Publikations-Übersicht

To avoid the detrimental consequences of global warming, digital nudges were recognized as effective means to steer individual behavior toward sustainability. We investigated the applications, contexts, and outcomes of green digital nudges by conducting a systematic literature review of 64 nudge interventions. We found six distinct types of nudges—priming, goal-setting, default, feedback, social reference, and framing—and 18 sustainable target behaviors (e.g., energy conservation). To explain how behavior changes through green nudges, we clustered the identified target behaviors into three behavior change outcomes: (i) altering an existing behavior, (ii) reinforcing an existing behavior, and (iii) forming a new behavior. Based on our findings, we propose guidance for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers who seek to design choice architectures that facilitate pro-environmental behavior.

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Residential heating is a major source of carbon emissions and, at the same time, represents a significant cost factor for households. Thus, reducing heating costs through sustainable heating behaviors is of great individual and societal interest. However, the consequences of heating behaviors are complex and delayed, so most people are unaware of them. To address this problem, we designed two loss aversion nudges, using (i) a cost salience and (ii) a health risk framing to induce more sustainable heating and ventilation behaviors. We evaluated them against a no-intervention control group in a field experiment at a major German real estate company. While the cost salience nudge was found to improve heating behaviors and became more effective over time, the health risk nudge did not show an effect. Finally, our findings have implications for research on nudging and loss aversion and for practitioners, namely housing providers and more generalized entities aiming to nudge for pro-environmental behaviors.

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Technical debt (TD) is a technical compromise wherein the ability to maintain information technology (IT) applications over the long term is sacrificed for short-term goals. TD occurs when software development teams undergo constant pressure to release applications swiftly, on a tight schedule. The accumulation of TD, which often leads to a significant cost surplus, presents a ubiquitous challenge in technology-driven organisations. To keep TD levels under control, many organisations implement top-down mechanisms that impose enterprise-wide principles on software development teams. This clinical research presents a complementary but distinct approach to managing TD. A digital nudge was introduced at Credit Suisse, a global financial services company, to help raise awareness and understanding, and stimulate actions related to TD decision-making in software development teams. This paper reports on the nudge’s clinical design, implementation, impact, and evaluation. As the nudge was effective in reducing TD in IT applications after one year of use, we demonstrate that digital nudges are viable means for guiding collective decisions in complex decision environments like that of TD management. Our findings have several implications for research and practice.

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Nudging und die Frage nach seiner Wirksamkeit wird im digitalen Zeitalter immer wichtiger, da Entscheidungen immer häufiger in digitalen Umgebungen getroffen werden. Gleichzeitig gibt es kaum Forschung zu den unbeabsichtigten und schädlichen Folgen von Nudging, auch als Backfiring bezeichnet. Das Paper beschäftigt sich deshalb mit der Rolle von Reaktanz im Zusammenhang mit Scarcity-Nudges. Es wurde ein Online-Experiment (n=180) auf einer fiktiven Hotelbuchungswebsite durchgeführt und der Einfluss zweier Varianten eines Scarcity-Nudges (Demand-Side vs. Supply-Side) auf die Reaktanz und die Kaufabsicht untersucht. Aufgezeigt werden konnte, dass die Reaktanz die Kaufabsicht, ausgelöst durch den Scarcity-Nudge auf der Supply-Side, reduziert. Auf der Demand-Side konnte kein Einfluss der Reaktanz auf die Kaufabsicht durch Scarcity-Nudges festgestellt werden.

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Residential heating, a major source of carbon emissions, is also a significant part of household costs, so reducing the consumption of energy for heating is of interest to both individuals and societies. Since the consequences of individual behavior related to heating are complex and not immediate, many people are unaware of them. In a longitudinal field experiment at a German real estate company, we evaluated two loss aversion nudges (one with a cost the other with a health-risk framing) toward sustainable heating behaviors. We find support for the cost framing nudge as the effectiveness of the nudge increased over the study period. Our findings have implications for research and for practitioners, particularly housing providers that seek ways to encourage pro-environmental behavior.

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Driven by economic advantages and the idea of disintermediation of business processes, the decentralization of technical and economic systems has become a highly discussed topic in recent years. Extant research primarily investigated the technical implementations of decentralized information systems (IS) and their use by firms in business networks. It became clear that interorganizational relationships and business functions must be transformed to enable the use of decentralized IS (e.g., those related to how firms can be involved in the design, instantiation, operation, and governance of decentralized IS). However, the impact of transforming business functions of individual firms remains largely unclear, obfuscating a comprehensive understanding of the implication of decentralized IS use on internal organizational structures of firms. In this work, we focus on the identification of challenges for firms in using distributed ledger technology (DLT as a representative for decentralized IS) and their effects on the business functions of firms.

