Customer Issues Research Articles

Contracting for online personalisation services: An economic analysis

Our study contributes to the literature as follows. Firstly, we are the first to develop and analyse a new contracting problem in the context of personalised services in which the vendor strategically offers two complementary personalisation services to acquire customer preference information. Secondly, given heterogeneity in the willingness to use and expected utility for complementary personalisation services, we uniquely incorporate market realities about the differentiation of customer segmentation. We investigate how the boundedly rational customer segment affects the vendor’s optimal personalisation service strategies and profits. Thirdly, our study extends the privacy calculus theory in information systems through an economic model to reveal customer privacy perceptions and online behaviours. In brief, our study offers guidelines for online vendors that address online personalisation and sheds light on how to effectively carry out information acquisition strategies with boundedly rational customer issues. Market demand uncertainty and customer preference complementarity make targeted advertising and pricing decisions for online vendors particularly challenging. Advanced Internet technologies have provided vendors with the capacity to acquire customer complementary preference information. These technologies depend on the level of personalisation services and segmentation of customers. These problems get exacerbated by the fact that a vendor cannot accurately predict customer preference and thus cannot charge for online personalisation services. Therefore, designing service contracts to acquire customer preference information is vital for the vendor. This study tries to derive the optimal contracting structures (basic service, zero-utility complementary, and positive-utility complementary contracts) for vendors under information asymmetry, considering service complementarity and customer segmentation. Our study can be used in many online shopping and line-interactive systems that give the vendor a noteworthy information advantage.

Developing Cultural Competence as Part of Nursing Studies: Language, Customs and Health Issues

Introduction: Developing nurses' cultural competence begins with their basic training, and requires them to participate in an array of activities which raise their awareness and stimulate their interest, desire and curiosity to know about different cultures. The aim of this work is to evaluate a cultural competence teaching model for nursing students. Method: A qualitative and quantitative evaluation was done using a semi-structured questionnaire completed by 155 students. Results: An improvement in cultural awareness, knowledge and attitudes among students as well as their willingness to recognize the other's difference was noted. The qualitative evaluation raised 3 themes: attitude change, cultural intelligence improvement and exploring cultural similarities. Conclusions: Developing nurses' cultural competence needs to be part of their basic training and based on cultural knowledge and experiential learning methods as well as providing them the opportunity to be exposed to different cultures.

An Empirical Study to Investigate the Impact of Communication Issues in GSD in Pakistan’s IT Industry

Global software development (GSD) practice has been increasingly emerging in the recent few decades in the field of business and software industry. On the one hand, many software development organizations get the benefits of GSD, including but not limited to reduced cost, cheap labor, round the clock working and skilled professionals. On the other hand, these organizations have to face several challenges because of GSD. These challenges pose serious threats to the stability of the GSD projects. Communication between distributed team members is one of the most crucial challenges in GSD. Therefore, the current study aims to identify the communication risk in GSD and also evaluate the impact of these communication risks in GSD environment. A Systematic Literature Review (SLR) has been performed to identify all the communication-related issues in GSD. After that, a conceptual framework has been proposed for evaluating the impact of those issues on communication risk in GSD. An empirical evaluation has been performed on data collected from the software organizations of Pakistan working in GSD based environment. The finding of our study demonstrates that geographical distance, socio- temporal distance, socio-culture distance, team member's attitude, team issues, organizational & architectural issue and customer issue have a significant direct impact on communication risk in GSD. The study also shows that there is a significant correlation between findings of SLR and empirical investigation (r = 0.460, P = 0.005). Further, we believe that the results of our research can help to tackle the issues related to communication in GSD. Therefore, it will help to improve the performance of the development activities of GSD organizations.

