Business Service Quality Research Articles

A quantitative analysis of cosmeceuticals: business service quality and client satisfaction

PurposeThe purpose of the quantitative correlational research study was to determine the relationship, if any, between the predictor variable, cosmeceutical business service quality, and the outcome variable, cosmeceutical client satisfaction, in the southeast region of the United States of America. Cosmeceuticals were cosmetics and medications administered by estheticians.Design/methodology/approachLiterature on business service quality and client satisfaction theories was synthesized after extensive review. Quantitative research data were collected and statistically analyzed on the following subscales of consumer satisfaction: general satisfaction, technical quality, interpersonal manner, communication, financial aspects, time spent with professionals and accessibility/convenience. The hypotheses addressed the research question (RQ) of whether cosmeceutical business service quality affects client satisfaction. The Cosmeceutical Client Satisfaction Questionnaire 18 (CCSQ-18), a web-based research instrument, had strong reliability with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.84. The target population (N = 50) included randomly selected female cosmeceutical consumers in the southeast region of the United States of America. The researcher did not digress from the detailed research protocol, instrumentation, data collection or data analyses. Through the Likelihood Ratio (LR) chi-squared statistic (18) = 65.35 and its associated probability, Prob > chi-squared = 0.000, the researcher determined the predictor variable cohesively has a statistically significant effect on the outcome variable.FindingsResearch results concluded that a significant relationship exists between cosmeceutical business service quality and cosmeceutical client satisfaction in the southeast region of the United States of America.Originality/valueThe findings detailed in the results complimented the argument that, generally, business service quality is important to consider, because good business is based on client satisfaction.

Can social enterprises achieve resilience and at what price?

AbstractSocial enterprises (SEs) are claimed to be able to address “wicked social problems1” in various policy instruments and governance models. However, doubts have been raised about whether the hybrid nature results in fundamental challenges that could prevent SEs from becoming ideal and sustainable public service organizations. Drawing upon organizational resilience literature, this article reveals two trade‐offs between social and business service qualities when SEs seek long‐term solutions to the challenges in delivering public services. This article argues that SEs—employing different hybrid models, emphasizing social or business service quality—jointly can overcome the trade‐offs to deliver sustainable and accountable public services at the public service contract level and the individual user's level.

An Overview of the Factors that Influence Purchasing Intentions in Online Reviews

Consumer purchasing behaviour is increasingly influenced by online reviews in the current internet era. Existing models have not fully explained the correlation between online reviews and consumer purchase intention in specific contexts. This study aims to analyse their relationship and propose inspiring viewpoints. The authors summarize current academic research from three perspectives: independent variables, mediating variables and moderating variables. The findings suggest that there are already well-developed studies on the independent variables, but there is still room for further discussion on the mediating variables; for the moderating variables, aspects of service, trust, and personal characteristics are common moderating studies at present. However, there are only a few studies on business service compensation measures and response methods. In addition, most of the existing literature adopts questionnaire survey and data analysis methods, and the content mainly focuses on mediating variables, so there is still room for further development of the study among the remaining variables. Therefore, this paper constructs an intermediate regulation model and proposes one new mediating variable: perceived fit and two new moderating variables: sales volume and business service quality, to investigate how they mediate and moderate the relationship between online reviews and purchase intention. Through an extensive literature review, the authors identified the limitations and shortcomings of previous models. This paper aims to complement and improve the existing research and provides a new research model to provide a basis for further in-depth research.

Streetscapes as part of servicescapes: Can walkable streetscapes make local businesses more attractive?

Attractive local businesses can make cities more walkable by providing desirable destinations to walk to. The term servicescape has been used to describe the physical settings and environments that affect customers' inference of the service quality of businesses at that location. This study extends the concept of servicescapes to include walkable streetscapes and examines whether features that make streets more walkable also make local businesses on those streets more attractive. This study measures walkable streetscape features using street view images and computer vision, which are associated with customer satisfaction values derived from Yelp review scores of restaurants in Atlanta, GA, USA. After controlling for various covariates including pedestrian accessibility, restaurant type, and neighborhood-specific characteristics, this study found sidewalk buffers, greenness at eye level, and building-to-street ratio as streetscape features positively associated with customer satisfaction. Planning tools for promoting walkable streetscapes are discussed to improve the street vibrancy and the economic opportunities of local businesses.

