Search results for: customers’ perspectives

Authors: Kateryna Merkulova, Alessio Castello, Maria Kreuzer

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This research investigates the drivers of long-term relationship building between customers and suppliers within the luxury food supply chain, a topic that remains largely unexplored in the current state of academic literature. This paper identifies for the first time the key elements that influence the formation and maintenance of effective supply chain relationships, which are crucial for navigating the complexities of the luxury food industry. In particular, it explores the critical role of trust in a business-to-business context, specifically emphasizing its significance in the luxury food supply chain. Empirically, this research is contextualized in the region of the French Riviera, which offers a gastronomic playground for food enthusiasts, making it ideally suited to explore the luxury food sector. Qualitative in-depth interviews with stakeholders along the luxury supply chain (i.e., suppliers, chefs, restaurant owners, and fine food shop managers) allow identifying key drivers of trustful business relationships. Triangulating different perspectives of stakeholders within the luxury supply chain adds validity and robustness to the findings. The findings have important theoretical and managerial implications for the effective functioning of long-term supplier-buyer relationships.

Keywords: luxury food, relationship building, B2B, supply chain, trust

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Authors: Andrew Adjah Sai, Portia Opoku Boadi

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Explaining change is an abstract endeavor. Many management scholars have adopted metaphors to explain change. In this paper, we deal with the drivers of technological change. We use a historical and theoretical approach to review and elaborate on the concepts and context about a specific case. We discuss the limitations of each approach proffered and the implications as a consequence on technological change. We present plurality and multiplicity of perspectives using a socio-technical approach to explain technological change contextually on an organizational level. We show by using our model how technology absorption and diffusion can be accelerated through artefactual institutions to enable social change. The multiplicity of perspectives and plurality of our arguments creates a fine explanation of the e-Estonia case as an example.

Keywords: artefactual institutions, e-Estonia, social change, technological trajectories

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Authors: Jean Hugé, Francisco Benitez-Capistros, Giorgia Camperio-Ciani

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Addressing conservation conflicts requires the consideration of multiple stakeholders' perspectives and knowledge claims, in order to inform complex and possibly contentious decision-making dilemmas. Hence, a better understanding of why people in particular contexts act in a particular way in a conservation conflict is needed. First, this contribution aims at providing and applying an approach to map and interpret the diversity of subjective viewpoints with regard to iconic species in conservation conflicts. Secondly, this contribution aims to feed the reflection on the possible consequences of the diversity of perspectives for the future management of wildlife (in particular iconic species), based on case studies in Galapagos and Malaysia. The use of the semi-quantitative Q methodology allowed us to identify various perspectives on conservation in different social-ecological contexts. While the presence of iconic species may lead to a more passionate and emotional debate, it may also provide more opportunities for finding common ground and for jointly developing acceptable management solutions that will depolarize emergent, long-lasting or latent conservation conflicts. Based on the research team’s experience in the field, and on the integration of ecological and social knowledge, methodological and management recommendations are made with regard to conservation conflicts involving iconic wildlife. The mere presence of iconic wildlife does not guarantee its centrality in conservation conflicts, and comparisons will be drawn between the cases of the giant tortoises (Chelonoidis spec.) in Galapagos, Ecuador and the Milky Stork (Mycteria cinerea) in western peninsular Malaysia. Acknowledging the diversity of viewpoints, reflecting how different stakeholders see, act and talk about wildlife management, highlights the need to develop pro-active and resilient strategies to deal with these issues.

Keywords: conservation conflicts, Q methodology, Galapagos, Malaysia, giant tortoise, milky stork

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Authors: Chonlada Choovanichchanon

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This research paper was aimed to investigate a relationship between the customer service marketing mix and the level of customers’ satisfaction from purchasing goods and service from small business around campus, Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University, Bangkok, Thailand. Based on the survey of 200 customers who frequently purchased goods and service around campus, the level of satisfaction for each factor of marketing mix was reached. An accidental random sampling was applied by using questionnaire in collecting the data. The findings revealed that the means values can help to rank these variables from high to low mean as follows: 1) forms and system of service, 2) physical environment of service center, 3) service from staff and employee, 4) product quality and service, 5) market channel and distribution, 6) market price, and 7) market promotion and distribution.

