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The cost of customer acquisition is one of the largest expenses that service firms incur due to loss-generating quotes/proposals. This paper aims to connect interactive marketing communications channels with increased customer acquisition and non-interactive marketing communications channels with decreased customer acquisition by service firms.

Two field studies using hazard models were used to assess the probability of acquiring a new customer after the prospect first contacts the firm. Multiple discrete hazard models were used to compare channels against each other.

Three interactive marketing communications channels (word-of-mouth, online review forum, search engine optimization) increased the rate of acquiring a customer over time. I also compared non-interactive channels (billboard/signage, direct mail), but the analysis did not reveal any significant impact on acquisition rate by the non-interactive marketing communications channels.

The present study illustrates why the cost of acquisition is so high in the service sector and takes the unique step of linking interactive marketing communications channels with higher customer acquisition rates over time in a services context. Specifically, interactive marketing channels enable customers to find firms that offer the attributes that they seek, thereby increasing acquisition probabilities and decreasing acquisition costs.

This paper aims to study students' strategic behaviors for increasing their job prospect in response to university administrators' moves for lifting up institutional reputation in the academia.

A Stackelberg differential game is used to study this strategic interplay between administrators and students. In this game, an administrator maximizes institutional quality to build university reputation while student maximizes grades to increase their job prospects. Therefore, administrators being the leader move first while students set strategies for maximizing their objective function by following administrators' move.

The study produces several distinctive results by analyzing administrator–students’ strategic interactions. First, university administrators need to be sufficiently more impatient for building reputation by improving institutional quality than students’ impatience for increasing their job prospects to have feasible solutions. Second, students attempt to increase academic grades for making them more marketable in response to administrators’ additional efforts for increasing their students’ job prospects. Third, exogenous increase in university reputation improves institutional quality and students’ job prospects without affecting their academic grades. However, increase in job prospects motivates students to increase their grades. Fourth, administrators’ too much impatience for increasing university reputation could inflate students’ grade, reduce job prospect and degrade institutional quality. Fifth, an exogenous rise in students’ impatience improves institutional quality and students’ job prospects but reduces students’ grades. Finally, the exogenous increase in opportunity cost of securing good grade degrades institutional quality, thus reducing further job prospects. Therefore, administrators’ positive but moderate impatience for reputation will improve students’ academic performances, institutional quality and job prospects.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to analyze students’ strategic responses for improving their job prospects in response to administrators’ actions for enhancing university reputation. It helps administrators to design an effective framework for building university reputation in the academic market through improving institutional quality and expanding job markets for their students.

With the increasing presence of Islamic banking to Nigeria’s banking space and its relative success in the predominantly Muslim Northern region, the question of its prospect in the predominantly non-Muslim southeastern Nigeria becomes legitimate and urgent. Thus, the purpose of this study is to predict the prospect of Islamic banking in Southeast Nigeria.

Three research questions were posed to address this objective. First, is there significant relationship between knowledge of Islamic banking concept and its prospects in Southeast Nigeria? Second, is there significant relationship between the relative advantage (principles) of Islamic banking concept and its prospects in Southeast Nigeria? Third, is there significant relationship between customers’ religion and prospects of Islamic banking concept in Southeast Nigeria? The study analyses using Pearson correlation, factor analysis with regression, t-test and ANOVA.

Knowledge of Islamic banking and prospects of Islamic banking show weak positive relationship and very low mean. In other words, Islamic banking is not well-known; therefore, the prospects of Islamic banking slightly depend on knowledge about Islamic banking. Furthermore, the relationship between Islamic principles and prospects of Islamic banking shows only 5 per cent impact, which means that factors other than Islamic principle will drive the prospects of Islamic banking in Southeast Nigeria. Two factors loading from factor analysis are “profit sharing” and “forbid of some business activities”. Finally, profit sharing influences the prospects of Islamic banking, while prospects of Islamic banking will be impeded by customers’ religion.

The study was conducted in Southeast Nigeria which contains a small size of sample; the research adopted convenient sampling technique and a limited number of measures in the model. Nevertheless, the study provides new information about an emerging Islamic market.

