Serendipity and its study

How technical and situational cues affect impulse buying behavior in social commerce? Evidence from bored consumers

Introduction

With the rise of social media and web technologies, users are increasingly spending time on browsing and purchasing on social commerce, particularly during idle moments of casual scrolling. Social commerce applications with sophisticated social features and security measures may tend to attract a significant number of highly engaged users. The purpose of this study is to find out whether customers will be interested in the content posted on the applications and generate impulse consumption when they are bored.

Methods

Drawing on stimulus-organism-response framework, this paper explores how technical cues and situational cues affect impulse buying behavior in social commerce applications and the mediating impact of consumer-perceived values. Data were gathered from 395 respondents who frequently utilize and have shopping experience on social commerce applications. The PLS-SEM and fsQCA were applied to formulate and test the proposed hypotheses.

Results

The results of PLS-SEM reveal technical cues (ease of use, visual appeal and security) and situational cues (passing time and serendipity) positively influenced impulse buying. The results of fsQCA offer six solutions of different combinations of constructs which can lead to high impulse buying.

Discussion

These findings may extend existing research on impulse buying behavior and consumer psychology, offering valuable insights for marketers. They also point towards strategies for more effectively encouraging impulse purchase in digital retail environments, particularly among consumers who are browsing out of boredom.

Designing for serendipity: a means or an end?

Purpose

This article aims to gain a better understanding of the reasons why serendipity is designed for in different kinds of environments. Understanding these design intents sheds light on the value such designs bring to designers, in contrast to the users of the environment. In this way, the article seeks to contribute to the literature on cultivating serendipity from a designers’ point of view.

Design/methodology/approach

An extensive review of the literature discussing designing for serendipity was conducted to elicit the different motivations to design for serendipity. Based on these findings and a thorough analysis, a typology of design intents for serendipity is presented.

Findings

The article puts forward four intents to design for serendipity: serendipity as an ideal, common good, mediator and feature. It also highlights that the current academic discourse puts a strong emphasis on two of them. It is argued that this academic abstraction could be problematic for how we deal with designs for serendipity, both in theory and practice.

Originality/value

The novelty of this article is that it addresses the question of why to design for serendipity from a designer’s point of view. By introducing the notion of directionality it opens up the opportunity to discuss serendipity from multiple perspectives, which contributes to gaining a firmer understanding of serendipity. It allows to more explicitly formulate the different functions of a design for serendipity and thereby expands our knowledge on the value of designing for serendipity. At the same time, it sheds light on the potential threats to designing for serendipity.

A typology of research discovery tools

There has been a proliferation of new research discovery tools that aid scientists in finding relevant publications. To obtain a general overview of this development, this article generates a conceptual typology of all possible research discovery tools by drawing from the information-theoretical concepts of redundancy/variety. Bibliometric links between scholarly publications can thus exhibit ‘redundancy’ (i.e. expectable linkages between academic works) or ‘variety’ (i.e. original co-occurrence patterns). On the redundancy-reproducing end of the typology are machines that harness extant co-citations or keyword queries, such as academic search engines and paper recommender systems. The variety end of the spectrum harbours services that enable categorial browsing or that suggest publications randomly, such as journals’ tables of contents or random paper bots. The typology has implications for understanding how the design of research discovery platforms may ultimately shape aggregate citational networks of science.

Research information encountering and keeping behaviour of post-graduate students of social sciences in an online environment

Purpose

Literature divides information behaviours into two forms: first, interacting information with a purpose in mind and second, encountering accidently in three environments including person to person, analogue and online environment. However, the unique information encountering and encountered information keeping behaviour of social sciences research students of Asian culture in an online environment remained unexplored. Therefore, the present study is designed to investigate the research information encountering and encountered information keeping behaviour of the students of social sciences in an online environment.

Design/methodology/approach

The quantitative approach and survey technique were used for the study. The research students were approached using a multi-stage total population sampling technique. In total, 233 returned questionnaires were entered and analysed in SPSS (version 22). Descriptive (frequencies and percentages) and inferential statistical techniques (t-tests, one-way ANOVA, effect sizes, correlations and regression) were applied to meet the objectives of the study.

Findings

The results of the study indicate that the respondents whether male or female, of MPhil or PhD, whichever frequency to use the Internet, often encounter research information. However, those who use the Internet for general browsing encounter more than those who purposively. This makes a change to the model of information encountering that the users encounter information while generally browsing and not only while actively working on foreground information searching. Moreover, the research students prefer to use simple tools on complex software based for keeping the encountered research information. The information if kept properly for use, may be useful in the course of research, ease its tasks and result in increasing the speed of research productivity.

