Search results for: Customer loyalty

Authors: Yen-Ting Chiu, Chia-Ying Lin, Pei-Hsuan Ho

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New technologies can help solve the problem of labor shortage and the decline of birthrate. Technologies can improve human’s life and reduce the burden on the staff and bring convenience to people. That’s why unmanned retail store X-Store was established in Taiwan to create more valuable services and shopping experiences based on smart retailing. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of unmanned stores, X-Store, on customers’ behavioral intentions. It uses the Unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) model as a basis and adds a perceived value factor to explain customer willingness to use the X-Store. In addition, the study further divided the sample into gender and age groups to compare behavioral differences between different groups. The study collected 214 valid questionnaires through online questionnaires. Using SPSS as a statistical analysis tool, the results of the study show that effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, and perceived value have a significant impact on behavioral intention to use X-Store. However, performance expectancy is not significant. This research concludes with managerial implications and suggestions for retail practitioners.

Keywords: perceived value, smart retailing, unmanned store, UTAUT, X-Store

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Authors: Sehrish Iftikhar, Ahmad Ali Shahid, Kiran Nawaz, Waheed Anwar

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Discovery and development of new compounds require intense studies in chemistry, biochemistry. Numerous experiments under laboratory-, greenhouse- and field conditions can be performed to select suitable candidates and to understand their full potential. Novel fungicides are fundamental to combat plant diseases. Fusarium solani is important plant pathogen. New broad spectrum foliar fungicides against complex II were designed in this study. Complex II, namely succinate dehydrogenase (SDH), or succinate quinone oxidoreductase (SQR) is a multi-subunit enzyme at the crossroads of TCA and ETC at the inner mitochondrial membrane. The need for new and innovative fungicides is driven by resistance management, regulatory hurdles and increasing customer expectations amongst others. Fungicidal activity was assessed for the effect on mycelial growth and spore germination of the fungi using fungicide amended media assay. In mycelial growth assay compounds C10 and C6 were highly active against all the isolates. The compounds C1 and C10 were found most potent in spore germination test. It fully proved that the SDHIs designed in this paper displayed as good inhibitory effects against Fusarium solani.

Keywords: Wilt, Fusarium, SDH, antifungal

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Authors: Tuğçe Yavaş Akış

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In recent years, due to an increased use of radioactive materials, radioactive sources are constantly being transported via air, road and ocean ways for medical, industrial, research etc. purposes throughout the world. The quantity of radioactive materials transported all around the world varies from negligible quantities in shipments of consumer products to very large quantities in shipments of irradiated nuclear fuel. Radioactive materials have been less attractive for social science researchers in literature. In this study, it is aimed to discover desired flow of radioactive materials from logistics service quality (LSQ) perspective. In doing so, case study approach will be employed by using secondary data collected from one of the world’s leading transportation companies’ customer care system reports. Movement of radioactive cargoes containing IR-192 and logistics process will be analyzed with the help of logistics service quality dimensions. Based on the case study that will be conducted, interaction between dimensions, the importance of each dimension in desired flow, and their relevance with desired flow of radioactive materials will be explained. This study will bring out the desired flow of radioactive materials transportation and be a guide for all other companies, employees and researchers.

Keywords: logistics service quality, LSQ dimension , radioactive material, transportation

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Authors: Ali Borhani Manesh, Sirus Mohammadi

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Harmonic distortion is caused by nonlinear devices in the power system. A nonlinear device is one in which the current is not proportional to the applied voltage. Harmonic distortion is present to some degree on all power systems. Proactive monitoring of power quality disturbance levels by electricity utilities is vital to allow cost-effective mitigation when disturbances are perceived to be approaching planning levels and also to protect the security of customer installations. Ensuring that disturbance levels are within limits at the HV and EHV points of supply of the network is essential if satisfactory levels downstream are to be maintained. This paper presents discussion on a power quality monitoring campaign performed at the sub-transmission point of supply of a distribution network with the objective of benchmarking background disturbance levels prior to modifications to the substation and to ensure emissions from HV customers and the downstream MV networks are within acceptable levels. Some discussion on the difficulties involved in such a study is presented. This paper presents a survey of voltage and current harmonic distortion levels at transmission system in Kohgiloye and Boyrahmad. The effects of harmonics on capacitors and power transformers are discussed.

Keywords: power quality, harmonics, flicker, measurement, substation

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Authors: Supattra Kanchanopast

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The purpose of this research was to study the customers’ behavioral trend for online accommodation system at Bangkonthi District, Samutsongkhram province. The research collected data from 400 online users. A questionnaire was utilized as the tool in collecting information. Descriptive statistics included frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation. Independent- sample t- test, analysis of variance and Pearson Correlation were also used. The findings of this research revealed that the majority of the respondents were male, 25-32 years old, and graduated a bachelor degree. The respondents mostly worked in private sectors and had monthly income between 10,001-15,000 baht. The regular online users, visiting this system between 3-4 times/month, spending 1-2 hours/time, searched for online accommodation information. This result showed that the users had good and high attitude towards the system. According to the hypothesis testing, the number of online usage had positive related to the behavioral trends: accommodation purchasing intention and recommend the accommodation to others. Furthermore, both the number of online usage and overall attitude had a significant correlation to accommodation purchase intention and recommend the accommodation to others.

