Distinct Customer Research Articles

Potensi Prosesi Balimau Kasai Sebagai Atraksi Wisata Budaya Dalam Melestarikan Adat DanBudaya Di desa Batu Belah Kecamatan Kampar Kabupaten Kampar


 Abstract: Kampar regency has the potential of culture as a source of tourism Based on the findings, the conclusions of this study is that the potential Procession Balimau Kasai For Tourism Attractions Culture, among others, have the potential to be developed in any event to welcome the month of Ramadan. The procession potential Balimau Kasai For Tourism Attractions Culture as a cultural tourist attraction, namely: Attracting visitors or tourists; Balimau kasai a tour event as a cultural tourism attractions; and Balimau kasai a distinctive customs and culture hereditary always retained by the people in the district of Kampar. Constraints faced is the lack of coordination between all interested parties between the head region.
 
 Keywords: Procession Balimau Kasai For Tourism Cultural Attractions

Segmenting Spa Customers Based on Rate Fences Using Conjoint and Cluster Analyses

The purpose of this study was to segment spa customers based on their preferences for spa rates and restrictions. A survey was conducted using a self-administrated questionnaire distributed to Chinese visitors in Hong Kong with spa experience. Four distinct customer segments were identified by combining conjoint and cluster analyses: treatment-oriented spa goers, guarantee-sensitive spa goers, price-sensitive spa goers, and fewer days advance booking seekers. The results support the effectiveness of combining conjoint and cluster analyses in market segmentation studies. The findings will be useful for spas in designing rate fences preferred by different types of customers, which could in turn increase spa revenue.

Effect of Customer-Centric Structure on Long-Term Financial Performance

Firms with a customer-centric structure—an organizational design that aligns each business unit with a distinct customer group—are expected to exhibit superior performance compared to firms that are internally structured. Top executives invoke these customer-centric beliefs when initiating corporate reorganizations. However, a lack of empirical evidence linking these customer-centric structures to better long-term financial performance raises doubts if corporate structure can truly foster customer centricity and better position a firm to satisfy customers and hence exhibit superior performance. The current research addresses this question by using longitudinal data (1998–2010) that links Fortune 500 firms’ corporate-level structure to performance. Utilizing a dueling mediator model with allowance for endogeneity in a firm’s organizational structure choice, the study reveals that a corporate-level customer-centric structure translates to greater customer satisfaction, but simultaneously adds coordinating costs. Further explaining customer-centric structure’s record of mixed success, the benefits of increased customer satisfaction diminish (1) as competitors have already adopted customer-centric structures, (2) in fragmented markets where competitors leave few unique customer needs unaddressed, and (3) in less profitable industries. Ultimately, we show that aligning corporate structure around customers pays off only in specific competitive environments. Data, as supplemental material, are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2014.0878 .

Exploring consumer preferences in cloud archiving – a student's perspective

Cloud storage has seen an increasing rise in demand and diffusion. Consequently, the cloud storage market is also becoming an increasingly commoditised market. That is, homogenous products are offered at equal prices, and this offer makes it more difficult for cloud storage providers to generate revenue and differentiate themselves from their competitors. Therefore, it is vital for providers to precisely understand customer preferences so that these can be targeted with appropriate services. To examine these preferences, we conduct a choice experiment and analyse choice decisions gathered from 340 German students by means of a conjoint analysis. We perform an individual-level analysis of preferences, which reveals significant differences and heterogeneity within the sample. By using a subsequent cluster analysis, we identify three distinct customer segments that also show significant differences in, for example, the perceptions of information privacy and risks. Our findings contribute to the literature by uncovering the preference structure and trade-offs that users make in their choice of storage services when employed for the purpose of archiving. We conclude the study with a discussion of practical implications that can aid cloud storage providers in service design decisions, and highlight the limitations associated with our research approach and drawn sample.

Globalisation & Act East Policy: The Role of Tribal Community

Indias Look East policy was envisioned by the Narasimha Rao government in 1991 as a focused foreign policy approach towards South East Asia in particular and East Asia in general. In the present day circumstance, tourism covers rural areas, the health sector, and the environment. There are about 305 communities and over 200 tribes inhabited in Indias northeast region. Each community has its distinct customs, cultural legacy and tradition and as such, the region has ample projection to promote modern day tourism. However, policy makers face certain challenges in the North East towards best possible implementation of the Look East policy (hereinafter Act East Policy). This paper throws light on these challenges like lack of infrastructure, crisis of insurgency, the disjuncture between the elites and the social base in the North East regarding the Look East policy, and the states in capacities during the implementation process of this policy. There are ample possibilities for Tribals in North-East India to reap benefits from Indias thriving relations with South East Asia as the process of globalization provides the countries with the opportunities to grapple with cross-market convenience and enabling them lessen their poverty and economic backwardness.