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An unhealthy lifestyle is one of the key factors of mortality in modern society. Persuasive technologies, information systems that aim to change users behaviors and attitudes in a predefined way, are increasingly used for health promotion to encourage a physically active lifestyle and healthful nutrition to prevent diseases of affluence. Persuasive technologies for health come in different shapes, though, recent advances in mobile and sensor technologies have given rise to wearable self-tracking devices that have shortly reached high penetration in mainstream markets. While high hopes lie on persuasive technologies to improve personal and public health outcomes and empirical evidence for their effectiveness exists, concerns regarding their capacity to sustainably induce changes in health behaviors are growing. Despite the rich body of literature on the adoption of persuasive technology, gaps in knowledge exist with regard to users post-adoptive use experiences and behaviors, the processes along which persuasive technologies generate cognitive-affective and behavioral outcomes, and how persuasive technologies can impel such processes in a targeted way. This cumulative dissertation addresses these gaps and seeks to gain an understanding of post-adoptive use processes, to explain the occurrence of adverse experiences and their effects on users, to explain the outcomes of persuasive technology use, and to generate design knowledge to develop persuasive technologies to achieve long-term changes in health-promoting behaviors. These research objectives are achieved through eight research papers using different research approaches to shed light at different aspects concerning the post-adoptive use, the behavioral outcomes, and the design of persuasive technologies, by applying qualitative and quantitative research methods, and following the design science research paradigm. The dissertation makes several primary contributions to persuasive technology research: First, users habit formation processes and adverse experiences are highlighted. Second, the outcomes of persuasive technology use are outlined and mechanism-level explanations for why some users arrive at behavioral outcomes while others do not are provided. Third, by presenting a design artifact, design knowledge for the development of adaptive persuasive technologies for health promotion is generated. Moreover, the findings have important implications for practitioners, in particular, providers of persuasive technology and system designers.

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Business ecosystems are dynamic network structures of autonomous actors who contribute individual resources and capabilities towards a shared purpose. This study proposes a design theory to develop a model that describes the fundamental value creation activities in business ecosystems. This research endeavor is embedded in a consortium research project following design science and builds on both the current body of academic knowledge and the experience of. The paper makes three main contributions. Firstly, the study defines a specific problem space, identifies justificatory knowledge, and develops design requirements and principles as the theory’s core. Secondly, a reference model is developed that describes value creation, providing a conceptual grid for further theoretical analysis. Thirdly, the model provides an analytical framework for practitioners, who need to understand which activities should be performed and how these activates should be configured to generate advantages relative to others.

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By enabling a new way to digitize transactions, distributed ledger technology allows to fundamentally change how value is digitally issued, transferred, and stored. Accordingly, «tokenization» refers to the concept of creating a singular identifier on a distributed ledger in terms of a token that may represent anything from financial assets, goods, to other valuable resources. Where tokenization may disrupt our economic system leading to more efficiency or democracy, it is required to gain insights and facilitate the development of use cases associated with this concept. To illustrate how firms can apply tokenization to innovate their businesses, we propose a framework of different token properties, drivers, and barriers for adoption based on literature and expert interviews and present eight archetypical cases derived from an analysis of 129 ventures. This work provides strategic guidance in a token economy and a starting point for future research of viable applications.

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Business Ecosystems are dynamic structures of interdependent actors who co-create value. Despite high interest, the networks remain poorly understood. Participants form partnerships to collaborate with each other, however, these partnerships are fragile. As a possible analytical lens for the success or failure of these partnerships, this study draws on cultural values. By combining value creation characteristics of business ecosystems with the available knowledge base of cultural values, the study develops an artifact which identifies ten crucial cultural values in business ecosystems. The construct functions as a compass of cultural values and helps organizations to anticipate potential issues and recalibrate accordingly. The artifact was developed in a consortium project following the design science research. The paper contributes to a better understanding of value creation and organizational culture in business ecosystems.

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Wearables are used to help motivate individuals to trade their unhealthful behaviors for beneficial ones, thereby preventing the diseases of affluence, which are caused by a sedentary lifestyle. However, inconclusive study results regarding the effectiveness of wearables raise questions about the outcomes of using wearables. Research on the topic paints an ambiguous picture regarding the support wearables offer users in performing beneficial health-related behaviors, leaving the underlying mechanisms of wearable use and its outcomes unexplained. We seek to fill this gap in the literature by means of a critical realist study based on thirty narrative interviews with long-term users of wearables. By identifying seven generative mechanisms that drive users’ interactions with wearables and the subsequent cognitive and behavioral outcomes of that use, we answer the research question concerning how and why users’ interactions with wearables can facilitate positive behavioral and cognitive outcomes. The study makes several contributions to theory and practice.

