Service Quality and Customer Loyalty in a Post-Crisis Context. Prediction-Oriented Modeling to Enhance the Particular Importance of a Social and Sustainable Approach

Research into the influence of service quality on customer loyalty has typically focused on confirming isolated direct causal influences regarding particular dimensions of quality, usually undertaken in the context of positive, firm-customer relations. The present study extends analysis of these factors through a new lens. First, the study was undertaken in a market context following a crisis that has had far-reaching consequences for customers’ relational behaviors. We explore the case of the Spanish banking industry, a sector that accurately reflects these new relational conditions, including a rising demand for more socially responsible banking. Second, we propose a holistic model that combines the effects of four key factors associated with service quality (outcome, personnel, servicescape and social qualities). We also apply an innovative predictive methodological technique using partial least squares (PLS) and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) that enables us not only to determine the direct causal effects among variables, but also to consider different scenarios in which to predict customer loyalty. The results highlight the role of outcome and social qualities. The novelty of the social qualities factor helps to underscore the importance of social, ethical and sustainable practices to customer loyalty, although personnel and servicescape qualities must also be present to improve the predictive capability of service quality on loyalty

Benchmarking in cluster analysis: A white paper

To achieve scientific progress in terms of building a cumulative body of knowledge, careful attention to benchmarking is of the utmost importance. This means that proposals of new methods of data pre-processing, new data-analytic techniques, and new methods of output post-processing, should be extensively and carefully compared with existing alternatives, and that existing methods should be subjected to neutral comparison studies. To date, benchmarking and recommendations for benchmarking have been frequently seen in the context of supervised learning. Unfortunately, there has been a dearth of guidelines for benchmarking in an unsupervised setting, with the area of clustering as an important subdomain. To address this problem, discussion is given to the theoretical conceptual underpinnings of benchmarking in the field of cluster analysis by means of simulated as well as empirical data. Subsequently, the practicalities of how to address benchmarking questions in clustering are dealt with, and foundational recommendations are made

SciTech News Volume 71, No. 2 (2017)

Columns and Reports From the Editor 3 Division News Science-Technology Division 5 Chemistry Division 8 Engineering Division 9 Aerospace Section of the Engineering Division 12 Architecture, Building Engineering, Construction and Design Section of the Engineering Division 14 Reviews Sci-Tech Book News Reviews 16 Advertisements IEEE

A Multilevel Model of RN Workgroup Intent to Stay

An understanding of how determinants of RN intent to stay on the unit vary by unit type is essential for developing the targeted retention strategies that are an important component of efforts to address the evolving nursing shortage. Relationships depicted in the multilevel RN Workgroup Intent to Stay Model were examined, after determining the appropriateness of a workgroup level measurement model for intent to stay. The model was examined using secondary analysis of cross-section data from the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators (NDNQI®). The sample consisted of 373 medical unit RN workgroups, which included 7,730 RNs in 157 hospitals. Data from the 2006 RN Survey were combined with hospital characteristics, unit staffing, and unit type. Psychometric analysis found the workgroup level measurement model of intent to stay appropriate. Glick's (1985) criterion for group-mean reliability was supported by ICC(2) values ranging from .521 to .598. Bliese's (2000) criteria for emergent construct validity were supported by an ICC(1) of .064 and zero-order correlations with job satisfaction subscales that were consistently higher at the workgroup level than individual level. Mixed linear modeling fit indices (BIC=2575.330) supported the fit of the revised RN Workgroup Intent to Stay Model in medical units, and pseudo R2 indicated the model accounted for 56% of the variance in RN workgroup intent to stay. Higher ratings of RN workgroup satisfaction with task and appropriate RN assignments were the most important predictors of RN workgroup intent to stay. In addition, higher ratings of RN workgroup satisfaction with nurse management, lower percent of unit RNs taking a meal break, and greater RN workgroup diversity in unit tenure and age also contributed to RN workgroup intent to stay. Findings indicated that retention strategies for RN workgroups on medical units should target perceptions of appropriate RN assignments, as well as satisfaction with task and nurse management. Refinement of the RN Workgroup Intent to Stay Model should continue by examining model relationships in other unit types