Keywords: service marketing mix, satisfaction, small business, survey

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Authors: Samuel Marínez González

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In the last decades, the studies about humor have been increasing significantly in all areas. In the field of education and, specially, in the second language teaching, most research has concentrated on the beneficial effects that the introduction of humor in the process of teaching and learning a foreign language, as well as its impact on teachers and students. In the following research, we will try to know the learners’ perspectives about humor and its use in the Spanish as a Foreign Language classes. In order to do this, a different range of students from the Spanish courses at the University of Cape Town will participate in a survey that will reveal their beliefs about the frequency of humor in their daily lives and their Spanish lessons, their reactions to humorous situations, and the main advantages or disadvantages, from their point of view, to the introduction of humor in the teaching of Spanish as a Foreign Language.

Keywords: education, foreign languages, humor, pedagogy, Spanish as a Foreign Language, students’ perceptions

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Authors: Murtala Mohammed Alamai, Abdullahi Marshal Idris, Adama Idris

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Today, marketing does not only involve selecting target markets, but it also involves communicating with the customers through various means to put across your selling point. Modern marketing involves driving new product development based on customer needs by getting feedback from them. Utilizing the latest technology for better communication with the customers is the latest advancement in Marketing in the 21st century. The survey approach was used where a sample of tourist destinations across the six geographical zones of the country at random was done to ascertain the use of information communication systems in promoting their products and or services, the findings revealed that only a few utilize these modern advanced means in marketing and promoting their products and a need to develop effective and up to date online services for marketing was proffered as solutions to the findings observed.

Keywords: information, communication, travel, trade, promotion

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Authors: Rokhmatul Insani, Hira Laksmiwati Soemitro

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Business Intelligence is a methodology that exploits the data to produce information and knowledge systematically, business intelligence can support the decision-making process. Some methods in business intelligence are data warehouse and data mining. A data warehouse can store historical data from transactional data. For data modelling in data warehouse, we apply dimensional modelling by Kimball. While data mining is used to extracting patterns from the data and get insight from the data. Data mining has many techniques, one of which is segmentation. For profiling of telecommunication customer, we use customer segmentation according to customer’s usage of services, customer invoice and customer payment. Customers can be grouped according to their characteristics and can be identified the profitable customers. We apply K-Means Clustering Algorithm for segmentation. The input variable for that algorithm we use RFM (Recency, Frequency and Monetary) model. All process in data mining, we use tools IBM SPSS modeller.

Keywords: business intelligence, customer segmentation, data warehouse, data mining

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Authors: Tania Camarillo Contreras, Yana Kuchirko

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Women’s sexuality, despite it being a core part of human functioning, has historically been stigmatized, silenced, and regulated and silenced across many cultures. The regulation of women’s bodies and desires has often been accomplished via gender ideologies and norms that ascribe power to men over women. Within Latino communities, gender ideologies like marianismo provide scripts by which women are expected to adhere submissiveness, purity, and putting others’ needs before their own. Prior work on sexuality-related topics among Latinas has almost exclusively examined the roles of risky behavior, partner violence, and gender roles on psychological and health outcomes. it know little about positive aspects of Latinas’ sexuality, such as their perspectives on sexual excitation and inhibition. Moreover, we know little about Latina’s sexuality in relation to marianismo. In this study, it ask the following questions (1) What are Latina’s perspectives on sexual excitation/inhibition? Do they vary by demographic variables (e.g., education, religiosity); (2) Does endorsement of marianismo among Latina women predict their perspectives on sexual excitation/sexual inhibition? and (3) Does endorsement of double standard (mediator variable) mediate the relation between marianismo (Independent) and sexual excitation/sexual inhibition? The results of this study shed light on effects of culturally specific gender ideologies like marianismo on women’s sexualities and have implications for culturally informed and gender-affirming policies seeking to better support Latinas’ sexual health.

Keywords: cultural beliefs, latinas, marianismo, sexuality, sexual inhibition

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Authors: Muath Awadalla, Maen Awadallah

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Banking sector covers different activities including lending money to customers. However, it is commonly known that customers pay money they have borrowed including an added amount called interest. Compound interest rate is an approach used in determining the interest to be paid. The instant compounded amount to be paid by a debtor is obtained through a differential equation whose main parameters are the rate and the time. The rate used by banks in a country is often defined by the government of the said country. In Switzerland, for instance, a negative rate was once applied. In this work, a new approach of modeling the compound interest is proposed using Hadamard fractional derivative. As a result, it appears that depending on the fraction value used in derivative the amount to be paid by a debtor might either be higher or lesser than the amount determined using the classical approach.