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Business ecosystems are dynamic structures of various actors who co-create value. By combining complementary and substitute services, these actors create integrated offerings. This paper proposes a conceptual model which supports the analysis of ecosystems by de- composing the offering into distinct modules. Each mod- ule represents a beneficiary-provider duality with a specific value proposition and activities to be performed. It further describes, how different service modules con- tribute and may change the network-level purpose. The research follows design science and was facilitated in a consortium setup to integrate practitioners’ insights. The paper contributes by developing design principles for a service configuration model, identifying relevant activities to describe service creation, providing a logic to configure distinct services into a whole, and introducing the concept of substitutes into the discussion.

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Wearables provide great opportunities for improving personal health, but research challenges their capacity to evoke behavioral change effectively. Realizing the full potential of wearables requires a better understanding of users’ behavior change processes. Based on self-efficacy theory, we investigate how wearables influence users’ perceptions of their self-efficacy and subsequent health behavior. Using narrative interviews with twenty-five long-term wearable users, we show that wearables can have both positive and negative effects on users’ perceptions of their self-efficacy and that these perceptions are subject to internal and external contexts, which can positively or negatively affect users’ compliance. We also find that the internal context may have a compounding or neutralizing effect on self-efficacy, despite an adverse external context. Our study shows the contextual and transient nature of self-efficacy, thus contributing to self-efficacy theory and research on wearables and offering practical design implications.

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Physical inactivity is a global public health problem that poses health risks to individuals and imposes financial burdens on already strained healthcare systems. Wearables that promote regular physical activity and a healthy diet bear great potential to meet these challenges and are increasingly integrated into the healthcare system. However, extant research shows ambivalent results regarding the effectiveness of wearables in improving users’ health behavior. Specifically important is understanding users’ systematic behavior change through wearables. Constructive digitalization of the healthcare system requires a deeper understanding of why some users change their behavior and others do not. Based on self-leadership theory and our analysis of narrative interviews with 50 long-term wearable users, we identify four wearable use patterns that bring about different behav- ioral outcomes: following, ignoring, combining, and self-leading. Our study contributes to self-leadership theory and research on individual health information systems and has practical implications for wearable and healthcare providers.

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The use of persuasive technologies to improve users’ personal health outcomes are becoming increasingly pervasive in the health context. While early research on persuasive technologies highlighted the technology’s individual and societal potential, recent empirical evidence has hinted about the adverse effects of their use. However, little is known about the causes of, experiences with, and coping reactions to these adverse effects. To fill this gap, we conduct an exploratory study of wearable technologies’ adverse effects on users based on twenty-five narrative interviews. Employing a technostress lens, we find two distinct patterns–control stress and validation stress–that show that users experience these adverse effects by revolving through a circular process of technostress and relying on various mechanisms to cope with it. We describe contributions to the literature and implications for research and practice.

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Wearables gelten als Hoffnungsträger der heutigen Zeit: Sie sollen die individuelle Gesundheit von Nutzern verbessern, dadurch die Gesundheitskosten senken und die gesellschaftliche Wohlfahrt erhöhen. Doch wie steht es wirklich um die Potenziale von Wearables? Dieser Beitrag gibt Einblick in Nutzung und Auswirkungen von Wearables und zeigt Implikationen für den Einsatz im betrieblichen Gesundheitsmanagement auf.

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Digitale Nudges nutzen psychologische Prinzipien, um Nutzerverhalten im digitalen Raum zu beeinflussen. Um als Unternehmen wirksame digitale Nudges zu entwickeln, ist ein systematisches Vorgehen notwendig. Zu diesem Zweck wird in diesem Artikel die Digital Nudge Design-Methode vorgestellt, die das Entwickeln von digitalen Nudges in vier Phasen unterstützt. Die in den einzelnen Phasen angewendeten Techniken und Prozessschritte werden am Beispiel der Hero AG illustriert, die jüngst mit der Methode eigene digitale Nudges zur Nutzungsintensivierung einer Business Intelligence-Software entwickelt hat.

