High-level Customer Research Articles

A Machine Learning Model for Local Market Prediction Using RFM Model

This study explores the application of machine learning for local market prediction in e-commerce. By leveraging the RFM segmentation method, the model predicts product sales based on user shopping patterns. The RFM score, calculated using recency, frequency, and monetary values of customer purchases, segments customers into distinct categories. The research utilizes a dataset obtained through seven parameters and performs data preprocessing. K-Means clustering then classifies customers into Low, Medium, and High levels based on their RFM scores. Customers in the Low category exhibit low purchase activity but high product browsing. The Medium segment displays consistent purchases of a limited product range. High-level customers demonstrate frequent purchases with significant spending. The identified customer segments enable targeted marketing strategies. For Low-level customers, discounts or product feature promotions can incentivize purchases. Combining product offerings can entice Medium-level customers to explore new products. Finally, High-level customers can be engaged through loyalty programs offering rewards. This approach empowers e-commerce sellers to tailor marketing strategies for each customer segment, enhancing market dominance.

Trends of consumer preferences in the segment of private medical services in Moscow

This scientific article analyzes the factors that influence to consumer preferences and its changes under impact of economic and financial events in the area of modern medical services at the city of Moscow. When there is made a choice of applying of paid medical services and medic institutions, the first of all Moscow residents take into account the educational level and specialization experience of senior medical personnel. According to opinions of medical services consumers the success of treatment depends on the qualifications of doctors that work at the private medic sector at Moscow. These clients are ready to spend relatively large amounts of material resources for consultations and cure by the best specialists. The Covid-19 pandemic and the political situation at the country have made changes to the consumer preferences of Muscovites. On the one hand they began to save more, and health issues became secondary ones at the most cases. On the other hand, they are still willing to invest financial resources in their health and also appearance. This explains the ranking of costs for the services of surgeons, cosmetologists and dentists. The previous financial year was marked by instability not only at the political arena, but also by high volatility of the financial market: the exchange rate of the national currency changed dramatically several times during the year. These data led to increased prices at medic centers. To maintain high level customer loyalty at private centers at Moscow they need train doctors, regularly improve their qualifications, create conditions for their additional education aimed to expanding skills and updating existing knowledge level.

Development of SCOR Database for Digitalisation of Supply Chain Customer Feedback Analysis

High-level customer service, with improved quality at a lower cost, is imperative in today's global supply chain, where customers have myriad options across borders. This is in line with the primary objective of supply chain management, which is to enable and deliver high-level customer service with lower costs, reduce lead time, and improve the quality of products/services. The Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) model based on KPI metrics enables an increase in the quality of products/services by monitoring and digitalising involved processes. The current paper suggests the structure of the SCOR database for Supply Chain process improvement by applying the best practices of the SCOR for Business Processes improvement. We recommend the Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) and Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) methods to estimate the influence of these improvements on Supply Chain efficiency through key performance indicators before implementation. Integrating the methods proposed in this article focuses on an approach that minimises supply chain failures, decreases failure elimination time, understands consumer needs, and offers more accurate price proposals and lead times to improve customer satisfaction. Accordingly, the integrated SCOR-based Business Process Modelling (BPM) was not previously combined with BBN to identify the most efficient ways to improve the reliability of a Supply Chain by applying best practices, which impacts the entire supply chain. Our research is limited to SME companies in electronics manufacturing, but our ambition is to develop a universal framework suitable for broader areas. The study aims to analyse how the customers see the company by combining the CDA (Customer Delivery Accuracy) and Customer Complaints measures and find the optimal way to improve business processes by applying best practices. Still, it is limited to SCOR reliability performance metrics.

Structure Analysis of Factors Influencing the Preference of Ridesplitting

Ridesplitting is a new form of for-hire service that riders with similar origins and destinations are matched to the same vehicle in real-time via Internet. However, the market share of ridesplitting only accounts for a small fraction of total travel. Understanding cognitive factors affecting ridesplitting preference would be helpful in designing its market measures, regulations, and incentives to achieve high-level customer attractions. This paper identifies the cognitive determinants affecting ridesplitting preference and their inner relationships via the structural equation model. The data from an online survey conducted in Shanghai were implemented for model calibration. The modal fitness results are reasonable, and the path coefficients are significant, exhibiting that the proposed hypothesis cannot be rejected. Specifically, attitude towards incentives and management issues, perceived benefit, and perceived usefulness appear to be strong active driving forces that encourage the desire to adopt ridesplitting.