Assessing the Quality of a Local Authority Conference and Hospitality Venue Using the ServQual Model

Abstract The close attention paid to service quality by successful private companies has become part of the environment within which most public service organizations now operate. The ServQual model has been used with success to help companies quantify customers' expectations and perceptions of their service and to use this analysis as the basis for improvement. More recently, the ServQual approach has been applied in public service contexts with mixed reliability and validity. This paper reports on the application of the ServQual model to a conference and hospitality venue operated by a Scottish local authority. The study investigates five distinct customer segments: conferences, meetings, receptions, performances, and weddings. The expectations-perceptions gaps are assessed for each of these segments using the ServQual model and the size and antecedents of ServQual Gap 1 is also examined.

One continent, one language? Europa Celtica and its language in Philippus Cluverius' Germania antiqua (1616) and beyond

Today's European Union is keen to point out that one of Europe's main characteristics is its linguistic diversity. Some early-modern scholars, however, emphasised the notion of European monolingualism, even though Europe's linguistic diversity was as obvious in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries as it is today. These scholars advanced the argument that, in a distant past, Europeans had spoken one single language. This article focuses on the first scholar to really substantiate this idea. In his voluminous Germania antiqua (1616), the Leiden founder of historical geography, Philippus Cluverius, set out to prove that Europe had once largely been populated by people who shared one single language and a set of distinctive customs. After analysing Cluverius' argument and his linguistic image of Europe, the article will outline the intellectual background behind his claims and map his work's impact on later representations of Europe in terms of language. Even when most early-modern scholars admittedly rejected the idea of Europe as a historical linguistic unity, the paper will show that the notion of Europe was a crucial point of reference in the linguistic scholarship of the early-modern period.

Smartphones and wine consumers: a study of Gen-Y

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to explore the potential of m-commerce (mobile commerce) combined with social media for the wine industry in order to reach distinctive customer segments Differences about access to information and shopping habits on the Internet seem to exist according to the cohorts users belong to. Design/methodology/approach – Based on a study of 190 respondents, this paper describes the consumer behavior of the Y generation regarding several variables: level of Internet sophistication and orientation, brand loyalty, risk aversion, involvement, shopping behavior and perception of authenticity. Findings – Results of the study show that m-commerce and e-commerce applications using social media platforms may prove greatly efficient in the foreseeable future for wine growers. Different ways of selling and disseminating information about their products are observed. Research limitations/implications – The infancy of m-commerce implies a relative difficulty to gather data about m-consumption. Active users on m-commerce browse and purchase a few items on the mobile web and many brands still don’t have the proper interface of their website to fit with mobile screens. As a result, it is not easy to find users with similar interests on the mobile web based on product preferences, directly linked to their browsing and purchasing history. Practical implications – Results of the confirmatory study show that m-commerce and e-commerce applications using social media platforms may in the foreseeable future, offer wine growers greater efficiency to expand their selling opportunities and reach a wider audience. Social implications – This topic is promising since various data show that wine consumption is composed of 45% of occasional drinkers (once or twice a week); and between 25 and 34 years old, it is composed of 50% are occasional drinkers. Originality/value – Y-Gens are occasional drinkers and therefore, to link those occasional drinkers with wine, it is important to use social media as a communication tool and maybe a distribution channel to better reach this potential target.

Moments of angst

Purpose– Competitive dynamics are placing greater emphasis on customer experience, making the management of the last 100 meters of the supply chain critical to differential performance. Traditionally, supply chain design has emphasized two processes: new product development and order fulfillment. Today, a third process must be designed and managed for competitive advantage. That is, the authors need to learn to design service value systems to enhance the customer experience and promote loyalty and lifetime streams of profit. This research informs the enduring challenge that underlies the delivery of high levels of customer satisfaction by enriching theory related to the design and provision of distinctive customer experience. The paper aims to discuss these issues.Design/methodology/approach– The critical incident technique (CIT), an inductive method, is employed to explore two core dimensions of expectancy theory and to identify the phenomenological and underlying systems design factors that bring about both positive and negative customer experiences.Findings– The analysis shows that few companies use customer experience as a competitive lever. Customer service failures persist from a lack of managerial commitment and poor service-delivery process design. A holistic view of customer service that emphasizes policy, people, performance measurement, and processes emerges.Originality/value– Identifying and describing the customer-experience system as a third fundamental supply chain process is an important contribution. By linking a CIT approach with cause-and-effect analysis, the authors go beyond the frequently analyzed cognitive phenomenology to identify vital systems design issues. By enhancing the customer experience at the end of the supply chain, greater advantage for all participants in the chain emerges.