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Wearable Activity Trackers (WATs) are often ascribed the ability to reduce health risks by promoting physical activity and healthful eating habits. However, research has shown that their use does not always lead to behavior changes. Using the affordance lens, this study investigates how WATs’ material features facilitate behavioral outcomes, as users interpret WATs in light of their personal health-related goals. Using narrative interviews with twenty-five WAT users, we found two catego-ries of affordances—learning affordances and behavior-focused affordances—leading to three behavioral outcomes: behavior change, compliance change, and remaining with the status quo. Moreover, we identified four types of users (based on their goal configurations) that actualized different affordances and showed different behavioral outcomes. While some types of users fundamentally changed their daily routines as a result of using WATs, others simply complied with technology cues or did not change their behavior at all. Our results have several implications for re-search on WATs and WATs’ design.

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Wearables have the potential to optimize health-related behaviors like physical activity and nutritional intake and to improve individual health outcomes. However, researchers are still doubtful about wearables’ capacity to induce behavior change in users. Research that has built on self-efficacy theory has shown that using wearables can influence the users’ perceptions of self-efficacy and behavioral responses both positively and negatively, indicating that there is little stability over time. This study will investigate the factors that cause instability in users’ situational perceptions of self-efficacy and behavioral reactions. We plan to conduct a longitudinal, quasi-experimental field study with wearable users who self-report in weekly intervals on action-related restrictiveness, contextual restrictiveness, personal restrictiveness, situational self-efficacy, and their behavioral responses over eight weeks. Preliminary results from a pilot study with a reduced sample showed promising results. We will contribute to self-efficacy research by clarifying the factors that cause variations in behavioral responses and finding quantitative support for a situationally varying construct of self-efficacy. We will contribute to practice by deriving implications for the design of wearable devices.

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Business ecosystems have recently attracted a growing interest. Scholars are working on various approaches to describe actors, their relationships, and the implications of this dynamic organizational structure. Value co-creation among these interdependent actors, including customers, based on shared technologies, standards, and rules leads to the emergence of ecosystems. Using the design science research (DSR) approach, this paper presents and evaluates propositions for value co-creation leading to the emergence of business ecosystems. They provide structuring guidelines for academic research and build the basis for the design of a model aiming to explain the actors’ collaborative activities of value co-creation in ecosystems.

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Although Behavior Change Support Systems (BCSS) are gaining ground in the field of health in-terventions, we lack an empirically grounded understanding of how the behavior change tech-niques (BCTs) that are implemented in BCSS influence behavioral outcomes. Based on the self-efficacy theory, we conduct narrative interviews to investigate the process along which BCTs ap-plied in wearable activity trackers (WATs) influence users’ perceived self-efficacy and behaviors. We find three patterns that show how WATs’ BCTs feed certain information sources on which users build their self-efficacy beliefs. We identify a positive path (i.e., high self-efficacy, leading to com-pliant behavior) and a negative path (i.e., low self-efficacy, leading to non-compliant behavior) for each of these patterns. Our findings indicate that, under certain circumstances and/or at a cer-tain level of task difficulty, BCTs inflict adverse effects on users’ perceptions of their self-efficacy and their subsequent behavioral responses. Our results provide insights for theory and practice into how BCSS affect perceptions of self-efficacy and behavior change.

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Konsequent umgesetzt, bietet Omnichannel Marketing (OCM) ein nahtloses kanalübergreifendes Kundenerlebnis sowie eine personalisierte und zeitlich optimierte Ansprache an den einzelnen Kanälen. Ziel ist es, enge, individuelle Kundenbeziehungen aufzubauen und den Kundenwert zu erhöhen. Die erfolgreiche Umsetzung von OCM erfordert neben einer tiefgreifenden organisationalen Transformation den Einsatz performanter Technologien. Der vorliegende Beitrag gibt einen Überblick über relevante Big Data Analytics-Technologien zur systematischen Gewinnung, Speicherung, Analyse und Anwendung von Kundendaten.

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Rapidly changing customer demands, increasing competition and faster development cycles requires companies to build capabilities to adapt their product and services as well as their business models quickly. By using agile methods, companies are supported in adapting to these changes and to achieve competitiveness in volatile markets. However, agile “off-the-shelf”-methods bear the risk of not answering the challenges of specific business situations. Thus, the concept of situational method engineering was applied to agile methods, resulting in situational agile method engineering (SAME). For SAME to work, a description of situations is necessary, which allows to decide among different agile methods and method fragments. Thus, situational characteristics have been derived in a literature review and validated in focus group interviews resulting in a list of 5 relevant situational characteristics for SAME.

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Given the large discrepancy between rates at which wearable activity trackers (WATs) are initially adopted and their continued use, the question concerning how sustainable use emerges arises. While IS research has found habit an important driver of sustained use, the mechanisms of habit formation have been left unexplored. To address this research gap, we conducted narrative interviews to investigate the habit-formation mechanisms behind the use of WATs. We identified two drivers of habitual WAT use and constructed five narratives that provide insights into the habit-formation processes of WAT users and possible interrupting factors. Our results provide a valuable basis for both theory and practice in explaining how sustained WAT use develops.