Early Childhood Education and Care in a Post-pandemic Economy: Lessons from China

The mismatch between the demand side and the supply side in the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) sector has been a recurring pattern for a long period of time. Unlike the other levels and types of education, over 60% of provision in the ECEC sector comes from private organizations in China. Following the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, challenges have emerged in the high-level customer contact services and the classic labour-intensive industries. From the "regular epidemic prevention and control" point of view, regulatory reform is necessary, such as translating the "price cap regulation" into the "rate of return regulation", enforcing the demand side incentive, combining regulatory innovation and technical innovation, and creating good conditions for the professional development of teachers in the ECEC sector.

Light-Weight Platform for Attack Validation in LTE Network

Within the scope of Long Term Evolution (LTE) security research, open-source implementations of LTE stack are generally used to validate attacks. Since analysis of the code requires advanced understanding of both specifications and programming, validating attacks is tiring and time-consuming. To address the difficulty, we develop LTE Evaluation Assistant Platform (LEAP), an extension of OpenAirInterface (OAI). It provides a Python interface to monitor and manipulate traffic inside OAI. LEAP adopts a novel architecture to reduce complexity. We also investigated the tradeoff between high level customization, usability, and latency. The evaluation result shows LEAP could effectively simplify attack validation process.

Krotov: A Python implementation of Krotov's method for quantum optimal control

We present a new open-source Python package, krotov, implementing the quantum optimal control method of that name. It allows to determine time-dependent external fields for a wide range of quantum control problems, including state-to-state transfer, quantum gate implementation and optimization towards an arbitrary perfect entangler. Krotov's method compares to other gradient-based optimization methods such as gradient-ascent and guarantees monotonic convergence for approximately time-continuous control fields. The user-friendly interface allows for combination with other Python packages, and thus high-level customization.

A Structural Model of Customer Learning on Mobile Payment

As one of the prominent areas of FinTech, mobile payment is increasingly accepted by more and more consumers. To investigate consumer mobile payment adoption behavior, we develop a Bayesian learning structural model using a rich data set from JD.com, the largest direct selling online retailer in China. We find that there exist two significant learning processes on consumer mobile payment adoption, i.e., mobile channel learning and online payment learning. On average, mobile channel learning plays a more important role in consumer mobile payment adoption than online payment learning. However, the speed of online payment learning is faster than the mobile channel learning. Second, we find a significant inertial effect on both learning processes. High membership level customers at JD.com are less likely to migrate from PC channel to the mobile channel, and also from offline cash-on-delivery payment to online payment than low membership level customers. Similarly, customers with longer shopping experience at JD.com are less likely to migrate from PC channel to the mobile channel. However, such inertial effect on online payment learning mainly exists for PC customers who did not migrate to the mobile channel. For those mobile customers who migrated to the mobile channel, the longer their shopping experience at JD.com, the more likely they switch from the offline cash-on-delivery method to the online payment. Third, we find that firm promotion policy on mobile channel is more effective to drive consumers to adopt mobile payment than the promotion policy on online payment, and interestingly the promotion policy on mobile payment directly is least effective. Finally, our policy simulations further show that the promotion frequency and duration are more important to drive consumer mobile payment adoption than promotion amount since the former two policies are more effective to facilitate consumer learning than the latter policy.

Customer Satisfaction in the Field of Comprehensive Service of Refrigerated Containers in Seaports

The article analyzes the issues concerning customer satisfaction survey with the complexity of handling refrigerated containers at the seaports' container terminals. It aims to determine the criteria to evaluate the port comprehensive service and to examine the opinion of chosen seaports terminals on customer satisfaction with the complexity of handling refrigerated containers. Evaluation criteria of comprehensive service of refrigerated containers in seaports were identified and examined. The analysis of ports opinions on customer satisfaction with the service of refrigerated containers was based on surveys, which covered 5 container terminals located in the Polish cities of Gdansk, Gdynia and Szczecin. The research revealed that according to the ports, complex service primarily affects the high-level customer satisfaction and shorter service time, while implementation of this service regards a good level of customer service and price.