Most previous studies concentrated on product attributes of innovation adoption or patronage. But this current study inculcated the consumers' religion, as it affects the prospects of Islamic banking in Southeast Nigeria. .

With respect to multi-stage group risk decision-making problems in which all the attribute values take the form of grey number, and the weights of stages and decision makers are unknown, the purpose of this paper is to propose a new decision-making method based on grey target and prospect theory.

First, the sequencing and distance between two grey numbers are introduced. Then, a linear operator with the features of the “rewarding good and punishing bad” is presented based on the grey target given by decision maker, and the prospect value function of each attribute based on the zero reference point is defined. Next, weight models of stages and decision makers are suggested, which are based on restriction of stage fluctuation, the maximum differences of alternatives and the maximum entropy theory. Furthermore, the information of alternatives is aggregated by WA operator, the alternatives are selected by their prospect values.

The comprehensive cumulative prospect values are finally aggregated by WA operator, alternatives are selected or not are judged by the sign of the comprehensive prospect theory, if the prospect value of alternative is negative, the corresponding alternative misses the group decision makers’ grey target, on the contrary, if the prospect value of alternative is positive, the corresponding alternative is dropped into the group decision makers’ grey target, the alternative with positive prospect value whose value is the maximum is selected.

Compared with the traditional decision-making methods using expected utility theory which suppose the decision makers are all completely rational, the proposed method is based on irrational which is more in line with the decision maker’s psychology. And this method considers the decision maker’s psychological expectation values about every attribute, different satisfactory grey target about attributes will directly affect decision-making result.

The aim is to apply pseudo‐random correlation method to detect very weak electrical signals because of various natural and artificial electron‐magnetic interferences in electrical prospecting.

Electrical prospecting is an important method of geophysical exploration and the electrical prospecting instruments are required to detect very weak electrical signals against strong interferences. Recently, pseudo‐random correlation coding has been widely applied in telecommunications and measurement and test systems to improve the signal noise ratio with great success, but has not been used in electric prospecting. This paper theoretically investigated the application model of pseudo‐random correlation techniques in electrical prospecting.

The model of pseudo‐random correlation techniques in electrical prospecting, including its principle, detailed protocol and parameter selection, is established.

With the continuing improvement in the capacity of electrical prospecting transmitters, the pseudo‐random correlation method will be widely used in electrical prospecting.

The pseudo‐random correlation techniques is originally investigated for its application in electrical prospecting. This paper is aimed at researchers and engineers in geophysical exploration.

A research stream known as prospect theory describes how decision biases lead to results that differ from those predicted by classical utility theory (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979). Prospect theory hypothesizes that individuals will experience potential losses more intensely than potential gains, and will be more risk‐seeking in loss situations, while more risk‐avoiding in gain situations. This study includes 948 participants from the PRC and 318 students from the USA. All of our attempts to replicate these findings in the Peoples’ Republic of China have revealed a different pattern. Chinese subjects consistently demonstrated risk‐seeking preferences, both in gain and loss situations.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a dynamic multi-attribute decision-making method based on the prospect theory for dealing with the dynamic multi-attribute decision-making problem with three-parameter interval grey number.

First, the kernel and comparison rule of three-parameter interval grey numbers are defined, which are the basis of collecting and sorting grey numbers. Next, the prospect value function is determined in view of the decision-making information with different time points as the reference points. Then, an optimal model for solving the attribute weight and time weight is constructed based on the grey entropy principle.

The paper provides a dynamic grey interrelation decision method based on the prospect theory with three-parameter interval grey number, and the example analysis shows that the method proposed in this paper has validity and rationality.

If we have a better understanding of the weights of different reference points, it is possible to receive a more reasonable expression for the comprehensive prospect utility value function.

The paper provides a grey interrelation decision method based on the prospect theory, which can help the decision maker deal with the dynamic multi-attribute decision-making problems under the uncertain environment.

The paper proposes the kernel and ranking method of three-parameter interval grey number, and uses different time points as the reference points to define the prospect value function. Furthermore, this paper structures a dynamic grey interrelation decision method with three-parameter interval grey number based on the prospect theory.