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The goal of digital nudging, a concept based on insights from behavioural economics, is to influence decision-making in digital choice environments. Information systems scholars increasingly see digital nudging as a promising research field, as do practitioners in the field of user interface, user experience, and digital service design. However, the use of digital nudging is not widespread because practitioners are often unaware of the concept or they do not have a systematic approach with which to apply it. Using a design science research approach, we develop the Digital Nudge Design method and evaluate its applicability and usefulness in practice. The method is based on requirements deduced from literature on digital nudging and persuasive systems and frominterviews with practitioners from five case organizations. The study contributes to research that seeks to develop methods for influential user interface design, and the method supports researchers and practitioners in designing digital nudges.

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Digital transformation has changed corporate reality and, with that, firms’ IT environments and IT governance (ITG). As such, the perspective of ITG has shifted from the design of a rela-tively stable, closed and controllable system of a self-sufficient enterprise to a relatively fluid, open, agile and transformational system of networked co-adaptive entities. Related to this par-adigm shift in ITG, this paper aims to clarify how the concept of an effective ITG framework has changed in terms of the demand for agility in organizations. Thus, this study conducted 33 qualitative interviews with executives and senior managers from the banking industry in Ger-many, Switzerland and Austria. Analysis of the interviews focused on the formation of catego-ries and the assignment of individual text parts (codings) to these categories to allow for a quantitative evaluation of the codings per category. Regarding traditional and agile ITG di-mensions, 22 traditional and 25 agile dimensions were identified. Moreover, agile strategies within the agile ITG construct and ten ITG patterns were identified from the interview data. The data show relevant perspectives on the implementation of traditional and new ITG dimensions and highlight ambidextrous aspects in ITG in the German-speaking banking industry.

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This paper reports on an exploratory, multisite case study of four organizations from the insurance, banking, telecommunications, and e-commerce industries that implemented big data analytics (BDA) technologies to provide individualized service to their customers. Grounded in our analysis of these four cases, a theoretical model is developed that explains how the flexible and reprogrammable nature of BDA technologies provides features of sourcing, storage, event recognition and prediction, behavior recognition and prediction, rule-based actions, and visualization that afford (1) service automation and (2) BDA-enabled human-material service practices. The model highlights how material agency (in the case of service automation) and the interplay of human and material agencies (in the case of human-material service practices) enable service individualization, as organizations draw on a service-dominant logic. The paper contributes to the literature on digitally enabled service innovation by highlighting how BDA technologies are generative digital technologies that provide a key organizational resource for service innovation. We discuss implications for research and practice.

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The proliferation of digital devices and services has fundamentally changed customer behavior and needs and thus the manner in which customers engage with firms. Many customers want to engage with firms across both online and offline channels, enjoying seamless switching and simultaneous use. In this changing environment, the omnichannel concept has been proposed as an appropriate approach to satisfy these customer demands. In practice, however, only a few firms have successfully initiated a transition from a multichannel business to an omnichannel business by integrating channels. One major challenge associated with channel integration is that of deploying the necessary dynamic capabilities that enable management to reconfigure the organization. Against this backdrop, we draw on the dynamic capability perspective to examine how firms transitioned to omnichannel management by the combination of adaptive organization principles and omnichannel retail information systems. For this purpose, this study sheds light on the microfoundations of the firms’ IT-enabled dynamic capabilities. The research is based on two qualitative case studies of a click-and-mortar retailer and an insurance firm that have transitioned to an omnichannel approach by successfully integrating their online and offline distribution channels. The findings make four primary contributions to theory and practice. First, they extend the literature on omnichannel business by discussing microfoundations related to channel integration grounded in empirical data. Second, our results provide relevant insights for information systems scholars on IT’s contribution to achieving the target of an omnichannel business. Third, the study contributes to research regarding dynamic capabilities by providing empirical insights into how firms deploy dynamic capabilities in practice. Fourth, for practitioners, this research provides valuable decision support on how to transform their organizations toward an omnichannel approach.

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Digital Nudging kann Nutzerverhalten im digitalen Kontext durch gezieltes Gestalten von Nutzeroberflächen lenken. Basierend auf Erkenntnissen der Verhaltensökonomik werden verhaltensbeeinflussende psychologische Effekte angewendet bzw. diesen entgegengewirkt, um Nutzer in ihrer Entscheidungsfindung zu unterstützen. Systematisch angewendet, kann Digital Nudging das Nutzererlebnis steigern und erheblich zum Wertbeitrag des Unternehmens beisteuern.