Keywords: compound interest, fractional differential equation, hadamard fractional derivative, optimization

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Authors: Dan Richard D. Fernandez

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This study determined the perspectives of community health workers’ perspectives in the sustainability of primary health care. Eight community health workers, two community officials and a rural health midwife in a rural community in the in the Philippines were enjoined to share their perspectives in the sustainability of primary health care. The study utilized the critical research method. The critical research assumes that there are ‘dominated’ or ‘marginalized’ groups whose interests are not best served by existing societal structures. Their experiences highlighted that the challenges of their role include unkind and uncooperative patients, the lack of institutional support mechanisms and conflict of their roles with their family responsibilities. Their most revealing insight is the belief that primary health care is within their grasp. Finally, they believe that the burden to sustain primary health care rests on their shoulders alone. This study establishes that Multi-stakeholder participation is and Gender-sensitivity is integral to the sustainability of Primary Health Care. It also observed that the ingrained Expert-Novice or Top-down Management Culture and the marginalisation of BHWs within the system is a threat to PHC sustainability. This study also recommends to expand the study and to involve the local government units and academe in lobbying the integration of gender-sensitivity and multi-stake participatory approaches to health workforce policies. Finally, this study recognised that the CHWs’ role is indispensable to the sustainability of primary health care.

Keywords: community health workers, multi-stakeholder participation, sustainability, gender-sensitivity

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Authors: Samira Mohabbatdar, Abbas Ahmadi, Mohsen S. Sajadieh

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This paper deals with a two-level supply chain consisted of one manufacturer and one retailer for single-type product. The demand function of the customers depends on price. We consider an integrated production inventory system where the manufacturer processes raw materials in order to deliver finished product with imperfect quality to the retailer. Then retailer inspects the products and after that delivers perfect products to customers. The proposed model is based on the joint total profit of both the manufacturer and the retailer, and it determines the optimal ordering lot-size, number of shipment and selling price of the retailer. A numerical example is provided to analyse and illustrate the behaviour and application of the model. Finally, sensitivity analysis of the key parameters are presented to test feasibility of the model.

Keywords: supply chain, pricing policy, defective quality, joint economic lot sizing

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Authors: Iman E. Bouthahab, Badea B. Geador

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Aim of this paper is to explore the prospect of a new approach of mobile phone banking in Libya. This study evaluates customer knowledge on commercial mobile banking in Libya. To examine the relationship between age, occupation and intention for using mobile banking for commercial purpose, a survey was conducted to gather information from one hundred Libyan bank clients. The results indicate that Libyan customers have accepted the new technology and they are ready to use it. There is no significant joint relationship between age and occupation found in intention to use mobile banking in Libya. On the other hand, the customers’ knowledge about mobile banking has a greater relationship with the intention. This study has implications for demographic researches and consumer behaviour disciplines. It also has profitable implications for banks and managers in Libya, as it will assist in better understanding of the Libyan consumers and their activities, when they develop their market strategies and new service.

Keywords: mobile banking, intention, customer knowledge, banks in Libya

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Authors: Rukhsana Shaheen, Tahira Ifraq

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Interest based transactions led the advent of Islamic banking. In order to provide an alternative to Interest based banking, financial transactions found in classical books of fiqh were employed. Musharakah, Mudarabah, Murabahah Salam, Ijara, and some other modes were adopted. These modes were modified so that they can be adopted for banking and satisfy the needs of customers. Since the inception of Islamic banking, these modes are being used and with the passage of time, are being molded and experimented with to cater different kinds of customers and requirements. Human efforts cannot be errorless. These modes too bear legal defects which need an in-depth scrutiny and refinement. The aim of this paper is to dig the basis and rulings of these modes in classical books of fiqh and analyze its modification and adoption in Islamic banking and the legal defects that these modes are bearing. Paper will prove itself fruitful by providing remedies for the legal defects.