Применение подхода Fuzzy-DEMATEL при анализе проблем мобильных приложений

In the current scenario, the popularity of smartphones has led to the emergence of an ample collection of mobile applications (apps). Mobile apps are dynamic in nature; therefore, classical software development approaches are not suitable. Individual needs of the customer, new technology, battery consumption, and many more issues force app developers regularly introduce new apps to the market. But due to the unavailability of any formal and customized practices of app development, various issues occur in mobile apps. These issues may adversely affect the application and user acceptance of the end product. In this paper, fifteen issues in mobile apps have been identified. Then we applied Fuzzy-DEMATEL (Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory) method to analyze the critical mobile issues (CMIs) and divide these issues into cause and effect groups. Firstly, multiple experts evaluate the direct relations of influential issues in mobile apps. The evaluation results are presented in triangular fuzzy numbers (TFN). Secondly, convert the linguistic terms into TFN. Thirdly, based on DEMATEL, the cause-effect classifications of issues are obtained. Finally, the issues in the cause category are identified as CMIs in mobile apps. The outcome of the research is compared with the other variants of DEMATEL like G-DEMATEL and E-DEMATEL and the comparative results suggest that fuzzy-DEMATEL is the most fitting method to analyze the interrelationship of different issues in mobile apps development. The outcome of this work definitely assists the mobile apps development industry to successful identification of the serious issues where professionals and project managers could really focus on.

A SECURED WEB-BASED E-PAYMENT SYSTEM INTEGRATING IMAGE-BASED STEGANOGRAPHY ENCRYPTION

Growth in technology has made online shopping such an interesting thing but has introduced fraud, making personal informationsecurity a major issue for customers as well as merchants and banks in the case of CNP (Card Not Present). This paper is aim atdeveloping a method for the creation of a Secured web-based e-Payment system that will allow a customer to provide limitedinformation necessary for fund transfer during online/physical shopping and enhance the security of customer data. In this paper, the image-based steganography encryption technique was used to design a web-based e-payment system. The descriptive research methodology was adopted in this research in which questionnaire was used to ascertain how reliable steganography as an encryption mechanism is for better security measure. The result obtained from this research shows that the level of trust onsteganography being used to implement the e-payment system is high with a percentage level of 69.2%. This work thereforeconcludes that image-based steganography encryption technique will enhance the security of information for online payment andprevent misuse of customers information.

An Empirical Investigation into Personal Characteristics' Effect on Choosing Complaint Channels

For companies, complaints are a valuable customer reaction to dissatisfaction. They enable the company to respond to customer issues to prevent them from changing supplier or spreading negative word-of-mouth communication. Previous research identified various influencing factors of complaint behaviour. However, it has been scarcely considered which aspects influence the selection of the complaint channel (e. g. telephone, social media). Therefore, a 1x2 experimental study (n = 244) was conducted. Results reveal effects of personal characteristics (aggressiveness, argumentativeness and social anxiety) on complaint channel choice. A moderating effect of failure severity was also partially found. From a managerial perspective, it is recommended to provide various complaint options. This would allow the disappointed consumer to choose an adequate complaint channel depending on his or her personality.

Factor & Elemental Analysis of Nanotechnology as GreenTechnology using ABCD Framework

There are many definitions for the research process in both natural sciences and philosophical sciences. Out of them, the most popular two definitions are (1) Creating new knowledge, and (2) Interpretation of existing knowledge in a new way through the suitable method of analysis. There are many analysis frameworks used to interpret concepts, ideas, technologies, models, systems, solutions to any problems, strategies, products or services of an organization, resources, etc. Out of them, recently developed analysis framework called ABCD analysis framework is flexible to use in both qualitative and quantitative manner. ABCD analysis method allows the researcher to interpret the given concepts, ideas, technologies, models, systems, solutions of any problems, strategies, products or services of an organization, resources including material, machine, men, money, and information, systematically by considering various determinant issues related to the problem under analysis. The various determinant issues like organizational issue, business issues, customer issues, technological issues, government issue, environmental issues, and societal issues are identified and the affecting factors under the constructs Advantages, Benefits, Constraints, and Disadvantages are determined for identified key attributes. The critical constitutional elements of the nanotechnology as green technology are also identified for the same four constructs. The scores are given to each critical element under all four constructs and based on calculating overall scores the importance of nanotechnology as green technology in solving both basic and advanced problems in the society are determined and rated.