The Regulation of International Roaming in the European Union: Why the MTR has No Clothes

The European Union’s ‘Regulation on roaming on public mobile telephone networks within the Community’, adopted in 2007 and amended twice since, does not set a wholesale price cap on the termination of voice calls received by European roamers. The European Union considers that such a price cap is unnecessary because, it is assumed, the termination of calls received by European roamers is covered by national regulation of the mobile termination market. This apparent assumption is incorrect. No national regulatory authority has yet demonstrated that the termination services provided by visited networks in the context of international mobile roaming should fall within the same market as the termination services provided by mobile operators in the context of standard, direct-dial voice calls. If any authority tried to do so, it could well fail, because of differences between the services which suggest that distinct product, geographic and customer dimensions apply to the relevant market definitions.

Store Atmospherics and Experiential Marketing: A Conceptual Framework and Research Propositions for An Extraordinary Customer Experience

The components of a store atmosphere that can be manipulated to generate answers on individuals are related tosensory factors. Experiential marketing that enhances the sensory aspects of consumption helps in understandingthe impact of retail environment on consumer behavior. Retailers around the world have embraced the concept ofcustomer experience management, with many incorporating the notion into their mission statements, searchingfor the creation of a distinctive customer experience for their customers (Verhoef et al., 2009). The mainobjective of this paper is to propose a conceptual framework for an extraordinary customer experience. Theconstruction of this theoretical paper was possible through the usage of desk research methodology. We reviewedthe theory on store atmospherics and customer experience, both related to the retail setting, beginning on the1950’s and ending on 2011. We also provide some research propositions aiming to develop the knowledge in thisfield. It is concluded that it is imperative for retailers today to take in account customers’ holistic experience as arelevant tool to manage the retail operation in a scenario of global competition.

Identifying Competitors in Markets with Fixed Product Offerings

We develop a novel methodology to identify competitors in markets where spatial location is an important factor of differentiation. In differentiated product markets, determining the key competitors of a focal product requires a characterization of customer demand that includes the identification of heterogeneous customer segments. The prevalent approach to characterize such a demand system is through a random utility model of customer choice. The existing methods used to estimate these models based on aggregate product sales data exploit variation in the set of product offerings to identify customer heterogeneity. Our proposed methodology uses a different empirical strategy: we use variation in observable attributes that determine the size of the distinct customer segments. This approach is useful to study markets where the set of product offerings and their characteristics are fixed or change infrequently. We apply our methodology in the hotel travel industry, where the characterization of key competitors is commonly used in practice to benchmark hotel performance. We collect publicly available data on local events to explain variation in customer segments, differentiating events by location and business/leisure purposes. Our methodology can be used effectively to characterize customer heterogeneity and identify the closest competitors to any focal hotel.

Social and Cultural Protection for Environmentally Displaced Populations: Banaban Minority Rights in Fiji

The effects of global warming are now being felt in various parts of the world. Few aspects of social and cultural life are likely to remain unaffected. The Pacific is widely regarded as one of the most vulnerable regions. Among the impacts of long-term environmental changes will be community migration and displacement. While most displacements are projected to be internal and temporary, for low lying atoll states in the Pacific permanent international relocation may be the only option. This article examines social and cultural rights of environmental migrants, and focuses on the Banaban resettlement in Fiji as a case study on minority rights protection of an environmentally-displaced population. While the Banaban displacement was not due to climate change but to long-term impacts of phosphate extraction on Banaba Island, the Banaban experience provides important lessons on the role of minority rights in the protection of culture and identity of environmentally-displaced communities. That the Banabans retained their collective identity and under existing Fijian law are allowed to maintain their indigenous system of self-government as well as use their native language are proofs of the resettlement’s success. However, Banaban minority protection is no longer as secure as it once seemed to be. Recent developments in Fiji threaten to veer away from minority rights protection and ethnic diversity. Ethnic or cultural minorities, including those displaced by environmental triggers, have distinct customs, traditions and histories requiring legal protection as well as physical and social space to thrive. The protection of cultural diversity promoting a balance of cultural identity retention and acculturation as a by-product of a healthy interaction with the host society constitute a component of successful long-term resettlement.

Nutritional status of tribal children in Andhra Pradesh

Context: Tribes constitute separate socio-cultural groups, having distinct customs, traditions, marriage, kinship, and property inheritance systems. They live largely in agricultural and pre-agricultural level of technology. Their dependency on nature and impoverished economy bear effect on the nutritional status different compared to the general population. Aims: To study the prevalence of malnutrition in the under-five years age group tribal children in the three regions of Andhra Pradesh and compare the same with national statistics. Methods and Material: A cross sectional survey was carried out to assess the nutritional status of under-five age group children in three Integrated Tribal Development Agency (ITDA) blocks of Andhra Pradesh. Results & Conclusions: Based on the WHO Child Growth Standards, the prevalence of malnutrition was lower in the AP tribal blocks than the national averages among tribal populations, but higher than the overall national and state averages.

