Search results

Spanish retail banking can be considered largely representative of retail banking in other developed European countries. The transformations in the Spanish retail banking system since the 1960s, especially the shift in emphasis from production to delivery/sales, brought about by a combination of technological change, heightened competition and increased client sophistication, are analysed from the point of view of their effect on the tasks carried out by front‐desk staff and the skills required to carry out those tasks. The changes in the prevailing culture of front‐desk staff is also discussed. It is concluded that the attempt to change the mentality, or culture, of front‐desk staff from that of “clerks” to that of “salespeople” is unnecessary. Rather, they should be thought of as “salesclerks”, and their culture should be client‐centred rather than sales‐centred.

To present a method for prioritising customer needs that was devised for a quality function deployment (QFD) project at a mass spectator event, due to the particular characteristics and constraints of this project. Standard methods for prioritising customer needs documented by several authors are reviewed, as well as their principal features and why they were not suitable for this particular QFD project. The devised method is presented together with an example extracted from this project. With the data available from the project, this method is briefly contrasted to a standard similar method. Presents the devised method as an effective solution for this particular QFD project. The method was useful for this particular QFD project due to the time and physical location constraints, but more research is needed in order to assess the real accuracy of this method compared to other documented practices. Sometimes standard practices may not be suitable for particular QFD applications, so methods should be adapted to the unique characteristics of specific QFD projects. This paper presents a review of documented practices for prioritising customer needs that was done for a particular QFD application, as well as a method that was devised because these standard practices were not effective enough for handling the constraints in the project. The process followed and results obtained may serve as a reference for QFD practitioners in the selection of a convenient method for prioritising customer needs.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a research model to investigate corporate visual identity (CVI) management from an organisational perspective. It is assumed that characteristics of the organisation and of the way a CVI is managed will affect consistency of CVI.

The model was tested in a survey carried out among employees in 20 Dutch organisations. Structural equation modelling with AMOS was conducted to get insight into the various influences and relationships.

CVI management characteristics – socialisation processes related to CVI, knowledge of CVI strategy, and CVI tools and support – have a strong impact on the consistency of CVI, and organisational characteristics affect the way CVI is managed. With the exception of the openness and dynamics of an organisation, no supporting evidence was found for a direct relationship between organisational characteristics and CVI consistency.

CVI has been measured by the judgement of the respondents, all employees of the organisation concerned. Therefore the measure was the perceived consistency of CVI. Further research could include a visual audit and the perception of external stakeholders towards the visual identity. There was no distinction examined among the main corporate visual identity and sub‐ or product brands. The study was conducted in the Netherlands, where the Dutch term huisstijl is unambiguous and clearly related to the corporate brand or identity. Future research can take different brands into account or can broaden the concept of CVI (including cultural aspects, language, rituals, myths, etc.).

The results indicate that CVI management matters, that CVI management is related to more general organisational characteristics, but that communication managers nevertheless have a considerable amount of freedom in determining the way they manage their CVI.

Corporate visual identity has received little attention in research and hardly been studied at all from the perspective of this paper. This paper has value to both researchers in the fields of corporate identity and organisational identity, as well as professionals involved in managing the corporate identity.

Aims to present a comparison and evaluation of four user interfaces of web‐based e‐journals (Science Direct, ProQuest Direct, EBSCO Host and Emerald).

The systems were assessed in an expert study according to accepted guidelines regarding user friendliness and functionality. User friendliness features studied were: language(s) and type(s) of interface; navigation options; personalization; and screen features. Functions inspected were: database selection; query formulation and reformulation; results manipulation; and help.

Many similarities were found, but some differences among the systems were also discovered and analysed in detail. The greatest differences were found in the area of query formulation, and between the interface languages and types.

The user interfaces of four full‐text IR systems offering e‐journals which are accessible at the University of Ljubljana are surveyed.

The interfaces are surveyed and assessed in order to discover their characteristics, advantages, and potential downsides and/or mistakes which may hinder use by an average user.

The study serves as a basis for a subsequent user study of the information behaviour of the users of these systems.

System usability and system usefulness are interdependent properties of system interaction, which in combination, determine system satisfaction and usage. Often approached separately, or in the case of digital libraries, often focused upon usability, there is emerging consensus among the research community for their unified treatment and research attention. However, a key challenge is to identify, both respectively and relatively, what to measure and how, compounded by concerns regarding common understanding of usability measures, and associated calls for more valid and complete measures within integrated and comprehensive models. The purpose of this paper is to address this challenge.

Identified key usability and usefulness attributes and associated measures, compiled an integrated measurement framework, identified a suitable methodological approach for application of the framework, and conducted a pilot study on an interactive search system developed by a Health Service as part of their e‐library service.

