Service Quality and Satisfaction Among Postgraduate Students at Universiti Utara Malaysia

Student satisfaction is a vital measure of service quality in educational institutions. Evaluating the university service quality provides an important feedback for the university to assess and develope its service to its students. Education institutions that looks for getting competitive advantage in the future, should search for innovative and effective methods to acquire, maintain and build stronger relationships with their students. The main purpose of this paper is to evaluate students' level of satisfaction toward the services provided by Universiti Utara Malaysia. Furthermore, It aims to determine if their is asignificant relationship between the five dimensions of service quality (tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy) and students' satisfaction. This research was conducted using a set of questionnaire to 360 postgraduate students including local and international who are currently studying at Universiti Uatara Malaysia, whereby five Likert skale questionnaires used as an instrument to gather the relevant data and information. However, majority of students are satisfied with the facilities provided by the university. The findings of this study will provide the university with some solutions to enhance its performance and increase the number of its students. In general, the results indicated that the five dimensions of service quality were correlated with student satisfaction. Data were collected using survey method, whereby five Likert scale questionnaires will be used as the tool to collect the relevant data and information

The effect of strategic factors and the role of relationship quality as mediator on brand equity of automotive industry

Building brand equity in today’s competitive markets is important for organizations. A number of strategic factors such as advertising, product innovation, product quality, and country of origin have affected brand equity significantly. Equally important is the role of relationship quality in building brand equity. Although past researches have examined the effect of these strategic factors on brand equity, only limited research has investigated the role of relationship quality as a mediator between such strategic factors and brand equity. This research was planned to fill this gap by investigating the effect of the said mediating variable between strategic factors and brand equity. This research focuses on brand equity, relationship quality and the strategic factors of the automotive industry in Malaysia. The data was collected through questionnaires which were distributed to passenger car users in Malaysia. The research employed systematic sampling technique and structural equation modeling (SEM) using the AMOS software to draw inferences and make conclusions. The results indicated that product innovation and country of origin had significant positive effects on brand equity. However, product quality had a negative effect on brand equity. Moreover, the effect of advertising on brand equity was insignificant. It was also found that relationship quality had a significant positive effect on brand equity. The results also revealed that relationship quality mediated the relationship between strategic factors and brand equity. The results of this research have further strengthened the theory and related literature on brand equity and put forward recommendations for car manufacturers about the best approaches to build brand equity by using strategic factors as independent variables and relationship quality as mediating variable. Future research is recommended to integrate other strategic factors which may strengthen the theory besides enabling management to make better decisions

Energy-Aware Streaming Multimedia Adaptation: An Educational Perspective

As mobile devices are getting more powerful and more affordable the use of online educational multimedia is also getting very prevalent. Limited battery power is nevertheless, a major restricting factor as streaming multimedia drains battery power quickly. Many battery efficient multimedia adaptation techniques have been proposed that achieve battery efficiency by lowering presentation quality of entire multimedia. Adaptation is usually done without considering any impact on the information contents of multimedia. In this paper, based on the results of an experimental study, we argue that without considering any negative impact on information contents of multimedia the adaptation may negatively impact the learning process. Some portions of the multimedia that require a higher visual quality for conveying learning information may lose their learning effectiveness in the adapted lowered quality. We report results of our experimental study that indicate that different parts of the same learning multimedia do not have same minimum acceptable quality. This strengthens the position that power-saving adaptation techniques for educational multimedia must be developed that lower the quality of multimedia based on the needs of its individual fragments for successfully conveying learning informatio

The impact of country of origin on relationship quality: Empirical evidence from automotive industry

This study examines the impact of country of origin on relationship quality in automotive sector.Four hypotheses were developed to test the relationships between country of origin and relationship quality. Relationship quality in this research is composed of three elements; brand trust, brand commitment, and brand satisfaction. Data were collected using survey questionnaire from 287 respondents of passenger car users in Northern region of Malaysia.To test the conceptual framework, Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) using AMOS 18 was employed as data analysis technique.In general, the SEM analysis revealed that country of origin has a significant positive influence on overall relationship quality. Moreover, the analysis indicated that country of origin has significant positive influence on brand trust, brand commitment, and brand satisfaction. Based on the findings of this study, it is suggested to the strategic policy makers in the automotive sector to emphasize on these three basic determinants of relationship quality; brand trust, brand commitment, and brand satisfaction to cope with intense competition.Particularly, this study would guide automotive manufacturers to benefits from these findings to enhance customer relationships through utilizing positive country of origin image

Strategic effects of product innovation, service quality, and relationship quality on brand equity

In highly competitive markets, building brand equity has become one of the first priorities for many organizations as it brings several benefits and reputation for them.Past researches have acknowledged that consumers look for brands which provide them with differential values through innovative product and service features.However, despite the importance of product innovation in determining an organization’s success, very limited studies have intended to examine its effect on brand equity.In the present study, we aim to examine the effect of product innovation on brand equity in M

Experimental Development of a Bat Inspired Obstacle Mapping System

This paper presents the development of an experimental method for obstacle detection using modified bat inspired navigation. Effective obstacle detection is vital to the efficient operation of many autonomous vehicles, mobile robotics and navigation systems. Varieties of sensors and sensor array combinations have been purposely developed to effectively detect and map obstacles and barriers during navigation [1][2]. Among these, ultrasonic sensors provide an inexpensive solution to distance and obstacle sensing. This is vital for industries such as automotive and transportation in which cost is a significant factor [3]. This work enhances the abilities of testing object classification capabilities of ultrasonic sensors through verification and proof of concept for bat-inspired, time of flight (TOF) based algorithms. Just as bats utilize acoustic echo to detect objects while navigating, this bat inspired system utilizes two static ultrasonic receivers and one central dynamic emitter. In our system, the electronic setup implemented was designed to activate a 40kHz emitter, capture the echo milliseconds later and incrementally move the emitter via the stepper motor. Upon activation of the emitter, the measurement device was triggered and the two distinct receiver signals were acquired. Receiver signals were then passed through a virtual low-pass filter and curve fitting algorithm in order to effectively and consistently determine the TOF values. Internal circuitry delays between trigger time and time of emission was accounted for through a test case with known orientation and speed of sound. Lastly the inherent nature of a diffuse detection surface permitted the detection of reflected signals from all emitter orientations. The experimental methodology developed in this research was successfully tested for detecting walls with a low cost ultrasonic emitter and receiver, setting a basis for analysis of future TOF based detection algorithms. The outcome of this research has the potential to provide effective barrier detection systems for autonomous navigation systems