Comfortable automotive seat design and big data analytics: A study in thigh support

This study demonstrates how big data analytics can improve automotive seat design practices pertaining to thigh support and cushion length, a consistent customer complaint across the automotive seating industry. The method featured an analysis of survey feedback (complaint and self-reported anthropometry) obtained from 92,258 buyers of new vehicles in the North American market. Driver seat three dimensional scans from 139 vehicles (representing 12 manufacturers) provided metrics related to cushion length allowing for determination of the percentage of an average occupant's thigh supported by an automotive seat cushion in relation to customer complaints. The range determined to provide thigh support leading to minimal complaints for overall cushion length is 83.46%–88.49% and for cushion length to trim prominence is 73.63%–80.60%. A specific vehicle program was used to confirm the targets established using big data analytics were effective in minimizing customer issues related to thigh support and cushion length.

Качество менеджмента: опыт теоретического осмысления

Based on the philosophical interpretation of quality, the research considers the external and internal de-termination of the quality of management. The ex-ternal determination includes the management style, the level of goal achievement, the level of perfor-mance, and the boss-subordinate relationship while the internal determination implies the organizational structure, the management system, the employee functions, and the latent characteristics of manage-ment (the level of pathology and the level of inver-sion). The issue of management customer is raised. It is argued that the quality of management is prima-ry in relation to the quality of products and services. The innovation management paradigm is considered as the ground for the development of methodologi-cal approaches to assessing the quality of manage-ment. The concept of open and hidden (latent) qual-ities of management is introduced. The theoretical constructs are based on the analysis and compre-hension of Russian and international scientific liter-ature and business press.

Measuring performance

Most organizations today have a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) that are used for decision-making. Because a balanced scorecard approach has been widely adopted, typically KPIs have moved beyond the basic financial metrics. However, developing the right set of KPIs is an important step in promoting continuous improvement and overall business success. Organization that implement six sigma or lean six sigma have a built-in set of KPIs, such as defects, ppm defective, process yields, process cycle times, and a variety of inventory statistics, such as WIP inventory. But I don't think this goes far enough in most situations. KPIs should be traceable to customer satisfaction, both for external customers and internal ones. Organizations should formalize customer requirements and then evaluate how they are doing with respect to this list when they conduct strategic planning sessions. This is a good way to develop the right KPIs. However, overemphasis on short-term financial results can skew this process. Too much focus on quarterly growth in sales or revenue and deflect attention from the issues that contribute to long-term business growth and success. Organizations often gravitate towards collecting data that is easy to obtain, but may not be necessarily useful. An example is information about customer satisfaction data. Surveys can be useful, but may not tell the complete story. One organization that I am familiar with has a customer service line. They reported very few serious complaints from that source. Analysis revealed that the average waiting time for customers that used this line was in excess of 30 minutes. Furthermore, the ability of the system to place calls on hold was limited, so a significant number of calls were “blocked”; that is, they were not answered at all. So the volume of customer issues that this service was designed to serve was dramatically underestimated. Some KPIs are lagging indicators of business performance. Examples include sales volumes and maintenance expenses. These are usually easy to generate, but may not provide much indication of future success. Reliable forecasts of future demand (demand isn't necessarily the same as sales) is usually a better business indicator. Leading indicators are harder to devise, almost always depend on the specific nature of the individual organization, and may be difficult to generate. For example, cycle time for new product introduction is often a critical measure of future business success in many industries. If this KPI is unsatisfactory or is getting longer for unexplained reasons it may indicate an area for lean six sigma intervention. Performance measurement is an important management tool for evaluating and improving organizational success. Leading KPIs can be an effective “canary in the coal mine” warning of impending trouble. The investment required to develop and maintain the correct set of KPIs will pay many dividends.

Factors influencing functional food and food supplement consumption

Functional foods and food supplements are two of the major classes of nutraceuticals or food-related products that have health benefits, such as improving health and prevention and treatment of disease. The aim of this present study is to introduce the main factors influencing functional food consumptions as well as food supplement consumption, searching for the answers to the following research questions: (1) What factors affect functional food and food supplement consumption and to what extent? (2) What is the most authentic source of information in customers’ decision making? Results of secondary and primary researches suggest that the most important factors in decision making are: experience in earlier consumption, nutrients, quality and price. Food supplements are complex products and therefore, it is difficult for consumers to check the quality of these products at point of purchase; thus food-safety is a major issue for customers when buying food supplements. It can also be concluded that the availability and reliability of the source of information can greatly determine customer’s decision making. The most authentic source of information according to customers’ opinion were the following: health care professionals, sales staff and health-related articles. These variables should be taken into account for marketers and businesses when considering product development or improving communication on nutritional and health benefits of functional food and food supplements.

