a r t i c l e i n f o Over the years, mobile advertising has grown to become a technology that allows an advertiser to promote products or services to targeted users efficiently and effectively. This is because the ubiquitous nature of mobile devices can provide contextual information and allow users to demonstrate preferences. This study proposes a targeted mobile advertising system (TMAS) tha...

The opening century of the four hundred years of Atlantic history explored in this volume can be understood historically only in terms of the cards that the entrants into it brought to the table. The hands they held were similar—in fact global—in Europe, Africa, and the Americas. The historical dynamics that motivated and enabled the players in all three regions revolved around very longterm st...

Search engines, referrals services, advisors, and other forms of information gatekeepers and recommenders, are omnipresent in today’s information-heavy economy. These services widely employ sponsored recommendations, wherein merchants pay the recommender in return for favorable placement in the recommender’s list. As a form of advertising, sponsored results can serve as a signaling mechanism wh...

The importance of merchant guilds for the commercial development of Europe is beyond doubt. However, there is still little agreement as to why they emerged, persisted and ultimately declined between the 11 and 18 centuries. Historical studies have focused on individual cases and idiosyncratic circumstances that restrict severely comparability, while economic approaches based on game or contract...

When faced with Esther Sahle's, Edmond Smith's, and Dane A. Morrison's recent books on English American merchants, their activities, communities, a reader any level of exposure to the field early modern republic business history might legitimately ask, do we really need more? Historians have so completely associated economic activity merchant that many deemed period an era “merchant capitalism....

Why have general-purpose stored-value cards been unsuccessful in penetrating the U.S. market? Three necessary conditions for a payment instrument to be successful are discussed: consumers and merchants need to be convinced of its advantages over existing payment alternatives for at least some types of transactions; payment providers must convince consumers and merchants simultaneously of its be...