Research on the Factors Influencing the Use Intention of Takeout APP Based on Structural Equation Model

In the context of the Internet economy, takeout APP has attracted the attention of many consumers because of its convenience, quickness, discounts and other characteristics. At present, more and more people are used to ordering, placing orders, paying and other operations through takeout apps. This new consumption mode has penetrated into all aspects of our daily life. Like Ramseook-Munhurrun and Nundlall (2013) added physical environmental quality as an important component of service quality based on Gronroos research in 1984.However, for the platform, information sharing between consumers and businesses can be achieved through takeout APP. Under this sharing mode, the platform can not only improve the service quality of businesses, reduce distribution costs and customers' shopping experience, but also enhance users' willingness to consume. Therefore, it is not only a marketing strategy for merchants to recommend takeout APP to consumers, but also a good platform for the development of the takeout industry. This study takes the Grab takeout APP in Thailand as an example, and uses the literature research method and questionnaire method to study the causes of its use intention. In the research process, the questionnaire survey method was used to collect data and analyze them, and then the structural equation model was used to verify the results of prediction; In the end, the results are displayed through data visualization analysis, hoping to bring some reference.

COVID-19 Pandemic! Its Impact on Online Business Service Quality and Performance

COVID-19 Pandemic! Its Impact on Online Business Service Quality and Performance

The Investigation Upper-Northern Thailand Wellness Spa Business Service Quality for Customer Satisfactions

This study of the knowledge management model for wellness spa business entrepreneurs in Upper Northern Thailand was a research and development (R&D) that aimed to find new methods to leverage the service standards for spas in Upper Northern Thailand by managing the knowledge and fortifying new skills to add to the existing knowledge to provide quality and standardized services to meet with certain expectations of the market and its customers in the future. Spa businesses in Upper Northern Thailand are unique by their identities, cultures, the style of “Lanna” the reflects through the 5 senses of human beings: sight, taste, smell, sound and touch, which is able to satisfy spa customers. The created model was then evaluated under a conceptual framework of project evaluation through inspections and evaluations from 6 spa business experts who suggested that the selected spa entrepreneurs could improve the existing skills and knowledge in all the 6 categories by managing knowledge through adult learning and learning readiness of the entrepreneurs appropriately by their own contexts. In order to achieve this goal, necessary trainings, seminars, and workshops were conducted as tools in managing the knowledge.

The Investigation Upper-Northern Thailand Wellness Spa Business Service Quality for Customer Satisfactions

The Investigation Upper-Northern Thailand Wellness Spa Business Service Quality for Customer Satisfactions

Analyzing e-Service Quality and e-Satisfaction Effects on Customer Loyalty at An Indonesian Digital Marketplace

Indonesia is listed as one of the countries with the most population in the world as well as one of the countries with the most internet users. With this fact, Indonesia is one of the largest potential markets in the digital trade sector. Many Indonesian people use the internet and marketplace platforms to shop and fulfill their daily needs. Indonesia is also the base of operations for several marketplace platforms with significant transaction values, one of which is Tokopedia. Tokopedia is one of the Indonesian marketplace platforms that consistently ranks in the top 3 for the category of online buying and selling sites that people are interested in. Some studies have stated that the quality of business services affects customer satisfaction and loyalty. This quality is one of the indicators that determine customer satisfaction with the company's products and services. This study analyzes the influence of the dimensions of electronic service quality and the aspects of customer satisfaction on customer loyalty in the Tokopedia marketplace. It analyzes the effect of the dimensions in the ES-Qual model on overall ES-Qual, e-satisfaction, and e-loyalty on consumers. The data obtained were analyzed using the variant-based Partial Least Square Structural Equation Model (PLS-SEM) equation model which can simultaneously test the measurement model, as well as the structural model. The results also show that online service quality and overall service quality affect online user satisfaction and online user loyalty.