Enabling entity discovery in indoor commercial environments without pre-deployed infrastructure

Finding entities of interest in indoor commercial places, such as the merchandise in supermarkets and shopping malls, is an essential issue for customers, especially when they are unfamiliar with an ad hoc indoor environment. This type of location-based indoor service requires comprehensive knowledge of indoor entities, including locations as well as their semantic information. However, the existing indoor localization approaches fail to directly localize these general entities without dedicated devices. This paper first focuses on the problem of discovering large-scale general entities of interest in indoor commercial spaces without pre-deployed infrastructure. We present a unique entity localization approach that leverages the localization results from multiple independent users to accurately determine the location of corresponding entities. Our key idea is to exploit the short-distance estimation with dead reckoning to guarantee the accuracy of entity localization. We develop a prototype system based on the crowdsourcing method, iScan, and test it in one of the biggest supermarkets in Changsha, China, to validate the performance of our design. Extensive experimental results show that our approach can achieve meter-level accuracy in a single day with 70 participants. Moreover, in a monthly evaluation with 500 effective participants, iScan discovered more than 200 entities and localized approximately 75% of them within 2 m.

An improved Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm for the VRP with Simultaneous Pickup and Delivery and Time Windows

In logistics, planners' main goal is to reduce operational cost as much as possible. Keeping this in mind, other aspects such as recycling arise as important issues for customers. As a consequence, planners often need to find a balance among all these aspects and operational costs. In this work, the vehicle routing problem with simultaneous pick-up and delivery and time windows is considered. Simultaneous pick-up and delivery (also called reverse logistics) allows us to address the problem of removing goods after they have been labelled as obsolete. To solve this complex combinatorial optimisation problem we use Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO), a social-inspired algorithm. PSO aims to find a set of paths that minimises the total distance of the paths while serving, simultaneously, customers delivery and pick-up demands. Further, time windows constraints are also considered in this paper, which make the problem harder to solve. Including time windows makes also the problem more realistic, though. Results show that the PSO algorithm can find solutions that are quite competitive w.r.t. previously reported algorithms in the literature. Furthermore, the PSO algorithm solves the problem within an acceptable time.

A full stack for quick prototyping of IoT solutions

The paper presents a novel approach for prototyping interconnected products belonging to the Internet of Things context. The proposed solution aims at merging the benefits provided by monolithic vertical approaches (where all the IoT elements are pre-selected, from the hardware to the cloud) with those of horizontal solutions (that leave the freedom to select the single components and write the integration code). The proposed solution allows to speed up the prototyping process and lets the developers focus on coding the product behaviors rather than solving customization issues. The advantages of the proposed solution goes beyond the prototyping, as the prototype can be easily converted into an industrially viable solution. The paper ends with a real case application where the proposed stack is used for the development of an IoT unit that converts industrial refrigerators into smart connected systems.

ANALYZING MOBILE BANKING QUALITY FACTORS UNDER NEUTROSOPHIC SET PERSPECTIVE: A CASE STUDY OF TURKEY

Mobile banking, also known as m-banking, provides low cost, innovative and easily accessible services to customers with technological developments as compared to retail banking. In this context, m-banking quality factors of the banks are considered to be important issues for customers. The aim of this study is to analyze the m-banking quality factors and to rank banks offering this service in Turkey under incomplete, inconsistent and indeterminate information.

Exploring the association of corporate social responsibility and employees’ organisational citizenship behaviour: A study in Pakistan

The motivation of the study was to find the link between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Organisational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB) among employees in the Pakistani context. Although in previous research, the studies have investigated how CSR influences organisational outcomes, there remains limited research examining its effects on employees’ attitudes and behaviour. To address this research gap, the current study examined the link between CSR programs and OCB. Further, the current study considers the range of criticisms regarding managerial imposition of ethical values on employees. This study also examined the variables of communication satisfaction and Perceived Organisational Politics (POP). This study was based on primary questionnaire data from over 200 non-managerial employees from a single case study organisation in Pakistan. The study found that three elements of CSR: CSR regarding the government, customer and social issues were significant in promoting or fostering employee's OCB. Interestingly, the results indicated that CSR towards employees was not significant for employee's OCB. The results also demonstrated that POP and communication satisfaction fully interfere the association between CSR and OCB. The theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed, and suggestions are offered for future studies.

