Search results

The purpose of this paper is to revise the Kano evaluation table and separating indifference attributes in order to develop satisfaction and dissatisfaction indexes.

The indifference requirements have been separated and reclassified, and after revising Kano satisfaction and dissatisfaction indexes based on the new evaluation table, the developed Kano model has been examined in the city of Isfahan regarding attributes of candidates in the presidential election of 2013.

According to the new classification, the indifference attributes can be separated into seven types. The results of the case study also show that among 20 priorities of the presidential candidates, payment of subsidy, offering loan and financial facilities are must-be attributes; protecting investment and national production, export incentives and increasing national unity are attractive attributes; and the remaining are one-dimensional attributes.

The case study implies that the findings are dependent on the cultural and social context of the respondents. On the other hand, the findings of Kano model analysis are limited to short-time periods.

This research is typically unique in separating indifference attributes and in revising the satisfaction and dissatisfaction indexes of the Kano model. Practically, the application of the Kano model in the presidential election is also a new subject.

This paper presents a holistic model of customer retention incorporating service quality perceptions, price perceptions, customer indifference and inertia. Data from a large‐scale postal survey of telephone users in England showed that perceptions of service quality have a direct linear relationship with customer retention even in mass services with low customer contact. Price perceptions and customer indifference too were found to have a direct linear effect on retention. Furthermore, it was also seen how both price perceptions and customer indifference moderated the relationship between service quality perceptions and customer retention. A linear relationship between inertia and customer retention was not found. Furthermore, there was evidence to indicate that inertia was a relatively unstable condition and that reliance by service providers on inertia to retain customers could indeed be a risky strategy.

The authors aim to demonstrate the impact of allowing for unequal intra-household distribution of resources on income poverty and income inequality.

The paper applies a collective consumption model to study the intra-household distribution of resources in Visegrád countries (V4). It utilises subjective financial satisfaction as a proxy for indirect utility from individual consumption to estimate the indifference scales within couples instead of the traditional equivalence scale. The European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) 2013 and 2018 data are applied.

This study’s results indicate substantial economies of scale from living in a couple that are generally higher than implied by the commonly applied equivalence scale. The sharing rule estimates suggest that at the mean of distribution factors, women receive a consumption share between 0.4 and 0.6; however, some of the results are close to an equal sharing of 0.5. The female consumption share rises with her contribution to household income. Regarding income poverty and inequality, the authors show that both these measures might be underestimated in the traditional approach to equal sharing of resources.

The authors add to the empirics by estimating indifference scales for Czechia (CZ), Hungary (HU), Poland (PL) and Slovakia (SK), countries that have not been involved in previous research.

While the literature on migration highlights the reshaping of host and immigrant population in countries, there is a paucity of research in marketing investigating the evolving dynamics for acculturation. The purpose of this study is to further the understanding of the emerging phenomenon of acculturation and identity negotiation.

Three experiments examined situational ethnicity, self-construal and identity negotiation in home and host culture work and social settings. Study 1 and Study 2 were conducted in the United Kingdom (UK), where the host country is the majority population. Study 3 was conducted in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where the host country is the minority population. Study 4 utilized qualitative interviews in both countries.

Results from all four studies show that ethnic consumers deploy “indifference” as an identity negotiation mechanism when the host society is the majority population (UK) and when the host society has the minority population (UAE).

The authors offer new insights into identity negotiation by ethnic consumers when the host society is the majority population as well as the minority population. “Indifference”, i.e. preferring to neither fit in nor stand out as an identity negotiation mechanism, is deployed in work and social settings of home and host societies. The authors also advance the existing literature on acculturation by examining whether independent and interdependent self-construal influence identity negotiation.

Many texts display circular indifference curves. The rationale for such curves typically requires that goods become bads — that is, their marginal utilities become negative — over some range (e.g., Baumol [1], p. 199). In this note we develop what seems to be a far more general and intuitively appealing rationale for “approximately circular” indifference curves. This rationale suggests that the phenomenon may be far more widespread than previous analysis implies.