Customs handling and sustainable development of enterprises

The aim of the paper is to present the essence of customs handling in the context of sustainable development of enterprises and to discuss its selected instruments of a pro-ecological nature, i.e., e-customs services. Thus, with a view to achieving this objective, the research hypothesis has been formulated as follows: the so-called pro-ecological solutions for handling customs administrative procedures, being familiar with them and their practical application, not only influence the facilitation of export and import transactions, but can also stimulate sustainable development management of enterprises. The article includes a theoretical part, as well as a practical one, in which examples of e-customs services offered in customs handling and benefits resulting from their use are indicated. The findings of the considerations of the paper are presented in the conclusion. The research was based on descriptive and comparative analysis, preceded by a review of sources from the subject literature. In the author’s opinion, transferring selected elements of customs handling from traditional processing to the model which takes advantage of modern information and communication technologies (ICT) helps companies to implement the idea of sustainable development. Information technologies play a key role in reducing the negative impact on the environment, and their development has created numerous new opportunities for customs handling, which are used by customs authorities with increasing success. It is important that over the coming years, the development of e-services for customs handling is continued, thus not only contributing to an improvement of the quality of business services but also the implementation of other aspects that are also crucial from the point of view of sustainable development of enterprises.

Next-Generation Blockchain-Enabled Virtualized Cloud Security Solutions: Review and Open Challenges

Cloud computing is a well-known technology that provides flexible, efficient, and cost-effective IT solutions for multinationals to offer improved and enhanced quality of business services to end-users. The cloud computing paradigm is instigated from the grid and parallel computing models. It uses virtualization, server consolidation, utility computing, and other computing technologies and models for providing better IT solutions for large-scale computational data centres. It encompasses different services for supporting data storage, networking, and computing for facilities and amenities for businesses and multinational corporations. The enormous elastic on-demand cloud provisioning resources and services and datasets are processed and stored in tier-level virtualized cloud data centres operated by third-party service providers called cloud owners. The primary issue with these cloud service providers is to provide and maintain data security, privacy, and confidentiality and service availability and data support for end-users. This paper reviews, highlights, and discusses some of the common cloud computing vulnerabilities primarily related to virtualization platforms and their implementations while outsourcing services and resources to different end-users and business enterprises. We then provided blockchain-enabled solutions for virtualized cloud platforms involving both the end-users and cloud service providers (CSP) to address and solve various security and privacy-related vulnerabilities. These solutions will help the data centre industry to improve its virtualized cloud services and resource provisioning facilities. Finally, we discussed different blockchain-related implementation challenges in cloud infrastructures.

EFFECTS OF SERVICE QUALITY, SATISFACTION, AND PERCEIVED LOYALTY IN TECHNOLOGY USE OF GENERATION Z CONSUMERS DURING THE COVID-19 SITUATION

Studying people’s behavior during COVID-19 is new and important for business planning. This research aimed to study the influencing relationship of four variables: service quality, customer satisfaction, perceived trust, and customer loyalty. This study focuses on Generation Z’s behavior in using technology during the coronavirus situation. Therefore, the research population is Generation Z in Thailand who were surveyed by sending questionnaires through various online media to collect data. The sample comprised 380 participants who were statistically analyzed by descriptive analysis and PLS structural equation analysis. The results showed that (1) the participants’ opinions on all four variables, included service quality, customer satisfaction, customer trust, and loyalty, were at a high level, (2) the service quality significantly influenced customer satisfaction, (3) the service quality significantly affected perceived trust, (4) the customer satisfaction significantly influenced customer loyalty, and (5) the perceived trust significantly affected customer loyalty. Research suggests that management and strategic planning in service businesses for Generation Z customers should focus on the four key success factors, including service quality, customer satisfaction, perceived trust, and customer loyalty. Planning through the business service quality has a positive effect on customer satisfaction and trust. It ultimately leads to customer loyalty in Generation Z, which is critical to the success and the continued growth of the service business.

Server consolidation: A technique to enhance cloud data center power efficiency and overall cost of ownership

