e-Customer Relationship Management in the hotel sector: Guests\u27 perceptions of perceived e-service quality levels

The notion of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has been shown to be a worthwhile strategy in many service industries. This coupled with Internet advances means that it is now possible and even beneficial to extend CRM practices on the Internet (eCRM) and integrate them with the offline CRM programme. eCRM has can boost guests\u27 satisfaction and patronage in the hospitality industry, as Internet business models have empowered guests with a great amount of information which, in turn, makes them more price sensitive, less brand loyal and more sophisticated. However, although research has concentrated so far on CRM and eCRM implementation and its operational requirements, CRM implications from the customer perspective have been ignored. This paper aims to fill in this gap by examining the impact of eCRM on guests\u27 perceptions of service quality on the Internet (e-service quality). It is advocated that eCRM enhances e-service quality by allowing guests to participate in service processes (e.g. service production, delivery, design) and so improving guests\u27 cognitive and emotional evaluations of service quality performances. Research propositions were tested by applying Critical Incident Analysis and conducting in-depth interviews with nine international hotel guests using eCRM. In general, findings mainly stressed the need to integrate eCRM with off line hotel strategies and operations providing several guidelines for further development and improvement of eCRM hotel practices. Future directions of research are also proposed

Battery Production Systems: State of the Art and Future Developments

This paper discusses the state of the art in battery production research, focusing on high-importance topics to address industrial needs and sustainability goals in this rapidly growing field. We first present current research around three themes: human-centred production, smart production management, and sustainable manufacturing value chains. For each theme, key subtopics are explored to potentially transform battery value chains and shift to more sustainable production models. Such systemic transformations are supported by technological advances to enable superior manufacturing performance through: skills and competence development, improved production ergonomics and human factors, automation and human-robot collaboration, smart production planning and control, smart maintenance, data-driven solutions for production quality and its impact on battery performance (operational efficiency and durability), circular battery systems supported by service-based business models, more integrated and digitalized value chains, and increased industrial resilience. Each subtopic is discussed to suggest directions for further research to realise the full potential of digitalization for sustainable battery production

A Survey of Mobility Management as a Service in Real-time Inter/Intra Slice Control

In-network softwarization, Network Slicing provides scalability and flexibility through various services such as Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) to cover the network demands. For the QoS, a set of policies must be considered in real-time, accompanied by a group of functions and services to guarantee the end-user needs based on network demand. On the other hand, for the QoE, the service's performance needs to be improved to bring an efficient service to cover the demands of the end-user. The 3G Partnership Project (3GPP) defined the slice as a component of resources used to process a set of packets. These resources need to be flexible, which means the resources can be scaled up or down based on the demand. This survey discusses softwarization and virtualization techniques, considering how to implement the slices for future networks. Specifically, we discuss current advances concerning the functionality and architecture of the 5G network. Therefore, the paper critically evaluates recent research and systems related to mobility management as a service in real-time inter/intra slice control by considering the strengths and limitations of these contributions to identify the research gaps and possible research directions for emerging research and development opportunities. Moreover, we extend our review by considering the slice types and their numbers based on the 3GPP Technical Specification (3GPP TS). The study presented in this paper identifies open issues and research directions that reveal that mobility management at a service level with inter/intra slice management techniques has strong potential in future networks and requires further investigation from the research community to exploit its benefits fully

e-Customer Relationship Management in the hotel sector: Guests\u27 perceptions of perceived e-service quality levels

The notion of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has been shown to be a worthwhile strategy in many service industries. This coupled with Internet advances means that it is now possible and even beneficial to extend CRM practices on the Internet (eCRM) and integrate them with the offline CRM programme. eCRM has can boost guests\u27 satisfaction and patronage in the hospitality industry, as Internet business models have empowered guests with a great amount of information which, in turn, makes them more price sensitive, less brand loyal and more sophisticated. However, although research has concentrated so far on CRM and eCRM implementation and its operational requirements, CRM implications from the customer perspective have been ignored. This paper aims to fill in this gap by examining the impact of eCRM on guests\u27 perceptions of service quality on the Internet (e-service quality). It is advocated that eCRM enhances e-service quality by allowing guests to participate in service processes (e.g. service production, delivery, design) and so improving guests\u27 cognitive and emotional evaluations of service quality performances. Research propositions were tested by applying Critical Incident Analysis and conducting in-depth interviews with nine international hotel guests using eCRM. In general, findings mainly stressed the need to integrate eCRM with off line hotel strategies and operations providing several guidelines for further development and improvement of eCRM hotel practices. Future directions of research are also proposed

