Customer agility and firm performance in the tourism industry

The growing importance of agility in any business process is universally accepted and extensively investigated in different disciplines. However, lacking empirical pieces of evidence for the suggested theoretical framework of agility hinders its application in the practices. Thus, this study attempts to address this issue by empirically testing a framework of customer agility’s antecedents and consequences using the tourism industry context. The framework is tested on data collected from 231 Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the tourism industry in Vietnam and analyzed using Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). Findings suggest that not all attributes of customer agility exert positive impacts on the firm’s performance and human factors are posited as the most important antecedents for organizational agility. A number of practical implications are also suggested from the research findings

Moderating and mediating effects of switching costs on the relationship between service value, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty: Investigation of retail banking in Vietnam

Switching cost highlights the way how companies create barriers to proactively prevent customer defection which directly and significantly affects customer loyalty and then companies’ performance. The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical evidences about the impact of switching cost on customer loyalty by examining its mediating and moderating effects on the relationships between service value, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. Specially, two difference types of switching costs, positive one and negative one, are proposed and tested independently in order to provide more insights about their impacts. The data about switching costs and other constructs are collected from 261 retail banking customers, and analysed using structural equation modelling and moderated path analysis. It is found that positive switching costs increase customer loyalty by partly transforming the effect of service value and customer satisfaction into customer loyalty. While negative switching cost only mediates the service value-loyalty relationship. Moreover, only negative switching cost has significant moderating effect on the satisfaction-loyalty relationships. Finally, the analysis reveals that negative switching cost might also weaken good impacts from positive switching cost on satisfaction-loyalty relationships. © Foundation of International Studies, 2017. and CSR, 2017

The relationship between service quality, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty: An investigation in Vietnamese retail banking sector

This study develops and empirically tests the interrelationships between service quality, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty in a retail banking context. Increasingly intense competitiveness and fundamental changes in the business environment nowadays are forcing firms to implement a customer-focused strategy which raises the importance of customer-related constructs such as customer satisfaction, service quality, and customer loyalty in explaining a firm’s performance. In particular, they are essential for competitiveness in industries where the exchanges are complex and customers are closely involved in the decision-making process, such as the banking industry. In this study, first, a research model about the interrelationships between service quality, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty is suggested. Then a survey is conducted with retail banking customers about these constructs, which results in 261 valid respondents. The hypotheses are then proposed and tested using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and the structural equation modelling technique (SME). The analysis reveals that service quality and customer satisfaction are important antecedents of customer loyalty and customer satisfaction mediates the effects of service quality on customer loyalty. These findings suggest that there are non-linear relationships between three constructs and emphasize the need to treat customer loyalty management as a process which includes plenty of factors interacting with each other.Internal Grant Agency of Faculty of Management and Economics, Tomas Bata University in Zlin [IGA/FaME/2016/020

The Mediating Effects of Switching Costs on the Relationship between Service Quality, Customer Satisfaction and Customer Loyalty: A Study in Retail Banking Industry in Vietnam

This paper develops and empirically tests the mediating role of switching costs in service quality - loyalty and satisfaction-loyalty relationships. Especially, different types of switching costs are tested separately providing more insights into their roles. A research model about the interrelationships between service quality, customer satisfaction, switching costs and customer loyalty is developed. Based on this model, a survey is conducted with retail banking customers, with and 261valid respondents. The hypotheses are then proposed and tested using Structural equation modeling technique (SEM). The analysis reveals that: positive switching cost is a significant mediator for both service quality-loyalty and satisfaction-loyalty relationships, while negative switching cost only mediates the service quality-loyalty relationship. These findings suggest that building and managing switching costs are necessary following-up steps after customer satisfaction for achieving long-term customer loyalty

The mediating effects of switching costs on the relationship between service quality, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty: A study in retail banking industry in Vietnam

This paper develops and empirically tests the mediating role of switching costs in service quality - loyalty and satisfaction-loyalty relationships. Specially, different types of switching costs are tested separately providing more insights about their roles. This approach extended the insights on mediating effects of switching costs by differentiate the roles of positive switching costs and negative switching costs in the model. A research model about the interrelationships between service quality, customer satisfaction, switching costs and customer loyalty is developed. Based on this model, a survey is conducted with retail banking customers, with and 261 valid respondents. The hypotheses are then proposed and tested using Structural equation modeling technique (SEM). The analysis reveals that: positive switching cost is a significant mediator for both service quality-loyalty and satisfaction-loyalty relationships, while negative switching cost only mediates the service quality-loyalty relationship. These findings suggest that building and managing switching costs are necessary following-up steps after customer satisfaction for achieving long-term customer loyalty. However, using the right types of switching costs is necessary to significantly boost the loyalty from customers. © ExcelingTech Pub, UK

