Exploring the antecedents of customer loyalty in the Malaysian retail sector

As the market is becoming more competitive, managers and marketers are becoming more aware of the importance of being a customer-oriented company to survive, and in this regard, customer loyalty is one of the major outcome of customer-oriented approach.Moreover, shifting the concept of marketing exchange from transactions to relationship emphasizes the importance of building customer loyalty.Therefore, nowadays, marketers are in the quest to obtain knowledge on how to build customer loyalty.However, most of the previous studies focused on business to customer (B2C) context.Due to several differences between B2C and B2B, there is a need to investigate the antecedents of customer loyalty separately from B2C. Therefore, this study focused on the Malaysian retail sector.The obtained results supported a positive influence of each of four adopted constructs, which represented by service quality, corporate image, customer trust, and customer switching cost, on customer loyalty.In light of the findings, several managerial implications were highlighted

Clinical significance of anti-Scl-70 antibody estimation in pediatric patients with systemic lupus erythematosus

Background: Some patients with scleroderma have overlap features with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Anti-Scl-70 antibody was reported in as many as 35% of patients with scleroderma and signifies an increased risk for the development of pulmonary fibrosis and pulmonary hypertension. This antibody was detected in 25% of adult patients with SLE. Objective: We hypothesized that a particular subset of lupus patients might be at an increased risk of certain complications if anti-Scl-70 antibody was elevated in their sera. Methods: Serum anti-Scl-70 antibody levels were assayed by ELISA from 34 pediatric patients with SLE and from 24 healthy controls. Patients were also subjected to clinical evaluation for system involvement and for disease activity by systemic lupus erythematosus disease activity index (SLEDAI). The ESR, serum anti DNA antibody, serum complement 3, creatinine clearance and 24 hours urinary protein excretion were assessed and renal biopsy for histopathology was performed in selected cases. Results: Anti Scl-70 antibody was elevated (> 25 U/ml) in 6 SLE patients (18%), borderline (15-25 U/ml) in 17 patients (50%) and normal (< 15 U/ml) in 11 of them (32%). The patient group had significant elevation of serum anti-Scl-70 antibody levels (mean [SD] = 32.5 [8.8] U/ml) as compared to the controls, (mean [SD]= 9.3 [4.1] U/ml; p < 0.001). Patients with clinical lupus nephritis had significant higher levels of this autoantibody as compared to those without clinically evident renal involvement. Also, pulmonary hypertension was found significantly related to the high serum levels of anti-Scl-70 antibody. A significant positive correlation could link anti-Scl-70 levels to the ESR values and SLEDAI scores. Anti-Scl-70 levels were neither affected by the presence of neuropsychiatric involvement nor by intake of cytotoxic drugs. Conclusion: Anti-Scl-70 antibody is present in a significant subset of patients with SLE. For this subset, it offers a good correlate of disease activity and suggests an increased risk for pulmonary hypertension and renal involvement.Keywords: SLE; anti-Scl-70; pulmonary hypertension; lupus nephritis; SLEDAIEgypt J Pediatr Allergy Immunol 2006; 4(2): 53-60

Evaluating Relationship Between Islamic Store Image and Malay Muslim Consumer Attitudes’ in Patronizing a Store

The growing of religious consciousness among Muslim consumers is become an introductory factor for the new concept of businesses that concern with religious values expand in the market. Retailer must realize that Muslim consumer must be treat as a niche market for the reason that, they have their own evaluation in patronizing a stores. The effect of Islamic lifestyles in the marketing environment had urge retailer to complement their marketing strategy to be suit with Islamic attributes. The religiosity adherence among Muslim consumers may affect the patronage behavior of the store. With the changing behavior among Muslim consumer, thus, this study intends to examine the influence of Islamic store image on Muslim consumer attitudes. The study was done in several states of Malaysia by cluster sampling. A number of customers were asked to complete the questionnaires by mall intercept method. Finding of the study found that, Islamic store image have a significant impact to the patronage behavior of the Muslim consumer in patronizing a store in Malaysia. As a conclusion for this study, Islamic image of the store significantly become major determinant towards Muslim customer in patronizing a store. Customer feel more confident by considering store image as it give a first impression towards the expectation of the halal status

E-Banking as a financial supply chain system: can e-TAM improve trust and the rate of adoption?

Electronic banking as a financial supply chain system has gone a long way to revolutionize banking services as contemporary customers of banking organizations have largely moved from brick and mortal banking to digital platform. However, trust remains an important underlying factor that makes users from developing countries to be wary of the way they adopt this novel technology banking system. The significant objective of this study therefore centres on how to improve trust using extended technology acceptance model (e-TAM) by incorporating perceived security and e-trust with perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use to predict adoption of e-banking. Previous studies have paid meagre attention to this area, especially in a developing context. The data of the study were collected from 266 customers while the responses obtained were analysed using Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modelling. The findings show that perceived usefulness and perceived ease use predicted e-trust and e-banking adoption. Perceived security also predicted e-banking adoption but failed to predict e-trust. E-trust mediates the relationship between perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and e-banking adoption. However similar mediating effect was not found between perceived security and e-banking adoption. The implications of the study were presented

