Emerging Technologies Of Web 2.0 Case Study

The emerging technologies of Web 2.0 have had major impacts in all aspects of social and personal life. These new technologies have become the complicated vehicles for mutual creation and satisfaction of interests (Kozinets, 2017). One of the main outcomes of these new technologies has been a shift in the retail industry. In our consumer society, the buying behavior is now more a ritual, a bravado and a show off, rather than an activity to secure necessary items that satisfy our primary or secondary needs. People carefully evaluate, consult, recommend and buy things as if this is the sole way to determine and enhance their identity. As figures show, the use of Internet is on the rise worldwide and accordingly, it is not surprising that the
In addition, ease of access, certainty about sellers' behavior (actually most of the work is done by the machine), being notified when an item becomes available, saving time and energy and other features are among some reasons that buyers are shifting towards online retail stores. But, one important aspect of this retail industry is that customers can find reviews from previous buyers of an item and learn about their experience. There are even independent forums dedicated specifically to customer experience. These platforms are a special category of discussion communities which facilitate the exchange of information, experiences, and recommendations of particular items. Examples include Amazon and eBay communities and independent consumer review platforms such as epinion.com, dooyoo.com, and ciao.co.uk. Virtual or consumer-opinion websites provide consumer reviews on virtually any product and company. Consumer reviews on these portals generally include a textual review of a product, a formal product rating (often numeric in nature), how other readers found the review useful and/or the degree of usefulness, and information about the review writer (Burton & Khammash,
Founded in 2006 by two brothers, Digikala soon became a multi-million-dollar business and today it is valued between 400 to 600 million US dollars. The powerful algorithm of recommendation has helped Digikala find the interests of customers and therefore this business can stimulate buyers to buy more by showing other items that previous buyers of an item have bought, recommending commodities based on user visits, and providing discount bonuses for customers which expire in a short period, if not used. As Digikala now enjoys both advantages of "economy of scale" and "economy of scope," it has become a monopoly in Iran and this might be the reason why some features like user profile information, image, and credits are not available on Digikala's website. As the sole superpower of the online retail industry in Iran, Digikala does not see any reason to give away a part of its power.
Given the importance of Digikala in the consumer life in Iran, it is not surprising that many Iranian and international scholars have studied it with different approaches (see Pahlavanyali & Momeni, 2016; Safari et al., 2016; Taleizadeh et al., 2016). As we mentioned above, users have shown great interest and trust in other users' reviews about a commodity and therefore in this study we want to evaluate what factors contribute to a perceived usefulness of a