Examination of importance and range of comprehensive service for refrigerated containers in seaports

The article concerns the problems of comprehensive service for refrigerated cargo performed at maritime container terminals. It aims to determine the services range forming the comprehensive service of refrigerated containers in seaports and to examine the opinion of container terminals on customer satisfaction with the complexity of handling refrigerated containers. An approach to assess the customer satisfaction with the complexity of handling refrigerated containers has been proposed. The results of the survey conducted at five Polish maritime container terminals have been analysed. The research revealed that according to the seaports opinion the comprehensive service is important for their customers. The high-level customer satisfaction and shorter service time are the main benefits of service. The importance rating for services groups within comprehensive service of analysed cargo has been analysed. It was stated that seaports need to strengthen the implementation of logistic services group for refrigerated containers under their comprehensive service.

Mapping of global research literature in the field of cloud computing

Cloud computing services mark a new paradigm shift in attracting business models for high level customer satisfaction. It empowers users to virtually use the computing servers anytime, irrespective of location. The present study analyzed the dataset obtained from Scopus (http://www.scopus.com) on various aspects of cloud computing to map progress in the field. The study found that 4108 papers have been published on cloud computing till December 31, 2013. These papers have been cited 38339 times till December 31, 2014. The average number of publications per year has been ∼684.7. Maximum literature has been published in English, 3598 (87.6 percent) and Chinese, 416 (10.1 percent). Literature on the subject was published in 157 journals around the world. Overall, 95 countries contributed to producing the literature on cloud computing. China is the leading country in publishing cloud computing research with 1208 papers (29.4 percent). Using the Salton’s index the collaboration was found strong between Spain and United Kingdom (∼0.1139), United Kingdom and Germany (∼0.0957). 21 highly cited papers accounted for total 9595 (25.0 percent) citations. It is noted that 1422 (34.6 percent) papers have not been cited by any author. The study revealed that 160 institutes around the globe contributed on the subject. Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications is the leading institutes with 80 (1.9 percent) papers. Buyya, R. from University of Melbourne is the leading author in the subject with 27 (0.7 percent) papers and his papers received the highest citations 2734 (3.4 percent). The journal entitled ‘Future Generation Computer Systems’ published the highest number of papers, 75 (1.8 percent) and received the highest citations, 2961 (7.7 percent).

GeMSTONE: orchestrated prioritization of human germline mutations in the cloud.

Integrative analysis of whole-genome/exome-sequencing data has been challenging, especially for the non-programming research community, as it requires simultaneously managing a large number of computational tools. Even computational biologists find it unexpectedly difficult to reproduce results from others or optimize their strategies in an end-to-end workflow. We introduce Germline Mutation Scoring Tool fOr Next-generation sEquencing data (GeMSTONE), a cloud-based variant prioritization tool with high-level customization and a comprehensive collection of bioinformatics tools and data libraries (http://gemstone.yulab.org/). GeMSTONE generates and readily accepts a shareable ‘recipe’ file for each run to either replicate previous results or analyze new data with identical parameters and provides a centralized workflow for prioritizing germline mutations in human disease within a streamlined workflow rather than a pool of program executions.

The impact of supply chain agility on business performance in a high level customization environment

To improve business performance in rapidly changing environments, supply chain agility can be a crucial requisite to address responsiveness issues, especially in environments with high levels of customization. This paper examines the effect of supply chain agility on customer service, differentiation, and business performance. A survey research methodology was employed using a sample of 156 manufacturing firms that provide high levels of customization. In particular, structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed to evaluate the proposed model. The results suggest that supply chain agility influences customer service and differentiation positively. However, it does not affect business performance directly; instead, better business performance can be achieved and mediated through improved customer service and differentiation. In particular, differentiation through customer service is the most effective way to improve business performance, and supply chain agility can help to achieve high-level customer service. The paper advises managers on details of how to fulfil their business performance ambitions better through suggested key agile supply chain management activities.

Preferences for Floor Plans of Medium-Sized Apartments: A Survey Analysis in Beijing, China

This study constitutes a new approach to quantitative analysis of people's housing preferences. Using medium-sized apartments in Beijing as an example, seven floor plans were developed and a questionnaire survey was conducted where the respondents were asked to decide between different pairs of floor plans based on their own preferences. Based on the data, the spatial properties of the floor plans were examined and sample families were classified by their attributes. Using a modeling approach, the preferences for housing floor plans of various family groups were estimated and discussed in detail. The results demonstrated that ‘privacy,’ ‘south-facing,’ ‘storage,’ and ‘number of rooms’ were the critical means of evaluation of the floor plans of medium-sized apartments. The preferences of different family groups differed significantly and most families were quite selective regarding floor plans. Thus, high-level customization is necessary in architectural design and information services. The preference indices revealed to what extent people were satisfied with different floor plans and suggested precise ways to improve satisfaction with regard to layout plans. In addition, the results implied that, for apartments smaller than 90 m2, essential functions or ‘housing utility’ must be given priority. In particular, a dining room and a study room were considered mandatory, but a separate storage room was not required.