Effectiveness, efficiency, aesthetic appearance, terminology, navigation, and learnability are key attributes of system usability; and relevance, reliability, and currency key attributes of system usefulness. There are shared aspects to several of these attributes, but each is also sufficiently unique to preserve its respective validity. They can be combined as part of a multi‐method approach to system evaluation.

Pilot study has demonstrated that usability and usefulness can be readily combined, and that questionnaire and observation are valid multi‐method approaches, but further research is called for under a variety of conditions, with further combinations of methods, and larger samples.

This paper provides an integrated measurement framework, derived from the goal, question, metric paradigm, which provides a relatively comprehensive and representative set of system usability and system usefulness attributes and associated measures, which could be adapted and further refined on a case‐by‐case basis.

The International Society for Hybrid Microelectronics invites the submission of technical papers for presentation at the above event. All original unpublished papers on microelectronics related topics are welcomed.

The purpose of this paper is to present data that begin to detail the deficiencies of log file analytics reporting methods that are commonly built into institutional repository (IR) platforms. The authors propose a new method for collecting and reporting IR item download metrics. This paper introduces a web service prototype that captures activity that current analytics methods are likely to either miss or over-report.

Data were extracted from DSpace Solr logs of an IR and were cross-referenced with Google Analytics and Google Search Console data to directly compare Citable Content Downloads recorded by each method.

This study provides evidence that log file analytics data appear to grossly over-report due to traffic from robots that are difficult to identify and screen. The study also introduces a proof-of-concept prototype that makes the research method easily accessible to IR managers who seek accurate counts of Citable Content Downloads.

The method described in this paper does not account for direct access to Citable Content Downloads that originate outside Google Search properties.

This paper proposes that IR managers adopt a new reporting framework that classifies IR page views and download activity into three categories that communicate metrics about user activity related to the research process. It also proposes that IR managers rely on a hybrid of existing Google Services to improve reporting of Citable Content Downloads and offers a prototype web service where IR managers can test results for their repositories.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the prerequisites of customer online experience and its outcomes in banks. Brand congruity is an important mediating variable in these connections.

A quantitative approach is used to test the model based on the literature review. The subjects are online customers of an Iranian bank, Bank Mellat, in East Azerbaijan Province, which is famous for its e-banking. Data analysis was conducted using structural equation modeling.

The results suggested that the prerequisites of customer experience affected customer experience, which was, in turn, divided into two components (affective experience and functional experience). Besides, brand congruity played a moderating role in the relationship between prerequisites and consequences.

In the model, brand congruity was the only moderating variable and other moderating variables were excluded. Further, test results were related to a specific brand.

This paper explores how the behaviors of customers could be improved in the online context by concentrating on determinants of customer online experience. The paper offers implications for the improvement of customer online experience in service marketing, especially in banking.

This is the first study in Iran to use brand congruity as a way of surveying the perquisites and outcomes of online experience in banking. The findings expand the importance of brand congruity in online experience to the entire banking sector.

This paper aims to explore the relationship between clustering and hotel competitiveness in emerging economy destinations by analyzing potential mediation of the management innovations implemented.

This empirical study is based on hotel-level information from a survey including 131 hotels in 2014. Colombia was chosen as a representative of Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa (CIVETS) emerging destinations. The relationships were analyzed by structural modeling and partial least squares.

Clustering has a positive direct impact on hotel competitiveness and innovation, and there is a positive effect of innovation on competitiveness. Therefore, the link between clustering and competitiveness is partially mediated through implementation of management innovations.

Hotels should actively participate in agglomerated destinations and build relationships with established firms by clustering. Interaction with related firms and implementation of management innovations will lead to increased levels of economic competitiveness. Public policymakers should foster collaborative strategic networking in the hospitality industry of emerging economy destinations.

This paper focused on separating the direct and indirect effects of clustering on hotel competitiveness. Implementation of management innovations was considered as an outcome derived from clustering in emerging tourist destinations, using the example of Colombia. Clustering stimulates and eases management innovations within the location, and that combination reinforces the role that cooperating while competing plays in hotel competitiveness for destinations with lagging innovation.

The paper's aim is to illustrate the use of a technique that can help researchers choose which techniques, and at what level, to employ in an internet‐based survey.

A screening experiment, designed as a Plackett‐Burman design, is used to study main effects of 11 techniques for increasing survey response. Three measures of effect used are click rate, completion rate, and response rate. A convenience sample of students at a large university in New Zealand is used.

Follow‐up had significant impact on click rate; incentive and pre‐notification had a significant impact on completion rate; no technique had significant effect on response rate.

Main effects are examined. Also, a limited number of approaches for each technique are studied.

This paper illustrates the use of a methodology that researchers, practitioner, and academics alike, can use to select techniques to employ in an internet survey. This is the first known application of the technique for selecting data collection techniques in marketing.