The Application of Six Sigma Improvement Process on Enhancement of Product Quality and Service Quality of Internet-Marketing

Abstract Internet marketing is believed to have many advantages over traditional marketing, such as limitless time and boundless distance, low cost and home delivery, and therefore has become another trend of marketing nowadays. It success is determined critically in two aspects: product quality and service quality. Product quality refers to the customer’s acceptability of product’s Research and Development (R&D) and manufacturing at the backstage while service quality means the customer’s acceptability of product’s marketing and maintenance at the proscenium. Most research on customer’s satisfaction on Internet-marketing generally limits itself within product quality and service quality and analyzes and improves customer’s satisfaction through one single aspect. Such method is not able to find critical causal categories on customers’ whole acceptability. Therefore, this study used Six Sigma MAIC (measure, analyze, improve and control) to ameliorate procedure and meanwhile considered product quality and service quality of Internet-marketing in order to establish a system to enhance customer’s whole satisfaction. This study included three steps. First of all, focusing on the product quality at backstage, we conducted a customer acceptability survey (containing dimensions of importance and satisfaction), conducted product quality performance matrix to measure low importance, high satisfaction and high importance, low satisfaction of abnormal products, which determined the reducing or increasing R&D and manufacturing resources for such products. For abnormal products with high importance but low satisfaction, Cause-and-Effect Diagram was used to analyze and identify the critical major causes of such products. Moreover, with focus on importance, satisfaction and process capability of critical major causes, a process-capability performance matrix was established. Then the worst critical main causal category would be the priority target as to enhance and improve R&D and manufacturing resources. Secondly, emphasizing on the survey of the customer’s acceptability at the proscenium, containing dimensions of importance and satisfaction, we conducted service quality performance matrix to measure low importance, high satisfaction and high importance, low satisfaction of abnormal service items, which decided on the reducing or increasing marketing and maintenance resources of such service items. For abnormal service, characteristics cause-and-effect diagram was conducted to analyze and identify specific service strategies. Then Quality Function Development would be used to determine critical service strategies for improvement. Thirdly, after improvement, focusing on abnormal products, Machine Parameter, Optimum Tolerance, and conditions for best manufacturing were used as criteria to enhance process capability and ensure that each critical major cause are under control. Furthermore, for abnormal service, we ensured each critical service strategies under implementation. Finally, with emphasis on the department of R&D and manufacturing at the backstage and the department of marketing and maintenance at the proscenium, standard operating procedure and knowledge manage system were established in order to standardize operation and to maintain the control effect. Such Six Sigma Improvement Process provides practical method to manage the information of the importance and the satisfaction in the aspects of product quality and service quality step by step, and to holistically consider R&D, manufacturing, marketing and maintenance at the same time. Such application of Six Sigma Improvement Process on Internet-marketing is believed to reinforce customer’s purchase inclination and enhance business performance

Remote sensing and field assessment of tsunami effects on coastal pond aquaculture in northern Sumatra

An attempt was made to conduct spatial assessment of the pattern and extent of damage to coastal aquaculture ponds along the east coast of Aceh province in Sumatra, Indonesia, resulting from the tsunami event of 26 December 2004. High-resolution satellite imagery, i.e., SPOT-5 multispectral scenes covering the 700 km stretch of the coast, acquired before and after the tsunami, were digitally enhanced and visually interpreted to delineate pockets of aquaculture ponds that were discerned to be damaged and relatively intact. Field checks were conducted at 87 sites in the four eastern coastal districts. The results indicate that SPOT-5 multispectral imagery was minimally sufficient to detect areas of damaged and relatively intact aquaculture ponds, but the 10-m spatial resolution poses limitations to evaluating the extent of pond damage. Nevertheless, the 60 km swath of the imagery makes it reasonably affordable for large-area assessment to identify pockets of severe damage for targeting more detailed assessments. The image maps produced from a mosaic of the SPOT-5 scenes can also serve as base maps for spatial planning in the challenging task of reconstruction and rehabilitation of the disrupted livelihoods of the coastal communities.Remote sensing, Disasters, Spatial analysis, Coastal zone, ISEW, Indonesia, Aceh,