Preliminary Study on Effect of Chemical Composition Alteration on Elastic Recovery and Stress Recovery of Nitrile Gloves

Nitrile gloves are widely used in the medical and automobile field due to its superiority in hypo-allergic component and chemical resistance over natural latex gloves. However, poor elastic recovery of nitrile glove to compressive force also creates an aesthetic issue for customers with high levels of wrinkling after removing from glove box. This paper demonstrates the preliminary study on the varies chemical composition such as crosslinking agents, sulphur and zinc oxide, the accelerator agent added during curing process, and the rubber filler Titanium Dioxide, on the elastic recovery and stress relaxation in nitrile gloves manufacturing. These chemical were studied at different concentration level comparing the high and low level versus the normal production range. Due to the inconsistency in the analysis technique on the surface imaging, the elastic recovery result was unable to be quantified and was not conclusive at this point. The cross linking agents, sulphur and zinc oxide, and the accelerator agent, played a significant role in the mechanical strength of the gloves. Increment of these chemicals result in higher tensile strength, but a reduction in the elasticity of the materials in which causes a lesser elongation at break percentage for the gloves. Both cross-linkers demonstrate different behaviour where higher sulphur content, provide higher stress relaxation (SR%) yet zinc oxide shows otherwise.

ANALYZING MOBILE BANKING QUALITY FACTORS UNDER NEUTROSOPHIC SET PERSPECTIVE: A CASE STUDY OF TURKEY

Purpose - Mobile banking, also known as m-banking, provides low cost, innovative and easily accessible services to customers with technological developments as compared to retail banking. In this context, m-banking quality factors of the banks are considered to be important issues for customers. The aim of this study is to analyze the m-banking quality factors and to rank banks offering this service in Turkey under incomplete, inconsistent and indeterminate information. Methodology - First linguistic expressions of experts are converted to crisp values via approximation approach proposed by Chen and Hwang. Then, the Single Valued Neutrosophic Set (SVNS) based entropy, which deals with incomplete, indeterminate and inconsistent environment better than fuzzy set, is used to rank the banks providing m-banking services in Turkey. Findings- Findings show that the Denizbank has the best performance in m-banking applications followed by TEB and ING. Additionally, in terms of entropy weights, response time was found to be the most important criterion followed by accessibility, accuracy and trust. Conclusion- Banks could consider the criteria of response time, accessibility, accuracy and trust for improving the performance in mbanking services implementation.

The Way of Customer Issue Visualization for Service Design Planning

The Way of Customer Issue Visualization for Service Design Planning

Impact of Relationship Management on Customer Loyalty of e-Wallet Users: A Study of Paytm Enterprise

The success of any organisation depends on customized strategies, and its dedicated team to implement the strategies, without which an organisation may fail. In order to achieve increased and sustainable results, organizations need to execute strategies and engage customers to retain them. The focus of relationship management is to keep and retain existing customers and not focusing on new ones. Retained customers many times work as the catalyst for the new customers as they share their experiences with them. This study is all about the effects of relationship management strategies being implemented by Paytm Enterprise to retain the e-wallet customers. In other words the aim of the study is to check the impact of relationship marketing strategies on customer loyalty. To conduct the study four independent variables reliability, dedication, conversation and handling of customer issues were checked on one dependent variable, i.e., customer loyalty. Awell-structured questionnaire was developed to collect the responses through purposive sampling from 151 respondents of Varanasi city. Data was analysed by the means, standard deviation, and multiple regression. Results of this study show the correlation between relationship management and customer's loyalty. On the basis of the results it can be concluded that the regression model is good fit. In order to have loyal customer in Paytm Enterprise, the marketer needs to build a solid relationship with the customer by focusing on these independent variables.