970 research outputs found
Moderating roles of customer characteristics on the link between service factors and satisfaction in a buffet restaurant
Purpose: In service sector, measuring quality of services is generally acknowledged to be difficult as it involves many psychological features. Hence, identifying the determinants of service quality and linkages with customer satisfaction is a challenging research topic. In this study, we take up a research study to address this challenge. Specifically, we examine the importance of factors influencing customer satisfaction in the context of a Chinese buffet restaurant in the UK. Design: We use a questionnaire based on the SERVQUAL instrument for the purpose. Using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, we have found that service quality could be grouped into four main factors - service, food, ambience and price. Findings: Using multiple regression analysis, we have found that food is the most significant factor influencing customer satisfaction, followed by price, ambience, and service respectively. Using a multi-group analysis, we have found interesting moderating roles of age, gender and annual income on the influence of the four factors on satisfaction: ambience is considered significant by male customers while it is not significant for female customers; the influence of price on satisfaction is much higher for female customers than for male customers; food and service factors are important for younger customers while price is important for older customers; price is important for customers with lower levels of income but not important for high-income customers. Practical implications: These results are useful to restaurant managers in allocating appropriate levels of resources to different factors based on their contributions to customer satisfaction in order to maximize customer satisfaction efficiently and effectively. Originality: Analysis and findings of this research are based on the customers’ survey data of a Chinese buffet restaurant in the UK. We have found an interesting ranking of the importance of service factors: food followed by price, ambience, and service. Our results on the moderating role of customer characteristics provide newer insights in the literature on service quality. Our research findings can help the hotel management to improve their service levels to attain maximum customer satisfaction
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Impact of e-commerce in B2B physical distribution: diffusion of innovations perspective
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Key factors of carbon footprint in the UK food supply chains: a new perspective of life cycle assessment
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to empirically identify key factors of UK food supply chains (SCs) that significantly contribute to CO 2 emissions (CO 2 e) taking into account the life cycle assessment (LCA). The UK food supply chain includes imports from other countries.
Design/Methodology Approach: This research develops a conceptual framework from extant literature. Secondary data obtained from ONS and FAOSTAT covering from 1990 to 2014 are analysed using Multilinear Regression (MLR) and Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) to identify the factors relating to CO 2 emissions significance, and the efficient contributions that are being made to their reduction in the UK food supply chains.
Findings: The study results suggest that Transportation and Sales/Distribution are the two key factors of CO 2 emissions in UK food supply chains. This is confirmed by two multivariate methods, MLR and SFA. MLR results show that transportation increases UK CO 2 emissions by 10 tonnes of CO 2 emissions from one tonne of fruits and vegetables imports from overseas to the UK. Sales and Distribution reduces the UK CO 2 emissions by 1.3 tonnes of CO 2 emissions due to improved, technological operation activities in the UK. In addition, the SFA results confirm that the key factors are sufficient to predict an increase or decrease in CO 2 emissions in the UK food supply chains.
Research limitations/implications: This study has focused on the LCA of the UK food supply chain from limited data. Future studies should consider Sustainability Impact Assessment of the UK food supply chain, identifying the social, economic, regulatory and environmental impacts of the food supply chain using a redefined LCA (all-inclusive assessment) tool.
Practical implications: This research suggests that food supply chain professionals should improve efficiency, e.g., the use of solar energy and biogas, and also integrate low-carbon policies and practices in food supply chain operations. Furthermore, governments should encourage policies such as mobility management programmes, urban redevelopment and privatisation to enhance better transportation systems and infrastructure to continuously reduce CO2e from the food trade.
Originality: Although logistics play a major role in CO 2 emissions, all logistics CO 2 emissions for other countries are not included in the ONS data. This research reveals some important insights into the UK food supply chains. Logistics and other food supply chain processes of importing countries significantly contribute to CO 2 emissions which are yet to be considered in the UK food SCs
Delivery complications and determinants of caesarean section rates in India : an analysis of National Family Health Surveys, 1992-93
Caesarean section rates have been increasing world-wide raising
the question of the appropriateness of the selection of cases for the
procedure. This paper examines the levels and correlates of delivery
related complications and caesarean section deliveries in eighteen selected
states of India in terms of specific maternal and institutional factors,
using data from the National Family Health Surveys, 1992-93. Goa (15.3
per cent) and Kerala (13.7 per cent) were the two states with relatively
higher caesarean section rates. There is reason to believe that the current
caesarean section rates are part of a rising trend. This can not be attributed
entirely to the rise in institutional deliveries alone because of the strong
association between caesarean sections and private sector institutions.
