Search results

The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of post-purchase logistic services on customer satisfaction and future purchase decision, to reveal any differences across China and Taiwan, to fill in a gap in the literature focused on post-purchase logistic activities related to shipping, return, and tracking, to provide managerial guidance in logistics for e-commerce, and to develop insights on logistic services for future research.

Using a validated survey instrument, 384 respondents in China and 145 respondents in Taiwan are collected. The research model is analyzed using component-based estimation approach to structural equation modeling.

The structural equation analysis of the study found that post-purchase shipping and tracking have an impact on customer satisfaction in both China and Taiwan. It also found that customer service is the most significant factor among the examined antecedents for online shoppers in China. While, return service is more important for shoppers in Taiwan. Finally, customer satisfaction played a stronger positive role for online shoppers in Taiwan as compared to their counterparts in China.

This research extended the current literature about post-purchase logistic services in an online shopping environment with a literature-based research model and good empirical data support. However, one limitation of the study is that the data collected represents a cross-sectional sample; future research should examine longitudinal sample to study customers’ purchase intentions over time.

This study can help both scholars and practitioners understand the importance of tracking, return, shipping, and customer service in an online shopping environment and across countries. It provides insights on designing e-commerce relevant shipping services to satisfy and attract customers across countries.

The study investigated how post-purchase activities contributed to customer satisfaction in online shopping and explored the influence of customer satisfaction on future purchase intention in China and Taiwan. This is one of the first studies available in the literature to provide empirical support and managerial insights about post-purchase activities related to shipping, tracking, and returns for e-commerce with cross-regional comparison.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the drivers, practices, and outcomes of social media use in the management of organizational supply chain.

Online questionnaire survey was used to collect data from 285 organizations representing different industries in China. The data then were analyzed with structure equation modeling using SmartPLS.

The results indicate that key antecedents such as external pressures, internal readiness, expected benefits, strategic goals, and perceived risks influence organizational social media use, which subsequently impact organizational performance outcomes in operation and marketing as well as the satisfaction level of both internal and external constituents, such as customers, employees, partners, and suppliers.

The study obtained data about one organization from only one respondent and did not used random sampling.

This study provides insights on why and how companies should use social media for relationship building and business outcomes.

Drawing from the resources-based view, social networks, strategic choice theory, and technology organization and environment framework, a new social media utilization model for business outcome was established and testified using empirical data. This study is one of the first studies that adopts technology-organization-environment (TOE) framework of technology adoption theory to study organizational social media use. The findings in this study confirm the validity of the TOE framework for analyzing social media adoption and use in various organizations.

The paper aims to establish a quality assurance framework for Chinese private higher education (PHE) in particular and for any newly-established higher education sector in general.

This research relied on published qualitative and quantitative data, existing literature, historical documents, and the authors' observations. It described the PHE growth context, analyzed the quality issue from three dimensions (academic, administrative, and relationship quality), and examined its quality assurance practice through three players.

The paper provides empirical insights about how quality and quality assurance issues have impacted on PHE development. To approach the issues, it suggests a “quality assurance triangle” framework that is composed of three PHE players (government, market, institution) and their joint association.

Because of the relative position of each player in current quality assurance, the success of its implementation in China depends on how the government establishes the triangle system and balances its dominating roles to ensure each of the players act independently and collaboratively.

This framework provides directions for establishing an appropriate quality assurance system for PHE in China.

This paper fulfills an identified need to setup a sound quality assurance system for PHE in China and contributes to quality assurance literature with a new framework.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the antecedents and consequences of social media utilization in teaching by college faculty.

The paper is based on literature review, the author's observations, and qualitative and quantitative information reported by 249 full‐time and part‐time faculty members.

There are four antecedent factors for social media utilization in teaching: faculty personal social media involvement and personal readiness; external pressures from peers, supervisors, students and their employment; expected benefits; and perceived risks. Two factors are important to assess the consequences of social media utilization in teaching: perceived student satisfaction and student learning outcomes.

Data were obtained from only one university. This paper includes only simple statistical analysis, although structural equation analysis is more appropriate for testing the model.

The established social media utilization model suggests that the key to solving problems related to social media utilization in teaching is to address faculty's concerns and convince them about the benefits of social media utilization with examples and sound outcomes.

This study draws on both past publications and first‐hand research; it establishes a social media utilization model about the antecedents and consequences of social media utilization in teaching, and has both qualitative and quantitative data to support the model.

Green space is one of the main measures to alleviate urban heat islands (UHI). The transformation mechanism of daytime and nighttime scale sensitivity of vegetation coverage to reduce the UHI effect in a daily cycle has been unclear. As a result, we propose a scale sensitivity measurement algorithm to study the spatial and temporal response relationship between UHI and green coverage. Based on the scale theory of landscape ecology and the method of geostatistical analysis, we adopted ArcGIS, MATLAB, SPSS, and other data processing software as well as a large amount of measured and high-resolution satellite imagery data of Beijing and Tianjin to quantitatively study their spatial scale sensitivity and daily variation features of urban green spaces to reduce summer UHI. The results show that first, the green coverage rate and the UHI intensity experience positive and negative correlations during the daytime, and negative correlations at night. When the correlation coefficient is significant, there is a linear relationship between the UHI intensity and the core green rate. Second, the reduction of the UHI by green spaces displays spatial and temporal change scale sensitivity characteristics. The radius scale of daytime sensitivity is 15m, and the radius scale of nighttime sensitivity is 60m. The study's conclusion enriches the theoretical parameters of landscape ecological scales and patterns, and provides spatial and temporal scales for systematic planning of green space to reduce UHI.

With the increasing attention acquired from researchers and practitioners in Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry, building information modeling (BIM) has fundamentally changed the approach we design, construct and delivery, as well as operate and maintenance of buildings and civil infrastructures. This study tries to provide an innovative perspective on BIM research. This study aims to analyze the necessity and feasibility of BIM user satisfaction research and define what BIM user satisfaction is, and then to develop a quantitative method for the measurement of BIM user satisfaction.

As it is indicated in the content, BIM user satisfaction is measured by the sum of the user's weighted reactions to a set of factors. To be specific, the entropy method was adopted to calculate the “weighting” of the factors, and the triangular fuzzy number (TFN) method was selected to compute the “scoring” of the factors. Through the literature review, methodology and tool development, as well as case study and discussions, this paper was generated sequentially.

This study found that the proposed tool for the measurement of BIM success is valid and reliable; it formerly translated the conceptual definition of BIM user satisfaction into an accurate measurement instrument. It also indicated that many factors are affecting the BIM users' satisfaction, and each of the factors inherited various importance and score, and the findings are expected to improve the performance and effectiveness of BIM management.

Through the translation of the conceptual BIM user satisfaction into a valid quantitative measurement instrument, this research provides an excellent framework for the management of BIM from the user's perspective, and it could help to stimulate user's acceptance of BIM in the AEC industry in future.