The Effects of Popularity: An Online Store Perspective

Recently, internet is widely used in our daily life, caused online customer growing rapidly, then the amount of online store rising quickly. Therefore, it is an important issue for online stores to stand out from the crowd, even boost sales and profit. Many enterprises had invested resource on online store, but great amount of stores were closedown. The major reason is operator spend many efforts on valueless marketing campaign, caused popularity and repeat purchase intention raising ineffectively, finally folded up online store. Consequently, this research summarizing the critical factors for online store operating, and using structural equation model (SEM) to establish “Online Store Popularity Effect Model”. Through the model, this research can understand (1) relationship between online store popularity and marketing campaign, service quality, product power, website design; (2) effect between purchase intention and customer value, brand image; (3) moderating impact of consumption ability. This result not only indicates the critical point that enterprise should call more attention, but draws a whole new perspective for academic researcher

Dilemma in Online Shopping How to Select Online Shopping Platform

Although many scholars had proposed lots research results about online shopping, they are quite vague and hard for enterprisers to practice it. Hence, this research observes the online store policies, services, functions, and activities among 17 online shopping platforms in Taiwan, China, and Hong Kong. And, this research (1) finds online stores assessment items by literature review; (2) establishes “online shopping platform for selecting decision table”; (3) applys Fuzzy Delphi and Multiple Attribute Decision Making to decide the priority of selecting decision categories. This research result can translate vague concept into physical principle, and even assist enterprisers to select online shopping platform.DOR: 98.1000/1726-8125.2015.0.17.0.0.68.10

The Different Attribute of Online Store- An Industrial Perspective

Online stores are dramatically increasing and becoming popular, in a way that enterprisers invest tremendous resource and effort to meet customer requirements. However, the failure rate resulting from improper operation has been increasing year by year. By investigating the main cause, the operators cannot grasp the online store websites’ industry type and attribute category. Therefore, they fail to effectively use resource, show website image of the stores and information quality, to further meet customers’ demand and obtain the expected operational efficiency. Therefore, this research (1) grasps the website attribute of online stores by reviewing the literature; (2) sets up “online store website attributes structure” through qualitative method, serving as a basis for enterprisers to improve the operation/service mechanism; (3) sets up “industry breadth and depth graph”, so as to find the website content equilibrium degree of various industries’ online store and further obtain improvement strategy. It is believed that this research result, as said by the professors and scholars being interviewed, not only assists enterprisers to clearly grasp advantage/disadvantage and strategy of online store website attribute, but also promotes the effectiveness in resource utilization and the probability of success. Meanwhile, this research result can also effectively link practical application and academic value and provide researchers with new direction and scope.DOR : 98.1000/1726-8125.2015.0.27.0.0.84.10

Meeting the cultural and service needs of Arabic international students by using QFD

Quality has become an important factor in global competition for many reasons. Intensive global competition and the demand for better quality by customers has led organizations to realize the benefits of providing quality products and services in order to successfully compete and survive. Higher education institutions are one example of these organisations. Higher education institutions work in an intensive competitive environment worldwide driven by increasing demands for learning by local and international students. As a result, the managers of these sectors have realized that improving the quality of services is important for achieving customer satisfaction which can help survival in an internationally competitive market. To do this, it is necessary for organizations to know their customers and identify their requirements. To this end, many higher education institutions have adopted principles of total quality management (TQM) to improve their education quality which leads to better performance through involvement of every department to achieve excellence in business. This chapter considers the importance of measuring quality in order to assist universities to proactively manage the design and improvement of the social and academic experiences of postgraduate international students, and plan management decision-making processes to deliver high-quality services in a globalized business of provision of higher education. Higher education institutions must operate effectively and efficiently and be able to deliver quality programs, by seeking to better understand the needs of their customers to be competitive in this market space