Keywords: customer behavior, information system management, online accommodation services, behavioral trend

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Authors: Syed Basit Ali Shah Bukhari, Yan Qiang, Saad Abdul Rauf, Syed Saqlaina Bukhari

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Text Classification is the methodology to classify any given text into the respective category from a given set of categories. It is highly important and vital to use proper set of pre-processing , feature selection and classification techniques to achieve this purpose. In this paper we have used different ensemble techniques along with variance in feature selection parameters to see the change in overall accuracy of the result and also on some other individual class based features which include precision value of each individual category of the text. After subjecting our data through pre-processing and feature selection techniques , different individual classifiers were tested first and after that classifiers were combined to form ensembles to increase their accuracy. Later we also studied the impact of decreasing the classification categories on over all accuracy of data. Text classification is highly used in sentiment analysis on social media sites such as twitter for realizing people’s opinions about any cause or it is also used to analyze customer’s reviews about certain products or services. Opinion mining is a vital task in data mining and text categorization is a back-bone to opinion mining.

Keywords: Natural Language Processing, Ensemble Classifier, Bagging Classifier, AdaBoost

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Authors: Kalyan Deepak Kolla, Ketan Paua, Rajkumar Bhagate

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Transmission dynamics occupy major role in customer perception of the product in both senses of touch and quality of sound. The quantity and quality of sound perceived is more concerned with the whine noise of the gears engaged. Whine noise is tonal in nature and tonal noises cause fatigue and irritation to customers, which in turn affect the quality of the product. Transmission error is the usual suspect for whine noise, which can be caused due to misalignments, tolerances, manufacturing variabilities. In-cabin noise is also more sensitive to the gear design. As the details of the gear tooth design and manufacturing are in microns, anything out of the tolerance zone, either in design or manufacturing, will cause a whine noise. This will also cause high variation in stress and deformation due to change in the load and leads to the fatigue failure of the gears. Hence gear design and development take priority in the transmission development process. This paper aims to study such variability by considering five pairs of helical spur gears and their effect on the transmission error, contact pattern and vibration level on the transmission.

Keywords: gears, whine noise, manufacturing variability, mount vibration variability

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Authors: Hamide Özyürek, Metin Yılmaz

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Standard processes, similar and limited production lines, the production of high direct costs will be more accurate than the use of parts of the traditional cost systems in the literature. However, direct costs, overhead expenses, in turn, decreases the burden of increasingly sophisticated production facilities, a situation that led the researchers to look for the cost of traditional systems of alternative techniques. Variety cost management approaches for example Total quality management (TQM), just-in-time (JIT), benchmarking, kaizen costing, targeting cost, life cycle costs (LLC), activity-based costing (ABC) value engineering have been introduced. Management and cost applications have changed over the past decade and will continue to change. Modern cost systems can provide relevant and accurate cost information. These methods provide the decisions about customer, product and process improvement. The aim of study is to describe and explain the adoption and application of costing systems in SME. This purpose reports on a survey conducted during 2014 small and medium sized enterprises (SME) in Ankara. The survey results were evaluated using SPSS package program.

Keywords: modern costing systems, managerial accounting, cost accounting, costing

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Authors: Muhamad Azani Yahya, Vikneswaran Munikanan, Mohammed Alias Yusof

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Lean thinking holds the potential for improving the construction sector, and therefore, it is a concept that should be adopted by construction sector players and academicians in the real industry. Bridging from that, a learning process for construction sector players regarding this matter should be the agenda in gaining the knowledge in preparation for their career. Lean principles offer opportunities for reducing lead times, eliminating non-value adding activities, reducing variability, and are facilitated by methods such as pull scheduling, simplified operations and buffer reduction. Thus, the drive for rapid construction, which is a systematic approach in enhancing efficiency to deliver a project using time reduction, while lean is the continuous process of eliminating waste, meeting or exceeding all customer requirements, focusing on the entire value stream and pursuing perfection in the execution of a constructed project. The methodology presented is shown to be valid through literature, interviews and questionnaire. The results show that the majority of construction sector players unfamiliar with lean thinking and they agreed that it can improve the construction process flow. With this background knowledge established and identified, best practices and recommended action are drawn.