Practical implications

The present study has theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically first, it fills the literature gap regarding research information encountering and its keeping and second, it came up with a proof that the researcher not only encounter research information while foreground information searching but while generally browsing also. Hence, information encountering model is equally applicable to research students who generally browse. Regarding practical implications, the study identifies that the research students prefer to keep using simple tools. Hence, information literacy instructors, either librarians or continuous education program designers are advised to incorporate instructional programs on the use of complex software-based tools for keeping information.

Originality/value

This is the first study in non-Western countries which investigated the research information encountering behaviour of social sciences MPhil and PhD students. The preferred tools to keep the encountered research information are first time identified in the literature.

Information Encountering at the Opera: What Donizetti and Romani’s Opera Buffa L’elisir d’amore Can Teach Us About Pseudo-Serendipity in Human Information Behaviour

This study connects two purportedly unrelated disciplines: information studies and opera, by examining what can be learned about information encountering, and in particular on pseudo-serendipity in human information behaviour, through analysing selected scenes of the nineteenth century opera buffa L’elisir d’amore (“Elixir of love”). As part of the emergent “information studies in the arts” framework, the study uses a hermeneutic interpretation of the libretto through informational perspective and analysis of the musical treatment of the text. All choices and sense-making are subjective. Analysis of L’elisir d’amore’s first six scenes uncovers valuable descriptions and insights regarding information encountering within a nineteenth century south-west Europe temporal culture. Findings augment the current knowledge on pseudo-serendipity in human information behaviour, and provide a more profound understanding of this nonlinear information behaviour. Operatic works have not yet served the development of information studies. This study establishes that opera can be a meaningful scholastic source for developing information research and discourse. It provides both valuable insight, from an operatic angle, into information encountering in the context of a bygone era, and an original information-behavioural layer of analysis to the Italian opera L’elisir d’amore.

Information encountering re-encountered

Purpose

In order to understand the totality, diversity and richness of human information behavior, increasing research attention has been paid to examining serendipity in the context of information acquisition. However, several issues have arisen as this research subfield has tried to find its feet; we have used different, inconsistent terminology to define this phenomenon (e.g. information encountering, accidental information discovery, incidental information acquisition), the scope of the phenomenon has not been clearly defined and its nature was not fully understood or fleshed-out.

Design/methodology/approach

In this paper, information encountering (IE) was proposed as the preferred term for serendipity in the context of information acquisition.

Findings

A reconceptualized definition and scope of IE was presented, a temporal model of IE and a refined model of IE that integrates the IE process with contextual factors and extends previous models of IE to include additional information acquisition activities pre- and postencounter.

Originality/value

By providing a more precise definition, clearer scope and richer theoretical description of the nature of IE, there was hope to make the phenomenon of serendipity in the context of information acquisition more accessible, encouraging future research consistency and thereby promoting deeper, more unified theoretical development.

Toward a description framework of information encountering experiences

Purpose

One of the primary challenges of conducting information encountering (IE) research is the difficulty in capturing people's IE experiences. The purpose of this paper is to develop a general description framework of IE experiences as guidance for participants to record diary entries in diary studies of IE.

Design/methodology/approach

340 descriptions of IE incidents were collected from 18 previous IE studies as secondary data. A thematic analysis of the secondary data engendered a general description framework of IE experiences composed of 9 main themes and 31 sub-themes. The framework was then applied in a diary study to investigate Generation Z's online IE behavior.

Findings

The nine main themes of the framework, including “environment”, “foreground activity”, “stimulus noticed”, “reaction to stimulus”, “content examined”, “interaction with encountered information”, “value of experience”, “pre-encountering emotional state”, and “post-encountering emotional state”, were used to create a diary questionnaire for collecting IE incidents. The sub-themes were refined and organized into a coding scheme for the content analysis of the incidents collected. The diary study collected 255 valid IE incidents which were analyzed based on three phases, that is, pre-encountering, encountering, and post-encountering.

Originality/value

The value of this study consists in its methodological contributions. First, it makes creative use of secondary data accumulated in the literature and derives from the thematic analysis a general framework which people follow to describe their IE experiences. Second, it demonstrates the great potential of diaries for data collection in IE research through the successful application of the general description framework of IE experiences in a diary study. Third, the diary questionnaire created based on the framework provides sufficient guidance in eliciting complete and detailed IE incidents.

