Quality Of Service Issues Research Articles

Study on e-government services quality: The integration of online and offline services

Purpose : E-Government, as a new bond linking the government and the public, has gradually become the focus of innovation in government services. The paper focuses on the e-Government service quality issues from the perspective of users. Design/methodology/approach : From the aspects of online service quality perception and offline service quality perception, based on IS Success model and SERQUAL model, e-Government Services Quality model has been set up with information quality, system quality and service quality as key factors. Then, the survey method was applied to collect data and then to test the model. Findings : It was found that users’ perception of offline service quality has a significant effect on improving their perception of online service quality, and online service quality perception has a significant effect on public satisfaction of e-Government services; information clarity, system security and stability, interactive services and “one-stop” services all have a significant effect on public satisfaction of e-Government services. However, offline service quality perception has certain positive effect on public satisfaction of e-Government services but not dramatically. Research limitations/implications : Mobile e-Government as an important direction of the development of e-Government, in the future, we will study more about mobile e-Government services channels. Originality/value: This study further develops the theory of information system service quality, and also provides a theoretical reference for government departments. On the one hand, based on the characteristics of e-government system, information quality, system quality and service quality in the previous system service model are further discussed; on the other hand, both online and offline services are taken into consideration in the information system service model, thus establishing the e-government services quality model and making an in-depth study of the integration effect of online and offline services. Its conclusions can be references for the application of traditional information system service model in the field of e-government.

Immune optimization of task scheduling on multidimensional QoS constraints

Aiming at the sensitive issues of service quality in cloud computing, a task scheduling tactic with multidimensional QoS constraints is studied. Based on cluster service and user QoS preference, this article constructs an immune optimization model to make a description through formulas and quantify the performance constraints; the utility function of multidimensional QoS is given and then the immune optimization operation is performed with the antibodies. It is beneficial to increase the prediction accuracy of the equality evaluation, and the search for a Pareto optimal set of multiobjective optimization problems is implemented. Finally, the optimum node distribution structure with the highest utility value is obtained. It's shown that the approach gives sufficient consideration of multidimensional user QoS requirements. The results from the test show a significant improvement in average rate of equipment utilization, service time and response time compared to similar algorithms.

Are Private Shopping Sites Really Satisfied Customers?

Last decade, there is tremendous increase in online shopping sector in Turkey. Private shopping is the most popular type that users have to be sign up to the system and can buy goods at high discounts with in 2 to 6 days. With this limited time and lots of campaign traffic, private shopping sites have to understand and improve their customer's satisfaction level. The extant literature and extensive focus group research in Zeithaml, Parasuraman, & Malhotra's (2000) study suggested that customers’ assessment of a Web site's quality includes not only experiences during their interactions with the site but also post interaction service aspects. In this point of view this paper focuses on measuring electronic service quality and service recovery issues by means of E-S-QUAL and E-RecS-QUAL scales based on Parasuraman et al's (2005) framework. The current research aims to understand the e-service quality and e-recovery of private shopping sites from the consumer perspective, by identifying the main factors that are able to predict the e-satisfaction of consumers. 300 questionnaires are distributed to private shopping sites users.

Performance Evaluation on a Hybrid Algorithm for Computing Constrained Shortest Paths

Finding a delay constrained least-cost path in a directed graph is a fundamental issue for quality of service provisioning in communication networks. Recently Feng and Turkay proposed a hybrid algorithm which uses a heuristic approach to boost the average performance of a well known approximation algorithm. In this paper we provide extensive simulation results to show that the hybrid algorithm runs significantly faster than the approximation algorithm, often by one or two orders of magnitude.

Determinants of service quality in education: service provider's perspective and academician's perspective

This paper addresses the issue of service quality in one of the service provider industries of the present business scenario, i.e., education. Like other sectors, the issue of service quality has caused concern in the education sector also. Researchers have been interested in modelling, measuring and determining the service quality aspects in education. In this paper effort has been made to identify the determinants of service quality in education from the academician's perspective. Findings of this paper give important insights to the various stakeholders as to what and how the service quality of an educational institute may be enhanced. It helps in identifying the critical and non–critical factors that affects the service quality of education so that efforts may be used judiciously for its enhancement.