Asian Values and Human Rights: A Vietnamese Perspective

This paper examines the impact of the ideology of ‘Asian Values' on the legal norms and practices that frame the recognition and protection of human rights in Vietnam. Specifically, the paper focusses on the extent to which Asian Values has been deployed to discourage the adoption of international human rights norms and practices in the context of Vietnam’s rapid economic development since the mid- 1980s. The paper first sketches the adoption of Asian Values in Vietnam’s politics and society. Cultural and political factors that have shaped the conception of human rights are reviewed. Human rights language and norms, as manifest in political ideologies, policies and laws are then analysed, with particular reference to the different versions of Vietnam’s Constitution. It is shown that both the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) and the State of Vietnam have clearly articulated Asian Values in formulating their conceptions of human rights. This outcome is argued to result from the fact that Vietnamese political leaders, alike with Lee Kwan Yew in Singapore, the progenitor of Asian Rights, have been strongly influenced by Confucian ideals of governance. Confucianism is not, however, the only basis for political ideas in Vietnam. Although Vietnam is a market economy it remains a one- party state  controlled  by  the  CPV.  The  Marxist-Leninist  principles  on  which the current State of Vietnam was based at its inception in 1975 remain intact. This ideology was however layered onto generations of collectivist principles embodied in the dominant agrarian society. The influence of Asian Values, on the recognition of and support for human rights in Vietnam has, however, been largely negative rather than positive, especially in relation to recognising civil and political rights as codified in universal human rights instruments. Thus, the protection and promotion of human rights in Vietnam, going forward, essentially mandates eliminating the influence of Asian Values in the ideology of political leaders and in the wider society. Key words: Human rights, Asian Values, democracy, constitution, Communist Party, Vietna

Criminal Justice Responses to Trafficking in Persons

Human trafficking is a domestic and transnational crime that poses complex law enforcement challenges to all nations. Vietnam is particularly affected due to rapid growth in labour migration and international tourism. The presumption of law makers is that by improving the criminal justice response to trafficking in persons (TIP), its incidence within the country and beyond its borders will decrease. Inherent in this premise is the assumption that strong legal sanctions deter would-be traffickers. This paper describes Vietnam’s criminal justice responses to human trafficking with reference to the legal framework and institutions. Barriers and challenges in implementing the ASEAN Convention on Trafficking in Persons (ACTIP), and the underlying reasons why the current response is inadequate in addressing TIP are identified with a focus on issues associated with victims and trials. The paper argues that Vietnam needs to increase efforts to meet its obligations and standards as set out in the United Nation’s Recommended Principles and Guideline on Human Rights and Human Trafficking and ACTIP. In particular, prosecution of traffickers and the protection of victims need to be prioritised.    Keywords: Human Trafficking, Human Rights, Labor Migration, Criminal Justice, Vietna

Deep Learning-Aided Multicarrier Systems

This paper proposes a deep learning (DL)-aided multicarrier (MC) system operating on fading channels, where both modulation and demodulation blocks are modeled by deep neural networks (DNNs), regarded as the encoder and decoder of an autoencoder (AE) architecture, respectively. Unlike existing AE-based systems, which incorporate domain knowledge of a channel equalizer to suppress the effects of wireless channels, the proposed scheme, termed as MC-AE, directly feeds the decoder with the channel state information and received signal, which are then processed in a fully data-driven manner. This new approach enables MC-AE to jointly learn the encoder and decoder to optimize the diversity and coding gains over fading channels. In particular, the block error rate of MC-AE is analyzed to show its higher performance gains than existing hand-crafted baselines, such as various recent index modulation-based MC schemes. We then extend MC-AE to multiuser scenarios, wherein the resultant system is termed as MU-MC-AE. Accordingly, two novel DNN structures for uplink and downlink MU-MC-AE transmissions are proposed, along with a novel cost function that ensures a fast training convergence and fairness among users. Finally, simulation results are provided to show the superiority of the proposed DL-based schemes over current baselines, in terms of both the error performance and receiver complexity

Evaluation of water loss and solute uptake during osmotic treatment of white radishes (Raphanus sativus L.) in salt-sucrose solution

White radish, scientifically known as Raphanus sativus L., is a yearly vegetable. Currently, it was being grown and widely used in the world, including Vietnam. These plants have been used as food or food processing. The osmotic treatment of vegetables involves the removal of water from plants in which the solids from the osmotic solution are transported to the plant material by osmosis. By this procedure, sucrose and saline solution are usually performed. White radishes were dehydrated in different hypertonic solutions by combined sucrose and NaCl at three different concentrations, including 9 runs. Mass transfer behaviour was applied according to three common models such as Fick’s second law, Weibull and Peleg’s equations based on the change of moisture and solid content of white radish during osmotic dehydration. The obtained results showed that the mass transfer was fast at initial stage and became slowly at the later stage. The effective moisture (Dm) and solid diffusivities (Ds) were ranged from 1.0186 to 1.2826x10-8 and from 1.0692 to 2.3322x10-8 (m2/s) respectively. The Peleg’s equation was found to be the best fitting for water loss and solid uptake thanks to the high determination coefficient (>97.64%) and the low average relative error (<3.174%). Raised up solution concentration resulted in higher water loss and mass gain

Does foreign ownership impact accounting conservatism adoption in Vietnam?

This study investigates the effects of foreign ownership on accounting conservatism adoption in Vietnam. Although foreign ownership is found to have a positive relationship with accounting conservatism in Korea (An, 2015), there is still no general agreement on it. In this regard, the purpose of this study is to shed more light on the association between foreign ownership and accounting conservatism. Using data from Vietnamese firms listed on stock exchanges, the study finds that in contrast to the findings of An, foreign ownership is negatively associated with accounting conservatism. This result supports the transient hypothesis of foreign ownership, indicating that foreign investors with the low level of ownership do not have significant incentives to oversee managers, thus not influencing financial reporting quality. © 2017 Prague Development Center.Internal Grant Agency of FaME; TBU - The Relationship between Concentration Ownership and Financial Reporting Quality [IGA/FaME/2017/004