Keywords: financial instruments, legal defects, remedies, Islamic banking

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Authors: Ulas Vural, M. Ergun Okay, E. Mesut Yildiz

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Telecommunication service providers demand accurate and precise prediction of customer churn probabilities to increase the effectiveness of their customer relation services. The large amount of customer data owned by the service providers is suitable for analysis by machine learning methods. In this study, expenditure data of customers are analyzed by using an artificial neural network (ANN). The ANN model is applied to the data of customers with different billing duration. The proposed model successfully predicts the churn probabilities at 83% accuracy for only three months expenditure data and the prediction accuracy increases up to 89% when the nine month data is used. The experiments also show that the accuracy of ANN model increases on an extended feature set with information of the changes on the bill amounts.

Keywords: customer relationship management, churn prediction, telecom industry, deep learning, artificial neural networks

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Authors: Rana Alaa El-Deen Ahmed, M. Elemam Shehab, Shereen Morsy, Nermeen Mekawie

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With the growing popularity and acceptance of e-commerce platforms, users face an ever increasing burden in actually choosing the right product from the large number of online offers. Thus, techniques for personalization and shopping guides are needed by users. For a pleasant and successful shopping experience, users need to know easily which products to buy with high confidence. Since selling a wide variety of products has become easier due to the popularity of online stores, online retailers are able to sell more products than a physical store. The disadvantage is that the customers might not find products they need. In this research the customer will be able to find the products he is searching for, because recommender systems are used in some ecommerce web sites. Recommender system learns from the information about customers and products and provides appropriate personalized recommendations to customers to find the needed product. In this paper eleven classification algorithms are comparatively tested to find the best classifier fit for consumer online shopping attitudes and behavior in the experimented dataset. The WEKA knowledge analysis tool, which is an open source data mining workbench software used in comparing conventional classifiers to get the best classifier was used in this research. In this research by using the data mining tool (WEKA) with the experimented classifiers the results show that decision table and filtered classifier gives the highest accuracy and the lowest accuracy classification via clustering and simple cart.

Keywords: classification, data mining, machine learning, online shopping, WEKA

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Authors: Teerapong Lorchitamnuay, Thirarut Worapishet

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In the present digital age, today's customers explore various channels before finalizing a purchase, with abundant options and information at their disposal. Despite this, there is a strong digital interconnectedness. With just a few mouse clicks, customers can gather comprehensive information about a product, free from the influence of a salesperson. Salespeople must embrace cutting-edge technology to truly redefine the essence of selling if they are to thrive in this digital era. The significance of customer-salesperson communication in companies is becoming increasingly evident. It prompts the inquiry of how companies can modify or reshape their sales teams' approaches to effectively respond to evolving customer preferences and effectively manage external shifts, all in pursuit of sustaining and expanding their enterprises. Research highlights that digital and intercultural skills are the latest competencies sought by customers from salespeople in today's fast-paced world prior to making purchases of products and services. This study seeks to examine the pivotal influences of these salesperson skills in achieving customer satisfaction. The research design encompasses the analysis of descriptive statistics and quantitative data through a regression model. Data were gathered from an online convenience survey involving 260 respondents who are customers of an air express service provider in Thailand and who engage with salespeople in a traditional manner. The findings underscore that intercultural skills have a substantial impact on customer satisfaction in the digital era, particularly concerning adaptability, foreign language proficiency, active listening, and empathy skills. Organizations should focus on nurturing beneficial habits among their salespeople; since it signifies this effort, it should extend beyond just the frontline but should extend to encompass backline units and high-level management, ensuring that everyone possesses the same customer-oriented skills. The conclusions drawn from this research provide valuable insights, affirming that digital and intercultural skills can empower organizations to optimize their workforce's competencies, thereby achieving customer satisfaction in the digital age.

Keywords: customer behavior, customer satisfaction, digital era, digital skill, intercultural skill

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Authors: Shu-Chen Wu

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This paper will present a study by the author which investigates Chinese teachers’ perspectives on learning at play and their teaching activities in the designed play activities. It asks the question of how Chinese teachers understand learning at play and how they design play activities in the classroom. Six kindergarten teachers in Hong Kong were invited to select and record exemplary play episodes which contain the largest amount of learning elements in their own classrooms. Applying video-stimulated interview, eight teachers in two focus groups were interviewed to elicit their perspectives on designing play activity and their teaching activities. The findings reveal that Chinese teachers have a very structured representation of learning at play, and the phenomenon of uniformity of teachers’ act was found. The contributions of which are important and useful for professional practices and curricular policies.

