Provide After-sales Services Research Articles

Studi Komparatif Metode Ekstraksi Fitur pada Analisis Sentimen Maskapai Penerbangan Menggunakan Support Vector Machine dan Maximum Entropy

Almost all companies use social media to improve their product services and provide after-sales services that allow their customers to review the quality of their products. By using Twitter social media to be an important source for tracking sentiment analysis. Sentiment analysis is one of the most popular studies today, using sentiment analysis companies can analyze customer satisfaction to improve their services. This study aims to analyze airline sentiments with five different features such as pragmatic, lexical n-gram, POS, sentiment, and LDA using the Support Vector Machine and Maximum Entropy methods. The best results can be obtained using the Maximum Entropy method using all feature extraction with an accuracy of 92.7% and in the Support Vector Machine method, the accuracy obtained is 89.2%.

Estimating the Impacts of Financing Support Policies Towards Photovoltaic Market in Indonesia: A Social-Energy-Economy-Environment (SE3) Model Simulation

This study estimates the impacts of four solar energy policy interventions on the photovoltaic (PV) market potential, government expenditure, economic growth, and the environment. An agent-based model is developed to capture the specific economic and institutional features of developing economies, citing Indonesia as a specific case study. We undertake a novel approach to energy modelling by combining energy system analysis, input-output analysis, life-cycle analysis, and socio-economic analysis to obtain a comprehensive and integrated impact assessment. Our results, after sensitivity analysis, call for abolishing the existing PV grant policy in the Indonesian rural electrification programs. The government, instead, should encourage the PV industry to improve production efficiency and to provide after-sales service. A 100-watt peak (Wp) PV under this policy is affordable for 33.2 percent of rural households without electricity access in 2010. Rural PV market size potentially increases to 82.4 percent with rural financing institutions lending 70 percent of capital cost for five years at 12 percent annual interest rate. Additional 30 percent capital subsidy and 5 percent interest subsidy slightly increase the rural PV market potential to 89.6 percent of PV adopters. However, the subsidies are crucial for creating PV demands by urban households but the most effective policy for promoting PV to urban households is the net metering scheme. Several policy proposals are discussed in response to these findings.

Assessment of the Cambodian National Biodigester Program

The National Biodigester Program (NBP) was established in 2006 to build and maintain household biodigesters in Cambodia. In its first six years, the program installed almost 20,000 biodigesters and established an in-country network of local financiers, construction companies, skilled masons, bioslurry specialists and after-care technicians accessible to rural users in 14 of 24 Cambodian provinces. Since its initial success, the program's adoption rates have stalled despite increasing government support and high rates of user satisfaction. Building on an initial evaluation of the NBP in 2013, this updated assessment identifies multiple changes in its second implementation phase that have undermined the initial momentum of the program. Abrupt interruptions in institutional support, deteriorating supply side services (access to construction agents, masons, repair services) and reduced access to credit for farmers have eroded the service network that the first implementation phase established. Structural changes in the rural economy may also contribute to declining demand. Government support to another biodigester program which offers a lower investment price, but does not provide after-sales services, has also undercut the long-term implementation strategy of the NBP. The paper finds that despite these programmatic changes, the installed biodigesters continue to perform according to expectation and to be maintained and valued by their users, but the future viability of the program remains uncertain.

Value added reseller or value at risk: The dark side of relationships with VARs

This paper examines the dark side of using reseller networks to provide after-sales services. A proposal made by previous research studies on the use of brand-reseller relationships for management of value to be delivered remotely through reseller networks was reviewed. Technical inability, with a focus on the sales of resellers of information technology (IT) and information technology-enabled services/products (ITES), was highlighted as one of the major challenges faced by brands. Unsuccessful delivery and failure of VARs to provide after-sales services puts brand performance at risk and, as a consequence, negatively influences perceptions of other resellers concerning the brand. Thus a VAR's inability to support customers can discourage resellers from offering the brand to their customers. This dark side of network interdependence negatively affects the shared brand-reseller goal of value co-creation. Applying data collected from 334 resellers of technology brands in India, this research focuses on the current periphery of international branding literature by focusing on the dark side of manufacturer brand-reseller relationships. From the relationship management perspective, we contribute to the recognition of value-at-risk as the dark side of the brand-reseller relationship. Based on empirical findings, we propose a business model that will enable manufacturer brands to control the brand value perceived by their resellers, by monitoring the actions of their VARs.

