Evaluation of hotel quality attribute importance through fuzzy correlation coefficient

An indirect method of calculation of the importance of attributes as the fuzzy correlation between the performance of attributes and the overall satisfaction was proposed in a recent paper. We apply the method to the results of a survey with respect to the quality of hotel services in Oradea (Romania). Different representations of the answers as triangular fuzzy numbers, as well as distinct analyzes to compare the hierarchies of the attributes with respect to the experience with the hotel and the motivation of the travel are considered. First published online: 30 Mar 201

Cargo company recommendation study based on probabilistic linguistic term set

The global economic structure is the main reason for changes in consumption habits and consumer behavior. Developing information technologies direct producers and consumers to e-commerce. Cargo services are an important link in the chain in the fast and effective operation of e-commerce. The growth in e-commerce has a driving force in the development of cargo services and cargo companies. Cargo companies can survive in global competition by being preferred by customers and increasing their number of customers. The change in the number of customers occurs by communicating the satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the cargo company to potential customers. This study deals with the preference levels of cargo companies serving in Turkey according to customer suggestions. The data obtained from the survey evaluations are processed and recommendation ranking calculations are made for cargo companies. Probabilistic Linguistic Term Sets (PLTS) are used to eliminate customer ambiguities in survey evaluations. Alternative cargo company recommendations are ranked based on the customers' past service experiences from cargo companies. Aras Cargo, MNG Cargo, PTT Cargo, Surat Cargo, UPS Cargo, Yurtiçi Cargo companies are evaluated according to price, personnel, speed, reliability and network attributes. The maximum deviation optimization method based on the Lagrangian function is used to calculate the weights of the cargo companies' attributes. The probabilistic linguistic cosine similarity method compares cargo companies pairwise under attributes and a similarity matrix is obtained for six cargo companies. The similarity matrix defines the alternative cargo company recommendation ranking based on customers' past experiences. UPS, SURAT and MNG cargo companies stand out as the most prioritized companies according to the evaluation results. The effects of attribute weights are observed by designing six different scenarios and it is observed that the differentiating attribute weights affect the recommendation ranking. Spearman correlation coefficient evaluation based on recommendation rankings indicates a high relationship between attributes.Publisher's Versio

Predicting Service Reliability - Using Survival Analysis of Customer Fuzzy Satisfaction

Abstract. It had been known that the main objective of adding service was creating value to improve customer satisfaction. Therefore, if customer satisfaction was plotted in time series variable, service reliability function was reflected. The benefits obtained from understanding the service reliability function were knowing the trend of service life cycle and analyzing the time to react for service in order that the company could offer service innovation before the service became unfavorable. This research was aimed to analyze service reliability function by using the definition concept of product reliability function which was called survival analysis. To reduce bias data because of linguistic variable such as customer satisfaction, fuzzy logic was used in this research. The data was collected by doing a survey to 100 SAMSAT customers about their satisfaction. SAMSAT is a public unit giving service in tax. Then, fuzzied customer satisfaction was plotted in time series to describe the survival analysis of service. In other words, the plotting result was used to determine the right time for innovating service. So, the conclusion was drawn that survival analysis implemented in service field could help the managerial level in terms of innovation management. In addition, fuzzy logic used could bold the bias definition of customer satisfaction. Furthermore, this framework would be able to be used in mobile application development for future research in terms of supporting a company to define the right moment of service innovation based on asimple customer satisfaction survey.  Keyword: Service reliability, survival analysis for service, fuzzy logic in service, fuzzy satisfaction, technology as suppor

INTEGRATING KANO MODEL WITH DATA MINING TECHNIQUES TO ENHANCE CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

The business world is becoming more competitive from time to time; therefore, businesses are forced to improve their strategies in every single aspect. So, determining the elements that contribute to the clients\u27 contentment is one of the critical needs of businesses to develop successful products in the market. The Kano model is one of the models that help determine which features must be included in a product or service to improve customer satisfaction. The model focuses on highlighting the most relevant attributes of a product or service along with customers’ estimation of how these attributes can be used to predict satisfaction with specific services or products. This research aims at developing a method to integrate the Kano model and data mining approaches to select relevant attributes that drive customer satisfaction, with a specific focus on higher education. The significant contribution of this research is to improve the quality of United Arab Emirates University academic support and development services provided to their students by solving the problem of selecting features that are not methodically correlated to customer satisfaction, which could reduce the risk of investing in features that could ultimately be irrelevant to enhancing customer satisfaction. Questionnaire data were collected from 646 students from United Arab Emirates University. The experiment suggests that Extreme Gradient Boosting Regression can produce the best results for this kind of problem. Based on the integration of the Kano model and the feature selection method, the number of features used to predict customer satisfaction is minimized to four features. It was found that either Chi-Square or Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) features selection model’s integration with the Kano model giving higher values of Pearson correlation coefficient and R2. Moreover, the prediction was made using union features between the Kano model\u27s most important features and the most frequent features among 8 clusters. It shows high-performance results

A study of instrumental method for suiting fabric hand evaluation and classification

