The attributes of value co-creation in service and its impact on customers' willingness to pay. Observations from three service industries.

Marketing literature has propagated “customer-participation” and “co-production” in the seller-buyer framework since the 1970s (Lovelock and Young 1979), yet marketing knowledge gaps exist in this area. Recent management research emphasise the need to re-evaluate how value is created for consumers and to consider the close nature of the interactions between buyers and sellers (Payne et al 2008). Vargo and Lusch’s (2004) proposed service-dominant logic reiterates this need, arguing that the “customer is always the co-creator of value”, as they are part of the system that delivers value. Understanding value co-creation is then important to management research, as it uncovers new opportunities to create “value” for customers. This also enables firms to formulate better pricing strategies. This thesis examines value co-creation attributes and how they may impact on the customer’s willingness to pay. Three studies utilising qualitative and quantitative methods have been conducted to address the research question. The first two studies employed qualitative methods to derive insights into value co-creation attributes from a comparative case study perspective under two different service contexts; the defence and healthcare industries. The third study, conducted under the higher education context, employed quantitative methods to gauge the impact of value co-creation attributes on the customers’ willingness to pay. The qualitative studies found six generic value co-creation attributes, while the quantitative study empirically verified the importance of value co-creation attributes and the fact that they may impact on the customer’s willingness to pay for a service. This thesis validates that value co-creation is important in service provision. As customers become increasingly informed and empowered, a deeper understanding of how customers co-create value with the firm is then central to marketing activities, specifically in how firms design and price their services. Therefore, this thesis contributes to marketing knowledge by proposing value co-creation attributes that have both theoretical and managerial implications

A performance study of packet scheduling algorithms for coordinating colocated Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11b in a Linux machine

Due to the proliferation of hand-held short-range communication devices, coexistence between Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11b has become a performance critical issue. In this study, we performed an actual implementation of a Linux based network access point (NAP), in which Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11b are colocated. Such a NAP is expected to be crucial in supporting 'hot-spot' systems targeted to serve nomadic users carrying either a Bluetooth or a IEEE 802.11b device. Specifically, the goal of our study is to investigate the efficacy of a software based interference coordination approach. We consider five most commonly used scheduling algorithms in a Linux environment. Our extensive experimental results obtained in a real environment indicate that a hierarchical scheduling approach exhibits the best performance in terms of aggregate bandwidth achieved by Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11b.published_or_final_versio

Audit committee characteristics, trust and audit quality: Evidence from Hong Kong

This thesis comprises of two parts. Part One of the thesis denotes an archival modelling study that evaluates the relationships between effective audit committee characteristics (size, independence, financial expertise, meeting frequency, directorship, tenure and age of audit commit-tees) and perceived audit quality in Hong Kong. Part Two is a questionnaire survey study exploring the effects of external auditors’ trust in audit committee members on both their interactions and perceived audit quality in Hong Kong.In the archival modelling study, discretionary accruals estimated by the modified Jones model were employed in order to measure perceived audit quality. Fixed effect panel data regression with robust standard errors was used as primary analysis. On the basis of data obtained from the Hong Kong Hang Seng Composite Index between 2010 and 2015, the findings suggest that their financial expertise, size, tenure and age are important determinants of perceived audit quality. This result indicates that their expertise enables them to fulfil their oversight role competently, whereas their size provides them with sufficient resources to be able to perform their roles. Similarly, their length of tenure enables them to obtain more experience and knowledge of the operations of companies, while their age indicates that they may have less energy to perform their oversight role and have difficulties in keeping abreast of changing environment of companies. Thus, an audit committee with old members may reduce audit quality. Audit fees and choice of auditor are used as the measures of audit quality for the robustness checks. The results of robustness checks demonstrate that a large audit committee with financial expertise demands greater efforts from external auditors, as indicated in higher audit fees. However, audit commit-tee members’ directorships are found to be negatively associated with audit fees but positively related to the appointment of Big 4 auditors.In the questionnaire survey study, perceived audit quality is measured based on external auditors’ interactions with audit committee members. Semi-structured questionnaires were used in order to assess the levels of their trust in audit committee members and their interactions. Ordinary least square with robust standard errors, independent t-tests and thematic analysis were used in this study. According to the findings, the external auditors trust them because they have and display integrity, competence and goodwill. These findings also suggest that their trust in audit commit-tee members improve their interactions in terms of sharing information, devoting their time and efforts to an external audit and providing their comments on managers.Overall, both findings are congruent with agency theory and social interdependence theory. On the one hand, agency theory states that higher quality audit committees are associated with effective monitoring, which, in turn, helps to improve audit quality so that earnings management is constrained. On the other hand, social interdependence theory states that when two parties (external auditors and audit committee members, in this case) depend on one another, they will try to improve their interactions so that their common goals (high audit quality) can be achieved on the basis of trust. The findings are of potential interest to policy makers, professionals, boards of directors and audit firms, particularly on issues relating to audit quality and the mandating of corporate governance practices