THE EFFECT OF EMPLOYEE’S COMMITMENTS ON CUSTOMER’S LOYALTY BASED ON TRANSACTION COST

Few researchers, such as Hansen, Sandvick and Selnes (2003) and Jones, Taylor and Bansal (2008), have mentioned about the effect of employee’s commitments and individual commitment on consumer’s loyalty for products. This study aims to integrate the organizational commitment provided by Hansen, Sandvik and Selnes (2003) with the affective commitment and the calculative commitment presented by Jones et al. (2008) to explore the three types of commitments which affect customer’s loyalty to the providers. Individual commitment, employee commitment, affective commitment and calculative commitment are selected as research variables. The research attempts to understand the factors and the effects of different commitments on consumer’s loyalty and consumer’s willing to continue consumptions under the agent’s services from the different insurance companies. The 300 consumers serviced by insurance agents are selected as research samples. The research method is applied questionnaires analyzed by multiple Hierarchical Regression analysis. The research results show that employee’s commitments and individual commitments positively influence the calculative commitment and the affective commitment which affect consumer’s loyalty. Transaction cost does not have positive effect on consumer’s loyalty

Biological and Preclinical Evaluations of Designed Optically Guided Medical Devices with Light Scattering Modules for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Treatment and Surgical Procedure

A novel technique and product applied to carpal tunnel microscopic surgical procedures through the designed medical devices were prepared and studied. The novel design of the medical device could be developed and applied for new carpal tunnel microscopic surgical procedures instead of the traditional carpal tunnel surgical procedures. Also, a new medical device with optical LLLT module was designed for wound healing in carpal tunnel syndrome treatments. Furthermore, assistive surgical healing dressings for carpal tunnel syndrome treatments via minimally invasive surgery (MIS) such as air-foam soft cleaning sponges and hydrogel surgical dressings with polymeric films were designed for more comfortable treatments. Biological and clinical evaluations of carpal tunnel surgical procedure using the new designed medical devices are studied. For commercialized reasons, guidance such as ISO 10993-1:2009(E) for biological evaluation of medical devices must be considered. Furthermore, the clinical evaluation of modified medical devices would be carried out

Focusing On The High-End Or Low-End? Local Attacking With Network Externality

Network externality can encourage adoption when a network is growing in size. Network externality, however, can also encourage abandoning when a network is getting small. Therefore, the challenger’s action focusing on persuading a part of the market can eventually affect the whole market when network externality is at work. This paper discusses two local attacking strategies, namely, “focusing on the high-end” and “focusing on the low-end”, and compares their effects. The conclusions show that the former strategy generally exhibits stronger eventual effects than the latter. Although direct effects are local, the eventual effects could be global when network externality is strong and/or consumers have small differences in their reservation prices. Based on our results, the incumbent should set a price keeping all installed users away from being stranded. If any installed user gives up the incumbent’s technology, he or she may be the fuse to trigger the chain reaction. Thus, a better approach is to “make the fuse wet”. To the challenger, local attacking strategies work better when network externality is strong and/or reservation prices of installed users are nearly the same

User Resistance to the Implementation of Information Systems: A Psychological Contract Breach Perspective

The current study proposes an exploratory model to examine the antecedents of user resistance in information system (IS) implementations from the perspective of a psychological contract breach (PCB). The purpose of this study is to investigate PCBs between users and IS providers (ISPs), which extends IS theory in two ways: by elaborating on why some users psychologically resist the IS, and by more deeply exploring the social-psychological determinants of user resistance. Our results show that user-perceived PCBs can lead to user resistance and feelings of violation via reneging, high user vigilance, and incongruence between the users’ and the ISP’s understandings of the obligations. Our results also show that users’ interpretations—i.e., causal attribution of the breach and perceived fairness after the breach—moderate the relationship between user-perceived PCBs and feelings of violation. We discuss our findings and their academic and practical implications, and suggest directions for future research

Extreme Rainfall Mechanisms Exhibited by Typhoon Morakot (2009)

Moderate Typhoon Morakot (2009) became the most catastrophic typhoon in Taiwan on record. The MM5 numerical experiments with and without bogus data assimilation (BDA) were used to investigate the extreme rainfall mechanisms in Taiwan associated with the westbound typhoon. The BDA, based on 4DVAR, helps MM5 to maintain a more consolidated typhoon vortex and better predict the observed track after landfall, thus producing realistic extreme rainfall (about 2400 mm) at the southern and Central Mountain Range (CMR) of Taiwan. Severe rainfall in Taiwan is dominated by the CMR that hence modulates rainfall predictability