Impact of the Financial Recession on the Taxi Market

This paper investigates the impact of the economic recession on the taxi market in Greece. Data are used from two questionnaires, addressed to both taxi drivers and users. The perceptions of drivers and users about the effects of recession, service quality issues, and possible solutions to mitigate the negative impacts are recorded. The statistical tests reveal that significant differences exist between the responses before and during the economic recession regarding taxi use and working conditions of taxi drivers. A binary logit model is developed to analyze the effect of financial recession on taxi use. The model shows that trip purpose and frequency are the main factors that influence the possibility of reducing taxi use. Quantitative results provide useful information to the taxi industry, which can proceed in necessary management actions for mitigating impacts of financial recession.

Exploring dimensions and challenges of services quality in banking sector of Pakistan: a focus group methodology

Service quality, due to its enduring impact on organisational performance, has become a central concern of service-oriented organisations. Due to the nature of its services and continuous interaction with customers, banking sector of Pakistan has become more progressive towards establishing service of quality standards and its monitoring and evaluation process during the recent past. However, there are concerns that the standards set by top management of Pakistani banks do not translate into delivery of quality service by lower level managers. Therefore, it is important to explore how banking sector institutes understand service quality, and how this understanding contrasts with the existing body of knowledge. In this respect, the current study investigates the issue of service quality in the context of banking sector of Pakistan. The study explores the dimensions of service quality and the challenges faced by management to provide promised quality service in the banking sector of Pakistan. The study incorporates qualitative research design with focus group as methodology for data collection. Focus group methodology is useful when the research is exploratory in nature, researchers want to benefit from the knowledge and experience of the respondents and the cultural aspects related to the studied phenomenon are pertinent to be considered. Findings revealed that service quality is a contextual phenomenon in Pakistan and the interpretations of different stakeholders about its dimensions and delivery vary across parts of the country.

Developing a cause and effect model of factors influencing fast food restaurants' service quality using DEMATEL

The rapid emergence of the service industry, the awakening of consumer consciousness, and fierce market competition all mean that customer satisfaction has become the primary indicator that is used to assess corporate operations. In this context, many service businesses have noticed that increasing service quality, and thus raising customer satisfaction, can create competitive advantages. This study applies the decision making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) approach to examine the issue of service quality in fast food restaurants. The casual relation charts produced in this work shows that there are a number of correlations among the seven focal criteria. Among these, 'fresh meal' has few significant effects on the other six criteria. Moreover, none of the other criteria, except for 'employee attitude', have any significant influences on each other. Therefore, managers should invest more resources in improving 'employee attitude', as this can enhance the service quality in fast food restaurants.

A Comparative Study of Call Admission Control in Mobile Multimedia Networks using Soft Computing

Call admission control (CAC) is one of challenging issues for quality of service (QoS) provisioning in mobile multimedia network communication systems. CAC can be defined as the system that restricts the network access based on resource availability. A new call is admitted if enough idle resources are available in order to meet the QoS requirements of the new call without violating the QoS for already accepted calls, otherwise the call is rejected. This paper provides a survey of different CAC schemes used for mobile multimedia networks using soft computing techniques like artificial neural networks, fuzzy logic, and genetic algorithms. Soft computing can be used to obtain optimized results from many parameters used in mobile multimedia networks. Our goal is to review and compare the best features of soft computing applied in mobile multimedia networks to improve the capability of existing CAC methods. This paper also elaborates the future directions for the use of untouched areas of artificial neural networks, fuzzy logic, and genetic algorithm.

