Using Digital Media for Family and School Communication

With the emergence of digital information sharing, the usage of digital media for parent-teacher communication is increasing globally. However, digital communication still lacks complete acceptance and confidence by both teachers and parents. The research conducted by Bordalba and Bochaca explored the usage of emails and online platforms for the purpose of two-way communications. The primary research data was obtained using information from interviews with 30 families, 35 teachers from 11 different schools in Spain. There were two key areas that demanded focus:

1. Beliefs about the medium
2. Beliefs about the context

Background

The level of involvement parents have towards schooling and child’s educational success greatly impacts the student’s academic progress. For this reason the governmental institutions in Europe have emphasized parent involvement with schools to ensure they attain their target of less than 10% early leavers by 2020. When parents and schools have a frequent and transparent flow of information regarding the student academic progress, this propagates confidence, trust and respect between both the parties. However for many schools there is low-quality level of communication because, there are various barriers that impact effective communication such as incompatible work schedules, cultural barriers and socio-economic differences.

Although the usage of ICT such as emails, mobile devices and online platforms has immensely increased, these device are frequently used for one-way broadcasting of information. The researchers were perplexed as why these devices have not been frequently used for two-way communication between parents and schools? 

Research on ICT Between Schools and Parents

Bordalba and Bochaca selected twenty schools on the basis of purposeful sampling, the schools further recommended samples of parents on the basis of various factors such as size, rural or urban settings and varying socio economic backgrounds. The interviews were conducted on the basis of purposeful sampling too, of five teachers and five parents for each school. Of these schools five were labelled ICT because they had some form of e-communication with parents and the rest were non-ICT. The data waa collected over a period of several months (April- November 2014).

Research Findings

• The study concluded that the beliefs about context impact immensely on the implementation of emails and online platforms. The communication process involves two agents, the parents and the teachers and each comes with their own predispositions. There is a need for alignment between these two parties for successful implementation of the framework. 
• Another implication of the research is that there is a need for combining both the methods for a win-win situation . Some teachers form ICT schools implied that digital media are suitable tools for communicating basic information where as for complex messages it is better to have face-to-face communication.  Thus according to Bordalba and Bochaca the main role of ICT is to redistribute the channels and opt for the most suitable one depending on the nature of the message.
• The research findings also suggested that the parents and teachers are more willing to adapt to the ICT methods if they are promoted by the management for school-family communication. The management needs to take the first steps to adapt this methodology.

References

Bordalba M.M. & Bochaca J.G., Digital media for family-school communication? Parents' and teachers' beliefs, Computers & Education (2019)

A Comparison of Experience and Search Goods: How Consumers Search for Information

Search and Experience Goods – An Introduction

Nelson¹ has categorized products in two categories: the search goods and the experience goods. The search goods are those for which the consumer has had the opportunity to reach about opinions and reviews prior to purchasing it. But for the experience goods the evaluation can only be formed upon purchasing and using the product. Subsequently the information on the attributes assigned to search goods is easily available, whereas for experience goods this information cannot be provided without direct experience of the product. 

Overlap of Search and Experience Goods

However with the immense penetration of the electronic commerce the gap between search and experience goods has been bridged to a large extent. Today’s consumers has access to a wide array of reviews and information on various products online as compared to the traditional consumers of brick-and-mortar businesses.

However there is an explosion of reviews and information about products from multiple sources which can be very overwhelming for the consumer. The new challenge now the online consumers face is to filter out the relevant information to make an informed purchase decision.

Role of Recommendations

The previous searches conducted by Nelson concludes that consumers follow endorsements for experience goods with greater fervor than search goods.

In such an environment recommendation agents play an important role. Chen et al ² conducted a categorized books on Amazon into best-sellers, most popular and the least popular and evaluated the role recommendations played. They arrived at the conclusion that recommendations are positively associated with sales.

Research on Search and Experience Products at Online Retail Store

Previous studies have focused primarily on a single product available at multiple stores. Basu has challenged this traditional model by focusing on buying behaviors of consumers looking at various products, categories and brands available at a single large Finnish retail store over a span of one year (March 2014- March 2016). In order to narrow down the research to specific product types, the model has used three examples:

1.       Search Goods (personal electronics like mobile phones, laptops, household appliances)

2.       Experience Goods (Health and Beauty Products)

Basu has only considered the browsing patterns of consumers who visited the online store and eventually made the purchase. When consumers are browsing through the products, the recommendation agents also provide other relevant product based on the search profiles. Prompts such as “customers who viewed this item also viewed” or “customers who bought this item also bought” or “what customers bought after viewing this item”. Thus when a consumer clicks on any of these prompts this shows the influence of recommendations for search products.

Conclusion and Findings

·         With an increase in price there is a direct relationship in search for information on search goods, this implies that the more expensive a search good is the more intensely the consumers with search for information on them. However for experience goods there is a slight inverse relationship, as the price of experience good increases the search for information decreases nominally.

·         For search goods, if consumers have prior knowledge about the products they are likely to search even more. However for experience goods, prior knowledge has no impact on information search. This is because for search goods, as they are provided with more information they uncover more product attributes which eventually increases the likelihood of purchase.

·         For search goods, the quality of recommendation that has been clicked on/followed is not significant. But for experience goods, these recommendations are highly significant.

·         The main finding of the research was that the experience goods have up to three times lower search intensities as compared to the search goods.

References

1.       Philip Nelson. Advertising as information. Journal of Political Economy, 82(4):729–54, 1974.

1.       Phillp Nelson. Information and consumer behaviour. Journal of Political Economy, 78(2):311–329, 1970.

2.       Pei-Yu Chen, Shin-yi Wu, and Jungsun Yoon. The impact of online recommendations and consumer feedback on sales. ICIS 2004 Proceedings, (58):520–541, 2004.

3.       S. Basu, Information search in the internet markets: experience versus search goods, Electronic Commerce Research and Applications (2018)