Cloud computing is a well-known technology that provides flexible, efficient, and cost-effective information technology solutions for multinationals to offer improved and enhanced quality of business services to end-users. The cloud computing paradigm is instigated from grid and parallel computing models as it uses virtualization, server consolidation, utility computing, and other computing technologies and models for providing better information technology solutions for large-scale computational data centers. The recent intensifying computational demands from multinationals enterprises have motivated the magnification for large complicated cloud data centers to handle business, monetary, Internet, and commercial applications of different enterprises. A cloud data center encompasses thousands of millions of physical server machines arranged in racks along with network, storage, and other equipment that entails an extensive amount of power to process different processes and amenities required by business firms to run their business applications. This data center infrastructure leads to different challenges like enormous power consumption, underutilization of installed equipment especially physical server machines, CO2 emission causing global warming, and so on. In this article, we highlight the data center issues in the context of Pakistan where the data center industry is facing huge power deficits and shortcomings to fulfill the power demands to provide data and operational services to business enterprises. The research investigates these challenges and provides solutions to reduce the number of installed physical server machines and their related device equipment. In this article, we proposed server consolidation technique to increase the utilization of already existing server machines and their workloads by migrating them to virtual server machines to implement green energy-efficient cloud data centers. To achieve this objective, we also introduced a novel Virtualized Task Scheduling Algorithm to manage and properly distribute the physical server machine workloads onto virtual server machines. The results are generated from a case study performed in Pakistan where the proposed server consolidation technique and virtualized task scheduling algorithm are applied on a tier-level data center. The results obtained from the case study demonstrate that there are annual power savings of 23,600 W and overall cost savings of US$78,362. The results also highlight that the utilization ratio of already existing physical server machines has increased to 30% compared to 10%, whereas the number of server machines has reduced to 50% contributing enormously toward huge power savings.

A Study on the Effects of Business Service Quality on Satisfaction, Commitment, Performance, and Loyalty at a Private University

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impacts of business service quality on satisfaction, commitment, performance, and loyalty in higher education. A survey was given to undergraduates involved in business through employment and start-up companies at a private university in Korea. With 252 respondents, this study used exploratory factor analysis and reliability analysis to verify the reliability and validity of measured variables. Multiple regression was employed as a statistical method for the hypotheses of the study. The research questions were: 1) How do education SERVQUAL factors (tangibles, responsiveness, reliability, assurance, and empathy) affect customer satisfaction? 2) How do education SERVQUAL factors affect customer commitment? 3) How does customer satisfaction or commitment affect education performance? 4) How does customer satisfaction, commitment or performance affect their loyalty in higher education? The findings show that most dimensions of business service quality have effects on satisfaction and commitment, and satisfaction and commitment have a positive effect on performance. Additionally, satisfaction, commitment and performance all have an effect on loyalty. This study confirmed the need for the improvement of business service quality in a private university. Additionally, it highlighted the importance of user satisfaction, commitment and performance in order to increase the loyalty level of undergraduate students.

Factors affecting customers' satisfaction on service quality – the case of Duong Vy service trading limited company

This study analyzes the factors affecting customer satisfaction about the service quality of businesses operating in the field of logistics, using the case study conducted at Duong Vy company. From the SERVQUAL model of Parasuraman, this study develops a model to measure the satisfaction of logistics service quality which consists of five factors, including (1) reliability, (2) responsiveness, (3) assurance, (4) empathy, and (5) tangibles. The study used quantitative methods (linear regression) to analyze data sets collected from 256 customers of Duong Vy to test the research hypotheses. The results show that responsiveness, assurances, and empathy have a positive impact on customer satisfaction. This comes from the characteristics of logistics industries that require assurance and accurate responsiveness. Therefore, the study offers some solutions for Duong Vy as well as the logistics industry to improve the quality of logistics services, such as (1) invest to improve the assessment of tangible value and customer trust; and (2) promote assurance, responsiveness, and empathy to increase customer satisfaction and enhance business efficiency.

On General Framework of Type-1 Membership Function Construction: Case Study in QoS Planning

Fuzzy approaches that are proposed to describe uncertain, impressive or vague concepts, are based on the construction of membership function (MF), which reflects what is known about the linguistic variables in the application domain. However, a non-trivial problem exists in how to construct the most appropriate MF that has the best-fit representation of the analysed problem. Therefore, many authors propose their own ways to construct MF using a certain technique in a particular application domain. Consequently, the need for a general approach for constructing MF led us to systematise and to generalise the analysed approaches into a general methodological framework (GMF) of constructing MF. The novelty of this paper is that the proposed GMF is general, domain independent and free of a chosen understanding of fuzziness (i.e., similarity (imprecision), preference (vagueness), and uncertainty). To verify the proposed GMF, it was applied for the enterprise business service quality (QoSEBS) planning problem. The obtained results showed that a semi-automatic MF construction for QoSEBS planning was more sensitive, less subjective and more precise than a manual construction. Moreover, illustrative examples showed that our proposed GMF is applicable and implementable. The reliability of the results was assessed using experts and users’ experience, which is based on general guidelines of the “acceptable” response time limits for various activities.