In the textile and apparel industry, fabric end-use preference and selection criteria are largely based on fabric hand because it relates to both the mechanical properties and aesthetic appearance of fabrics. This paper examines a method to grade fabric hand based on Kawabata’s measurements and neural network modeling. The proposed method is verified by comparing the hand graded by the neural network model to Kawabata’s total hand value. Ninety-five commercial fabrics from different manufacturers were tested using Kawabata evaluation system (KES-FB). Cluster analysis using SAS classified the suiting fabric samples into four groups in this study. The test results of fabric mechanical properties show similarities and dissimilarities between woven and knitted suiting fabrics. In comparison, woven suiting fabrics are less subject to shear and bending deformation. Knitted fabrics have a higher total hand value than woven fabrics with a smoother surface. Cluster analysis well divided the suiting fabric samples into four groups describing different fabric performance. The training dataset in the neural network model was selected based on information from the clustering results. The training model was proved to be accurate with a low MSE of 4 × 10-8. The model successfully graded the test samples with values ranged from 0 to 1. Additionally, the validity for grading fabric hand using the neural network technique was examined by analyzing the correlation between the hand graded by neural network model and Kawabata’s equations. The regression analysis shows a relatively strong correlation (p<0.0001, R2= 0.6363) between neural network grades and Kawabata’s grades.Textile and Apparel Technolog

Ecosystem services, sustainable rural development and protected áreas

Enhancing social and economic development while preserving nature is one of the major challenges for humankind in the current century. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment showed an alarming degradation of ecosystems and exacerbated poverty for many groups of people across the world due to unprecedented changes in ecosystems caused by human activities in the 20th century. Sustainable Rural Development is key to maintaining active local communities in rural and semi-natural areas, avoiding depopulation, and preserving high-ecological-value sites, including protected areas. Establishing protected areas is the most common strategy to preserve biodiversity around the world with the advantage of promoting the supply of ecosystem services. However, depending how it affects economic opportunities and the access to natural resources, it can either attract or repel human settlements. The convergence of development and conservation requires decision-making processes capable of aligning the needs and expectations of rural communities and the goals of biodiversity conservation. The articles compiled in this Special Issue (nine research papers and two review papers) make important contributions to this challenge from different approaches, disciplines and regions in the world.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Multi-Objective and Multi-Attribute Optimisation for Sustainable Development Decision Aiding

Optimization is considered as a decision-making process for getting the most out of available resources for the best attainable results. Many real-world problems are multi-objective or multi-attribute problems that naturally involve several competing objectives that need to be optimized simultaneously, while respecting some constraints or involving selection among feasible discrete alternatives. In this Reprint of the Special Issue, 19 research papers co-authored by 88 researchers from 14 different countries explore aspects of multi-objective or multi-attribute modeling and optimization in crisp or uncertain environments by suggesting multiple-attribute decision-making (MADM) and multi-objective decision-making (MODM) approaches. The papers elaborate upon the approaches of state-of-the-art case studies in selected areas of applications related to sustainable development decision aiding in engineering and management, including construction, transportation, infrastructure development, production, and organization management

Fuzzy Sets in Business Management, Finance, and Economics

This book collects fifteen papers published in s Special Issue of Mathematics titled “Fuzzy Sets in Business Management, Finance, and Economics”, which was published in 2021. These paper cover a wide range of different tools from Fuzzy Set Theory and applications in many areas of Business Management and other connected fields. Specifically, this book contains applications of such instruments as, among others, Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis, Neuro-Fuzzy Methods, the Forgotten Effects Algorithm, Expertons Theory, Fuzzy Markov Chains, Fuzzy Arithmetic, Decision Making with OWA Operators and Pythagorean Aggregation Operators, Fuzzy Pattern Recognition, and Intuitionistic Fuzzy Sets. The papers in this book tackle a wide variety of problems in areas such as strategic management, sustainable decisions by firms and public organisms, tourism management, accounting and auditing, macroeconomic modelling, the evaluation of public organizations and universities, and actuarial modelling. We hope that this book will be useful not only for business managers, public decision-makers, and researchers in the specific fields of business management, finance, and economics but also in the broader areas of soft mathematics in social sciences. Practitioners will find methods and ideas that could be fruitful in current management issues. Scholars will find novel developments that may inspire further applications in the social sciences

Rethinking the risk matrix

So far risk has been mostly defined as the expected value of a loss, mathematically PL (being P the probability of an adverse event and L the loss incurred as a consequence of the adverse event). The so called risk matrix follows from such definition. This definition of risk is justified in a long term “managerial” perspective, in which it is conceivable to distribute the effects of an adverse event on a large number of subjects or a large number of recurrences. In other words, this definition is mostly justified on frequentist terms. Moreover, according to this definition, in two extreme situations (high-probability/low-consequence and low-probability/high-consequence), the estimated risk is low. This logic is against the principles of sustainability and continuous improvement, which should impose instead both a continuous search for lower probabilities of adverse events (higher and higher reliability) and a continuous search for lower impact of adverse events (in accordance with the fail-safe principle). In this work a different definition of risk is proposed, which stems from the idea of safeguard: (1Risk)=(1P)(1L). According to this definition, the risk levels can be considered low only when both the probability of the adverse event and the loss are small. Such perspective, in which the calculation of safeguard is privileged to the calculation of risk, would possibly avoid exposing the Society to catastrophic consequences, sometimes due to wrong or oversimplified use of probabilistic models. Therefore, it can be seen as the citizen’s perspective to the definition of risk