Applying the maturity model concept to the servitization process of consumer durables companies in Brazil

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the servitization process of typical manufacturing companies that already provide after-sales services, by identifying the phases and organizational elements that enable the delivery of more services. Design/methodology/approach – A servitization maturity model for consumer durables companies is proposed. Servitization is an evolutionary process based on customer profiling, company profiling, the nature of the service, maturity of the process and process characteristics. The capacity of maintaining organizational relationships among players in the value chain describes the organizational maturity needed to advance towards the next phase. The research has been conducted as an exploratory study, in which four different case studies of consumer durables companies were performed to validate the proposed maturity model and detail each phase and the critical resources needed to become servitized. Findings – Four category levels of organizational relationships were identified: first, company and customers; second, company and production network; third, company and market, in addition to; fourth, the internal relations of the company. Practical implications – The means to evaluate companies that undergo servitization are also presented to provide a better understanding of their placement in the process and guide managers through the next necessary steps of action. Originality/value – The development and application of this model allowed exploring the levels of servitization as an evolutionary process based on the relationships among players in the value chain by gathering, structuring, organizing several critical requirements and highlighting important attributes that must be examined by companies during the servitization process.

Assessing the after-sales performance of an IT product- service company

A product-service system (PSS) can be perceived as an extension of the functionality of a physical good to which specialised services are added. IT (Information Technology) companies have operated with a PSS model in a business-to-business (B2B) context and are referred to as IT PSSs in this paper. In addition to software and hardware products, IT PSSs provide after-sales services to clients such as system operation, installation, maintenance, support, and customisation. The objective of this paper is to identify and assess the after-sales performance of an IT PSS. A medium-sized IT company located in an emerging economy facing global competition was studied. The Analytic Hierarchy Method (AHP) was used to assess the relative importance of after-sales dimensions. The company develops and sells IT management software. Some services are associated with the software offerings: system maintenance, management of the client company’s IT management software, and customisations. The after-sales performance was 54.5%. The dimensions ‘Installation’, ‘Training’ and ‘Support for use’ have the highest relative importance and highest gaps. These results suggest that initial improvement actions should focus on these dimensions. The proposed method of assessing after-sales performance may be adapted to other companies and applications. Key words: After-sales, product-service system, IT companies.

Optimal pricing, EOL (end of life) warranty, and spare parts manufacturing strategy amid product transition

Abstract We study firm’s strategy to determine its product price and warranty period, and plan the spare parts manufacturing so as to maximize its profit and at the same time to fulfill its commitment to providing the customer with the key part continuously over the relevant decision time horizon, i.e., the product’s life cycle plus its EOL service (warranty) period . To examine the research question, we develop and solve a two-stage optimal control theory model. From the numerical analysis, we infer as follows. It is not always true that the longer the EOL warranty period, the better for the company’s profitability, implying there exists an optimal EOL warranty period that balances all the relevant forces like market demand and cost structures. The relationship between optimal EOL warranty period and failure rate (defect rate) is concave: when the defect rate is moderate, the company has to increase its EOL warranty period as the defect rate increases so as to compensate for the deteriorating quality; but, when the defect rate is beyond a threshold level, the company needs to curtail its EOL warranty commitment as the defect rate increases in order to avoid excessive cost to service the failed parts. By depicting key dynamics in this managerial problem, this paper sheds light on how to make decision for optimal pricing and warranty when the product life cycle is finite and the company is obliged to provide after-sales services to customers for an extended period of time after the current product is no longer produced.

Factors affecting success and failure of trickle irrigation systems in Balochistan, Pakistan

An evaluation of performance of trickle irrigation systems installed in Balochistan, Pakistan during 1982–2002 was conducted by field surveys, physical verifications and interviews with farmers. Thirty systems were fully or partially operational and 76 had been abandoned. Successful systems required clean and reliable water supply, availability of spare components and accessories for replacements, skilled manpower, and a high level of interest and participation by the owner. The dominant species irrigated with these trickle systems were apples, grapes, and mixed orchards. Installations of trickle systems on old mature orchards were not generally successful due to lack of adaptation of the new system to limited and scheduled irrigation supplies. Many of the irrigators were not instructed on how to adjust the trickle system to meet changing needs of the plants. Consequently, growth of some of the trees was stunted and a few of them died. Lack of technical skill to repair and maintain the system and non-availability of replacement parts were general causes of failure of installed trickle irrigation systems. Clogging of the emitters was the primary specific cause of failure. Emitters with a larger opening that will not be clogged by most of the contaminants contained in the water available to these farmers and turbulent action screening systems to take out the other contaminants are proposed as solutions to this problem. Commercial shops, which sell the components, carry replacement parts and provide after-sales service are needed to keep trickle systems functioning in these isolated areas.