Keywords: learning at play, teacher involvement, video-stimulated interview, uniformity

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Authors: Christopher Benedikt Jakob

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Human beings are intrigued by luxury watches for decades. It is fascinating that customers pay an enormous amount of money for specific wristwatch models. It is fascinating that customers of the luxury watch industry accept a yearly price increase. This behavior increases their desirability even more. Luxury watches are perceived as status symbols, but they are additionally accepted as a currency without the disadvantage of currency fluctuations. It is obvious that the symbolic value is more important as the functional value with reference to the buying-reasons as regards luxury watches. Nowadays human beings do not need a wristwatch to read the time. Tablets, notebooks, smartphones, the watch in the car and watches on public places are used to inform people about the current time. This is one of the reasons why there is a trend that people do not wear wristwatches anymore. Due to these facts, this study has the intention to give answers to the question why people invest an enormous amount of money on the consumption of luxury watches and why those watches are seen as a status symbol. The study examines why the luxury watch industry records significant growth rates. The self-expression model is used as an appropriate methodology to find reasons why human beings purchase specific luxury watches. This evaluative approach further discusses if human beings are aware of their current self and their ideal self and how they express them. Furthermore, the research critically evaluates the people’s social self and their ideal social self. One of the goals is to identify if customers know why they like specific luxury watches and dislike others although they have the same quality and cost comparable prices.

Keywords: luxury watch, brand awareness, buying-behaviour, consumer, self-expression

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Authors: Michael N. O'Sullivan, Con Sheahan

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Mass customization is the idea of offering custom products or services to satisfy the needs of each individual customer while maintaining the efficiency of mass production. Technologies like 3D printing and artificial intelligence have many start-ups hoping to capitalize on this dream of creating personalized products at an affordable price, and well established companies scrambling to innovate and maintain their market share. However, the majority of them are failing as they struggle to understand one key question – where does customization make sense? Customization and personalization only make sense where the value of the perceived benefit outweighs the cost to implement it. In other words, will people pay for it? Looking at the Kano Model makes it clear that it depends on the product. In products where customization is an inherent need, like prosthetics, mass customization technologies can be highly beneficial. However, for products that already sell as a standard, like headphones, offering customization is likely only an added bonus, and so the product development team must figure out if the customers’ perception of the added value of this feature will outweigh its premium price tag. This can be done through the use of a ‘serious game,’ whereby potential customers are given a limited budget to collaboratively buy and bid on potential features of the product before it is developed. If the group choose to buy customization over other features, then the product development team should implement it into their design. If not, the team should prioritize the features on which the customers have spent their budget. The level of customization purchased can also be translated to an appropriate production method, for example, the most expensive type of customization would likely be free-form design and could be achieved through digital fabrication, while a lower level could be achieved through short batch production. Twenty-five teams of final year students from design, engineering, construction and technology tested this methodology when bringing a product from concept through to production specification, and found that it allowed them to confidently decide what level of customization, if any, would be worth offering for their product, and what would be the best method of producing it. They also found that the discussion and negotiations between players during the game led to invaluable insights, and often decided to play a second game where they offered customers the option to buy the various customization ideas that had been discussed during the first game.

Keywords: Kano model, mass customization, new product development, serious game

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Authors: Dalicia Bouallouche, Jean-Baptiste Vioix, Stéphane Millot, Eric Busvelle