Guest satisfaction survey at the Aquaticum Debrecen Thermal and Wellness Hotel

Aquaticum Debrecen Thermal and Wellness Hotel is one of the most successful hotels in the North Great Plains region as well as in Hungary. The key to success lies in high level customer satisfaction. On the one hand only the satisfied guests will return to the hotel, on the other hand the guests’ positive or negative opinions will be shared with thousands of potential customers immediately by means of the Internet. Consequently, exploring the main factors of guest satisfaction has never been so important as nowadays. An online questionnaire system was introduced to the hotel in 2010, which resulted in an increased number of customer responses, thus it became possible to analyse the various aspects of customer satisfaction in a greater detail. In the present study the critical factors of guest satisfaction are analysed. We investigated the guests’ willingness to return to the hotel, and found that there is no significant difference between the guests’ gender, age, permanent place of residence and the fact if they travel alone or with a company and their willingness to return to the hotel, i.e. guest satisfaction. However, business travellers’ opinion significantly differs from the recreational travellers’ views concerning their return to the hotel. Business travellers are less satisfied and less willing to return. Furthermore, we investigated whether the problems experienced by the guests in the hotel influence the guests’ willingness to return to the hotel. We found that the guests who experienced problems are less willing to return. However, we also concluded that there was no significant difference in their willingness to return among those guests who experienced problems during their stay and these were efficiently handled, and those guests who did not experience any problem.

High-level customization framework for application-specific NoC architectures

Network-on-Chip (NoC) has been recognized as the new paradigm to interconnect and organize a high number of cores. NoCs address global communication issues in System-on-Chips (SoC) involving communication-centric design and implementation of scalable communication structures evolving application-specific NoC design as a key challenge to modern SoC design. In this paper we present a SystemC customization framework and methodology for automatic design and evaluation of regular and irregular NoC architectures. The presented framework also supports application-specific optimization techniques such as priority assignment, node clustering and buffer sizing. Experimental results show that generated regular NoC architectures achieve an average of 5.5 % lower communication-cost compared to other regular NoC designs while irregular NoCs proved to achieve on average 4.5×higher throughput and 40 % network delay reduction compared to regular mesh topologies. In addition, employing a buffer sizing algorithm we achieve a reduction in network's power consumption by an average of 45 % for both regular and irregular NoC design flow.

Strategic Pricing, Market Entry and Competition: Evidence from German Electricity Submarkets

In German electricity submarkets for residential customers standard contracts offered by former monopolists are the more costly option for customers who have not switched to an alternative contract yet. As most German households are served with this contract type we follow the Limit Pricing theory and show that standard contract price could be used as an instrument to affect competition, in terms of market entries, in the related market. We theoretically derive the optimal price-setting behavior of a price-discriminating incumbent provider and show that under particular circumstances reducing the standard contract price could increases the incumbent’s profit. We then analyze our theoretical findings employing data for German retail electricity submarkets using simultaneous equation approach and can find support for our hypothesis. In particular for customers with low consumption and high relative switching costs the results show that the standard contract price can affect market entry whereas for high consumption level customers we have to reject our hypothesis.

ERMIS: Designing, developing, and delivering a remote managed infrastructure services solution

Remote management of IT (information technology) infrastructures, as a service, has received significant attention due to the numerous benefits it offers. In this paper, we discuss our work on taking a previously India-only remote IT infrastructure management service offering to a global audience. We first provide an overview of this IBM offering, called Express™ Remote Managed Infrastructure Services (ERMIS), and then focus on two specific aspects, service catalog and problem determination and resolution (PDR). In service catalog-based remote management, customers browse the catalog and place orders as they would using an online store. Our service catalog entries contain workflows to automate the deployment of requested applications or the configuration change of customer resources. High-level customer requirements are translated into capacity sizing and configuration parameters, which are then used to provision the final solution by making use of ITIL® (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) release and configuration management processes. PDR involves detecting, locating, and fixing anomalies. Probe-based techniques are used for targeting the problem location, while knowledge management assists with problem analysis, diagnosis, and classification. ERMIS architectural decisions have been driven by emerging-business requirements related to small and mediumsized businesses.