Rolling out new products across country markets: An empirical study of causes of delays

Faced with the challenge of launching a new product into numerous countries, managers may view a sequential rollout as the prudent course of action. Rather than launching the product simultaneously in diverse countries, they may believe they can reduce risk by launching first in one or two countries, and then in others. However, this strategy overlooks the interplay between timeliness in international new product rollouts (INPR) and product success. George M. Chryssochoidis and Veronica Wong explore these issues in a study of 30 high-tech products launched into multiple European markets. Their study has three objectives: examining the incidence of timeliness and delays in simultaneous and sequential INPR; exploring the causes of delays in INPR; and assessing the effects that INPR timeliness and delays have on new product outcomes. They define timeliness in INPR as the availability of the new product to the firm's multiple target markets within the time frame planned by the company's managers. In other words, timeliness in this study reflects a company's capability for adhering to the schedule that management has established. Contrary to expectations, the results of this study do not reveal direct effects on timeliness in INPR from such sources as diversity of target markets or the firm's external environment. These results suggest that firms can achieve on-time, multicountry rollout of new products notwithstanding the legal, technological, and competitive environment. For the firms in this study, timeliness in INPR depends on such factors as sufficiency of marketing and technological resources (for example, to train sales staff, provide after-sales service, and adapt the product for multiple markets), proficiency in executing new product development activities, and effective communication between a company's headquarters and its business units and customers in different countries. Among the 22 product launches categorized as sequential rollouts in this study, 15 experienced delays. All eight of the simultaneous launches were timely. The results of this study indicate a positive relationship between timeliness in INPR and new-product success. Conversely, for the firms in this study, delays in INPR resulted in lower-than-expected product sales and profitability. In other words, the seemingly less risky sequential launch strategy may actually increase the risk of new product failure by delaying product rollout in multiple markets.

Rolling Out New Products Across Country Markets: An Empirical Study of Causes of Delays

Faced with the challenge of launching a new product into numerous countries, managers may view a sequential rollout as the prudent course of action. Rather than launching the product simultaneously in diverse countries, they may believe they can reduce risk by launching first in one or two countries, and then in others. However, this strategy overlooks the interplay between timeliness in international new product rollouts (INPR) and product success.George M. Chryssochoidis and Veronica Wong explore these issues in a study of 30 high‐tech products launched into multiple European markets. Their study has three objectives: examining the incidence of timeliness and delays in simultaneous and sequential INPR; exploring the causes of delays in INPR; and assessing the effects that INPR timeliness and delays have on new product outcomes. They define timeliness in INPR as the availability of the new product to the firm's multiple target markets within the time frame planned by the company's managers. In other words, timeliness in this study reflects a company's capability for adhering to the schedule that management has established.Contrary to expectations, the results of this study do not reveal direct effects on timeliness in INPR from such sources as diversity of target markets or the firm's external environment. These results suggest that firms can achieve on‐time, multicountry rollout of new products notwithstanding the legal, technological, and competitive environment. For the firms in this study, timeliness in INPR depends on such factors as sufficiency of marketing and technological resources (for example, to train sales staff, provide after‐sales service, and adapt the product for multiple markets), proficiency in executing new product development activities, and effective communication between a company's headquarters and its business units and customers in different countries.Among the 22 product launches categorized as sequential rollouts in this study, 15 experienced delays. All eight of the simultaneous launches were timely. The results of this study indicate a positive relationship between timeliness in INPR and new‐product success. Conversely, for the firms in this study, delays in INPR resulted in lower‐than‐expected product sales and profitability. In other words, the seemingly less risky sequential launch strategy may actually increase the risk of new product failure by delaying product rollout in multiple markets.