Keywords: construction improvement, rapid construction, time reduction, lean construction

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Authors: Lorraine Joyce Chua, Sheena Fatima Ragas, Flora Mae Tantay, Carolyn Marie Sunio

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The Philippines is one of the countries most affected by weather-related disasters. The occurrence of natural disasters in this country increases due to environmental degradation making environment preservation a growing trend in the society including the corporate world. Most organizations implemented green practices in order to lower expenses unaware that some of these practices were already a part of a new trend in human resource management known as Green Human Resource Management (GHRM). GHRM is when business organizations implement HR policies programs processes and techniques that bring environmental impact and sustainability practices on the organization. In relation to this, the study hypothesizes that implementing GHRM practices in the workplace will spillover to an employees lifestyle and such lifestyle may moderate the impact of GHRM practices to his job performance. Private industries located in the Philippines National Capital Region (NCR) were purposively selected for the purpose of this study. They must be ISO14001 certified or are currently aiming for such certification. The employee respondents were randomly selected and were asked to answer a reliable and valid researcher-made questionnaire. Structural equation modeling (SEM) supported the hypothesis that GHRM practices may spillover to employees lifestyle stimulating such individual to start a green lifestyle which moderates the impact of GHRM to his job performance. It can also be implied that GHRM practices help shape employees to become environmentally aware and responsible which may help them in preserving the environment. The findings of this study may encourage Human Resource practitioners to implement GHRM practices in the workplace in order to take part in sustaining the environment while maintaining or improving employees job performance and keeping them motivated. This study can serve as a basis for future research regarding the importance of strengthening the GHRM implementation here in the Philippines. Future studies may focus more on the impact of GHRM to other factors, such as job loyalty and job satisfaction of the employees belonging to specific industries which would greatly contribute to the GHRM community in the Philippines.

Keywords: GHRM practices, Green Human Resource Management, Green Lifestyle, ISO14001, job performance, Philippines

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Authors: Aminur Rahman

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The Unique feature of BROTHERS Furniture sofa stands in ergonomic Design, skilled hand work and art work. Present world market is passing through a contentious competitive situation that is rapidly and dramatic. Competitive strategy concerns how to create competitive advantage in upholstery businesses. In order to competitive advantage in upholstery sofa market, Design and develop a sofa that have to ergonomic features. Design an ergonomic upholstery sofa knowing and understanding the appropriate seat depth, seat height, angle between Seat & back, back height which is concurrent market demand, world class sofa has to incorporate ergonomic factors. The study the relationships between human, seat and context variables comfort and discomfort. We must have conduct market survey among users whose are need and use sofa. Health & safety factors should be examined from a variety of angle. An attractive design and meet customer requirements, ergonomically fit should be considered for sofa development. This paper will explain how to design & develop sofa’s as per standard specifications which have ergonomic features for users all over the world.

Keywords: ergonomics, angle between seat & back, standard dimension, seat comfort

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Authors: Ezgi Avci-Surucu, Doganbey Akgul

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Turkey’s energy reforms has achieved energy security through a variety of interlinked measures including electricity, gas, renewable energy and energy efficiency legislation; the establishment of an energy sector regulatory authority; energy price reform; the creation of a functional electricity market; restructuring of state-owned energy enterprises; and private sector participation through privatization and new investment. However, current strategies, namely; “Electricity Sector Reform and Privatization Strategy” and “Electricity Market and Supply Security Strategy” has been criticized for various aspects. The present paper analyzes the implementation of the aforementioned strategies in the framework of generation scheduling, transmission constraints, bidding structure and general aspects; and argues the deficiencies of current strategies which decelerates power investments and creates uncertainties. We conclude by policy suggestions to eliminate these deficiencies in terms of price and risk management, infrastructure, customer focused regulations and systematic market development.

Keywords: electricity markets, risk management, regulations, balancing and settlement, bilateral trading, generation scheduling, bidding structure

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Authors: G. Scremin, I. Y. Suh, S. Doukas

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Spectators follow their favorite sports teams for different reasons. While some attend a sporting event simply for its entertainment value, others do so because of the personal sense of achievement and accomplishment their connection with a sports team creates. Moreover, the level of identity spectators feel toward their favorite sports team falls in a broad continuum. Some are mere spectators. For those spectators, their association to a sports team has little impact on their self-image. Others are die-hard fans who are proud of their association with their team and whose connection with that team is an important reflection of who they are. Several motives for sports consumption can be used to explain the level of spectator support in a variety of sports. Those motives can also be used to explain the variance in the identification, attachment, and loyalty spectators feel toward their favorite sports team. Motives for sports consumption can be used to discriminate the degree of identification spectators have with their favorite sports team. In this study, motives for sports consumption was used to discriminate the level of identity spectators feel toward their sports team. It was hypothesized that spectators with a strong level of team identity would report higher rates of interest in player, interest in sports, and interest in team than spectators with a low level of team identity. And spectators with a low level of team identity would report higher rates for entertainment value, bonding with friends or family, and wholesome environment. Football spectators in the United States and England were surveyed about their motives for football consumption and their level of identification with their favorite football team. To assess if the motives of sports fans differed by level of team identity and allegiance to an American or English football team, a Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) under the General Linear Model (GLM) procedure found in SPSS was performed. The independent variables were level of team identity and allegiance to an American or English football team, and the dependent variables were the sport fan motives. A tripartite split (low, moderate, high) was used on a composite measure for team identity. Preliminary results show that effect of team identity is statistically significant (p < .001) for at least nine of the 17 motives for sports consumption assessed in this investigation. These results indicate that the motives of spectators with a strong level of team identity differ significantly from spectators with a low level of team identity. Those differences can be used to discriminate the degree of identification spectators have with their favorite sports team. Sports marketers can use these methods and results to develop identity profiles of spectators and create marketing strategies specifically designed to attract those spectators based on their unique motives for consumption and their level of team identification.