Attaining superior complaint resolution

Introduction In 2003, Dell computers shifted support calls for two of its corporate computer lines from its call center in Bangalore, India back to the U.S. The reason was that its customers were not satisfied with the level of technical support they were getting. Apart from the language difficulties, customers also faced difficulty in reaching senior technicians to, perhaps, resolve their problems more quickly. However, such problems are not just limited to computer vendors such as Dell. Recent research from Accenture finds that 75% of the sample of consumer technology company executives believed their companies provided average customer service. However, to their surprise, 58% of their customers had rated customer service to be either average or below average. A further grim detail was that 81% of the respondents who rated customer service as below average expressed intent to purchase from a different vendor next time. This research highlights the importance of customer service for consumer technology companies in retaining their customers. In general, consumer technology companies spend inordinate amounts of time, cost, and effort to get their innovations to market. However, initial acceptance is only the first step towards technology utilization. It is only after a certain amount of use that customers become aware of a technology's benefits and limitations. Having technology is one thing, using it effectively and persisting with it, is quite another. Hence, the study of factors leading to consumer technology repurchase is of critical importance. Consumer technologies, in particular, demand attention due to their commoditization, increased complexity, advances in technology, and focus on high serviceability. We can note the following when we think of consumer technologies such as PCs, laptops, or mobile phones: • The marketplace for these technologies is characterized by fierce competition amongst numerous players leading to a continuous price decline. For instance, almost all computer vendors now offer laptops for a few hundred dollars as compared to thousands of dollars a few years back. As prices continue to decline, it is imperative that companies focus on providing high-level customer service to differentiate from competitors and retain their existing customers, and prevent them from discontinuing their product. • Consumer technologies have also become more complex with more functionality being constantly added to the core product. Take the case of mobile phones: What was once a simple device for making phone calls has been morphed to include a digital camera, mp3 player, organizer, and a Web browser, to name a few. With such additional functionality and increased complexity, a customer is likely to encounter problems whose cause is difficult to identify correctly, yet need to be resolved quickly before the customer switches to a competing product. • Technological advances and a new generation of products have meant that both the technology providers as well as customers have to be knowledgeable in utilizing the consumer technologies. Without proper knowledge of the technology, support staff often struggle to resolve the problems in a timely manner. For example, in resolving problems with new release of operating system like Windows Vista, both the customers as well as Microsoft technical staff are required to have certain amount of knowledge about the system. A crucial aspect of customer service is being able to resolve consumer concerns during their use of technology. These factors contribute to difficulties in retaining customers for the consumer technology companies. One of the ways to have satisfied customers is continuing to address customer complaints effectively. Customers expect to have any service or product failures diagnosed and resolved quickly. In this context, we chose to examine how the complaint management process can impact customers' intention to continue or discontinue using a given technology. The complaint management process is not just a customer service issue and is not just limited to customer service personnel. It also has to do with the overall policies governing the customer service function. As Dell discovered, their policy of not limiting the time junior technical support personnel spent in resolving customer complaints (instead of referring to senior personnel) had impact on customers' satisfaction. Moreover, encouraging customer participation and feedback while addressing their concerns can lead to innovative practices within the company. For instance, Cingular involves its customers in its usability lab and leverages its interactions with them to design better mobile phone services. Hence, apart from customers' satisfaction, a good complaint management process can also help leverage customers' input to design better offerings. In our research we open the black box of the consumer technology complaint management process to learn how it affects customer satisfaction and intent to continue/discontinue a given product or service.

On Assortment and Implementation of Modern Mass Customization of Apparel

In this paper, the author mainly discusses assortment and implementation methods of mass customization nowadays. Through investigation of market requirements of mass customization, the author proposes the major assortment of mass customization of apparel: personal customization aimed at high-level customers, group customization aimed at group customers, marketplace customization aimed at tradesman ordering, original brand customization aimed at foreign trade ordering, and alteration customization on standard ready-to-wear clothes. And also features and implementation methods of these kinds of customization, including fast design method, production management method, customer relationship management method and resource reuse method of mass customization and mass production.