A hybrid model for cloud providers and consumers to agree on QoS of cloud services

This paper describes a new agenda based approach which facilitates multi-issue negotiation process between service consumer and service provider over the quality of service (QoS) requirements in cloud services. We assume that the order of agenda (issues) has impact on the negotiation outcome, but a group of service consumers and providers may have conflicting preferences over the importance of issues. In a multiple-issue negotiation process it is difficult to reach an optimal outcome when their preferences and the relative importance of their associated issues are not known to each other. The proposed agenda based preference ordering approach helps consumers and providers to reach a consensus over the issues and to construct a common preference sequence to improve the efficiency of the issue-by-issue negotiation outcome. Consequently, a co-evolutionary negotiation model based on the result of preference ordering approach is introduced for the agents to negotiate and reach an agreement, if there is any. The contribution of the research is a new mechanism that is able to formulate issue sequence along with a co-evolutionary negotiation approach that can effectively facilitate negotiation over QoS issues in cloud computing. Finally, a case study is provided to illustrate the proposed approach.

A Framework to Identify Service Quality Determinants of IT Enabled Scalable Ventures: A Study from Indian Context

The introduction of information and communication technology (ICT) has altered the service delivery around the world by making it more accessible and cost effective across e-service markets. In a country like India the problem of health is an enormous one where a majority of poor are outside the effective medical network. In order to address these problems many information and technology (IT) oriented new ventures have been established to eliminate the gap in health inequity by creating network of hospitals exclusively in non-urban areas. Despite of huge popularity of these services, identifying the quality of such services need careful attention. Exhaustive review of literature highlights that there exists little understanding for such a study in IT enabled Indian healthcare domain in context to new ventures/start-ups with an emergence of a gap. With the increasing rise of technology enabled new healthcare ventures there have been high rates of failure too due to lack of providing quality service, so it has become imperative to prioritize the contextual and sectoral specific settings of service quality issues as it is being felt increasingly that it is the quality that would ultimately decide the value of services. This paper thus attempts to prioritize the context specific service quality dimensions in IT enabled scalable healthcare ventures from Indian context with focus in non-urban regions by deploying technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) methodology as multi-criteria decision making technique. Further this paper proposed a conceptual model as conjectural understanding of the antecedents to the start-ups and as a guide that can provides new entrepreneurial insights to the service managers who can better apportion their resource in order to build quality and scalability.

A Total Quality Management Research on the Portman Ritz Carlton Shanghai

In the hospitality industry, customers are seen as the key driving a business’s survival and success. The industry is therefore highly competitive and much more aware of the provision of quality service to meet customer expectations. Since hotel businesses are providing similar superior facilities among competitors in the market, service quality has been considered as the first priority and essential part of the organisational culture, making today’s businesses more concerned with delighting their customers than simply satisfying them [1]. Consequently, Total Quality Management (TQM) is becoming a widely used business management strategy within the hospitality industry. The intent of this essay focuses on the issue of service quality with the selected hotel - The Portman Ritz Carlton, Shanghai. It will first introduce TQM theory and then discuss how the approach helps to generate and maintain high quality service to achieve “customer delight”.

Decision Support for Healthcare ICT Network System Appraisal

A framework to support the appraisal process to improve the quality of service (QoS) of an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) network system in health care service is presented. Most of health-related activities stand to benefit from ICT endorsement; however, technical problems may appear, as an inadequate physical infrastructure, insufficient access by the user to the hardware/software communication infrastructure and QoS issues. The aim is to develop a prototype assessment model based on data collected from the main users of a health network system An evaluation process is carried out to analyze and assess the support of QoS of ICT, its infrastructure and user interface perception of the QoS offered through case study for hospitals in Chile. Performance has been evaluated by simulation and modelling network Architecture. The Optimization Network Engineering Tool (OPNET) simulation platform is used to examine the network behaviour and performance to ensure consistency and reliability for thousands of staff across the hospital network.

