The Impact Of Service Quality And Consumer Decision Factors On Brand Equity

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between service quality, consumer decision factors and brand equity in hotel industry.  The population of this research is 17 brand name “Five star” and “Four star” hotels in Thailand.  There is a survey on service quality, consumer decision factors and brand equity responded to by guests of the hotels.  The samples for the study were 370 guests of the hotels.  Paired samples t-statistics test method was used to test the differences and similarities of the mean response between service quality expectations and customers’ perceived service quality.  The research used descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and ANOVA to test the hypotheses.  The results indicate that there was no significant difference between the expectation and perception of service quality of Thai hotels on all five dimensions.  The results also indicate that there is no relationship between service quality and brand equity.  However, the results indicate that there is a relationship between quality perception and consumer decision factors.  Furthermore, a relationship was found between quality perception and brand equity in the hotels.  In addition, the research found there is a relationship between consumer decision factors and brand equity. Moreover, the research found there is a relationship between service quality, consumer decision factor and brand equity.  The contribution is derived from the works of Keller (1993) and the study of Aaker (1991), Aaker & Biel (1993), Howard (1994) and Berry (2000)

Merging Just-in-Time (JIT) Inventory Management with Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) Impacts on the Taiwan Electronic Industry

[[abstract]]This paper compares the firm merging Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) with just-in-time (JIT) inventory management, to the firm with traditional inventory methods for the purpose of determining the impact of both methods on reducing inventory cost. JIT inventory management eliminates waste which includes all material, equipment, inventories and labor since JIT requires the production of just the right quantities and results in elimination of waste. (EDI) is the electronic exchange of information, documents and business transactions between computers. The information transmitted in manufacturing includes purchase orders, shipping and freight invoices, and bills of lading. There are many advantages to using EDI transaction over a traditional paper exchange environment. When the exchange of information is electronic the transactions are instantaneous. Thus, the processing and handling of paper and input of data are eliminated with no re-keying of data. Therefore, the chances of errors, time spent on auditing, and tracing errors are all significantly decreased. Additionally, the use of electronic commerce was able to cut down the lead time of purchasing and speed up inventory turnover to achieve just-in-time inventory management. Therefore, the merging of JIT with EDI has brought unprecedented benefits to users, especially with the increase in the use of international sourcing. The use of information technology to control the value chain cycle is crucial in the electronic industry, since it requires effective and efficient inventory control to speed up production and cut down inventory cost. This is an exploratory research project facilitated via the case study method. Two hubs and their suppliers were investigated to reveal the use of electronic commerce in the electronic industry based on the value chain theory. The findings are the firm merging EDI with JIT will result in a higher percentage of transactions as compared with the firm using EDI with traditional inventory method. This higher percentage of transactions by EDI results in reduced supply chain inventory cost due to using EDI to reduce paper work and errors in re-keying of data, audit tracing errors, etc. Thus, the firm merging JIT with EDI results in significantly reducing supply chain inventory cost.[[ispeerreviewed]]