Keywords: fan identification, market segmentation of sports fans, motives for sports consumption, team identity

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Authors: Chia-Ching Tsai

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In service delivery, interpersonal interaction is the key to customer satisfaction, and apparently, the factor of human is critical in service delivery. Besides, customers quite care about the consequences of co-recovery. Thus, this research focuses on service failure caused by other customers and uses a 2x2 factorial design to investigate the impact of consequence and level of service co-recovery on post-recovery satisfaction and repurchase intent. 150 undergraduates were recruited as participants, and assigned to one of the four cells randomly. Every participant was requested to read the scenario and then rated the post-recovery satisfaction and repurchase intent. The results show that under the condition of failed co-recovery, level of co-recovery has no effect on post-recovery satisfaction, while under the condition of successful co-recovery, high-level co-recovery causes significantly higher post-recovery satisfaction than low-level co-recovery. Moreover, post-recovery satisfaction has significantly positive impact on repurchase intent. In the system of service delivery, customers interact with other customers frequently. Therefore, comparing with the literature, this research focuses on the service failure caused by other customers. This research also supplies a better understanding of customers’ view on consequences of different levels of co-recovery, which is helpful for the practitioners to make use of co-recovery.

Keywords: service failure, service co-recovery, consequence of co-recovery, level of co-recovery, post-recovery satisfaction, repurchase intent

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Authors: Angad Arora

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In production operations/manufacturing, a cell or line is typically a bunch of similar machines (computer numerical control (CNCs), advanced cutting, 3D printing or special purpose machines. For qualifying a typical manufacturing line /cell / new process, Ideally, we need a sample of parts that can be flown through the process and then we make a judgment on the health of the line/cell. However, with huge volumes and mass production scope, such as in the mobile phone industry, for example, the actual cells or lines can go in thousands and to qualify each one of them with statistical confidence means utilizing samples that are very large and eventually add to product /manufacturing cost + huge waste if the parts are not intended to be customer shipped. To solve this, we come up with 2 steps statistical approach. We start with a small sample size and then objectively evaluate whether the process needs additional samples or not. For example, if a process is producing bad parts and we saw those samples early, then there is a high chance that the process will not meet the desired yield and there is no point in keeping adding more samples. We used this hypothesis and came up with 2 steps binomial testing approach. Further, we also prove through results that we can achieve an 18-25% reduction in samples while keeping the same statistical confidence.

Keywords: statistics, data science, manufacturing process qualification, production planning

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Authors: Mohammed Mutala Surazu

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The origin of Islam is traced back to the time of Prophet Mohammed (SAW), 571 AD, who thought the six main articles of faith and the five pillars of the region. Today, Islam is regarded as one of the fastest growing religions in the world, another peaceful one and very accommodating to other religions. Politics dominates in Islam and, as a result, divisions into various groupings, including the Ahmadiyah, Tijania, Suni and many others. Despite all believing the Qur’an as the only holy book used, they are all affiliated with different types of hadiths, including the al-Nawawi’s. These divisions are the reasons for tension in Islam, and it is necessary to conduct this research to investigate political situations in Islam within the society. Over the past three or two decades, there have been diverse and divided opinions about politics and religion (Islam). Many believe that politics and religion are inherently subjective and should be accepted as such, and the further argument for a relativistic approach is that individuals' and communities’ beliefs and values should be acknowledged and respected since no single political or religious ideology can claim absolute truth and superiority over the other. The perspective view is that emphasis is placed on tolerance and coexistence between different political and religious views; moreover, society is comprised of individuals with different backgrounds, opinions and interests, so it is necessary to find common ground and create space where diverse ideas can peacefully coexist in order to promote dialogue, understanding and mutual respect to maintain social harmony and peaceful relation in the society. Also, some individuals in society argue about the universalism of certain moral principles, which should be certain and agreed upon by all. For example, the Jewish people believe that eating pork is wrong, and if someone of another religion is asked if they agree with that, objectively, the non-Jewish would be comfortable with that. Others still argue that a continuous relativistic approach to politics and religion can lead to a breakdown of shared moral standards, loss of ethical principles, doubting faith or loyalty and uprising against agencies of politics and religion. And within the political groupings, they believe in the same ideologies to propagate their message, likewise the religious belongings (Christianity, Islam, Judaism and others) who also ensure that their religious perspectives or beliefs are deeply rooted in the society. This forms the basis for research about the perspective of politics and religious relativism in this modern era to respond to the questions and the challenges of religious politics in Islam.

