Assessing the Quality of Hospitality Services: A Study on Hotels in Chittagong

Service quality is considered as an important aspect to the success of hospitality industry, the importance of evaluating service quality provided to guests becomes apparent. Assessing service quality provides with the necessary information needed to manage service delivery operations appropriately. Considering the importance, the study aims to evaluate the service quality of two five star hotels in Chittagong using random sampling. The study applied SERVQUAL model consisting of five dimensions namely tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. Based on a questionnaire survey of 68 customers (guests), frequency analysis, gap analysis between perceptions and expectations, reliability tests of items were conducted. The results of the reveal that the overall service quality of sample hotels is rated as -0.24. The perception of service delivery was less than expectations of guests in all the dimensions of SERVQUAL. The sample hotels have not fulfilled the expectations of their guests. The findings of the study imply that the management of selected hotels should understand the guests’ expectation and standardize their relevant services with expectation, set proper standards and support them with necessary resources to minimize the gaps between perception and expectation. Keywords:   quality, hospitality services, customers

Factors Influencing Adoption and Adoption Intensity of Precision Agriculture Technologies in South Dakota

Precision agriculture can play an important role in preserving the environment and improving the economic conditions of agricultural producers. This thesis analyzes the determinants of adoption and adoption intensity of precision agriculture technologies in South Dakota. This analysis uses survey data collected from 199 farms distributed over 28 different counties in South Dakota, accounting for approximately 500,000 acres of tillable agricultural land, to (1) discover the factors impacting precision technology adoption; (2) compare and contrast several characteristics among adopters and non-adopters; and (3) develop probit, count, and negative binomial models to determine the significance of explanatory variables impacting precision technology adoption and adoption intensity. T-test results of the mean age of participants, Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) enrollment, service center access, reliance on farm dealers for information, and computer usage for accounting purposes were statistically different between adopters and non-adopters of precision agriculture technologies. Probit model results indicate that age, spousal non-farm income, and service/repair access negatively influenced the decision to adopt, while the number of cropland acres, reliance on information from farm dealers, and use of computers for accounting activities positively impacted the decision to adopt. Results from the count model suggest that age, livestock owner status, spousal non-farm income, and service/repair access negatively influence the intensity of precision agriculture technologies adoption, while CSP enrollment, crop-land acreage, reliance on information from farm dealers, and using computers for accounting activities positively influenced the intensity of precision agriculture technologies adoption. Results of the negative binomial model indicate that only lack of access to service/repair facilities negatively affected the adoption intensity, and the adoption of different bundles of the six most popular precision technologies (auto-steer, variable rate systems, automatic section control/shut-offs, prescription field maps, yield monitors, and GPS guidance systems), while CSP enrollment, reliance on farm dealers as an information source, and using computers for accounting activities positively influenced precision technologies adoption intensity. The results of this study may help policy makers understand how agricultural producers perceive precision agriculture technologies in general, and the degree to which these technologies may be used to enhance productivity, profitability, and environmental quality. The result also provides useful insights on key determinants of the adoption of precision agriculture technologies. The results may further help farm dealers and repair service providers as they consider marketing precision agriculture technologies to agricultural producers. Precision agriculture technologies manufacturers and sellers can use these results to identify the demand of their product and services in the future

Effect of Public Investment on Economic Growth in Bangladesh: An Econometric Analysis

This paper explores the role of public investment in the process of economic growth, in the context of Bangladesh economy. Due to lack of recent official statistics, necessary datasets were derived by the author for the period 1973-2011. For the estimation purposes several econometric method are used. The results show that Public Investment has positive effects on GDP in Bangladesh. So increases in public investment should have a positive net impact on economic growth which augments our economic development in future. Findings point out that keeping the high public investment level in Bangladesh together with improvement in institutional surroundings would be beneficial for economic growth. This paper concludes with a number of policy recommendations arising from the research findings. Kewords: Public Investment, Economic Growth, Unit Root Test, Co-integration test, Jarque-Bera test, Multicollinearity test, Heteroskedasticity, Likelihood Ratio Test

BANKING SERVICES AND CUSTOMER PERCEPTION IN SOME SELECTED COMMERCIAL BANKS IN BANGLADESH: A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