Innovation and Six Sigma foundation from the perspective of the absorptive capacity theory

There are many strategies and initiatives that have been applied in different organizations, and Six Sigma is one of these strategies. By applying Six Sigma, organizations aim to achieve a high rate of performance. The effect of Six Sigma on the business performance has drawn the attention of many scholars. Since Motorola’s release of Six Sigma as a quality strategy, researchers have studied the relationship between Six Sigma and many aspects of business performance whether financial or non-financial aspects.But there are some aspects of the organization that still need to be investigated and elaborated.The relationship between Six Sigma and innovation is one of the organization aspects that needs to be deeply investigated.(Parast, 2010).Although reviewing the literature related to Six Sigma hints that Six Sigma helps organizations to be innovative via one of the approaches that belongs Six Sigma which is DFSS, there is no an explicit study that explains the effect of Six Sigma as a strategy on the innovative abilities of the organization.Thus, the present paper aims to introduce a theoretical study that investigates and explains this relationship between Six Sigma and innovation from the Absorptive Capacity Theory perspective

Assessing the mediating role of marketing capability in the relationship between TQM practices and innovation performance dynamic capabilities approach

Achieving high innovation performance has been considered as the best way to compete, survive, and gain market share in the hyper competitive market. To do so, companies need to enhance and build its capabilities which represent the main antecedents of innovation performance. In response to the aforementioned issue, this study aims to investigate the effect of TQM as an effective organizational philosophy that enhances organizational performance and marketing capabilities, and in turn, innovation performance. To this end, a primary data is collected from the manufacturing companies in Malaysia. Then, data is analyzed through Partial Least Square PLS-SEM technique. The obtained results support all the formulated hypotheses

Six Sigma and innovation performance: A conceptual framework based on the absorptive capacity theory perspective

Achieving high rate of performance is the aim of any organization, especially under the pressure of competition. In this regards, innovative abilities of any organization is considered as the leverage of the competitive abilities. The organization’s innovative abilities have drawn the attention of the scholars and practitioners over last decade. Trying to link between innovative abilities and another organizational discipline is one of the most interesting fields to the scholars. Therefore, the current study tries to evaluate the relationship between innovative abilities of organization and Six Sigma as one of the organizational discipline that belongs to the quality umbrella [1]. Six Sigma is considered as a quality approach which has proved its abilities to positively affect the organizational performance. Thus, the current paper aims to review the literature to introduce a conceptual framework that discuses the relationship between the two fields of the organizational discipline represented by Six Sigma and innovation from the perspective of the Absorptive Capacity Theory. Finally, the study presents some suggestions for further studies that can be conducted in the future

Assessing the Relationship among Six Sigma, Absorptive Capacity and Innovation Performance

Nowadays in the hypercompetitive marketplace companies try to adopt and apply many strategic approaches and initiatives that have proved its success to improve the competitive advantage, innovative abilities, and business performance in general. Thus, this study attempts to figure out the relationship between Six Sigma and innovation performance, and examine the mediating role of AC in this relationship. A questionnaire was used to collect the data from the manufacturing companies in Malaysia and Partial Least Square (PLS) was adopted to analyze the data obtained. Based on the literature review, the conceptual framework of this study is introduced. The hypotheses were tested and supported through the findings

The strategic options to enhance the competitive advantage of Malaysian restaurant sector

High competition in the market makes competitive advantage one of the absolute options that companies must seek to build and maintain competition. Organizational capabilities form one of the inimitable sources of competitive advantage. Therefore, establishing organizational capabilities is recognized as antecedents of competitive advantage. To build up such capabilities, several strategies have been applied. Thus, this study aims to investigate the role of IMO to enhance and build up the organizational capabilities and the competitive advantage. Hence, the present study to examine the direct effect of IMO on competitive advantage, the mediating role of organizational capabilities between IMO and competitive advantage. To do so, managers of restaurant chains sector were selected as the respondents from which the necessary data were collected.Partial least square was the statistical approach to get the result. The obtained results supported all the proposed hypotheses. Therefore, IMO is considered as one of the strategic options that organizations can apply to enhance their competitive advantage. Further discussion and suggestions for future studies were presented in the last section of the paper

Does interaction between TQM practices and knowledge management processes enhance the innovation performance?

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of applying total quality management (TQM) on enhancing knowledge management processes. It also examine the relationship between knowledge management and innovation performance in the Malaysian manufacturing sector. Design/methodology/approach: This study used a survey method to test the formulated hypotheses. Therefore, the adopted questionnaire was used as an instrument to collect the needed data. The population of the study consisted of 800 big and medium manufacturing companies listed in Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers (2012). Findings: The results of this paper support a positive and significant impact of TQM practice on knowledge management processes. Furthermore, the relationship between knowledge management and innovation performance has been a proved. However, further analysis on dimension level indicates that knowledge acquisition failed to show significant relationship with innovation performance Originality/value: This study addresses one of the recent issues within the Malaysian context of becoming a developed nation, which is innovation performance, specifically for manufacturing companies. To do so, the overlapping relationships among TQM practices, knowledge management, and innovation performance have been tested