Sustainability in Online Video Hosting Services: The Effects of Serendipity and Flow Experience on Prolonged Usage Time

Online video hosting services have been a highly competitive e-commerce application in recent years. The service providers constantly seek viable ways for users to prolong usage time as a model for sustainable business development. In this study, we propose a framework to verify the impact of perceived serendipity on flow experience and prolong usage time. In addition, we verify the factors of online video platforms that affect perceived serendipity, such as enabled connections, introduced unexpected information, and induced curiosity. This study used questionnaires to survey YouTube users and analyzed 405 samples using the Structural Equation Model (SEM) method. The result shows that enabled connections and introduced unexpected information significantly affect perceived serendipity, which significantly impacts on the flow experience. Although induced curiosity does not significantly affect perceived serendipity, it directly affects the flow experience. Moreover, both perceived serendipity and flow experience positively affect intentions to prolong usage time. The results validate that serendipity is another antecedent of flow experience, and support the assumption that increasing the likelihood of perceived serendipity will affect users’ intention to prolong usage time in online video hosting services. The implication of research and discussions provides references for online video hosting service providers in marketing and operations.

Catch that word: interactivity, serendipity and verbal fluency in a word production task

Problem solving outside of the cognitive psychologist’s lab unfolds in an environment rich with bodily gesture and material artefacts. We examine this meshwork of internal mental resources, embodied actions and environmental affordances through the lens of a word production task with letter tiles. Forty participants took part in the study which contrasted performance in a high interactivity condition (where participants were able to move letter tiles at will), a low interactivity condition (where movements were restrained) and a shuffle condition (where participants could not move the tiles but were allowed to randomly rearrange the array). Participants were also video recorded to facilitate coding of behaviour. While aggregate performance measures revealed a marginal impact of interactivity on performance, when the participants’ behaviour was taken into account, interactivity had a consistent and statistically significant beneficial effect. Detailed, exploratory examination of a subsample of participants informed the formulation of additional hypotheses tested across the full sample: the luckiness of the shuffle in that condition significantly predicted the number of words produced and a more efficient strategy was significantly easier to enact in the high interactivity condition. Additionally, two detailed case studies revealed several moments when accidental changes to the letter tile array offered unplanned words reflecting a serendipitous coagency as well as many moments when environmental chance was ignored. These data and observations indicate that interactivity, serendipity, and internal cognitive resources determine problem-solving performance in this task.

Genres and situational appropriation of information

Purpose

Information science research has begun to broaden its traditional focus on information seeking to cover other modes of acquiring information. The purpose of this paper is to move forward on this trajectory and to present a framework for explicating how in addition to being sought, existing information are made useful and taken into use.

Design/methodology/approach

A conceptual enquiry draws on an empirical vignette based on an observation study of an archaeological teaching excavation. The conceptual perspective builds on Andersen’s genre approach and Huvila’s notion of situational appropriation.

Findings

This paper suggests that information becomes appropriable, and appropriated (i.e. taken into use), when informational and social genres intertwine with each other. This happens in a continuous process of (re)appropriation of information where existing information scaffolds new information and the on-going process of appropriation.

Originality/value

The approach is proposed as a potentially powerful conceptualisation for explicating information interactions when existing information is taken into use rather than sought that have received little attention in traditional models and theories of human information behaviour.

The role of serendipity in the story ideation process of print media journalists

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to build upon the studies of journalism from an LIS perspective by exploring and differentiating the purposive behavior of newspaper reporters from their serendipitous encounters with information that lead to new story ideas. This paper also provides a path toward pedagogical improvements in training the modern journalism workforce in being more open to creative story ideas.

Design/methodology/approach

This study utilized semi-structured telephone interviews. Participants were recruited via e-mail after collecting contact information through the Cision database. The study sample was drawn from newspaper reporters who work at or freelance for the top 25 metropolitan newspapers in the USA, in terms of circulation size, based on data from the Alliance for Audited Media. A total of 15 participants were interviewed.

Findings

This paper provides insight into the story ideation process of journalists in that the study participants generally do not think about how they are coming up with story ideas as much as they are striving to place themselves in situations where, based on their experience and interests, they know they are more likely to encounter a good idea. Each encounter proved meaningful in some powerful fashion, which speaks to the historical importance of serendipity in achieving breakthroughs and discoveries in a wide variety of fields.