The banking system is facing challenges with stiff competition and advancement of technology. It becomes imperative for service providers to meet or exceed the target customers' satisfaction with quality of services expected by them. Hence, the present study attempted to study customers' perception of quality of services (both transactions-based and IT-enabled) in terms of its constituent factors and IT adoption in public, private, and foreign commercial banks in this E-age. The present investigation was planned with the objective to assess the extent of use of services especially the IT-enabled services in these banks and to analyze the constituent factors affecting customer satisfaction with the quality of services. The study area was Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh. Simple random sampling was used for selection of sample branches. The study reveals that check deposition and check clearance are the most popular banking services among the customers of all sample banks. The customers of nationalized banks were not satisfied with the employee behavior and infrastructure while respondents of private and foreign commercial banks were not satisfied with high charges, accessibility and communication. A small number of respondents were using IT-enabled services other than ATM, and a few respondents made complain against their respective banks. Keywords : Transaction-based banking services, IT-enabled banking services, Customer satisfaction, Service qualit

Is Bangladesh on the right path toward sustainable development? An empirical exploration of energy sources, economic growth, and CO2 discharges nexus

The sustainability of the recent economic progress of Bangladesh is critically dependent on how it faces envi-ronmental challenges, as the country is one of the primary victims of climate alteration. Taking into account the crucial roles of energy sources in this scenario, we analyze the impacts of non-renewable and renewable energy consumption (NREC and REC) on the growth-environment nexus in Bangladesh from 1980 to 2018. Based on the Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model with and without structural breaks and policy dummies, our findings show that REC significantly upsurges economic growth, whereas NREC diminishes it. However, NREC leads to environmental deterioration, while REC enhances environmental quality. Besides, our results fail to support the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis for Bangladesh. Interestingly, the policy dummy upsurges CO2 discharges while lessening economic growth, implying that the Bangladesh governments policies do not adequately cut pollution. Our Toda-Yamamoto non-causality test indicates a unidirectional causality running from GDP and its square term and NREC to CO2 emissions. Our findings suggest that policymakers in Bangladesh should adopt and implement strategies like enhancing renewable energy production, investment subsidies, tax credits, quota policies, and technological advancements to boost REC while plunging NREC to achieve economic sustainability.Author´s last draft is self-archived on the author's personal homepage: https://ylifin.wordpress.com/publications/</p

BDPS: An Efficient Spark-Based Big Data Processing Scheme for Cloud Fog-IoT Orchestration

The Internet of Things (IoT) has seen a surge in mobile devices with the market and technical expansion. IoT networks provide end-to-end connectivity while keeping minimal latency. To reduce delays, efficient data delivery schemes are required for dispersed fog-IoT network orchestrations. We use a Spark-based big data processing scheme (BDPS) to accelerate the distributed database (RDD) delay efficient technique in the fogs for a decentralized heterogeneous network architecture to reinforce suitable data allocations via IoTs. We propose BDPS based on Spark-RDD in fog-IoT overlay architecture to address the performance issues across the network orchestration. We evaluate data processing delays from fog-IoT integrated parts using a depth-first-search-based shortest path node finding configuration, which outperforms the existing shortest path algorithms in terms of algorithmic (i.e., depth-first search) efficiency, including the Bellman–Ford (BF) algorithm, Floyd–Warshall (FW) algorithm, Dijkstra algorithm (DA), and Apache Hadoop (AH) algorithm. The BDPS exhibits low latency in packet deliveries as well as low network overhead uplink activity through a map-reduced resilient data distribution mechanism, better than in BF, DA, FW, and AH. The overall BDPS scheme supports efficient data delivery across the fog-IoT orchestration, outperforming faster node execution while proving effective results, compared to DA, BF, FW and AH, respectively

Rural Development as a Key to Achieve Zero Hunger in 2030

Agricultural development, a subset of economic development, implies a sustained increase in the level of production and productivity over a reasonable length of time and the subsequently improved well-being of farmers as reflected in their higher per capita income and standard of living. Rural development relates not only to a sustained increase in the level of production and productivity of all rural dwellers, including farmers, and a sustained improvement in their well-being, manifested by increasing per capita income and standard of living, but also leads to a sustained physical, social, and economic improvement of rural communities (Nchuchuwe and Adejuwon 2012)