of the experience of the website. It can be noted that Ooredoo has provided a log in system by which users can have a personal interactive experience with the company but such avenues are lacking for Vodafone. 5.2 Discussion on e-commerce 250 On e-commerce, Ooredoo’s strength was in two major areas, which were novelty and lock-ins. The website was however weak in the areas of efficiency and Complementarities. This is a very serious situation that the hosts of the website may want to check. This is because earlier, respondents had scored information quality as very low, indicating there may be some level of inaccuracies in information from what users know in the real world as compared to what exists on the website. Once a situation like this happens, the credibility of the website may be called to doubt because the complementarities of the website has also been explained to have some correlation to the degree to which the website complements its everyday activity with the website (Myers, Hudson and Pausch, 2001). In terms of efficiency also, it will be very important for the company to look into the need to create value for its users in terms of cost per transaction. This is because once users find it continuously efficient to be in the premises of the company than to visit their website for the same kind of service and product, they will neglect the website all together. Vodafone was also weak in two areas and strong in two areas in terms of creation of value for e-commerce. The areas of strength were Complementarities and efficiency. In terms of novelty and lock-ins however, the company was weak. Meanwhile, Koffman and Perry (2006) touched on the need for websites to be constantly changing with novelty ideas that are meant to create value for companies. Ghali, Cristea and Stewart (2009) indicated that there are so many avenues by which a company make raise its competitive advantage but the most significant of these is for the company to be as novel as possible, knowing that whenever users visit the site, they will be looking for something new they will not find at other places. Using lock-ins is also another means of attracting a lot of users to a website. In a much related manner, Vodafone had scored low results for its interactivity and lock-in, which has a component of customisation. This means that until now, the website of Vodafone has distanced customers from itself. 6.0 Conclusion This report has been a useful avenue of critically analysing two websites, which are those of Vodafone and Ooredoo. The analysis was done from a quantitative perspective and using a lot of primary data colletion. Two major research tools were employed in the analysis, which are the WebQual and Value Creation model. After critical review of the findings and the discussion that has been done, it can be concluded that both Vodafone and Ooredoo have made several advances to present highly workable and productive websites to aid in the companies’ ambitions of becoming part of a new global experience of e-commerce. In terms of quality however, Ooredoo has been ahead of Vodafone and has championed its lot in sharing its experiences with users of the website. This is evident in the scores given in areas of measurement that had to do with adaptation. The company would however have to improve its information presentation to ensure that users can adequately rely on the information on the website and treat it as trustworthy. Vodafone on the other hand have not performed as creditably as Ooredoo has done even though the company has its own strengths in terms with how it has presented its website. Should there be much effort put into value creation, Vodafone can also become a global competitor through the use of its website. References Brusilovsky and Cooper (2002). Domain, Task, and User Models for an Adaptive Hypermedia Performance Support System. ACM. Vol. 3 No. 2; pp 2-8 Ghali F, Cristea A.I and Stewart C (2009). My Online Teacher 2.0. Coventry: University of Warwick Koffman, E. B. and Perry, J. M. (2006). A model for generative CAI and concept selection. International Journal on the Man-Machine Studies 8 (1976) 397-410 Myers, B., Hudson, S. E., and Pausch, R. (2001). Past, present and future of user interface software tools. In: Carroll, J. M. (ed.) HCI In the New Millennium. New York: Addison-Wesley. University of Warwick (2009) Authoring of Adaptive Hypermedia. Accessed March 17, 2014 from http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/~acristea/Books/AHChenBookChapt-cameraReady2.pdf Read More