Keywords: relativism, religion, universality, politics

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Authors: Mohammad Amini, Aliakbar Alijarahi

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This research that is collected and title as ‘ the search of possibility of running six sigma process in IT education center ‘ goals to test possibility of running the six sigma process and using in IT education center system. This process is a good method that is used for reducing process, errors. To evaluate running off six sigma in the IT education center, some variables relevant to this process is selected. These variables are: - The amount of support from organization master boss to process. - The current specialty. - The ability of training system for compensating reduction. - The amount of match between current culture whit six sigma culture . - The amount of current quality by comparing whit quality gain from running six sigma. For evaluation these variables we select four question and to gain the answers, we set a questionnaire from with 28 question and distribute it in our typical society. Since, our working environment is a very competition, and organization needs to decree the errors to minimum, otherwise it lasts their customers. The questionnaire from is given to 55 persons, they were filled and returned by 50 persons, after analyzing the forms these results is gained: - IT education center needs to use and run this system (six sigma) for improving their process qualities. - The most factors need to run the six sigma exist in the IT education center, but there is a need to support.

Keywords: education, customer, self-action, quality, continuous improvement process

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Authors: Balqees A. Al-Thuhli, Ali H. Al-Badi, Khamis Al-Gharbi

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Information technology is changing rapidly and the users’ expectations are also growing. Dealing with these changes in information technology, while satisfying the users’ needs and expectations is a big challenge. IT managers need to explore new mechanisms/strategies to enable them to cope with such challenges. The objectives of this research are to identify the significant challenges that might face IT managers in higher education institutes in the face of the high and ever growing customer expectations and to propose possible solutions to cope with such high-speed changes in information technology. To achieve these objectives, interviews with the IT professionals from different higher education institutes in Oman were conducted. In addition, documentation (printed and online) related to these institutions were studied and an intensive literature review of published work was examined. The findings of this research are expected to give a better understanding of the challenges that might face the IT managers at higher education institutes. This acquired understanding is expected to highlight the importance of being adaptable and fast in keeping up with the ever-growing technological changes. Moreover, adopting different tools and technologies could assist IT managers in developing their organisations’ IT policies and strategies.

Keywords: information technology, rapid change, CIO roles, challenges, IT managers, coping mechanisms, users' expectations

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Authors: Mohammad Soliman, Mohamed A. Abou-Shouk

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Knowledge management focuses on the development, storage, retrieval, and dissemination of information and expertise. It has become an important tool to improve performance in tourism enterprises. This includes improving decision-making, developing customer services, and increasing sales and profits. Knowledge management adoption depends on human, organizational and technological factors. This study aims to explore the concept of knowledge management in travel agents in Egypt. It explores the requirements of adoption and its impact on performance in these agencies. The study targets Category A travel agents in Egypt. The population of the study encompasses Category A travel agents having online presence. An online questionnaire is used to collect data from managers of travel agents. This study is useful for travel agents who are in urgent need to restructure their intermediary role and support their survival in the global travel market. The study sheds light on the requirements of adoption and the expected impact on performance. This could help travel agents identify their situation and the determine the extent to which they are ready to adopt knowledge management. This study is contributing to knowledge by providing insights from the tourism sector in a developing country where the concept of knowledge management is still in its infancy stages.

Keywords: knowledge management, knowledge management adoption, performance, travel agents

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Authors: Min Wei

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Objectives: Experience tourism represents an advanced stage of tourism compared with sightseeing tourism and relaxation tourism. Experience tourism reflects the full respect of experience economy to the human natures. This paper chose one of the most popular ocean tourism products in Zhoushan, as a subject and investigated the constructive elements in tourist experience based on the needs of tourists. Methods: This paper started with the influences of tourism product innovation on tourist experience, then proposed a model of the relationship between tourist experience, tourist satisfaction, and the following behavior of tourists, and concluded that tourist experience improves tourist satisfaction and thereby enhances tourist loyalty based on the developmental pathway of experience tourism. To ensure the accuracy of the collected data of the research results, the sample of this questionnaire survey is chosen by the method of occasional sampling, combined with the judgment of the investigators and the convenience of the questionnaire survey, the survey objects are selected from the scenic spots of Putuo Mountain, Zhujiajian, Taohua Island, waiting room of passenger terminal, etc. Before filling in the questionnaire, the author and the respondents have a short communication. On the premise that the respondents can fully understand the purpose and content of the questionnaire, tourists fill in the questionnaire independently and collect it on the spot. Results: The research results of this paper are mainly embodied in the following aspects: it is concluded that there are many constructive factors of tourists' experience in Zhoushan tourism products. Based on Zhoushan tourism products, this paper explores the constructive factors of tourists' experience in Zhoushan tourism products from three aspects: attracting object experience, facility experience and service experience. At present, there are still big differences between Zhoushan tourism products, tourists’ expectations and tourists' experience, mainly in the aspects of transportation, publicity and tour guide service. Corresponding measures should be taken to improve tourists' experience quality and satisfaction. Conclusions: The influence factors of island tourism products are discriminated, and established a structural model of tourist experience, which includes three basic elements: attractions, facilities, and services. This model was further verified by questionnaires and analyses in Putuo Shan, Zhujia Jian, and Taohua Island. Finally, we combined this model and made some suggestions on boost the satisfaction of Zhoushan islands.

