1. Issues in Information Systems Research & Research Methods IL IM Assistant Professor Information Systems Department New Jersey Institute of Technology E-mail: il.im@njit.edu

2. Agenda Trends in information technology Trends in Information Systems research What I have learned in doctoral program –What is theory? –What is good research? –Why literature review is important –Journals and conferences

3. Trends in Information Technology (3 P’s) Price down Pervasive –Every where, any time, in any devices Personalized –Customized to each user’s needs and tastes

4. Price Down Moor’s law –Capacity of computers (same price) doubles in every 18 months –Processor  Memory  Bandwidth  Sensor –Mega  Giga  Tera  ? New applications –Convergence (PDA + PC + Cell phone + GPS + Camera + … ) –More intelligent system

5. Pervasive IT Pervasive and ubiquitous computing devices More devices will have integrated micro computer –Continuous sensing and data collection –Examples: E-Z Pass, PDA + phone, Smart Card, Active badge More devices will be connected –Bluetooth – networking standard for nearby devices ( < 10m) –802.11 – wireless network card standard –IPv4  IPv6 Recent technology –location aware devices (GPS), MEMS

6. Smaller and Smaller Devices

7. MicroElectroMechanical System (MEMS)

8. Location-Aware Wireless Internet

9. Personalized Information Systems Customizing services for personal tastes Internet technologies –User configured system – Yahoo!, MSN –Opportunistic links – travelocity.com, expedia.com –Recommendations – amazon.com Recent technology – location-aware personalization

12. Research Issues Identifying customer tastes –How to identify and use customer taste information Developing new services and application in the pervasive computing environments –What types of services and applications are possible –What application is good for what How do people use new information technologies (IT) –Acceptance and adoption of IT –Impact of IT on people

13. Research Issues in Marketing From Segmentation to personalization –Personalized marketing –New type of marketing (real-time marketing) Customer information overflow –Various sources of customer data –How to extract useful information

14. Theory in Research Theory – Tested model about the relationships between variables Why is it important? –You don’t have to invent the wheel again –A good thinking exercise Good theory –Parsimonious –Generalizable

15. What is Good Research Rigorous (research methodology) –Reliability: repeatability –Validity: generalizability Significant (research topic) –Contribution to practice –Simple

16. Journals and Conferences Journal –Communication medium for researchers –Most journals are online Why is literature review important? –Check if similar study has already been done –Know related research –Know research trends Conference –Communication channel for state-of-the-art research –Networking with other people

17. How to Write A Paper (Thesis)? Find interesting phenomenon Search for previous studies and related studies –Develop “SPECIFIC” research questions (ask managers) –Find out what has been done Framework development –Apply theories –Synthesize two or more theories (develop a framework) Design research –Data collection methods (experiment/survey, sample/subject) –Analysis methods