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Seit fünf Jahren wird die Blockchain-Technologie in den Medien intensiv diskutiert. Der Technologie wird ein hohes Disruptionspotenzial für den Finanzsektor zugesprochen sowie auch für weitere Branchen wie Versicherung, Logistik und Recht. Um den Mehrwehrt der Blockchain verstehen zu können, erklärt der folgende Artikel ihre DNA und Anwendungsfelder.

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The paper presents guidelines for education in business and information systems engineering (BISE) at tertiary institutions, which were designed by a working group comprising domain experts, both from academia and practice. The guidelines contain the learning outcomes in Bachelor’s and Master’s degree programs, in particular, the key subject-specific, social, and personal skills needed by BISE graduates. Moreover, corresponding occupational profiles, the specific skills required, as well as the essential and typical learning content for BISE education are described. Furthermore, detailed recommendations for the design of Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees curricula and sub-curricula in BISE, business administration, and com- puter science, respectively, are provided. The presented guidelines serve several purposes. Providing common directions for BISE education is aiming to support per- sonnel in charge of curriculum development and to assist students in program and career choice.

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Individuals make increasingly more decisions on screens, such as those on websites or mobile apps. However, the nature of screens and the vast amount of information available online make individuals particularly prone to deficient decisions. Digital nudging is an approach based on insights from behavioral economics that applies user interface (UI) design elements to affect the choices of users in digital environments. UI design elements include graphic design, specific content, wording or small features. To date, little is known about the psychological mechanisms that underlie digital nudging. To address this research gap, we conducted a systematic literature review and provide a comprehensive overview of relevant psychological effects and exemplary nudges in the physical and digital sphere. These insights serve as a valuable basis for researchers and practitioners that aim to study or design information systems and interventions that assist user decision making on screens.

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Statt in Zürich oder München im Unterengadin arbeiten – das Projekt «mia Engiadina» hat die dafür nötigen Grundlagen geschaffen. Eine Chance für die Randregion, die Wertschöpfung zu vergrössern.

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Smart meters are the backbone of modern electricity metering and an important enabler of reaching energy efficiency targets. The implementation of new metering infrastructure is, however, making little progress and is often focused on technical aspects only. Additionally, existing smart metering information systems do not yet exploit the possibilities to optimally support customers in their electricity savings activities. Knowing customer preferences is absolutely essential for the effectiveness of energy efficiency measures and, as a consequence, for realizing the economic value of smart metering technology. The presented research contributes to the field by identifying customer value perceptions concerning new smart meter services in the retail electricity market in Switzerland. Founded on a choice-based conjoint analysis with a data sample of more than 1500 respondents from three Swiss regions, five customer segments with different preferences are identified. With the exception of the comfort-oriented customer segment, the other four segments are comprised of customers who are willing (1) to pay for smart meter services and (2) to change their behavior to save electricity. Based on the identified customer value perceptions, implications for the design of smart meter-based energy efficiency services are elaborated.

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Online travel agencies have emerged as the preferred channel to make travel arrangements, but industry reports show that the conversion rates on OTA websites are extremely low. Against this background, we aimed to create a user-interface design element that motivates users to complete their online booking instead of searching and comparing further options. This research in progress builds on insights from the emerging field of digital nudging and used a systematic process for developing a digital nudge based on the design science research paradigm. Specifically, we created a text-based nudge leveraging the goal framing effect, which will be empirically tested through an experiment in future research. Our research contributes to both behavioral and design-oriented research on persuasive technology and digital nudging as well as to practice aiming to create persuasive choice architectures for specific use contexts and goals.

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The evolution of technology and the constant digitalisation strongly influence how consumers behave, how markets develop, and how companies and consumers interact. By offering many channels, companies attempt to react to these developments. In recent years, researchers as well as practitioners have proposed omnichannel management as the best approach to offer several channels. An omnichannel strategy enables consumers to use channels seamlessly and interchangeably and experience the channels uniquely. However, reality looks different: many channel management approaches coexist in practice, and in research, terms to describe different concepts are used without clear distinctions. This paper seeks to eliminate ambiguities regarding the term omnichannel management. By delimiting the term from related approaches and understanding current topics discussed by omnichannel management research, this paper creates a common basis from which to fully understand the concept. Omnichannel management has shown relevance in many areas, but particularly in retailing, marketing, and information systems (IS) research. IS plays an important role in the implementation of the omnichannel approach because obstacles are often technology-related and companies are strongly dependent on information technology (IT). To move research on omnichannel management forward, this paper proposes directions for further research.

