There have been heated debates on the controversial role of healthcare Group Purchasing Organizations (GPOs) which negotiate contracts with vendor on the behalf of healthcare providers. These GPOs cover their costs by charging manufacturers ‘‘Contract Admi nistrative Fees,’’ instead of being reimbursed by the providers. This causes conflicts of interests. Therefore, purchasing through GPOs migh...

A model for comparing the inventory costs of purchasing under the economic order quantity (EOQ) system and the just-intime (JIT) order purchasing system in existing literature concluded that JIT purchasing was virtually always the preferable inventory ordering system especially at high level of annual demand. By expanding the classical EOQ model, this paper shows that it is possible for the EOQ...

Electronic word of mouth is available to customers in different types of online consumer reviews, which can be used to help them make e-commerce purchasing decisions. Customers acknowledge that online consumer reviews help them to determine eWOM credibility and to make purchasing decisions. This study uses surveys and multiple regression analysis to create an extended Elaboration Likelihood Mod...

Online purchasing is a booming business and is studied extensively in marketing and information systems research. Online product reviews are one factor that influence a consumer’s purchasing behavior and attitudes. Brand equity is a popular phenomenon that influences purchasing behaviors and attitudes of consumers. We seek to answer two questions in this research. First, do online consumer revi...