Developing consumer-based service brand equity via the internet: The role of personalization and trialability

The commercialization of the Internet has provided opportunities for building service brands in the minds of consumers. Services are characterized as intangible, heterogeneous, inseparable, and perishable features that often engender high information costs and, hence, low perceived value to potential consumers. When a service is available via the Interneta medium that can subdivide and rebuild the service into personalized offeringspotential consumers become better informed in advance of what the service provides. The Internet also permits most services to be trialable before consumption. These new features, empowered by the Internet, have important implications for what we call consumer-based service brand equity (CSBE), the value that potential consumers assign to a service brand. This article investigates the effects of service personalization and trialability on the development of CSBE of Internet banking service, a typical service available via the Internet. Results from a laboratory experiment indicate that both service personalization and trialability have significant positive influences on the development of the CSBE of an Internet banking service brand. While personalization was found to indirectly influence CSBE development by mediating the perceived benefits of the brand, trialability exerted both a direct and an indirect effect. Trialability developed the brand's CSBE by first mediating the information through gathering cost savings and then the perceived benefits of the brand. Implications of the study's results are discussed.published_or_final_versio

Overcoming obstacles associated with other learning experiences and school-based assessment: Perspectives of high school students with visual impairment in Hong Kong - Collaborative research project report

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2016 Consensus statement on prevention of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease in the Hong Kong population

published_or_final_versio

Validity and Reliability of Timed Up and Go Test on Dynamic Balance in 3-5 Years Old Preschool Children

Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate the validity and reliability of the Timed Up and Go Test (TUG) among normal 3-5 years old preschool children in Hong Kong. Methods: Cross-sectional design was applied to this study. Sixty (30 female, 30 male) preschool children aged from 3 to 5 years old (mean age=4.22 ± 0.85) from local normal preschool was recruited using convenient sampling to perform three dynamic balance tests: Timed Up and Go Test (TUG), Star Excursion Balance Test (SEBT) and the Pediatric Balance Scale Test (PBS). A simple self-administrative questionnaire survey was also conducted with their parents. Results: Positive correlation (r=0.74, p<0.05) was found between TUG results obtained at two time points when assessing the test-retest reliability. Moderated negative correlations were found between TUG and SEBT or PBS, which indicated children with longer reaching distance or higher PBS score tend to use shorter time to complete TUG. Conclusion: TUG was a valid and reliable tool for assessing dynamic balance of preschool children aged between 3 and 5 years old. This can also be used for screening or early detection of developmental coordination disorder (DCD) for children aged 6 years old or younger

The incorporation of fixed cost and multilevel capacities into the discrete and continuous single source capacitated facility location problem

In this study we investigate the single source location problem with the presence of several possible capacities and the opening (fixed) cost of a facility that is depended on the capacity used and the area where the facility is located. Mathematical models of the problem for both the discrete and the continuous cases using the Rectilinear and Euclidean distances are produced. Our aim is to find the optimal number of open facilities, their corresponding locations, and their respective capacities alongside the assignment of the customers to the open facilities in order to minimise the total fixed and transportation costs. For relatively large problems, two solution methods are proposed namely an iterative matheuristic approach and VNS-based matheuristic technique. Dataset from the literature is adapted to assess our proposed methods. To assess the performance of the proposed solution methods, the exact method is first applied to small size instances where optimal solutions can be identified or lower and upper bounds can be recorded. Results obtained by the proposed solution methods are also reported for the larger instances

A review of literature on challenges and obstacles to implementation of generic skills

As a result of continuous curriculum transformation (Chan & Luk, 2013) in today’s knowledge-based society, government and employers have expressed raising demand for graduates’ quality, not only in terms of discipline knowledge but also generic skills (Chan, 2012a). This global movement of generic skills involves many unresolved issues that need to be thoroughly investigated. Thus, in this paper, we provide a critical review of literature on challenges in generic-skills development as identified over the past 20 years. Firstly, there is disagreement on the definition of generic skills. A variety of terms have been used interchangeably to express the notion of generic skills (Barrie, 2005), yet there has not been an open discussion of how such notion can be more ...link_to_OA_fulltex

Psychometric properties testing of a Cantonese version of the life-space assessment in people with stroke

202203 bckwVersion of RecordPublishe

Testing the psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the neurological fatigue index-stroke

202206 bcchAccepted ManuscriptOthersDepartmental GRFPublishe

Contribution of sleep quality to fatigue following a stroke : a cross-sectional study

202109 bcvcVersion of RecordPublishe

Commodity house prices

This paper studies how commodity price movements have affected the local house prices in commodity-dependent economies, Australia and New Zealand. We build a geographically hierarchical empirical model and find that the commodity prices influence local house prices directly and also indirectly through macroeconomic variables. The impacts of commodity price changes are analogous to "income shocks" rather than "cost shocks". Regional heterogeneity is also observed in terms of differential dynamic responses of local house prices to energy versus non-energy commodity price movements. The results are robust to alternative approaches. Directions for future research are also discussed. © 2013 Elsevier B.V