Research limitations/implications

The sampling frame for this study was relatively small, representing 8 percent of the total number of working newspaper journalists from the top 25 newspapers in the USA, in terms of circulation size. Therefore, the findings are not generalizable to the entire population of journalists in this country.

Practical implications

The findings point to the importance of a prepared mind in facilitating serendipitous episodes. In the case of journalism, that means developing a heightened news sense and cultivating routines where they place themselves in trigger-rich environments. Pedagogically, journalism education must include courses in creative storytelling to help train the modern newspaper workforce in an ever-expanding and competitive media landscape. These courses, ideally paired with techniques and models from the field of information science and learning technologies, could help train young journalists in methods that enhance their ability to identify, seek and pursue serendipitous stories.

Originality/value

This paper fulfills a need in journalism studies in finding variability in news routines by utilizing an interdisciplinary approach that combines journalism studies and library and information science models to probe how journalists encounter ideas incidentally. Previous research in this area has focused on how news consumers serendipitously encounter information. This paper takes a fresh approach to explore how creative ideas are encountered serendipitously in the construction of news.

A context-based study of serendipity in information research among Chinese scholars

Purpose

The current understanding of serendipity is based primarily on studies employing westerners as the participants, and it remains uncertain whether or not this understanding would be pervasive under different cultures, such as in China. In addition, there is not a sufficient systematic investigation of context during the occurrence of serendipity in current studies. The purpose of this paper is to examine the above issues by conducting a follow-up empirical study with a group of Chinese scholars.

Design/methodology/approach

The social media application “WeChat” was employed as a research tool. A diary-based study was conducted and 16 participants were required to send to the researchers any cases of serendipity they encountered during a period of two weeks, and this was followed by a post-interview.

Findings

Chinese scholars experienced serendipity in line with the three main processes of: encountering unexpectedness, connection-making and recognising the value. An updated context-based serendipity model was constructed, where the role of context during each episode of experiencing serendipity was identified, including the external context (e.g. time, location and status), the social context and the internal context (e.g. precipitating conditions, sagacity/perceptiveness and emotion).

Originality/value

The updated context model provides a further understanding of the role played by context during the different processes of serendipity. The framework for experiencing serendipity has been expanded, and this may be used to classify the categories of serendipity.

Three key affordances for serendipity

Purpose

Serendipity is an interesting phenomenon to study in information science as it plays a fundamental – but perhaps underestimated – role in how we discover, explore, and learn in all fields of life. The purpose of this paper is to operationalize the concept of serendipity by providing terminological “building blocks” for understanding connections between environmental and personal factors in serendipitous encounters. Understanding these connections is essential when designing affordances in physical and digital environments that can facilitate serendipity.

Design/methodology/approach

In this paper, serendipity is defined as what happens when we, in unplanned ways, encounter resources (information, things, people, etc.) that we find interesting. In the outlined framework, serendipity is understood as an affordance, i.e., a usage potential when environmental and personal factors correspond with each other. The framework introduces three key affordances for facilitating serendipity: diversifiability, traversability, and sensoriability, covering capacities of physical and digital environments to be diversified, traversed, and sensed. The framework is structured around couplings between the three key affordances and three key personal serendipity factors: curiosity, mobility, and sensitivity. Ten sub-affordances for serendipity and ten coupled personal sub-factors are also briefly outlined. Related research is compared with and mapped into the framework aiming at a theoretical validation. The affordance approach to serendipity is discussed, including different degrees and types of serendipity.

Findings

All the terminological “building blocks” in the framework are seen to resonate with the included related research. Serendipity is found to be a commonplace phenomenon in everyday life. It is argued that we cannot “engineer” nor “design” serendipity per se, but can design affordances for serendipity. Serendipity may thus be intended by designers, but must always be unplanned by users. The outlined affordance approach to serendipity points to the importance of our sensory-motor abilities to discover and explore serendipitous affordances.

Research limitations/implications

Implications of the framework for designing physical and digital environments with affordances for serendipity are briefly considered. It is suggested that physical environments may have a primacy regarding affordances of sensoriability for facilitating serendipity, and digital environments a primacy regarding traversability, whereas physical and digital environments may afford similar degrees of diversifiability. In future research, the framework needs further empirical validation in physical and digital environments.

Originality/value

No other research has been found addressing affordances for serendipity and connections between environmental and personal factors in similarly detailed ways. The outlined framework and typology may function as a baseline for further serendipity studies.

Citation classics published in knowledge management journals. Part III: author survey

Purpose

This paper is the third part of a series of works investigating the top 100 knowledge management (KM) citation classic articles. The purpose of this paper is to understand why KM citation classics are well-cited.