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When researchers or logistics software developers deal with vehicle routing optimization, they mainly focus on minimizing the total travelled distance or the total time spent in the tours by the trucks, and maximizing the number of visited customers. They assume that the upstream real data given to carry the optimization of a transporter tours is free from errors, like customers’ real constraints, customers’ addresses and their GPS-coordinates. However, in real transporter situations, upstream data is often of bad quality because of address geocoding errors and the irrelevance of received addresses from the EDI (Electronic Data Interchange). In fact, geocoders are not exempt from errors and could give impertinent GPS-coordinates. Also, even with a good geocoding, an inaccurate address can lead to a bad geocoding. For instance, when the geocoder has trouble with geocoding an address, it returns those of the center of the city. As well, an obvious geocoding issue is that the mappings used by the geocoders are not regularly updated. Thus, new buildings could not exist on maps until the next update. Even so, trying to optimize tours with impertinent customers GPS-coordinates, which are the most important and basic input data to take into account for solving a vehicle routing problem, is not really useful and will lead to a bad and incoherent solution tours because the locations of the customers used for the optimization are very different from their real positions. Our work is supported by a logistics software editor Tedies and a transport company Upsilon. We work with Upsilon's truck routes data to carry our experiments. In fact, these trucks are equipped with TOMTOM GPSs that continuously save their tours data (positions, speeds, tachograph-information, etc.). We, then, retrieve these data to extract the real truck routes to work with. The aim of this work is to use the experience of the driver and the feedback of the real truck tours to validate GPS-coordinates of well geocoded addresses, and bring a correction to the badly geocoded addresses. Thereby, when a vehicle makes its tour, for each visited customer, the vehicle might have trouble with finding this customer’s address at most once. In other words, the vehicle would be wrong at most once for each customer’s address. Our method significantly improves the quality of the geocoding. Hence, we achieve to automatically correct an average of 70% of GPS-coordinates of a tour addresses. The rest of the GPS-coordinates are corrected in a manual way by giving the user indications to help him to correct them. This study shows the importance of taking into account the feedback of the trucks to gradually correct address geocoding errors. Indeed, the accuracy of customer’s address and its GPS-coordinates play a major role in tours optimization. Unfortunately, address writing errors are very frequent. This feedback is naturally and usually taken into account by transporters (by asking drivers, calling customers…), to learn about their tours and bring corrections to the upcoming tours. Hence, we develop a method to do a big part of that automatically.

Keywords: driver experience feedback, geocoding correction, real truck tours

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Authors: Imran Ali

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General chemotherapy for cancer treatment has many side and toxic effects. A new approach of targeting nano anti-cancer drug is under development stage and only few drugs are available in the market today. The unique features of these drugs are targeted action on cancer cells only without any side effect. Sometimes, these are called magic drugs. The important molecules used for nano anti-cancer drugs are cisplatin, carboplatin, bleomycin, 5-fluorouracil, doxorubicin, dactinomycin, 6-mercaptopurine, paclitaxel, topotecan, vinblastin and etoposide etc. The most commonly used materials for preparing nano particles carriers are dendrimers, polymeric, liposomal, micelles inorganic, organic etc. The proposed lecture will comprise the-of-art of nano drugs in cancer chemo-therapy including preparation, types of drugs, mechanism, future perspectives etc.

Keywords: cancer, nano-anti-cancer drugs, chemo-therapy, mechanism of action, future perspectives

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Authors: Mai Anh Tuan, Wenlong Liu, Meng Li

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Despite warnings and concerns about the use of fast food that has health effects, the fast-food industry is actually a source of profit for the global food industry. Obviously, in the face of such huge economic benefits, investors will not hesitate to continuously add recipes, processing methods, menu diversity, etc., to improve and apply information technology in enhancing the diners' experience; the ultimate goal is still to attract diners to find their brand and give them the fastest, most convenient and enjoyable service. In China, as the achievements of the industrial revolution 4.0, big data and artificial intelligence are reaching new heights day by day, now fast-food diners can instantly pay the bills only by identifying the biometric signature available on the self-ordering kiosk, using their own face without any additional form of confirmation. In this study, the author will evaluate the acceptance level of customers with this new form of payment through a survey of customers who have used and witnessed the use of smart kiosks and biometric payments within the city of Nanjing, China. A total of 200 valid volunteers were collected in order to test the customers' intentions and feelings when choosing and experiencing payment through AI services. 55% think that it bothers them because of the need for personal information, but more than 70% think that smart kiosk brings out many benefits and convenience. According to the data analysis findings, perceived innovativeness has a positive influence on satisfaction which in turn affects behavioral intentions, including reuse and word-of-mouth intentions.

Keywords: artificial intelligence, catering industry, smart kiosks, technology acceptance

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Authors: Boussoualim Nacira, Aklouf Youcef

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Software as a Service (SaaS) is a software delivery paradigm in which the product is not installed on-premise, but it is available on Internet and Web. The customers do not pay to possess the software itself but rather to use it. This concept of pay per use is very attractive. Hence, we see increasing number of organizations adopting SaaS. However, each customer is unique, which leads to a very large variation in the requirements off the software. As several suppliers propose SaaS products, the choice of this latter becomes a major issue. When multiple criteria are involved in decision making, we talk about a problem of «Multi-Criteria Decision-Making» (MCDM). Therefore, this paper presents a method to help customers to choose a better SaaS product satisfying most of their conditions and alternatives. Also, we know that a good method of adaptive selection should be based on the correct definition of the different parameters of choice. This is why we started by extraction and analysis the various parameters involved in the process of the selection of a SaaS application.