Pan-cancer analysis of whole genomes

Cancer is driven by genetic change, and the advent of massively parallel sequencing has enabled systematic documentation of this variation at the whole-genome scale(1-3). Here we report the integrative analysis of 2,658 whole-cancer genomes and their matching normal tissues across 38 tumour types from the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). We describe the generation of the PCAWG resource, facilitated by international data sharing using compute clouds. On average, cancer genomes contained 4-5 driver mutations when combining coding and non-coding genomic elements; however, in around 5% of cases no drivers were identified, suggesting that cancer driver discovery is not yet complete. Chromothripsis, in which many clustered structural variants arise in a single catastrophic event, is frequently an early event in tumour evolution; in acral melanoma, for example, these events precede most somatic point mutations and affect several cancer-associated genes simultaneously. Cancers with abnormal telomere maintenance often originate from tissues with low replicative activity and show several mechanisms of preventing telomere attrition to critical levels. Common and rare germline variants affect patterns of somatic mutation, including point mutations, structural variants and somatic retrotransposition. A collection of papers from the PCAWG Consortium describes non-coding mutations that drive cancer beyond those in the TERT promoter(4); identifies new signatures of mutational processes that cause base substitutions, small insertions and deletions and structural variation(5,6); analyses timings and patterns of tumour evolution(7); describes the diverse transcriptional consequences of somatic mutation on splicing, expression levels, fusion genes and promoter activity(8,9); and evaluates a range of more-specialized features of cancer genomes(8,10-18).Peer reviewe

Ultrasound localization of the femoral vein facilitates successful cannulation for hemodialysis

Background: Real-time ultrasound-guided techniques allow for improved cannulation of the internal jugular vein and femoral vein for hemodialysis; however, these techniques require extra sterilization procedures, specialized probes, or needle guides. A simpler ultrasound vessel localization method was performed to investigate whether this alternative approach would aid in the cannulation of the femoral vein for patients in whom temporary angioaccess was required for hemodialysis. Methods: Patients requiring temporary femoral vein catheters for hemodialysis were divided into 2 groups on alternating days of the week during a 6-month period. One group underwent ultrasound localization of the femoral vein before cannulation and the second group received conventional landmark localization. Data regarding the strength of the femoral arterial pulse, number of attempts, failures, and complications were recorded. Results: Ultrasound localization resulted in significantly improved first-attempt success rates, reduced attempts, and reduced failure and complication rates overall (p < 0.001, p < 0.001, p = 0.002 and p = 0.004 respectively) as well as in the group of patients with a clearly discernible arterial pulse (p < 0.001, p = 0.001, p = 0.004 and p = 0.011 respectively). The same trend was observed among patients with faintly palpable or non-palpable femoral arterial pulses, although the differences were not statistically significant. Conclusion: Cannulation of the femoral vein for hemodialysis should be performed with the aid of ultrasound. If real-time ultrasound-guided cannulation is not available, the vessel localization method is a good alternative, given its known limitations and the fact that it is simpler. It remains to be determined whether 1 - dimensional localization or localization including vessel depth information can improve outcomes in patients with faintly palpable or non-palpable femoral arterial pulses

Relationship between Kt/V urea-based dialysis adequacy and nutritional status and their effect on the components of the quality of life in incident peritoneal dialysis patients

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>It is well known that the quality of life of patients with chronic kidney disease can be improved by dialysis. While previous studies have used retrospective designs and adhered to a standard target prescribed by clinical guidelines, our study prospectively investigates the association between the adequacy of peritoneal dialysis (PD) and measures of nutritional status on quality-of-life domains in a cohort of incident PD patients.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>It was a prospective 6-month observational study. Eighty incident PD participants who were treated in a hospital-based PD center were enrolled. The period of enrollment was January 2009–June 2010; follow-up continued until December 2010. PD adequacy indices, including Kt/V urea, weekly Ccr (WCcr), measures of nutritional status (albumin, BMI), and nPCR were measured at 1 month and 6 months after PD initiation. SF-36 health survey questionnaires were used to measure the quality of life. The outcomes were used to measure the changes in the domains of the SF-36 after 6 months of PD therapy.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Seventy-seven incident patients who underwent PD for 6 months were included in the study. The mean age was 47.3 years, and the male-to-female ratio was 38:39. A peritoneal Kt/V urea value of 1.2, which was also the baseline cutoff value, was found to have the highest influence on SF-36 domains. Patients with baseline peritoneal Kt/V urea value of <1.2 showed improvement in the physical functioning and role limitation of physical functioning components after 6 months of PD. In contrast, patients with baseline peritoneal Kt/V urea values of ≥1.2 showed remarkable improvement in the general health, physical functioning, role limitation caused by physical problems, and bodily pain components. However, the trend of improvement decreased in patients with baseline nPCR of <1.2. Baseline renal WCcr did not influence the improvement in the SF-36 domains.</p> <p>Limitations</p> <p>A small cohort and a short observation period.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The baseline level of peritoneal Kt/V urea affected the components of the quality of life after PD initiation. In contrast, a lower baseline nPCR level was associated with deterioration in the quality of life after PD therapy.</p