E-government in North and Far North Queensland communities: an exploratory analysis

The goal of marketing management is to provide value to customers. It is documented in various research, that Internet purchases of products enhance customer satisfaction (see for example, Athiyaman, 2002). Since market orientation is a salient criterion for business success at the market place, Governments now deliver information and services online through the Internet. The focus of this paper is on E - Governments in the North Queensland (NQ) and the Far North Queensland (FNQ) communities. Specifically, we assess the information and services that are online for each of the 21 shires and city councils in the NQ/FNQ region. The conceptual model that we employ to assess the websites was the "spreading activation" model. This model highlights that when an item representation and concept are activated in one's memory, the activation begins to spread to the features associated with them in one's memory (Seth et al., 2005). For example, the concepts "Internet" and "Local Government websites" may activate features such as PDA access, security, etc. The objective of this exercise is to elicit features such as information and services that customers expect to be offered online on a local government website. This analysis then paved the way for modeling the dynamics of "website competition" between two major city councils in the region: the city of Townsville in NQ, and Cairns in the FNQ region