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The proliferation of digital technologies enhances the possibilities for collecting customer data. This has tremendously increased the interest in the use of business intelligence and analytics (BI&A) to generate knowledge about customers’ behaviour, preferences and demands. Firms have recognised the potential of BI&A; however, they are still unsure about the exact action possibilities of BI&A to enhance their customer orientation. Thus, in this paper, we aim to identify the functional affordances of BI&A with regard to the establishment of customer-oriented work practices. We conducted an interpretive single case study of a bank in Switzerland. Our results reveal seven affordances from the firm’s perspective. These findings enable us to explain how BI&A may be used in the case-study organisation and what its potential outcomes are. Moreover, we highlight the contributions of BI&A to a firm’s customer response and customer orientation capabilities.

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Linking social networks with government applications promises various benefits, such as improving citizens’ public engagement, increasing transparency and openness in government actions, and new or enhanced government services. The research goal is to drive innovation in governments through the integration of user activities from social networks into government applications. Instead of using third-party social media tools, we call for self-developing integration software, so that the government retains full control of the sensitive government data that is linked to social network user data. Following a design science approach, we developed a data model of user activities in social networks. Our 40 user activity types conceptualize the common fundamental data structure and are a means for comparing current features of ten prominent social networks. We find that a substantial share of user activities can be mutually integrated by wrapping social network Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).

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Business model innovation is a crucial task for established firms, as they need to be able to adapt to increasingly dynamic market environments and foster innovation proactively. However, many incumbent managers struggle with inertia and cognitive barriers hindering adoption of forward-looking business models. Extant business model literature offers methods, which promote thinking outside the realms when designing novel business models. However, there are little insights yet on how to avoid falling back into the trap when converting novel designs into an operative business. By building on the recently emerging cognitive view on business models as well as on theory from cognition in strategy and psychology, we design a process model. The approach aims at mitigating cognitive barriers while assessing required actions for the commercialization of novel business models, which typically needs to be supported by middle management. We evaluate the artifact based on a longitudinal, in-depth case study with a large firm from the enterprise application software industry.

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Previous research has emphasized the virtues of customer insights as a key source of competitive advantage. The rise of customers’ social media use allows firms to collect customer data in an ever-increasing volume and variety. However, to date, little is known about the capabilities required of firms to turn social media data into valuable customer insights and exploit these insights to create added value for customers. Based on the dynamic capabilities perspective, in particular the concept of absorptive capacity (ACAP), the authors conducted multiple case studies of seven mid-sized and large B2C firms in Switzerland and Germany. The results provide an in-depth analysis of the underlying processes of ACAP as well as contingent factors – that is, physical, human and organizational resources that underpin the firms’ ACAP.

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Social Customer Relationship Management (SCRM) ergänzt das klassische Kundenbeziehungsmanagement (CRM) um die bisher nicht vorhandenen Möglichkeiten des Web 2.0. Trotz des zunehmenden Social Media-Engagements fehlt es Unternehmen an Methoden, um den Beitrag des Einsatzes sozialer Medien zu den Unternehmenszielen zu quantifizieren. Dieser Beitrag präsentiert ein strukturiertes Vorgehensmodell, welches Unternehmen dabei unterstützen soll ihre SCRM-Ziele in messbare Kennzahlen zu übersetzen.

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Digitalization is omnipresent in today’s world. Today, it is one of the main drivers for the transformation of business models. This article describes the drivers and challenges of digitalization using the case of Ringier, a leading Swiss media company

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Durch die Integration von Daten aus sozialen Netzwerken und Informationssystemen (IS) im Unternehmen können betriebliche Abläufe verbessert werden, indem neue und relevante Informationen über Kunden/Konsumenten zur Verfügung stehen und Prozesse durch Automatisierung beschleunigt werden. Das Forschungsziel des vorliegenden Beitrags ist die einheitliche Datenintegration von Nutzeraktivitäten verschiedener sozialer Netzwerke mit IS im Customer Relationship Management. Der Ergebnistyp ist ein Datenmodell für Nutzeraktivitäten, welches auf vorhandenen Konzepten basiert und nach gestaltungsorientiertem Forschungsansatz entwickelt wurde. Die Konkretisierung durch die Sicht auf die Daten, erweitert die wissenschaftliche Perspektive und ermöglicht die Implementierung einer Integrationslösung. In einem Softwareprototyp wurde das Datenmodell in einem Anwendungsfall erprobt und dafür verwendet, die unterschiedlichen Datenstrukturen der sozialen Netzwerke LinkedIn, Facebook und Twitter zu vereinheitlichen, um Nutzeraktivitäten plattformunabhängig zu filtern. Die generelle Praxistauglichkeit des Datenmodells in anderen Anwendungsfällen muss künftig durch weitere Einsätze aufgezeigt werden.