Performance Evaluation of Least Disruptive Topology Repair Algorithm (Ledir) Using Ns-2

In wireless sensor networks, sensor nodes fail either when some critical event occurs at the node or when the battery of the nodes is completely drained. If the remaining nodes in the sensor network are not aware of the node failure, the network might under undergo significant broadcast delay and path loss. An alarm packet has to be broadcast throughout the network when any critical event occurs and the transmission path must be recovered to achieve better quality of service in the sensor network. This paper utilizes least disruptive topology repair (LeDir) algorithm to minimize the power consumption and to handle such critical events. LeDir algorithm is used to recover the transmission path and to ensure that the quality of service issues in the network is met. The variations in the throughput, roundtrip time, broadcast delays and packet delivery ratio of the network are observed by performing multiple NS-2 simulations. It is observed that the throughput of the network could be quickly regained when the transmission path is recovered by node replacement.

How do social media transform politics? The role of a podcast, ‘Naneun Ggomsuda’ in South Korea

In December 2012 South Korea completed a presidential election that exhibited a high level of political participation through podcast-based Internet use and smartphone access. Podcasts and social media in relation to political and social participation are extremely popular in South Korea. ‘Naneun Ggomsuda’ is a podcast program which is ranked first in the world among Korean-speaking users for political participation. Drawing on DeLone and McLean’s IS success model from the theoretical lens of the belief-desire-intention (BDI) framework, we propose a research model investigating the effects of three quality dimensions (systems, content, and service) of Naneun Ggomsuda’s podcast system on participation, desire and intention. Among the quality dimensions, content quality and real-time connectivity service quality have a significant impact on political participation desire. Interestingly, podcast systems quality does not show a significant effect. The study looks at critical success factors of this podcast social media system, including system quality, social content quality, service quality and social issues, and suggests practical implications encompassing the political, social, and business aspects of this program’s influence.

Comparative analysis of traditional telephone and VoIP systems

Pakistan is in the period of upgrading communication infrastructure. Therefore many communication techniques are taking birth day by day and building the effective way of communication and one of many is IP Telephony system. In Pakistan the adoption of IP telephony is slow because of variety of reasons, but the main factor is the reliability of legacy phone systems. With a weak economy in Pakistan, the management team of organizations is happy to get as much mileage as possible out of their existing infrastructure, and if the legacy phones are working fine, IT team will need a really strong reason to change it to IP telephony. The purpose of this independent study is to drive the correct adoption of new IT & communications technologies in Pakistan to enable increased productivity and added value for businesses. This paper investigates the issues of service quality and cost lie in Pakistan and on the basis of this issues what steps we need to consider while deciding to implement VoIP. After implementation of VoIP in two different organizations and we then analysis their comparative results with legacy phone systems.

Examining Quality Issues in 3G Services in India: An Empirical Study

Internet and mobile telephony has transformed the human life and the way business conducted conventionally. India has witnessed a tremendous rise in the internet and mobile penetration. Especially mobile technology has reached the nooks and corners of the country where internet is still a farfetched dream. 3G services are the advanced services that facilitate internet access on 3G compatible devices like Smartphone’s, tablets and PCs etc. The article is an attempt to comprehend the present scenario of 3G services in India and to assess its standing in comparison to the global counterparts. In addition, the shortcomings of the 3G quality services in India are highlighted along with the regulatory protocols regarding the same.

Performance Comparison between OOK, PPM and PAM Modulation Schemes for Free Space Optical (FSO) Communication Systems: Analytical Study

