SHOULD WE DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN BUSINESS AND PRIVATE CUSTOMERS?

The literature on how customers make their service-provider choices largely distinguishes between private and business customers, and companies’ offerings have been separated accordingly. This study takes a closer look at the possible differences between these two customer categories. The results are explorative and based on both qualitative and quantitative studies focusing on customers’ actual behavior. The findings show that it is not only job-related aspects such as “being able to work” that influence business travel, and that private matters such as “time with the family” are clearly of equal significance in the choice situation. Price perception is important, but only when it is set against the appropriate social costs. The contradiction appears in the airlines’ offers to these customers, which are generally specifically job related. The results of the present study show that most business customers are, in fact, “private customers”.air travel, customer relationships, business-to-business relationships, preferences, choice, service

Management of historical data in continuous integration systems

Continuous integration is an agile software practice where code is checked in frequently and subsequently built and tested automatically. Due to the maturity of this practice at the company Ericsson, the frequency of these automated builds is increasing at the company and as such, much more data about the development process is generated. However, the software systems that gather and present this data was not designed to scale with the current data growth. This has led to several problems surrounding the continuous integration process and the evolution of the software systems that support this process. This master’s thesis reports on the design and evaluation of two different prototypes for management of historical data in continuous integration systems. One of these prototypes uses a NoSQL database for storing historical data and one uses a relational database. The constructed prototypes where designed specifically to address problems related to scalability and performance of the current continuous integration systems in use at Ericsson. Evaluation shows that the prototypes solve scalability problems and increase performance of current systems by separating live and historical data. The value of the prototypes is further motivated by investigating how historical data in a continuous integration system can be utilized for the benefit of the company that has this data

Smooth potentials with prescribed boundary behaviour

This paper examines when it is possible to find a smooth potential on a C1 domain D with prescribed normal derivatives at the boundary. It is shown that this is always possible when D is a Liapunov-Dini domain, and this restriction on D is essential. An application concerning C1 superharmonic extension is given

Earnings among Nine Ethnic Minorities and the Han Majority in China's Cities

This paper asks if economic growth and steps towards a market economy have affected earnings gaps between the Han and nine large urban ethnic minorities: Zhuang, Hui, Manchurian, Tujia, Uighur, Miao, Tibetan, Mongol and Korean. It also asks how earnings premiums and earnings penalties have changed for the nine ethnic minorities. For the analysis we use a subsample of the 2005 China's Inter-Census Survey. We find examples of three different changes over time in earnings premiums and earnings penalties: One ethnic minority for whom the development has been more favourable than for the Han majority; a second category in which development has been similar; and a third category for which development has been unfavourable. We conclude from the analysis that it can be misleading to infer the experience of one ethnic minority from that of another

Determining Attribute Importance in a Service Satisfaction Model

Determining the importance that customers place on the product and service attributes that drive their satisfaction with, and loyalty to, service providers is an essential part of a firm’s resource allocation process. An unsettled issue is whether importance measures should come directly from customers or be derived statistically and, if so, how. The authors compare direct importance ratings with a variety of methods for statistically deriving attribute importance in a customer satisfaction model. Using three data sets, the methods are compared on criteria that include their ability to explain variation in satisfaction, to identify customers’ more important attributes, and to be interpretable. The findings suggest that because each of the tested methods has its strengths and weaknesses, it is essential to choose a method that is compatible with the research goals and context

Measuring and Managing the Satisfaction-Loyalty-Performance Links at Volvo

In this paper a general framework is developed for linking measures from quality to business performance via customer satisfaction and loyalty. The authors illustrate how the framework has been applied at Volvo Car Corporation. The example shows that it is possible to establish where a company should focus its improvement efforts in order to make it pay off. In this example Volvo gains a greater number of loyal customers who spend more money with the company

Mapping and Understanding Ethnic Disparities in Length of Schooling: The Case of Ningxia Autonomous Region, China

Disparities in length of schooling between the largest Muslim minority in China, the Hui, and the Han majority are investigated. We use household data collected in Ningxia autonomous region in 2007. It is found that compared with Han persons of the same age and gender, Hui persons have shorter educations with the exception of young and middle-aged urban males who have twelve years of schooling, on average. Particularly noteworthy is that as many as 45 percent of adult rural Hui females are not literate. Possible reasons for the shorter educations of Hui in many segments of the population are numerous. We show that the incentive to invest in length of schooling is smaller among Hui than Han as the association between education and income is weaker. We also report that Hui parents spend fewer resources on education than Han parents and that fewer years of schooling for Hui in the first generation helps to explain why Hui persons in the second generation have shorter educations