This study seeks to examine the impact of career growth prospect (CGP) and formal mentoring support (FMS) on overall organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) and its five dimensions.

Data were obtained from 72 supervisors and 182 of their subordinates in branches of a bank located in a city in South‐western Nigeria.

Results indicate that CGP accounted for a significant percentage of the variance in overall OCB (β=0.46, p<0.001), predicting three dimensions: sportsmanship, conscientiousness and civic virtue. Contrary to hypothesis, FMS did not predict overall OCB, but significantly influenced three OCB dimensions: sportsmanship, courtesy and altruism, predicting “sportsmanship” (β=0.26, p<0.001) to be better than CGP (β=0.22, p<0.01).

Although generalisation is limited in a study of a single organisation, the findings of the study imply that CGP and FMS have differential relevance in OCB.

Altering negative perceptions of CGP among employees engenders OCB but FMS needs to be complemented with other interventions to foster overall OCB.

Although career growth prospects and formal mentoring support are projected to foster OCB in the Nigerian banking sector, no research has investigated this expectation. The extant literature shows that research on the impact of career growth prospects on OCB is virtually absent. Again, the absence of African perspectives on research issues such as OCB, has limited comparative studies and the global scope of most reference journals. This study narrows these gaps in literature and contributes empirical information that equips management to deal more strategically with the integrated approach to OCB.

Crime and fear of crime in and around the university campus can affect enrolments and retention rates as well as compromising the safety, security and well-being of students and staff. The purpose of this paper is to explore user perceptions of personal safety using the “Prospect and Refuge Model” and crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED).

The study used a fear of crime survey of 88 students at a university in Western Australia. The respondents were asked to identify on a map, three locations perceived to be “safe” and three locations perceived to be “unsafe”. The six most commonly identified sites were then visually audited to measure the levels of “prospect” and “refuge” and CPTED features at each location.

The findings indicate the top three “fear spots” were associated with low levels of “prospect” and high levels of “refuge” – and generally, with poor opportunities for natural surveillance and CPTED qualities. The top three “safe spots” had consistently higher levels of “prospect” and lower levels of “refuge” in the site audits and responses to the surveys. Increased opportunities for surveillance were therefore associated with increased levels of personal safety.

The survey is relatively small (88) and a larger study is certainly required to underpin these findings. The methodology is transferable to other universities and facilities seeking to manage crime and fear of crime. The research develops more finely nuanced measures for the concepts of prospect and refuge.

Interestingly, surveillance opportunities and perceptions of personal safety were perceived to be mediated by distance from buildings and by the construction of new buildings and infrastructure being carried out across the campus. This has implications for the construction of new universities and for those which are expanding. Recommendations are provided for new and existing universities and for those undergoing redevelopment.

Improving students’ perception of personal safety can enhance their performance and retention at university.

No studies have investigated the campus design and layout and students’ perceptions of personal safety in Australia in this way. The approach is more “bottom-up” by first exploring users’ perceptions of “unsafe” locations, then assessing these sites in terms of the presence or absence of measures for CPTED and prospect-refuge.

The prospect theory is potentially an essential ingredient in modeling the disposition effect. However, many scholars have tried to explain the disposition effect with the help of prospect theory and they came to opposite conclusions. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of value function of the prospect theory on predicting the disposition effect.

Lagrange multiplier optimization and dynamic programming method are used to solve the representative investor’s optimal portfolio choice problem. Furthermore, numerical simulation is used to compare the prediction ability of different types of value function.

The authors support that the value function has a crucial role in predicting the disposition effect with prospect theory, i.e. the curvature and boundedness of the value function may influence the performance of applying the prospect theory in the disposition effect. They conclude that a piecewise negative exponential value function can predict the disposition effect, while others like the piecewise power value function may not.

Extant literature about modeling the disposition effect with the prospect theory mostly focus on the time when gain-loss utility occurs or the selection of reference point. This paper based on the value function properties provides a new perspective in analyzing the crucial role that value function has in predicting financial market anomalies.