It is usually unnecessary to define the output of an industry, but this is not the case with mental health services. Following Grossman's conception of health capital, the outputs of mental health care enter a household production function as a commodity vector. Considering the multiple and heterogeneous nature of the services of this industry, preferences exist in multi‐dimensional space. An application of the characteristics theory of consumer demand associated with Ironmonger and Lancaster illustrates the outputs in terms of two characteristics, viz. symptom alleviation and disability reduction. Representing preferences by indifference curves, in the usual way, clarifies the relationship between mental health care inputs and the outputs of mental health care. The theoretical problem in the economics of mental health care of whether, or how, individual preferences can count is also addressed. It is shown on an indifference map what it means when society institutionalises some individuals. This approach also enables the deinstitutionalisation movement to be placed into an economic context. It is noted that empirical work on goods and services that have multiple characteristics involves the application of hedonic price analysis, a technique already applied in the economic literature on mental health.

This chapter addresses commentary about constitutional law and politics in this current era of a conservative domination of the judiciary.¹ Its primary concern is the different ways in which a working majority on the Court and its judiciary of appointees by Presidents Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush might be conservative,² and the different ways in which domination might take place.³ The frame for the chapter is what I call an “indifference thesis” for analyzing constitutional law and politics. Stated boldly, the thesis is that there should be a commentary distinguished by an interpretive attitude that distrusts, and intentionally resists, analysis based on preconceived notions about the strengths and weaknesses of any constitutional law and politics, be it conservative or left-liberal.⁴ Perhaps, to many readers, an indifference thesis for commentary appears methodologically odd, if not politically perverse. Therefore, the first order of business is to try to make the thesis less odd and perverse by explaining its provenance and attributes.⁵

To develop just‐in‐time (JIT) purchasing threshold value (JPTV) models for ready mixed concrete (RMC) suppliers to decide whether or not to switch from an economic order quantity (EOQ) approach to a JIT purchasing approach for the purchase of their raw materials, when a price discount is offered.

The existing economic order quantity (EOQ) with a price discount versus the JIT purchasing cost comparative models neglect some important cost components under the inventory management systems, for example, the out‐of‐stock costs and the impact of inventory policy on product quality and production flexibility. In addition, these models do not empirically study the capability of an inventory facility to hold the EOQ‐JIT cost indifference point's amount of inventory. These models suggest that the JIT purchasing approach is always preferred to the EOQ approach when the JIT purchasing approach can capitalize on physical plant space reduction. The JPTV models developed in this study overcome the two limitations of the existing EOQ and JIT purchasing cost comparative models.

By developing the JPTV models, this study suggests that the theoretical advantages of JIT purchasing may have been overstated.

The field studies conducted in the RMC industries in Chongqing, China and Singapore supported the propositions in this study. The JPTV models, if adopted, would help to enhance performance in the RMC industries in other cities as well.

This paper aims to examine how temporaries’ experience and perception of encounters with permanent members’ relational indifference affect the social relations in blended workgroups.

Constructivist grounded theory study based on 15 semi-structured interviews with first- and third-year nursing students in clinical internships at somatic hospital wards was used.

The authors identified two themes around organizational alienation. Temporaries expected and hoped to experience resonance in their interactions with permanent members, which drove them to make an extra effort when confronted with permanents’ relational indifference. Temporaries felt insignificant, meaningless and unworthy, causing them to adopt a relationless mode of relating, feeling alienated and adapting their expectations and hopes.

Relational indifference is, unlike relational repulsion, problematic to target directly through intervention policies as organizations would inflict a more profound alienation on temporaries.

Unlike previous research on blended workgroups, which has predominantly focused on relational repulsion, this paper contributes to understanding how relational indifference affects temporaries’ mode of relating to permanent.

In the services marketing literature it has been argued that the concept of service loyalty needs further conceptual and empirical investigation. In this paper a theoretical framework for service loyalty consisting of three dimensions: preference loyalty; price indifference loyalty; and dissatisfaction response is developed. We subsequently focus on the role of service quality and switching costs as antecedents to these types of service loyalty. The results of an empirical study of a large sample of customers from five different service industries provide support for service loyalty as a three‐dimensional construct. Moreover, we find that the influence of service quality on service loyalty varies significantly per industry and that, hence, findings from one industry cannot be generalised to other industries. Furthermore, we establish that in industries characterised by relatively low switching costs, customers will be less loyal as compared to service industries with relatively high switching costs.