Hybrid recommender systems for personalized government-to-business e-services

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.As e-Governments around the world face growing pressures to improve the quality of service delivery and become more efficient and cost-effective, their initiatives currently focus on providing users with a seamless service delivery experience. Webbased technologies offer governments more efficient and effective means than traditional physical channels to provide high quality e-Service delivery to their users, which include citizens and businesses. Government-to-Business (G2B) e-Services involve information distribution, transactions, and interactions with businesses m varying ways via e-Government websites and portals. The G2B e-Services aim to reduce burdens on businesses and to provide effective and efficient access to information for business users. One of the most important e-Services of G2B is the promotion of local businesses goods and services to consumers (i.e., local and overseas businesses) by providing on line business directories. However, with the rapid growth of information and unreliable search facilities, busine s users, who are seeking 'one-to-one' e-Services from government in highly competitive markets, struggle with online business directories and increasingly find it difficult to locate business pa1tners according to their needs and interests. How, then, can business users be provided with inforn1ation and services specific to their needs, rather than an undifferentiated mass of information? An effective solution proposed in this research is the development of personalized G2B e-Services using recommender systems. It is worth mentioning that the adoption of recommender systems in the context of e- Government to provide personalized services has received very limited attention in the literature. Recommender systems aim to suggest the right items (products, services or information) that best match the needs and interests of particular users based on their explicit and implicit preferences. In current recommender systems, the Collaborative Filtering (CF) approaches are the most popular and widely adopted recommendation approaches. Regardless of the success of CF-based approaches in various recommendation applications, they still suffer from data uncertainty, data sparsity, cold-start item and cold-start user problems, resulting in poor recommendation accuracy and reduced coverage. An effective solution proposed in this research to alleviate such problems is the development of hybrid and fusion-based recommendation algorithms that exploit and incorporate additional knowledge about users and items. Such knowledge can be extracted from either the users ' trust social network or the items' semantic domain knowledge. This research explores the adoption of recommender systems m an e- Govemment context for the provision of personalized G2B e-Services. Accordingly, a G2B recommendation framework for providing personalized G2B e-Services (particularly personalized business partner recommendations) for Small-to-Medium Businesses (SMBs) is proposed. Novel hybrid and fusion-based recommendation models and algorithms are also proposed and developed to overcome the limitations of existing CF-based recommendation approaches. Experimental results on real datasets show that our proposed recommendation algorithms significantly outperfmm existing recommendation algorithms in terms of recommendation accuracy and coverage when dealing with data sparsity, cold-start item and cold-start user limitations inherent in CF-based recommendation approaches

Freight logistics services for rural economies : User needs and future challenges

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

East Midlands food & drink sector strategy

The food & drink sector is one of four priority sectors identified in the regional economic strategy, A Flourishing Region. This document sets out a strategy for maximising the contribution of the food & drink sector to the economic development of the East Midlands

Identify the HR factors that affect employee turnover in MasterHouse restaurant.

For organisations that seek reduction in employee turnover, it is crucial to identify which specific factors have the greatest impact on the staff turnover rate of the organisation. Similarly, after identifying influencing factors, it is also very important to formulate HR processes and policies based on the actual situation of the organisation. The aim of this research is to identify the HR factors that affect employee turnover rate in MasterHouse restaurant. High employee turnover rate will affect the performance of the organisation’s employees and the decline of daily functions, it will also increase the cost of organisation recruitment on-boarding and training. The purpose of this research is to identify the specific factors that affect employee turnover in MasterHouse and develop a practical plan for MasterHouse restaurant to improve employee loyalty and reduce employee turnover through the organisation’s human resources processes and policies. This research will lead to an understanding of the factors affecting the turnover rate of MasterHouse through secondary research, then researchers will collect data through quantitative research, and develop a strategic plan for MasterHouse to reduce employee turnover. The researcher will use questionnaires to investigate the HR strategies of MasterHouse and employees’ views on MasterHouse current HR process and policies. This research will involve five factors that affect employee turnover rate: Long-term relationships, benchmark, work-life balance, talent management, rewards and motivation. The researcher then connected and compared survey results with information in the literature and developed a practical plan for MasterHouse to reduce employee turnover rate

Keeping profits in New Zealand

The tourism industry is the second biggest for New Zealand and is expected to regain the top spot if current, exponential growth continues. Online travel agencies (OTAs) such as those owned by Expedia Inc. and Booking Holdings Inc. facilitate this boom by encouraging travellers to visit beautiful locations, but are taking huge chunks of this income away from the local Gross-Domestic Product (GDP) in the commission they charge on every night of accommodation booked. One of the largest consumers of New Zealand’s tourism industry is Chinese nationals. This study looks at feasibility of a small player developing an app in a market full of large corporates that are dominating the playing field. The primary research used mixed methods and sought to reach 120 questionnaire respondents and 10 interview participants which uncovered thoughts on stakeholders on either side of the discussion, the China-based potential customers and the New Zealand-based accommodation providers. Preliminary results indicate that Chinese nationals are often likely to conduct thorough research when making decisions about international travel and a large portion are enthused about the prospect of regular international travel. Accommodation providers in New Zealand are rarely hesitant to support a local OTA as they are often frustrated with the poor service received from the large corporates. Developing an app that is based in China and attempts to market the New Zealand tourism industry will be a difficult proposition but is plausible with the implementation of a marketing plan that is strategically thought out

To find a better way of training and development for a small retail business in the health product industry

This research is aimed at finding out how to bring a better training and development process to a small retail business in the health product industry to increase the effectiveness of employees' performance. The study was carried out at Dekang Nutrition Ltd. Currently，it has set up three physical stores in Rototuna, Hamilton. Dekang also has a 300-square-metre warehouse and delivery centre at Te Rapa, and operates two sales platforms online. This research uses qualitative methods. The primary qualitative method that used is interview. The study found out that the type of training needed to be changed, as the current training system is not enough for employees to keep up with rapid changes in the external environment. It also provides an insight into the lack of systematic follow up. The study recommends Dekang to have a mentoring/buddy system for training and to develop an evaluation system for employees to have a clear idea of their own performance in a timely manner. Also, the study recommends that Dekang have a clear career pathway to help employees improve

Measuring level of satisfaction

Customers are the ones to judge their level of satisfaction. Now times have changed and organisations have realized the value of retaining customers. This project is about knowing the level of customer satisfaction in a dairy shop, Melville Price Cutter, situated at 17 Bader Street, Hamilton. The information was gained by doing a survey of 50 customers who came to the dairy. Results obtained from this survey showed that most of the customers visited the dairy twice a week. 35% of the surveyed people were visiting the shop twice a week. When asked why they visit the dairy for shopping, the majority answer was time and location. 40% of the customers thought going to the dairy was time saving or should be very quick. 30% used the dairy for shopping because of its location. Customers preferred the nearest location to shop at a dairy. The results showed that customers who came to the dairy were always in hurry. They did not have time to go to supermarkets, so they expected to get quick service from the dairy. Customer felt happy when they were served quickly and they did not have to be in a queue. They liked deals where they could take advantage of cheap prices

A legacy handbook for innovation

Legacy Handbook reviewing emda's experience of innovation activity. Identifies key achievements and draws out lessons learned that may be relevant to successor bodies active in this area

Enhanced broadband access as a solution to the social and economic problems of the rural digital divide

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

A legacy handbook for business support

Legacy Handbook reviewing emda's experience of business support activity. Identifies key achievements and draws out lessons learned that may be relevant to successor bodies active in this area