A B S T R A C TSocial networking sites (SNS) have become a significant component of people's daily lives and have revolutionized the ways that business is conducted, from product development and marketing to operation and human resource management. However, there have been few systematic studies that ask why people use such systems. To try to determine why, we proposed a model based on uses and gratifications theory. Hypotheses were tested using PLS on data collected from 148 SNS users. We found that user utilitarian (rational and goal-oriented) gratifications of immediate access and coordination, hedonic (pleasure-oriented) gratifications of affection and leisure, and website social presence were positive predictors of SNS usage. While prior research focused on the hedonic use of SNS, we explored the predictive value of utilitarian factors in SNS. Based on these findings, we suggest a need to focus on the SNS functionalities to provide users with both utilitarian and hedonic gratifications, and suggest incorporating appropriate website features to help users evoke a sense of human contact in the SNS context.

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Purpose This research posits that e-vendors can use product aesthetic information (PAI) as a strategic positing tool to shape consumers’ perceptions of e-vendors’ websites. Design/methodology/approach To test this framework, variations on a garment’s color (a crucial element of product aesthetics) are presented to four different treatment groups to determine whether aesthetic treatment influences the perception of the website. Findings The results suggest that consumers who consider a product visually appealing also perceive the e-vendor’s website as useful, resulting in enjoyment of the shopping experience. Positive perceptions lead consumers to form positive attitudes toward the vendor’s website. Originality/value While product aesthetics is well-studied in marketing and psychology, its relevance to the e-commerce domain is relatively underexplored. To fill the void, the paper proposes a theoretical framework that explains how PAI influences buyers’ cognitive and affective evaluations of their online shopping experiences, which in turn shapes their attitudes toward e-vendors’ sites.

Online athlete-generated content in social media has high potential to become the information source for both team managers and coaches to discern players' mood status and shaky performance before games. In the existing literature, either in psychology or sport analytics, there is a stream of research that investigated the relationship between athletes' mood and the individual sport performance; however, few of them discussed the causality from the social media perspective. In this study, we look deep into the Athlete-generated content (AGC) and aim to provide a more comprehensive framework to sport operators that incorporates players' social media content into their administrative decision-making process. We obtained a unique and extensive dataset of AGC for active NBA players (in the 2012-13 season) from Twitter and apply sentiment analysis technique to measure the general mood polarity of a player. The general mood was then incorporated into econometrics models to examine its effect on players' individual game performance. The results suggest that the mood of NBA player has significant effect on driving sport performance. This paper explores the possibility of using social media data to measure athletes' mood and predicting the sport performance.

This paper examines the relationship between visual design and information systems (IS) design and describes how IS theory and practice has viewed visual design (an aesthetic discipline) from a positivist perspective. First, we present a rationale for the current view of aesthetics from the positivistic IS discipline. After tracing the philosophical development of aesthetics and its associated disciplines, we then follow the more recent development of positivism and the scientific method. Based on assertions by both philosophers and IS researchers, we examine the differing perspectives of the aesthetic and positivist disciplines from an IS vantage point. We propose that visual aesthetic design be integrated with IS theory and describe the benefits that are potentially gained from this transdisciplinary approach.