Scale for Measuring Perceived Service Quality of Public Service in Sri Lanka: With Special Reference to Divisional Secretariats in Gampaha District

The most accepted SERVQUAL is heavily applied to measure the service quality of Business to Customer (B2C) profit oriented organizations than for non-profit organizations. As such, this paper describes the development of a 19-item instrument for assessing customer perceptions of service quality in public service with special reference to Divisional Secretariats in Sri Lanka. To do so, both qualitative and quantitative methods were utilized in three fundamental stages recommended by Churchill (1979) and Parasuraman et.al, (1988). In following their footsteps, initially a qualitative research was undertaken in five Divisional Secretariats within Gampaha District through interviews with 50 customers from different backgrounds and affiliations which produced 42-items with eight factors emerged. These 42-items were included in a questionnaire and quantitative study was undertaken with 100 respondents who were current or recent customers of Divisional Secretariats within Gampatha District. To ensure the reliability and validity of the measures of service quality construct, mainly reliability test, split-half reliability and factor analysis, were used. Finally, 42-items were deduced in to 19-items and a new scale was developed to measure the service quality of Divisional Secretariats with 5 dimensions Responsiveness, Communication, Tangible, Empathy and Assurance. Among these, responsiveness dimensions could be the least important and the empathy dimension was of most concern to customers. As a closing note, limitations and further studies were discussed.

Spatial analysis of users-generated ratings of yelp venues

BackgroundWith popular location-based services on smart phones, users are willing to leave comments on the business venues (e.g., restaurants, shops, bars, etc.) that they visited. Reviews of users on Yelp venues somewhat indicate satisfaction of customers with services of those venues. Those reviews could be used to reflect service quality of business venues. Geo-localized venues could tell researchers where and how good a business venue is.MethodsIn terms of a spatial analysis of venues’ ratings, this paper explored geographic patterns of ratings of Yelp business venues in a city-wide region. Specifically, we identified clusters of high and low ratings and explored spatial patterns of clusters of high ratings for different venue categories (i.e., restaurants, fast foods and bars).ResultsIn this study, we undertook an analysis of Yelp ratings in Phoenix, USA. The empirical results indicate that spatial clusters of high ratings tend to be differently distributed between different categories of Yelp venues. More specifically, bars within or near the city centre are likely to get high ratings. Moreover, although hot spots and cold spots of restaurants and fast foods both tend to be randomly distributed over space, spatial distribution of restaurants’ ratings tends to be more similar to that of bars’ ratings.ConclusionMapping Yelp’s business venues with ratings provides a new way to understand spatial patterns of service quality of business or public venues at a large spatial scale.

Resources Scheduling Algorithm in Power Wireless Private Network Based on SDON

With the increasing of the business carried by the power wireless private network and the continuous development of the new network technology, the problems in the traditional mode of power wireless private network are becoming more and more obvious. In order to solve the problems such as poor business service quality, low system throughput, and fairness problems in the uplink resource scheduling process of power wireless private network, a dynamic uplink resource scheduling algorithm is proposed on the basis of Software Defined Optical Network (SDON). By studying the business characteristics of the uplink transmission of power wireless network, the priority of the service is evaluated before the resource scheduling is carried out. According to the characteristics of OFDM resource allocation and the numerical control separation and programmable feature of SDON, different scheduling methods are designed for different services. Simulation analysis shows that this algorithm can effectively improve the system throughput, guarantee QoS, and improve the transmission performance of different services.

Factors Affecting Information Security Focused on SME and Agricultural Enterprises

Progress in the field of information and communication technology is a source of advantage that improves quality of business services; increases productivity levels and brings competitive advantage to enterprises and organisations related to agricultural production. However, the use of information and communication technology (ICT) is connected with information security risks that threaten business continuity and information assets. The ICT in small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) and agricultural enterprises is the source of several advantages as well as the risks resulting from information security violation and security incidents. This paper aims at the current situation of information security in SME and agricultural enterprises. Furthermore, the paper provides results of a survey focusing on identification and evaluation of the effects of internal and external factors affecting existence of risks in information security in Slovak SME and agricultural enterprises. Until now, there had not been a similar survey carried out.