Keywords: experience tourism, tourists’ expectations, tourists' experience, tourism products

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Authors: Aysegul Sarac

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Washer-dryers are the machines which can either wash the laundries or can dry them. In other words, we can define a washer-dryer as a washing machine and a dryer in one machine. Washing machines are characterized by the loading capacity, cabinet depth and spin speed. Dryers are characterized by the drying technology. On the other hand, energy efficiency, water consumption, and noise levels are main characteristics that influence customer decisions to buy washers. Water condensation technology is the most common drying technology existing in the washer-dryer market. Water condensation technology uses water to dry the laundry inside the machine. Thus, in this type of the drying technology water consumption is at high levels comparing other technologies. Water condensation technology sprays cold water in the drum to condense the humidity of hot weather in order to dry the laundry inside. Thus, water consumption influences the drying performance. The scope of this study is to optimize water consumption during drying process under a constraint of energy consumption and drying performance. We are using 6-Sigma methodology to find the optimum water consumption by comparing drying performances of different drying algorithms.

Keywords: optimization, 6-Sigma methodology, washer-dryers, water condensation technology

Procedia PDF Downloads 333

Authors: Chia Yu Chen, Shu Fen Wu, Chen-Fuh Lam, I-Ling Tsai, Shu Jiuan Chen, Yen Ling Liu

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Aim: It remains undetermined that whether increased work stress may affect the job satisfaction and career loyalty among nursing staffs in the operating room. The long-term goal of this study is to lengthen the professional life of operating room nurses by attenuating the work stress and enhancing their contentment in work. Method: This was a cross-sectional, descriptive study performed in a metropolitan teaching hospital in the southern Taiwan between May 2017 to July 2017. A structured self-administered questionnaire, modified from the Occupational Stress Indicator-2 (OSI-2) and Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) manual was collected from the operating room nurses. Chi-square test was used to analyze the categorical data and Pearson correlation was used to analyze the association between two numerical datasets (SPSS version 20.0). Results: The response rate was 80% (80/100) and a total of 73 (73%) completed forms were eventually proceeded for analysis. The average scores for work stress and job satisfaction of the operating room nurses were 145.96±32.91 and 47.38±6.07, respectively. The correlation coefficients of work stress versus job satisfaction and organizational identity were (r=-0.338, p=0.003 and r=-0.354, p=0.002), respectively. There were more nurses who took rotating shift quitted works from the operating room than those who took only dayshift (2＝5.176, p<0.05). Nurses who reported of having lower job satisfaction were associated with significantly higher turnover intention (t=3.714, p< 0.01). Following multivariate regression analysis, rotating shift and low job satisfaction were identified as the two independent predictors of intention to quit from working in the operating room. Conclusion: Our study clearly demonstrates that increased work stress significantly attenuates job satisfaction and organizational identity. Rotating shift is associated with higher work stress, lower job satisfaction, and higher turnover intention, which is consistent with the previous surveys carried out in the department of medical technology. Therefore, improvement of working quality in the operating rooms is essential to increase the retain intention of the well-trained nursing staffs. Further investigation into types of work shifts and other strategies of attenuating stress in workplace is currently undertaken in order to improve the job satisfaction and to decrease turnover intention in the operating room.

Keywords: rotating shift, work stress, job satisfaction, turnover intention

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Authors: Yared Yitagesu Tilahun

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Every nation, developed or developing, relies on transportation, but Addis Abeba City's transportation service is impacted by a number of variables. The current study's objectives are to determine the factors that influence transportation and gauge consumer satisfaction with such services in Addis Abeba. Customers and employees of Addis Ababa's transportation service authority would be the study's target group. 40 workers of the authority would be counted as part of the 310 000 clients that make up the population of the searcher service. Using a straightforward random selection technique, the researcher only chose 99 customers and 28 staff from this enormous group due to the considerable cost and time involved. Data gathering and analysis options included both quantitative and qualitative approaches. The results of this poll show that young people between the ages of 18 and 25 make up the majority of respondents (51.6%). The majority of employees and customers indicated that they are not satisfied with Addis Ababa's overall transportation system. The Addis Abeba Transportation Authority prioritizes client happiness by providing fair service. The company should have a system in place for managing time, resources, and people effectively. It should also provide employees the opportunity to contribute to client handling policies.

Keywords: customer satisfaction, transportation, services, determinants

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Authors: Chan Kwon Park, Chae-Bogk Kim, Sung-Min Park

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This study is a research on the authenticity of transactions between corporations and quality of their relationships and transaction performances. As the factors of authenticity of transactions, honesty, transparency, customer orientation and consistency were selected; as the factors of quality of relationships, trust and commitment were selected, and as the factors of transactions performances, intention of repeat transactions and switching intention were selected, and on these relationships a hypothesis was established, and verification was conducted. First, the factors of the authenticity of transactions positively influenced the factors of quality of relationships. Thus, a higher level of authenticity of transactions can lead to higher level of trust and commitment. Second, the factors of quality of relationships made a positive influence on the intention of repeat transactions, while a negative influence in the switching intention. Third, it showed that trust and commitment as the factors of quality of relationships functioned partly as the parameter between the authenticity of transactions and transaction performances. Finally, it proved that the factors of the authenticity of transactions improved trust and commitment in transactions between corporations and further improved the intention of repeat transactions while they decreased the switching intention.