Banking liquidity as a leading approach to risk management

For the modern model of the market there are inherent existence of both a set of possibilities and a large number of hazards that are waiting for economic agents and which are generated by the need to make decisions in the conditions of considerable uncertainty about the future. Liquidity risk is one of the central places in the system of bank risks, is closely related to solvency and financial stability, and therefore its management is an extremely important element of financial management of the bank. This paper is devoted to the consideration of theoretical approaches to the management of bank liquidity risks, as well as understanding the risk of unbalanced liquidity and its place in the system of bank risks. In the course of the study, the essence of the concepts of uncertainty, risk as such, economic risk and its varieties, including banking is gradually clarified. We offer our own definition of "bank risk" and describe its essence. Based on the understanding of the concepts of bank risks, liquidity balance, bank liq uidity, the essence of the risk of unbalanced liquidity is disclosed, its characteristics and main aspects of management are determined. In determining the risk of liquidity as a probability of a future state, when the bank may suffer losses due to the imbalance of demand for liquidity and availability at a certain point in time, we believe that the essence of liquidity management is reduced to the maximum balance of demand for liquid assets and their actual availability in a certain moment of time using special tools. Our paper also reveals the mechanism of information influence on bank liquidity and its leading role in liquidity risk management processes. Moreover, the paper discloses the conceptual constituents of organizational support for bank liquidity risk management

The role of structural embeddedness in an IT outsourcing network

The design of governance to safeguard against a vendor's opportunistic behaviour is one of the critical issues in information technology outsourcing (ITO) since this behaviour causes cost escalation and service debasement. The roles of structural embeddedness underlying network governance have been gaining its importance as complementary or substitutable governance in ITO. Our research attempts to reveal how structural embeddedness can affect the decision-makings of clients and vendors and their resulting outcomes in an ITO network and how these effects are moderated by various ITO network structures according to outsourced IT services. An agent-based simulation and game-theoretic approach are adopted to build a simulation model to describe ITO networks with various structures and ITO transactions between clients and vendors. Finally, the future research directions are discussed

Applicability of the SERVQUAL instrument under South African conditions : an assessment of four situations

On-going research in recent years has shown quality of product and service, as perceived by customer, relative to competition, to be the single most important factor contributing to organizational well-being. Quality of product and service also presents one of the most significant opportunities for corporate differentiation. A major requirement for the successful management of quality is therefore effective measurement. In the case of physical goods, progress has been made over a long period. However, in the case of services, real advances have only occurred within the past decade. The importance of service quality is also highlighted by the fact that most businesses today are losing customers due to its inadequacy, rather than poor products. Indeed, from the customer's point of view, services and products probably do not exist in a dichotomy, but, rather, along a spectrum. Therefore, the measurement of service quality is critical, not only in traditional service organizations, but in manufacturing situations as well. The development of the SERVQUAL questionnaire in 1988, offered researchers, perhaps for the first time, an apparently reliable and valid instrument for the measurement of service quality. However, to date the instrument has not been subjected to rigorous testing for reliability and validity in South Africa, across a range of service organizations, within a typology. In this study, the SERVQUAL instrument was used to measure service quality across a range of firms within the Larsson-Bowen contingency framework, under South African conditions. Its main objectives were to assess its reliability and validity in these circumstances. It was found that SERVQUAL performed well across all organizations within the Larsson-Bowen framework, under South African conditions, with regard to reliability, convergent and nomological validity. Its construct validity proved to be less sound, and it was not found to possess discriminant validity. It is suggested that this is less attributable to South African circumstances than to the nature of the organizations. In cases of low diversity of demand, the instrument appears to capture the essence of service quality less effectively. Means of overcoming this in future studies are suggested, as well as other directions for research in the area of service quality measuremen