As wireless communication systems become ever-more important and pervasive parts of our everyday life; system capacity and quality of service issues are becoming more critical. In order to increase the system capacity and improve the quality of service, it is necessary that we pay closer attention to bandwidth and power efficiency issues. In this paper, the bandwidth and power efficiency issues in Free Space Optics (FSO) transmissions are addressed under Pulse Position Modulation (L-PPM) and Pulse Amplitude Modulation (M-PAM) schemes, and their performance in terms of power and bandwidth efficiencies and the Bit Error Rate (BER) versus Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) are compared analytically. The comparative study of the L-PPM and MPAM schemes is discussed, and showed that for similar SNR, L-PPM scheme offered improved performance. For FSO communication systems, although the power efficiency is inferior to L-PPM scheme, On-Off Keying (OOK) modulation scheme is more commonly used due to its efficient bandwidth usage, but M-PAM is the bandwidth efficient modulation scheme in this research for more than “2” bits of information can be sent, while L-PPM is the power efficient modulation scheme for more number of bits can be sent, and it may be able to improve performance by increasing the number of bits in L-PPM scheme. General Terms Optical Communications, Modulation schemes, Bit Error Rate (BER), Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR), Bandwidth Efficiency, Power Efficiency.

Performance analysis of a threshold-based dynamic TXOP scheme for intra-AC QoS in wireless LANs

The IEEE 802.11e Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) protocol has been proposed for provisioning of differentiated Quality-of-Service (QoS) between various Access Categories (ACs), i.e., inter-AC QoS, in Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs). However, the EDCA lacks the support of the intra-AC QoS provisioning, which is indispensable in practical WLANs since the network loads are always asymmetric between traffic flows of ACs with the same priority. To address the intra-AC QoS issue, this paper proposes a Threshold-Based Dynamic Transmission Opportunity (TBD-TXOP) scheme which sets the TXOP limits adaptive to the current status of the transmission queue based on the pre-setting threshold. An analytical model is further developed to evaluate the QoS performance of this scheme in terms of throughput, end-to-end delay, and frame loss probability. NS-2 simulation experiments validate the accuracy of the proposed analytical model. The performance results demonstrate the efficacy of TBD-TXOP for the intra-AC QoS differentiation.

Gap analysis of green hotel marketing

Purpose– The green marketing concept emerged in the late 1980s, and many hotels have since implemented a variety of green marketing strategies, such as the use of the “green hotel” label to project a green image and attract potential customers. However, some companies that have launched environment-based promotions have been accused of “green washing” by their customers. This study aims to investigate the gap between hotel manager and customer perceptions of the relative importance of green marketing-related activities.Design/methodology/approach– Two sets of 30-statement questionnaires designed for hotel managers and customers were used to gauge respondents' perceptions of a variety of hotel green marketing-related activities. Independent samplest-tests and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to examine the significant differences between the ways in which hotel managers and customers rate the importance of these activities.Findings– The two statements that gained the highest level of agreement amongst both hotel managers and customers were: “The internet is an effective channel for marketing a hotel's green initiatives directly to customers”; and “Green hotels can elevate industry members' image and reputation to attract green tourists who demand green accommodation when travelling”. Both also perceived: “The environmental claims in advertisements are often met with criticism from competitors and consumer organisations”; “Hotel customers are willing to pay a higher price for eco-facilities”; and “Customers are willing to pay a higher green price if part of the amount paid is donated to green activities” to be the three least important statements. The results also indicated ten over-perceptions and three under-perceptions amongst hotel managers, thus implying that they may require a better understanding of customer expectations. Several demographic differences were also identified. Female hotel managers and customers were found to be more concerned with green hotel products and a green image; hotel managers aged over 59 were found to have reservations about certain green marketing strategies probably because of service quality issues, although green supporters are in general older than average; younger customers aged between 20-29 become more concerned about environmental issues; and customers with a Master degree level of education or above challenged whether hotels are truly innovative in their development of green products and services and had reservations about the use of eco-labels.Research limitations/implications– The results of this study may not reflect the full picture of managerial perceptions of green hotel marketing, as the sample was restricted to hotels on the Hong Kong Hotels Association list. Researchers may thus wish to undertake further studies with larger hotel samples over a longer time period in future. Drawing on the foundations laid by this study, future researchers may also wish to investigate smaller, lower-ranked hotels, which may experience greater challenges in implementing green marketing strategies than those considered here.Originality/value– Few studies to date have investigated green hotel marketing. The findings of this study can be viewed as a preliminary step towards greater understanding of green hotel marketing-related activities.