Keywords: authenticity of transactions, trust, commitment, intention of repeat transactions, switching intention

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Authors: Kittipong Tissayakorn, Fumio Akagi, Yu Song

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Manufacturers have been exploring innovative strategies to achieve and sustain competitive advantages as they face a new era of intensive global competition. Such strategy is known as Supply Chain Management (SCM), which has gained a tremendous amount of attention from both researchers and practitioners over the last decade. Supply chain management (SCM) is considered as the most popular operating strategy for improving organizational competitiveness in the twenty-first century. It has attracted a lot of attention recently due to its role involving all of the activities in industrial organizations, ranging from raw material procurement to final product delivery to customers. Well-designed supply chain systems can substantially improve efficiency and product quality, and eventually enhance customer satisfaction and profitability. In this paper, a manufacturing engineering perspective on supply chain integration is presented. Research issues discussed include the product and process design for the supply chain, design evaluation of manufacturing in the supply chain, agent-based techniques for supply chain integration, intelligent information for sharing across the supply chain, and a development of standards for product, process, and production data exchange to facilitate electronic commerce. The objective is to provide guidelines and references for manufacturing engineers and researchers interested in supply chain integration.

Keywords: supply chain, supply chain management, supply chain integration, manufacturing industries

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Authors: Cem Isik Dogru, Salih Tekin, Kursad Derinkuyu

Abstract:

Electric vehicle (EV) carsharing is an alternative method to tackle urban transportation problems. This method can be applied by several options. One of the options is the one-way carsharing, which allow an EV to be taken at a designated location and leaving it on another specified location customer desires. Although it may increase users’ satisfaction, the issues, namely, demand dissatisfaction, relocation of EVs and charging schedules, must be dealt with. Also, excessive electricity has to be stored in batteries of EVs. To cope with aforementioned issues, two-step mixed integer programming (MIP) model is proposed. In first step, the integer programming model is used to determine amount of electricity to be sold to the grid in terms of time periods for extra profit. Determined amounts are provided from the batteries of EVs. Also, this step works in day-ahead electricity markets with forecast of periodical electricity prices. In second step, other MIP model optimizes daily operations of one-way carsharing: charging-discharging schedules, relocation of EVs to serve more demand and renting to maximize the profit of EV fleet owner. Due to complexity of the models, heuristic methods are introduced to attain a feasible solution and different price information scenarios are compared.

Keywords: electric vehicles, forecasting, mixed integer programming, one-way carsharing

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Authors: R. Ramesh, K. K. Shivaraman

Abstract:

The main aim of this paper is to handle the energy requirement in an efficient manner by merging the advanced digital communication and control technologies for smart grid applications. In order to reduce user home load during peak load hours, utility applies several incentives such as real-time pricing, time of use, demand response for residential customer through smart meter. However, this method provides inconvenience in the sense that user needs to respond manually to prices that vary in real time. To overcome these inconvenience, this paper proposes a convolutional neural network (CNN) with k-means clustering machine learning model which have ability to forecast energy requirement in short term, i.e., hour of the day or day of the week. By integrating our proposed technique with home energy management based on Bluetooth low energy provides predicted value to user for scheduling appliance in advanced. This paper describes detail about CNN configuration and k-means clustering algorithm for short-term energy forecasting.

Keywords: convolutional neural network, fuzzy logic, k-means clustering approach, smart home energy management

Procedia PDF Downloads 281

Authors: Tiberiu Socaciu, Tudor Colomeischi, Eugenia Iancu

Abstract:

Business failure affects in various proportions shareholders, managers, lenders (banks), suppliers, customers, the financial community, government and society as a whole. In the era in which we have telecommunications networks, exists an interdependence of markets, the effect of a failure of a company is relatively instant. To effectively manage risk exposure is thus require sophisticated support systems, supported by analytical tools to measure, monitor, manage and control operational risks that may arise. As we know, bankruptcy is a phenomenon that managers do not want no matter what stage of life is the company they direct / lead. In the analysis made by us, by the nature of economic models that are reviewed (Altman, Conan-Holder etc.), estimating the risk of bankruptcy of a company corresponds to some extent with its own business cycle tracing of the company. Various models for predicting bankruptcy take into account direct / indirect aspects such as market position, company growth trend, competition structure, characteristics and customer retention, organization and distribution, location etc. From the perspective of our research we will now review the economic models known in theory and practice for estimating the risk of bankruptcy; such models are based on indicators drawn from major accounting firms.