Keywords: cloud computing, business operation, Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM), Software as a Service (SaaS)

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Authors: Imen Douzi, Karim Ben Kahla

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In spite of the growing attention for social innovation, it is still considered to be in a stage of infancy with minimal progress in theory development. Upon examining the field of study, one would have to conclude that, over the past two decades, academic research has focused primarily on establishing a conceptual foundation. This has resulted in a considerable stream of conceptual papers which have outnumbered empirical articles. Nevertheless, despite its growing popularity, scholars and practitioners are far from reaching a consensus as to what social innovation actually means which resulted in competing definitions and approaches within the field of social innovation and lack of unifying conceptual framework. This paper reviews empirical research studies on social innovation, classifies them along three dimensions and summarizes research findings for each of these dimensions. Preliminary to the analysis of empirical researches, an overview of different perspectives of social innovation is presented.

Keywords: analysis of empirical research, definition, empirical research, social innovation perspectives

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Authors: Zh. Bolatova, Zh. Bulkhairova, M. Kulshigashova

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In this article, the authors consider the main aspects of climate change's impact on the economic efficiency of leguminous crop production and perspectives in Kazakhstan. It is worth noting that climate change has an impact on the instability of leguminous crops and leads to a decrease in production efficiency. Ultimately, all of the above determines the relevance and significance of this topic. The level of productivity of grain and legumes in the country and by regions of Kazakhstan was also analyzed. The authors conducted a survey and a deeper analysis of agricultural producers in the Kazakhstan region. In the end, the authors considered the prospects for the development of leguminous crops in Kazakhstan. For the article have been used different literature and reports from IPCC, WMO, WTO, FAO, UNEP, UNFCCC, UNDP, IMF, WB, OECD, KAZHYDROMET, Committee of the Statistics of Kazakhstan, etc.

Keywords: climate change, economic efficiency, leguminous crops, production, yield

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Authors: Rizwan Ali, Hammad Zafar

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The purpose of this research is to investigate the mediation effect of customer satisfaction in the relationship between service quality, corporate image to customer loyalty, in Pakistan banking sector. The population of this research is banking customers and sample size of 210 respondents. This research uses the SPSS, Correlation, ANOVA and regression analysis techniques along with AMOS methods. The service quality and corporate image applied by the banks are not all variables can directly affect customer loyalty, but must first going through satisfaction. Which means that banks must first need to understand what the customer basic needs through variable service quality and corporate image so that the customers feel loyal when the level of satisfaction is resolved. The service quality provided by the banking industry needs to be improved in order to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty of banking services, especially for banks in Pakistan.

Keywords: customer loyalty, service quality, corporate image, customer satisfaction

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Authors: Filipa Lancastre, Carmen Lages, Filipe Santos

Abstract:

The concept of social entrepreneurship (SE) remains ambiguous and deprived of a widely accepted operational definition. We argue that an awareness about the consensual constituent elements of SE from all key players from its ecosystem as well as a deeper understanding of apparently divergent perspectives will allow the different stakeholders (social entrepreneurs, corporations, investors, policymakers, the beneficiaries themselves) to bridge and cooperate for societal value co-creation in trying to solve our most pressing societal issues. To address our research question –what are the dimensions of SE that are consensual and controversial across existing perspectives? – We designed a two-step qualitative study. In a first step, we conducted an extensive literature review, collecting and analyzing 155 different SE definitions. From this initial step, we extracted and characterized three consensual and six controversial dimensions of the SE concept. In a second step, we conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with practitioners that are actively involved in the SE field. The goal of this second step was to verify if the literature did not capture any key dimension, understand how the dimensions related to each other and to understand the rationale behind them. The dimensions of the SE concept were extracted based on the relevance of each theme and on the theoretical relationship among them. To identify the relevance, we used as a proxy the frequency of each theme was referred to in our sample of definitions. To understand relationships, as identified in the previous section, we included concepts from both the management and psychology literature, such as the Entrepreneurial Orientation concept from the entrepreneurship literature, the Subjective Well Being construct from psychology literature, and the Resource-Based Theory from the strategy literature. This study has two main contributions; First, the identification of (consensual and controversial) dimensions of SE that exist across scattered definitions from the academic and practitioner literature. Second, a framework that parsimoniously synthesizes four dominant perspectives of SE and relates them with the SE dimensions. Assuming the contested nature of the SE concept, it is not expected that these views will be reconciled at the academic or practitioner field level. In future research, academics can, however, be aware of the existence of different understandings of SE and avoid bias towards a single view, developing holistic studies on SE phenomena or comparing differences by studying their underlying assumptions. Additionally, it is important that researchers make explicit the perspective they are embracing to ensure consistency among the research question, sampling procedures and implications of results. At the practitioner level, individuals or groups following different logics are predictably mutually suspicious and might benefit from taking stock of other perspectives on SE, building bridges and fostering cross-fertilization to the benefit of the SE ecosystem for which all contribute.