Intelligent Voltage Sag Compensation Using an Artificial Neural Network (ANN)-Based Dynamic Voltage Restorer in MATLAB Simulink

An innovative Dynamic Voltage Restorer (DVR) system based on Artificial Neural Network (ANN) technology, implemented in MATLAB Simulink, accurately detects, and dynamically restores voltage sags, significantly improving power quality and ensuring a reliable supply to critical loads, contributing to the advancement of power quality enhancement techniques. Voltage sags are a prevalent power quality concern that can have a significant impact on sensitive electrical equipment. An innovative approach to address voltage sags through the operation of a Dynamic Voltage Restorer (DVR) based on Artificial Neural Network (ANN) technology. The proposed system, developed using MATLAB Simulink, leverages the ANN's capabilities to accurately detect voltage sags and dynamically restore the voltage to the affected load. The ANN is trained using a comprehensive dataset comprising voltage sag events, enabling it to learn the intricate relationships between sag characteristics and optimal compensation techniques. By integrating the trained ANN into the DVR control scheme, real-time compensation for voltage sags is achieved. The effectiveness of the proposed system is rigorously evaluated through extensive simulations and performance analysis. The results demonstrate the superior performance of the ANN-based DVR in terms of voltage sag detection accuracy and restoration precision. Consequently, the proposed system presents an intelligent and adaptive solution for voltage sag compensation, ensuring a reliable and high-quality power supply to critical loads. This research contributes to the advancement of power quality enhancement techniques, facilitating the implementation of intelligent power system

Intelligent Voltage Sag Compensation Using an Artificial Neural Network (ANN)-Based Dynamic Voltage Restorer in MATLAB Simulink

An innovative Dynamic Voltage Restorer (DVR) system based on Artificial Neural Network (ANN) technology, implemented in MATLAB Simulink, accurately detects, and dynamically restores voltage sags, significantly improving power quality and ensuring a reliable supply to critical loads, contributing to the advancement of power quality enhancement techniques. Voltage sags are a prevalent power quality concern that can have a significant impact on sensitive electrical equipment. An innovative approach to address voltage sags through the operation of a Dynamic Voltage Restorer (DVR) based on Artificial Neural Network (ANN) technology. The proposed system, developed using MATLAB Simulink, leverages the ANN's capabilities to accurately detect voltage sags and dynamically restore the voltage to the affected load. The ANN is trained using a comprehensive dataset comprising voltage sag events, enabling it to learn the intricate relationships between sag characteristics and optimal compensation techniques. By integrating the trained ANN into the DVR control scheme, real-time compensation for voltage sags is achieved. The effectiveness of the proposed system is rigorously evaluated through extensive simulations and performance analysis. The results demonstrate the superior performance of the ANN-based DVR in terms of voltage sag detection accuracy and restoration precision. Consequently, the proposed system presents an intelligent and adaptive solution for voltage sag compensation, ensuring a reliable and high-quality power supply to critical loads. This research contributes to the advancement of power quality enhancement techniques, facilitating the implementation of intelligent power system

Multilevel Weighted Support Vector Machine for Classification on Healthcare Data with Missing Values

This work is motivated by the needs of predictive analytics on healthcare data as represented by Electronic Medical Records. Such data is invariably problematic: noisy, with missing entries, with imbalance in classes of interests, leading to serious bias in predictive modeling. Since standard data mining methods often produce poor performance measures, we argue for development of specialized techniques of data-preprocessing and classification. In this paper, we propose a new method to simultaneously classify large datasets and reduce the effects of missing values. It is based on a multilevel framework of the cost-sensitive SVM and the expected maximization imputation method for missing values, which relies on iterated regression analyses. We compare classification results of multilevel SVM-based algorithms on public benchmark datasets with imbalanced classes and missing values as well as real data in health applications, and show that our multilevel SVM-based method produces fast, and more accurate and robust classification results.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1503.0625