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Abstract. Deployment of Information Technology/Information Systems (IT/IS) has been recognized as one of the potential means to supply information for timely business decision making. Despite growing importance of IT/IS in business, Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) embrace constant challenges to deploy IS effectively, and thus, hardly to optimize the IT/IS strategic values. In such situation, IS planning is getting paramount to promote more effective IT/IS management of the firms. This study reports IS planning practices of a manufacturing-based SME. The face to face interview has been carried out to explore IS planning activities in a chosen firm. The qualitative analysis suggests that the selected company did undergo the four phases of strategic IS planning process namely, planning, analysing, selection, and implementation. The owner act as the champion of the strategic IS planning process. Further, the owner and the employees plays an important role as a decision maker. Specifically, the owner decides mainly on acquiring a new technology related to the firm's core business process whereas the users responsible on the selection of relevant application (s) to be used in their respective departments. Apart from that, the owner also plays a role as a researcher for the new technology acquired whilst the users provide an input on the applications to be acquired. Background and Objective of StudyGreater reliance on Information Technology/Information Systems (IT/IS) on daily operations and strategic needs urges today's organisations to emphasise on the IS planning. Appropriate IS planning practice enables organisations to narrow the gap between IT/IS and the strategic objectives of the organisations. IS alignment then leads to a greater competitiveness and value derived from IS-related investment [1].Increased importance of IT/IS in organisation has attracted considerable research to understand the impact of IT/IS on firm performance. Specifically, IS planning emerges as one of the primary focuses as long as IT/IS deployment is concerned. IS planning refers to a process of specifying an organization's selection of computer-based applications and technologies that correspond to the organisations strategic objectives [2].

Research on the strategic Information Systems (IS) planning is typically concentrated on large firms. However, the outcomes of this research may not be sufficient to adequately apply to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Responding to the limited body of work in SMEs with respect to strategic IS planning, this research aims to fill the gap in the body of literature. Having limited resources available, financially and technically, strategic IS planning is getting more crucial for SMEs. Prior work suggests that a high level of internal competencies such as IT leadership by the owner or the top management of the firm are important for progressive IT development to take place in SMEs. Having said that IS is getting paramount for firm’s survival to optimize IS effectively, it is incumbent to investigate the factors influencing strategic IS planning amongst the SMEs. This study contributes to research and practice by providing indepth insights into the IS planning processes in SMEs with a particular focus on the roles of top management and users. Researchers can use these results, which are somewhat different from larger organizations, to revise IS planning phases.

Abstract. The practices of social proof techniques to attract consumers to shop on social media have proliferated over time and been used extensively. The reviewed literature uncovers that social community recommendation, customers' ratings and reviews, celebrity's endorser and numbers of likes, affect consumers' purchasing decisions. However, the effect of different types of social proof techniques on purchasing intention is unknown. This study empirically compares the effect of number of followers, celebrity endorser and social community recommendation on consumers' purchasing intention. An experiment has been conducted and the results reveal that the consumers' purchasing intention differs between groups. Further analysis discovers that the impact on consumers' purchasing intention is different between high number of followers and low number of followers, and between having social community recommendation and not having social community recommendation. Though, the impact of these two techniques is equal wherein no technique is superior to other. In order to gain purchasing engagement and boost online sales, online businesses on social media are encouraged to use the power of social proof technique, either by increasing the number of followers or providing more social community recommendations.