Design/methodology/approach

The results of a survey of 58 KM citation classic authors were reported as descriptive statistics and subjected to content analysis.

Findings

An archetype of a KM citation classic author was constructed including demographics, personal characteristics, motivation and work preferences. There is a need for developing novel ideas in KM research. Timeliness of a publication is directly linked to its future impact. Editors should involve citation classics authors as reviewers, and KM researchers should improve their citation practices. Serendipity played a very important role in early KM research, especially from the perspective of discovering new and interesting phenomena.

Research limitations/implications

Whereas the importance of serendipity is not questioned, future KM researchers should rely more on a formal, meticulous and well-planned research approach rather than on the hope of making a discovery by accident or luck. KM citation classics authors relied on serendipity to form the foundation of the discipline, but extending their work requires formal and structured inquiries.

Practical implications

Many authors conducted research to solve a problem to serve the needs of both practice and academia, rather than being overly theoretical.

Originality/value

Because KM researchers can no longer rely on past bibliometric theories, this paper helps understand why specific articles are highly cited and recommends how to conduct and develop future KM research that has impact.

Serendipity in legal information seeking behavior

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of serendipity in legal information seeking behavior of family law advocates, whom act in a challenging information environment that lacks published court rulings.

Design/methodology/approach

– A quantitative research using a web-based structured questionnaire, among Israeli family law advocates. Single stage systematic sampling, with random starting point and no recurring pattern of each sixth family law advocate on the Israel Bar Advocates List, was applied. Data from 135 Israeli family law advocates were used for analysis.

Findings

– Electronic information sources were found as most serendipitous; family law advocates were identified as super encounterers; four types of professional background concerns and seven legal professional contributions of the unexpected encounters with court rulings, were identified. Furthermore, findings support several frameworks presented on earlier information encounter literature.

Research limitations/implications

– Data absence on demographic and professional variables distributions of Israeli family law advocates was a limiting factor, compensated by the systematic sampling method used, thus can be regarded to reflect the views of the entire study population. Surveys’ reliance on self-reporting recalls of serendipitous events is also a limiting factor, though predicted and acceptable in this matter since chance encounters occur unexpectedly and are complex to capture.

Practical implications

– Chance encounters may expose lawyers to meaningful information it is unlikely they were able to find because its limited publication, and assist them keep up with current law for better serves their clients.

Originality/value

– The study augments the current empirically based knowledge on serendipity and provides insights into legal information chance encounters among a little-studied group of knowledge workers: family law advocates.

Transgender information behaviour

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to explore information behaviour and the information barriers transgendered people encounter. This study produces new information about the information needs in the construction of the transgendered identity, the changing of the information needs during this phase, utilized information sources, information sharing and barriers encountered in the information behaviour displayed by transgendered people.

Design/methodology/approach

– Semi-structured interviews were used to explore the information behaviour of 12 transgendered participants. This study represents a phenomenological-hermeneutic approach. A qualitative content analysis was used in analysing the data with categories derived from previous research and research questions.

Findings

– Serendipity played an important role at the beginning of the participants’ information seeking phase: the young individual would not have terms corresponding to his or her experience because of the invisibility of the transgender phenomenon in the culture. The barriers to seeking information were psychological, demographic, role-related or interpersonal, environmental or source characteristic. Fear was apparent as a barrier in the surrounding culture often caused by expectations, attitudes in the family environment and people around. Source characteristic barriers were related to the lack of terms and vocabulary required to seek information and also the lack of the information itself. Information about transgender and gender minorities was essential in building up a clear gender identity, and the most relevant information sources of this sort of information this were other transgendered people and the experience-based information they had shared.

Originality/value

– The information behaviour of transgendered people has not been previously studied. In this study a model of information behaviour and information barriers was made. The model includes individual’s information practices, sources of information and also the barriers affecting information behaviour.

Spark, an application based on Serendipitous Knowledge Discovery

Findings from information-seeking behavior research can inform application development. In this report we provide a system description of Spark, an application based on findings from Serendipitous Knowledge Discovery studies and data structures known as semantic predications. Background information and the previously published IF-SKD model (outlining Serendipitous Knowledge Discovery in online environments) illustrate the potential use of information-seeking behavior in application design. A detailed overview of the Spark system illustrates how methodologies in design and retrieval functionality enable production of semantic predication graphs tailored to evoke Serendipitous Knowledge Discovery in users.