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For the design and engineering of enterprises, several methodologies are available that successfully address certain aspects of design problems in enterprises or certain domains. In real-world design problems it is essential to choose the right means to reach the desired ends. Often it is not apparent which methodology is best chosen in order to reach desired ends. Additionally, real-world design problems often require several such methodologies to be combined because multiple aspects have to be covered and/or the problem combines characteristics of several domains. In order to allow for a systematically understanding and comparison of methodologies and for a facilitation of their composition (if necessary), we propose a general conceptual framework. The framework allows analysing the essential concepts and constituent parts of enterprise engineering methodologies. The resulting analysis supports decisions making concerning which methodology or which combinations of methodologies to apply to the given design problem. To demonstrate its usefulness, we first analyse the concepts and building blocks of two design and engineering methodologies on that basis. Second, we show how these two methodologies, which are based on very similar concepts -- as resulted from the analysis by applying the conceptual framework -- can be combined in order to derive at a complete solution for a given design problem.

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The proliferation of digital devices and services has fundamentally changed consumer behavior and needs, and thus the way consumers engage with firms. Many consumers want to engage with firms across all channels, enjoying seamless switching and simultaneous use. Within this dynamic channel environment, the omnichannel concept has been proposed as an appropriate approach to fulfill these demands. However, in practice, many firms do not yet provide an omnichannel experience and need to transform. With this research-in-progress paper, we outline our approach to investigating this phenomenon based on the concept of dynamic capabilities. With insight gained through a multiple case study approach, we hope to give practitioners decision support and researchers new stimuli for further research by identifying best practice dynamic capabilities for transitioning to omnichannel management.

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Companies have long recognised that their participation in social networks is expected by existing and new potential customers, who request support, provide feedback to products they own, post complaints and exchange views about the company, for example. Information systems are required for identifying relevant user activities that must be dealt with in a given time. Therefore, existing social media tools provide analytical functions. The integration of these tools and/or social networks directly with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, however, is still sparse. We propose a system architecture for integrating user activities in social networks with CRM, which describes eight subsystems and serves as a construction plan to implement an integration software. The research follows the process of a design science research and includes proposed components of related system models from existing literature. Parts of the architecture have been evaluated in the context of a software-prototype that creates opportunity-tickets based on new posts, and thereby triggers the lead management process of a consulting company.

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The widespread use of wearables for self-tracking activities despite potential privacy risks is an intriguing phenomenon. For firms, the data collected from individuals’ wearable use are highly valuable for generating in-depth customer insights. Accordingly, firms have an increasing desire for these data. Despite the undisputed relevance of self-tracking activities in practice, there is scarce knowledge among information systems (IS) scholars about the perceived values of wearables that drive individuals’ use and the reasons why these values prevail over the privacy risks. Against this background, our research set out to better understand why people use wearables despite privacy risks by investigating the perceived values of wearables that drive individuals’ use and disclosure of data and the reasons why these values prevail over privacy risks of wearable use. Based on the concept of the privacy calculus and concepts from behavioural decision-making, we conducted in-depth interviews with 22 wearable users from Switzerland. As a result, we reveal eight values that individuals perceive through the use of wearable devices. Furthermore, we illustrate the low awareness regarding privacy risks and explain how the reliance on prominent dimensions and heuristics are influencing individuals’ value-risk assessment.

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A growing number of companies are recognising the benefits of using social media in customer relationship management. At the same time, the consumers' expectations are rising: short response times, individual communication, real interaction with humans, and participation. It is a challenge to observe the many different user activities on many different social media sites. The aim is to reduce the complexity of integrating multiple social media sites with enterprise systems. Therefore, a conceptualisation of user activities in social media is presented. A user activity is a cross-over of an action invoked on an object and a user who acts in a certain context. The 40 user activity types are compared with actual features of ten social media sites. We find out that a substantial share of them can be integrated technically using the social media site's Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).

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Social CRM (SCRM) gilt als neues Paradigma, um die Möglichkeiten des Web 2.0 für das Kundenbeziehungsmanagement zu nutzen. Die Praxis zeigt, dass es verschiedene Schwerpunkte und Ziele bei den Ansätzen für SCRM gibt. Dieser Beitrag erörtert das Zielesystem für SCRM und gliedert die Ziele in die Dimensionen Infrastruktur, Prozesse, Konsumenten und Unternehmensleistung.

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