Keywords: social entrepreneurship, conceptualization, dimensions, perspectives

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Authors: Vilem Paril, Dominika Tothova

Abstract:

This paper discusses the value theory in cultural heritage and the value theory in environmental economics. Two economic views of the value theory are compared within the field of cultural heritage maintenance and within the field of the environment. The main aims are to find common features in these two differently structured theories under the layer of differently defined terms as well as really differing features of these two approaches, to clear the confusion which stems from different terminology as in fact these terms capture the same aspects of reality and to show possible inspiration these two perspectives can offer one another. Another aim is to present these two value systems in one value framework. First, important moments of the value theory from the economic perspective are presented, leading to the marginal revolution of (not only) the Austrian School. Then the theory of value within cultural heritage and environmental economics are explored. Finally, individual approaches are compared and their potential mutual inspiration searched for.

Keywords: cultural heritage, environmental economics, existence value, value theory

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Authors: Yvonne A. Unrau

Abstract:

Social work education is a competency-based curriculum that relies mostly on cognitive frameworks and problem-solving models. Absent from the curriculum is knowledge and skills that draw from an embodiment perspective, especially somatic practice methods. Embodiment broadly encompasses the understanding that biological, political, historical, and social factors impact human development via changes to the nervous system. In the past 20 years, research has well-established that unresolved traumatic events, especially during childhood, negatively impacts long-term health and well-being. Furthermore, traumatic stress compromises cognitive processing and activates reflexive action such as ‘fight’ or ‘flight,’ which are the focus of somatic methods. The main objective of this paper is to show how embodiment perspectives and somatic methods can enhance social work practice overall. Using an exploratory approach, the author shares a decade-long journey that involved creating an education-support program for college students who exited the state foster care system. Personal experience, program outcomes and case study narratives revealed that ‘classical’ social work methods were insufficient to fully address the complex needs of college students who were living with complex traumatic stressors. The paper chronicles select case study scenarios and key program development milestones over a 10-year period to show the benefit of incorporating embodiment perspectives in social work practice. The lessons reveal that there is an immediate need for social work curriculum to include embodiment perspectives so that social workers may be equipped to respond competently to their many clients who live with unresolved trauma.

Keywords: social work practice, social work curriculum, embodiment, traumatic stress

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Authors: Guilherme B. B. Vieira, Rafael M. da Silva, Eliana T. P. Senna, Luiz A. S. Senna, Francisco J. Kliemann Neto

Abstract:

Due to the importance of ports to trade and economic development of the regions in which they are inserted, in recent decades the number of studies devoted to this subject has increased. Part of these studies consider the ports as business agglomerations and focuses on port governance. This is an important approach since the port performance is the result of activities performed by actors belonging to the port-logistics chain, which need to be properly coordinated. This coordination takes place through a port governance model. Given this context, this study aims to analyze the governance model of the port of Santos from the perspective of port customers. To do this, a closed-ended questionnaire based on a conceptual model that considers the key dimensions associated with port governance was applied to the international freight forwarders that operate in the port. The results show the applicability of the considered model and highlight improvement opportunities to be implemented at the port of Santos.

Keywords: port governance, model, Port of Santos, customers’ perception

Procedia PDF Downloads 418