Keywords: Anglo-Saxon models, continental models, national models, statistical models

Procedia PDF Downloads 377

Authors: Lizinis Cassendra Frederick Dony, Jirom Jeremy Frederick Dony, Cyril Supain Christopher

Abstract:

The purpose of this paper is to improve the devotion to leadership through HR practices implementation at the PETRONAS stations. This emphasize the importance of personal grooming and Customer Care hospitality training for their front line working individuals and teams’ at PETRONAS stations in Sabah. Based on Thomas Edison, International Leadership Journal, theory, research, education and development practice and application to all organizational phenomena may affect or be affected by leadership. FINDINGS – PETRONAS in short called Petroliam Nasional Berhad is a Malaysian oil and gas company that was founded on August 17, 1974. Wholly owned by the Government of Malaysia, the corporation is vested with the entire oil and gas resources in Malaysia and is entrusted with the responsibility of developing and adding value to these resources. Fortune ranks PETRONAS as the 68th largest company in the world in 2012. It also ranks PETRONAS as the 12th most profitable company in the world and the most profitable in Asia. As of the end of March 2005, the PETRONAS Group comprised 103 wholly owned subsidiaries, 19 partly owned outfits and 57 associated companies. The group is engaged in a wide spectrum of petroleum activities, including upstream exploration and production of oil and gas to downstream oil refining, marketing and distribution of petroleum products, trading, gas processing and liquefaction, gas transmission pipeline network operations, marketing of liquefied natural gas; petrochemical manufacturing and marketing; shipping; automotive engineering and property investment. PETRONAS has growing their marketing channel in a competitive market. They have combined their resources to pursue common goals. PETRONAS provides opportunity to carry out Industrial Training Job Placement to the University students in Malaysia for 6-8 months. The effects of the Industrial Training have exposed them to the real working environment experience acting representing on behalf of General Manager for almost one year. Thus, the management education and reward incentives schemes have aspire the working teams transformed to gain their good leadership. Furthermore, knowledge and experiences are very important in the human capital development transformation. SPSS extends the accurate analysis PETRONAS achievement through 280 questionnaires and 81 questionnaires through excel calculation distributed to interview face to face with the customers, PETRONAS dealers and front desk staffs stations in the 17 stations in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. Hence, this research study will improve its service quality innovation and business sustainability performance optimization. ORIGINALITY / VALUE – The impact of Transformational Leadership practices have influenced the working team’s behaviour as a Brand Ambassadors of PETRONAS. Finally, the findings correlation indicated that PETRONAS stations needs more HR resources practices to deploy more customer care retention resources in mitigating the business challenges in oil and gas industry. Therefore, as the business established at stiff competition globally (Cooper, 2006; Marques and Simon, 2006), it is crucial for the team management should be capable to minimize noises risk, financial risk and mitigating any other risks as a whole at the optimum level. CONCLUSION- As to conclude this research found that both transformational and transactional contingent reward leadership4 were positively correlated with ratings of platoon potency and ratings of leadership for the platoon leader and sergeant were moderately inter correlated. Due to this identification, we recommended that PETRONAS management should offers quality team management in PETRONAS stations in a broader variety of leadership training specialization in the operation efficiency at the front desk Customer Care hospitality. By having the reliability and validity of job experiences, it leverages diversity teamwork and cross collaboration. Other than leveraging factor, PETRONAS also will strengthen the interpersonal front liners effectiveness and enhance quality of interaction through effective communication. Finally, through numerous CSR correlation studies regression PETRONAS performance on Corporate Social Performance and several control variables.1 CSR model activities can be mis-specified if it is not controllable under R & D which evident in various feedbacks collected from the local communities and younger generation is inclined to higher financial expectation from PETRONAS. But, however, it created a huge impact on the nation building as part of its social adaptability overreaching their business stakeholders’ satisfaction in Sabah.

Keywords: human resources practices implementation (hrpi), source of competitive advantage in people’s development (socaipd), corporate social responsibility (csr), service quality at front desk stations (sqafd), impacts of petronas leadership (iopl)

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Authors: Yared Yitagesu Tilahun

Abstract:

Every nation, developed or developing, relies on transportation, but Addis Abeba City's transportation service is impacted by a number of variables. The current study's objectives are to determine the factors that influence transportation and gauge consumer satisfaction with such services in Addis Abeba. Customers and employees of Addis Ababa's transportation service authority would be the study's target group. 40 workers of the authority would be counted as part of the 310 000 clients that make up the population of the searcher service. Using a straightforward random selection technique, the researcher only chose 99 customers and 28 staff from this enormous group due to the considerable cost and time involved. Data gathering and analysis options included both quantitative and qualitative approaches. The results of this poll show that young people between the ages of 18 and 25 make up the majority of respondents (51.6%). The majority of employees and customers indicated that they are not satisfied with Addis Ababa's overall transportation system. The Addis Abeba Transportation Authority prioritizes client happiness by providing fair service. The company should have a system in place for managing time, resources, and people effectively. It should also provide employees the opportunity to contribute to client handling policies.

Keywords: transportation, customer satisfaction, services, determinants

Procedia PDF Downloads 83