Apart from the fact that the states of Kerala and Goa are having relatively
high caesarean section rates, in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat,
Karnataka, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh the risk of undergoing caesarean
section in the private sector institutions is four or more times that in the
public sector. It is possible that this extremely useful surgical procedure
is being misused for profit purposes in the private sector in several states.
There is therefore a need to examine this phenomenon using disaggregated
data by the nature of caesarean sections, i.e. whether it was
an elective or an emergency c-section along with the reasons for the
choice.
JEL Classification : I1, I18
Key Words: caesarean section, institutional deliveries, delivery
complications, medical interventio
A sequential study of circulating immune complexes, complement mediated IC solubilisation and immunoglobulins in borderline tuberculoid patients with and without reactions
Sequential estimates of the levels of circulating immune complexes (CIC), complement
catabolic fragment C3d, complement-mediated immune complex solubilization (CMS) and
immunoglobulins were made in 24 newly diagnosed patients with borderline tuberculoid
leprosy over a 20 month period after initiation of chemotherapy.
Fourteen of these patients had not suffered from reversal reactions either at the time
of presentation or during the follow-up period. The levels of CIC were elevated in them
from the third to the eleventh month after starting chemotherapy and immunoglobulin G
(IgG) levels were elevated upto eight months. The concentrations of C3d and
immunoglobulins A (IgA) and M (IgM) were normal in these patients.
The other ten patients had reversal reaction at the time of diagnosis which subsided
by the third month after starting treatment. They did not have reversal reactions later. The
levels of CIC and IgG were elevated and those of CMS were depressed throughout the
study period. Serum C3d level was initially elevated but came down to normal by the third
month while IgA and IgM levels were within normal limits.
The relevance of these findings to the genesis of reversal reaction is discussed in this
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A new rational IPA and application to cruise tourism
At least two versions of IPA, namely the simple IPA and the asymmetric IPA, are available in tourism literature (Albayrak and Caber, 2015; Pritchard and Havitz, 2006). The simple IPA involves asking customers their perceptions relating to importance of various performance criteria and how the firm has performed in terms of these criteria. The simple IPA assumes a symmetric relationship between performance in terms of various criteria and customer satisfaction. The asymmetric IPA or AIPA (Albayrak and Caber, 2013; Caber et al., 2013) recognizes that these relationships could be asymmetric and uses the three-factor theory of customer satisfaction (Matzler and Sauerwein, 2002) to argue that criteria could be basic, excitement or performance criteria and uses regression analysis. While AIPA is an improvement over IPA, AIPA calculations take into account only the magnitude of regression coefficients but not their level of significance. Further, figure 3 of Albayrak and Caber (2015) uses performance in Xaxis but impact asymmetry, not importance, in Y-axis. It is not clear why impact asymmetry should be considered synonymous to importance. In this research note, we propose a variation of AIPA and call it Rational IPA (RIPA). RIPA involves the following steps. Step 1. Collect relevant data. Step 2. Run two sets of regressions with overall customer satisfaction as the dependent variable, and performance in terms of various service criteria as dependent variables. The first set of regressions is called low performance regressions where only ratings below median levels for each criterion are considered. In contrast, the second set of regressions is called high performance regressions. As highlighted in previous studies (Hartline et al., 2003; Ramanathan and Ramanathan, 2011; Silverman and Grover, 1995), the criteria are classified based on the results of the two sets of regressions. 1 a. A critical criterion remains significant in all regressions (except for low performance in terms of the criterion). b. A desirable criterion is significant both for high performance and low performance in terms of the criterion. c. A satisfier criterion is significant for high performance regression in terms of the criterion but not significant for low performance. d. A dissatisfier criterion is not significant for high performance regression but significant for low performance in terms of the criterion. e. All other criteria are neutral criteria. Step 3. Prepare IPA matrix with the importance of criteria on the X-axis and performance (mean ratings) in the Y-axis. Step 4. Conduct IPA based on the criterion classification (importance) and achievement (performance). We demonstrate RIPA in the following steps using publicly available online data on customer ratings of cruise operations
Collaboration experience in the supply chain of knowledge and patent development