Supplier selection using a hybrid model for 3C industry

Supplier selection is a good strategy for firms that can reduce operating costs and improve competitiveness for computer, communication and consumer electronics (3C) industry. The major aim of this research is to build a systematic approach for establishing a supplier selection model, and then prioritize improvement criteria in order to best supply chain management. The study proposed a hybrid approach by using the interpretive structural modeling (ISM) method to deal with the interrelationship among criteria, and the analytic network process (ANP) method is employed to recognize the criteria of supplier selection and evaluate with respect to environmental competency for the case of Taiwan's 3C industry. The study shows that the proposed model could be an effective and efficient decision-making tool that can be easily extended to other contexts. Especially, it has provided decision-makers and researchers with better understanding of the differences in supplier selection activity needs and specific management interventions by examining these criteria

THE EFFECT OF EMPLOYEE’S COMMITMENTS ON CUSTOMER’S LOYALTY BASED ON TRANSACTION COST

Few researchers, such as Hansen, Sandvick and Selnes (2003) and Jones, Taylor and Bansal (2008), have mentioned about the effect of employee’s commitments and individual commitment on consumer’s loyalty for products. This study aims to integrate the organizational commitment provided by Hansen, Sandvik and Selnes (2003) with the affective commitment and the calculative commitment presented by Jones et al. (2008) to explore the three types of commitments which affect customer’s loyalty to the providers. Individual commitment, employee commitment, affective commitment and calculative commitment are selected as research variables. The research attempts to understand the factors and the effects of different commitments on consumer’s loyalty and consumer’s willing to continue consumptions under the agent’s services from the different insurance companies. The 300 consumers serviced by insurance agents are selected as research samples. The research method is applied questionnaires analyzed by multiple Hierarchical Regression analysis. The research results show that employee’s commitments and individual commitments positively influence the calculative commitment and the affective commitment which affect consumer’s loyalty. Transaction cost does not have positive effect on consumer’s loyalty

Development of a DSS to Estimate the Sales for the Retailing Industry in Taiwan

An algorithm is constructed in this study to estimate the market sizes of daily commodity in Taiwan based on the sampled sales information provided by retailer chains. Though retailer chains provide sampled sales information from only small portions of their retailing stores, they expect to receive more valuable processed information from that. As result of this research, a DSS is proposed to compute value-added information from this joint sales information database, namely the estimation information. Through certain public accessible data such number of stores by each chain and retailers’ financial reports, the sampled sales information can be transferred to the market size information of each item in Taiwan. Two similar algorithms are constructed for convenient stores and supermarkets/hypermarkets separately. A simple integration method is used to combine these results. Finally, a DSS is built based on these estimation algorithms and is implemented successfull

A Parallel Study of mRNA and microRNA Profiling of Peripheral Blood in Young Adult Women

Background: Aging is a complex process that involves the interplay of genetic, epigenetic, and environmental factors. Identifying aging-related biomarkers holds great potential for improving our understanding of complex physiological changes, thereby providing a means to investigate the mechanism by which aging influences various diseases. Method and Results: We performed a parallel study of microRNA and gene expression profiling of peripheral blood in a group of healthy young adult women, among which 13 were aged 22–25 and 9 were aged 36–39 years old. We identified a significantly distinct pattern of microRNA, but not gene expression profiling, between these two young adult women groups. We also performed correlation analysis of expression levels between all pairs of age-associated microRNAs and genes and identified a weak global correlation between these two types of expression levels. A significant involvement of estrogen regulation was observed by pathway analysis of the most differentially expressed microRNAs that included miR-155, -18a, -142, -340, -363, -195, and -24. Conclusion: Our results suggest that the change in global microRNA expression in the peripheral blood is associated with normal aging in young adult women. This change may precede global gene expression changes. Future studies are needed to investigate the regulatory mechanism of the estrogen-related microRNAs and associated diseases

MemorZig : A Short-Term Memory-Based Algorithm for Efficient Odour Source Tracking

The 11th International Symposium on Adaptive Motion of Animals and Machines. Kobe University, Japan. 2023-06-06/09. Adaptive Motion of Animals and Machines Organizing Committee.Poster Session P8