Using Value Chain Analysis to Manage Consumer Confidence in IT Knowledge Services

Abstract: Recent years have seen enormous growth of internet-based utility services. Such infrastructural support provides fertile ground for the cultivation of knowledge-based practices, driving the development of low-cost, mass-market tools for knowledge sharing. IT Knowledge Services are the programs that provide content-based organizational outputs to meet end-user requirements. A major obstacle in the adaptation of IT knowledge services and markets is the sceptic behaviour of the end-users. This thesis addresses the problem of how to manage consumer confidence in the IT knowledge services. Value chain analysis is employed for this objective. This thesis synthesises the results of survey of IT knowledge services users and providers (empirical analysis) and the results obtained by the peers (secondary analysis). The research reveals that majority of the users are not confident about the scope of knowledge services if these services are not designed in a way to overcome the internet’s inherent architectural vulnerabilities. Much concern about the privacy of personal information (including personal financial data such as bank info, credit card details etc.) among the respondents is observed. More than 61% of the users responded that their trust level will be increased if they are enabled to monitor the processing of their data in a comprehensible manner; however, only 12.5% of the respondents were found willing to pay more for better security (confidence building) solutions. The IT knowledge service providers believe that there is a disparity between the market expansion and the technological innovation; and therefore the supply of technological solutions does not match the market demand of dependable services and solutions. This situation gives rise to consumers’ distrust to the IT knowledge services ecosystem. The surveys were conducted in the form of interviews so as to provide the respondents a fine grained set of questions together with the possibility of having some informal discussions to have a better understanding of the contexts. A set of recommendations drawn from the results of this work are made at the end of this thesis.