In this paper we aim at understanding the role of collaboration experience in supply chains of knowledge (SCoK). The SCoK of a company is its supply chain not related to the flow of physical goods but to the flow of R&D commodities. R&D commodities are for example patents, technologies, research services, studies, and projects, and, in high-tech industries, their development and commercialization is considered as important as real products. To accomplish our aim in this paper we fulfil the following research objectives: 1) investigate the relationship between the collaboration experience in SCoK and the propensity of the firm to develop new patents; 2) examine how the structural embeddedness of the firm within its SCoK mediates this relationship. We ground our conceptual model on the supply chain, open innovation and social capital literatures and empirically test our hypotheses on a cross-sectional dataset of 208 biotech companies that have signed 612 SCoK agreements in the years 2006–2010. The key findings of this study are: first, accumulating experience in SCoK collaborations facilitates the development of new patents; second, being central and bridging structural holes within the SCoK are two means by which the experience in SCoK collaborations is translated into new patents
The debate on flexibility of environmental regulations, innovation capabilities and financial performance - a novel use of DEA
Operational research models have been employed to understand development issues associated with environmental sustainability. This article describes a novel application of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to help extend a specific debate in the literature on Porter’s hypothesis in environmental policy. The debate deals with the impact of flexibility of regulations on the relationship between innovation capabilities on financial performance in organisations. Using the resource based view of a firm, we hypothesise that relationship between innovation capabilities and financial performance in firms depends on how flexible or inflexible environmental regulations are. We apply DEA to capture the flexibility of environmental regulations. Our results indicate that innovation capabilities significantly influence financial performance of firms if firms feel that the environmental regulations they face are flexible and offer more freedom in meeting the requirements of regulations. On the other hand, corporations that feel that they face more inflexible regulations are not so effective in improving their financial performance with their innovation capabilities
Impact of customer loyalty and service operations on customer behaviour and firm performance: Empirical evidence from UK retail sector
Retail networks are striving to achieve competitive advantage by increasing value through loyalty and efficiency with a focus on service operations. As sales promotions have become an integral part of the retail supply chain planning, customer behavioural aspects based on loyalty and service operations have been challenged greatly. Subsequently, management capabilities, such as planning and timely replenishment, have become complicated tasks for many retail store managers. This study develops a model integrating retail network value and efficiencies with customer behaviour and performance. We validate the model using survey data from prominent U.K. retail store customers. Our data analysis shows that both loyalty and service operation attributes have positive significant impact on customer behaviour, while the service operation mediates the relationship between loyalty and customer behaviour. This result gives a new outlook to build managerial capability based on customer loyalty and service operations. Our results specifically show that the service operation attributes will indirectly influence the customers’ buying behaviour even in the presence of loyalty attribute such as promotion schemes. This result sends a strong signal to retail supply chain managers to offer customised promotions considering local community rather than having uniform sales promotion nationwide
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A holistic approach of process variation reduction: a case of UK chocolate manufacturing
Purpose: This research is elucidating quality control theories to reduce variation in chocolate manufacturing process in the UK food company that will help maintain the processes stable and predictable. The main objectives of this research are to reduce defects of the output; to identify the root causes of variation; to establish and implement solutions to this variation problem; and establish a control system to monitor and report any variation in the process.
Methodology: We use experimental case study of a chocolate company to achieve our objective. In this paper, we predominantly use established theory DMAIC (definemeasure-analyse-improve-control), customised to the case of the chocolate factory to reduce variations in production processes.
Findings: Our results confirm that customised-traditional theoretical quality models will support manufacturing companies to maintain customer satisfaction while enhancing quality and reliability.
Practical implication: Implementation of customised approach reduced the rate of defect from 8 percent to 3.7 percent. The implications of reduced variation are improved product quality; reprocessing elimination; and a more stable process that support sustainability and reliability in producing chocolates to meet customer needs.
Limitations: We used an experimental based case study approach to test with one company. Testing in multiple case companies may help to generalise results.
Originality: Our research study experimentally tested quality approach with a real case company and hence findings of this study can be applied to other cases working in similar settings
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