Entrepreneurialism, the games industry and universities

The article is a personal and reflective piece related in part to the games industry and to the role of universities in supporting the development of entrepreneurial behaviour and activity. The games industry, as many others, is undergoing considerable change, with new business models and new and distinct niches emerging rapidly. The response from large commercial organisations may not always be the quickest for the new and emerging distinct customer groups, and smaller, more creative, entrepreneurial businesses might have an increased role and impact in the sector.

Customers' cognitive patterns of assurance: a dual approach

Assurance has been identified as a key service quality dimension but has not attracted theoretical and empirical attention on a distinct basis. The present pilot study adopts both qualitative and quantitative methods to look at how distinct customer groups (internal and external) perceive assurance in particular when they evaluate service quality. Evidence comes from 83 individuals of the medical staff and 79 patients at an outpatient unit. The novelty of the present study lies in the combination of means–end analysis with a probabilistic model to ground the conceptually appealing composite structure of assurance on a more concrete attribute foundation. Findings suggest that while the groups under investigation realize different benefits in achieving assurance, they share a common guide when prioritizing service-related attributes, namely the professional capacity of personnel. Overall, assurance proves itself to be critical, at least for the healthcare sector.

Segmentation of Information Systems Users

The Expectation-Confirmation Model of Information Systems Continuance (ECM-IS) explains antecedents that influence IS users’ behavior and affect their decision whether to continue or discontinue information system (IS) using. ECM-IS emphasizes differences between initial acceptance and IS continuance. For companies that deal with the design and software development, IS continuance is retaining of existing customers of product and services. This study extends the ECM-IS by accounting for unobserved heterogeneity. The Finite Mixture Partial Least Squares (FIMIX-PLS) methodology is applied for identification of distinctive customer segments. Segmentation of IS users was made on the basis of cognitive beliefs and affect influencing one’s intention to continue using IS and two different segments of users were derived. The first segment comprises 65.6%, and the other one 34.4% users. The ECM-IS explained 51.9% of IS continuance intention and 20.7% of satisfaction for the first segment, while for the second segment the ECM-IS explained 98.1% of IS continuance intention and 91.3% of satisfaction.

Customer Roles in Service Supply Chains and Opportunities for Innovation

This article conceptualizes service supply chains according to the Unified Service Theory, which defines services as bidirectional supply chains that have customers both providing resources to and receiving resources from service providers. We establish how eight traditional roles in manufacturing supply chains are assumed by customers in service supply chains. Those service–customer roles include component supplier, labor, design engineer, production manager, product, quality assurance, inventory, and competitor. We describe how these eight roles are manifested in both business‐to‐consumer and business‐to‐business service contexts. We confirm the distinctiveness of these eight customer roles through an initial empirical study and show how the roles are manifested across different types of services. We then demonstrate how these distinctive customer roles can form the basis for service supply chain innovation.

Elements of Pacific Public Health Laws

Pacific countries are sovereign nations with distinctive histories, ethnicity, customs, primary resources, economies, and health systems. Despite these and other acknowledged differences, similarities exist in many areas such as geography, legal history, and culture. Many share the experience of colonization, with imported British laws and the subsequent experience of independence. Most Pacific countries are also developing countries. This article broadly describes approaches to legislating in public health in Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Vanuatu, and the Solomon Islands and notes common elements in their public health laws, in particular, in relation to administration, allocation of powers and responsibilities, interaction with local government, communicable disease control, and nuisance. The article concludes that many Pacific public health laws could deliver better support for current health policy, more sensitivity to the culture and customs of the region, and better management of public health risk through laws that are better suited to their Pacific environment, easier to understand, more flexible, and more relevant to current health policy.

Demographic Discriminators of Service Quality in Local Government

Few services, if any, will have customers who all have exactly the same needs and who use the services in exactly the same way. Rather, services will face distinct and different customer segments. This study aimed to discriminate on key demographic variables to determine which dimensions of service quality in local government are most important to different demographic segments. The data were collected by means of a self-administered questionnaire survey conducted among residents of Khok Pho municipality in Pattani Province, southern Thailand. Four separate discriminant analysis were performed to ascertain which dimensions of service quality are potentially more important to different demographic groups. Results indicated that three discriminant functions – gender, age, and education – were statistically significant. Strategic issues in managing service quality within the local government context are identified and discussed.