Human Processes in Customer Relationship Management

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a combination of people, processes, and technology that seeks to provide understanding of customer needs, to support a business strategy, and to build long-term relationships with customers. Successful utilization of the integrated technology requires appropriate business processes and organizational culture to adequately address human behavioral elements. Because it is not simply a technology solution, success in CRM business revolves largely around people. In order to build a clearer understanding of the content and role of the human processes of CRM, this study analyzes the literature on CRM processes and people dependencies and forms propositions about the need for human processes in CRM. It emphasizes the responsibility of executives and operational staff in making critical decisions and using intimate communications to conduct relationship management with their customers. Typical CRM human processes are those that are difficult to implement or that cannot be carried on using technology solutions alone, including such activities as planning customer strategy, designing CRM processes, coping with customer problems, understanding customer needs, handling intimate communications, and integrating customer responses. Factors that affect the dependency of human processes in CRM are related to customer factors, the content of information, employee capabilities, and the organizational environment. Propositions formed in this study are that the dependency on human processes in CRM is affected by (1) customer emotional needs; (2) the need for tacit customer information; (3) employees’ experience; and (4) the organizational culture

Humanizing E-Mail Processing for Personal Information Management with Semantic Web and Speech Act Theory

With the rapid progress of information technology, Internet and people’s lives are combining closely with versatile communication ways now. Among these ways, the most popular one for knowledge workers is e-mail. People use it to deal with business affairs or receiving information in daily life. That gradually induces every knowledge worker has to handle many grueling e-mails every day. As a result, knowledge workers may be stuck most of their time with the e-mail distention problem. Although there are growing e-mail management systems, most of them are still short of freeing user to set, reply or retrieve related information with customized personal dexterity. That is, the data or information in the e-mail system is still obstinate for most of the knowledge workers. To mitigate this problem, we rethink the spirit of an e-mail system from the perspectives of speech act theory, and use the six ethics of heart to construct the kernel of the social network with data provenance to help users reduce the gap between current e-mail routine process and their own personal information management. Together with the customized Semantic Web construction, our approach hopefully helps knowledge workers establish a more efficient e-mail processing model with humanity consideration

An Industry Policy Toward Cloud Service Brokerage

The development of the cloud computing industry re-shapes the global IT industry. Cloud computing technology and its service applications are taking off around the world. The governments around the world have gradually adopting cloud computing as the new way of public services provision, while industry partners have lack of confidence on adopting cloud-based solutions. The primary research question is how the national cloud computing strategy leads to design a mechanism to bridge providers and users in a flourishing industry. By using the action research method, this study proposes a cloud service brokerage mechanism as an intermediary of cloud service delivery. The contribution will present firms or policy makers an industry policy guideline for drawing up the cloud computing development strategy, which will shed light for future researches on cultivating an industry development scheme

The Formation Of The Big Data Industry And Related Strategies

Big Data, as moving into the post-cloud era in year 2015, is changing the way software is applied by industries. Meanwhile, the Open Data is transforming the sources of value for software development in which comprehensive digital data value creation is set to be the mainstream in IT application strategies. Big Data applications can enhance the knowledge level of technology applications as well as drive value growth for products and services. The key issue affecting Big Data development is the question of how to leverage mechanisms for joint creation by the general public to identify the value that Big Data can provide. This paper proposes that an effective Big Data industry ecosystem should encompass data owners, application innovators, technology leaders, and open API platforms. Using the methods of design science, the paper evaluates the way in which Big Data creates value in the industrial development process, and argues that it is important to attract mass participation and to satisfy the needs of both industrial and social development when putting forward a value proposition. Moving further, the next step is value creation initiatives, in which the first priority should be to promote the digitalization of industry seeking to create digitalized industries that can contribute to the gradual optimization of the industrial ecosystem as a whole