Search results

A good customer experience means meeting the customer expectation. Thus, unexpected customer experience is usually a good point to initiate improvement or innovation for product or service design. Attempting to enhance the customer experience in the customer journey, this study aims to demonstrate a customer journey centred service design approach to receive the design requirements based on customers' needs and to use a systematic approach to generate solutions.

A holistic service design method named 3E model was proposed. It integrates customer experience journey map (CXJM), the theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ) and service assembly and service replacement mechanism into three design stages. In stage 1, CXJM is enhanced with emotional range analysis to identify the customer pain points as well as customers' requirements (CRs) in exhibition, tourism and hotel sectors for initializing service design. Stage 2 investigates the specific design requirements (DRs) of the smart exhibition system and the contradictions. Then, the innovative principles were analyzed. In Stage 3, expected exhibition service system was designed.

The new service system which named the smart expo system based on information and communication technology (ICT) is proposed. It consists of “Tourism Link assists”, “i-Kaohsiung hotel service center”, “Smart AEC” and “O2O e-tickets”.

The proposed 3E model builds a systematic and coherent design method for the smart exhibition service area. It provides the linkage and action-oriented guidance from customer pain points, service parameters, innovative principles to solutions.

Owing to the recent surge of interest in the age of the data deluge, the importance of researching data infrastructures is increasing. The open archival information system (OAIS) model has been widely adopted as a framework for creating and maintaining digital repositories. Considering that OAIS is a reference model that requires customization for actual practice, this paper aims to examine how the current practices in a data repository map to the OAIS environment and functional components.

The authors conducted two focus-group sessions and one individual interview with eight employees at the world’s largest social science data repository, the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). By examining their current actions (activities regarding their work responsibilities) and IT practices, they studied the barriers and challenges of archiving and curating qualitative data at ICPSR.

The authors observed that the OAIS model is robust and reliable in actual service processes for data curation and data archives. In addition, a data repository’s workflow resembles digital archives or even digital libraries. On the other hand, they find that the cost of preventing disclosure risk and a lack of agreement on the standards of text data files are the most apparent obstacles for data curation professionals to handle qualitative data; the maturation of data metrics seems to be a promising solution to several challenges in social science data sharing.

The authors evaluated the gap between a research data repository’s current practices and the adoption of the OAIS model. They also identified answers to questions such as how current technological infrastructure in a leading data repository such as ICPSR supports their daily operations, what the ideal technologies in those data repositories would be and the associated challenges that accompany these ideal technologies. Most importantly, they helped to prioritize challenges and barriers from the data curator’s perspective and to contribute implications of data sharing and reuse in social sciences.

This paper aims to experimentally study the external flow characteristic of an isolated two-dimensional synthetic jet actuator undergoing diaphragm resonance.

The resonance frequency of the diaphragm (40 Hz) depends on the excitation mechanism in the actuator, whereas it is independent of cavity geometry, excitation waveform and excitation voltage. The velocity response of the synthetic jet is influenced by excitation voltage rather than excitation waveform. Thus, this investigation selected four different voltages (5, 10, 15 and 20 V) under the same sine waveform as experiment parameters.

The velocity field along the downstream direction is classified into five regions, which can be obtained by hot-wire measurement. The first region refers to an area in which flow moves from within the cavity to the exit of orifice through the oscillation of the diaphragm, but prior to the formation of the vortex of a synthetic jet. In this region, two characteristic frequencies exist at 20 and 40 Hz in the flow field. The second region refers to the area in which the vortices of a synthetic jet fully develop following their initial formation. In this region, the characteristic frequencies at 20 and 40 Hz still occur in the flow field. The third region refers to the area in which both fully developed vortices continue traveling downstream. It is difficult to obtain the characteristic frequency in this flow field, because the mean center velocities (ū) decay downstream and are proportional to (x/w)^−1/2 for the four excitation voltages. The fourth region reveals variations in both vortices as they merge into a single vortex. The mean center velocities (ū) are approximately proportional to (x/w)⁰ in this region for the four excitation voltages. A fifth region deals with variations in the vortex of a synthetic jet after both vortices merge into one, in which the mean center velocities (ū) are approximately proportional to (x/w)⁻¹ in this region for the four excitation voltages (x/w is the dimensionless streamwise distance).

Although the flow characteristics of synthetic jets had reported for flow control in some literatures, variations of flow structure for synthetic jets are still not studied under the excitation of diaphragm resonance. This paper showed some novel results that our velocity response results obtained by hot-wire measurement along the downstream direction compared with flow visualization resulted in the classification of five regions under the excitation of diaphragm resonance. In the future, it makes valuable contributions for experimental findings to provide researchers with further development of flow control.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an instrument to measure service competencies and explore the relationship between service competencies and service quality.

Data were gathered from 207 frontline employees (FLEs). A confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to examine the goodness-of-fit of the FLE service competence scale. Further, the partial least squares technique was used to analyze the data gathered from 252 customers to clarify the relationship between service competencies and perceived service quality.

The results indicate that the instrument demonstrated high reliability, stable dimensionality and predictable relationships with service quality within the nomological network of service competencies. Moreover, the results provide evidence for the position that FLE interpersonal competencies are positively associated with the service quality dimensions of reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy, and that FLE professional competencies are positively associated with reliability and assurance of service quality.

The study has limited generalizability given the convenience sample and the wide variety of service industries. Implications regarding which specific FLE service competencies FLEs should focus on to enhance specific customer perceptions of service quality are also discussed.

The present paper contributes specifically to understanding how service competencies of FLEs can influence consumers’ perceived service quality, and developing an instrument to measure service competencies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how service failure affects customers’ negative response and how service recovery affects perceived justice in the context of different relationship norms.

It includes four studies that examine how relationships influence customer reactions to service failures. In study 1, the paper examines how service failures affect customers’ negative reaction. In study 2, the paper examines how service recoveries influence perceived justice. Study 3 and study 4 test the robustness of the results of study 1 and study 2. All studies have a 2×2 between-subjects design.

The results show that individuals in exchange relationships experience a stronger feeling of betrayal than those in communal relationships during service failures. Further, individuals feel more betrayed and show greater negative responses during process failures. They perceive greater justice when offered physical recoveries, which, in turn, contributes to higher service-recovery satisfaction.

This study was conducted in Taiwan. Customer reactions to service failures may vary according to cultural and environmental contexts.

Service providers are encouraged to cultivate relationships with customers and identify different types of customers to compensate them more effectively, according to their preferences.

This study introduces relationship norms to investigate consumer responses to service failures. The main contributions are twofold; it investigates the effect of relationship norms on customer responses to service-failure types and service-recovery types.

This chapter examines the impact of urban development through the government provision of public inputs in a developing economy. When a financing constraint is taken into account, an increase in public inputs may worsen urban unemployment and hence reduce welfare of the economy. Further, the optimal level of public-input provision is larger (smaller) than that under full employment, if there exits a positive (negative) employment effect. The theoretical results are confirmed by numerical simulations.

Although recent studies have increased attention on the effects of related and unrelated variety on innovation, a Chinese test has until now been missing from the literature. This paper aims to investigate how related and unrelated variety affect regional innovation in Chinese provinces. In particular, emphasis was placed on differentiating the analysis for the industry and services sectors at a detailed sectoral level.

This paper’s sample is composed of 30 provinces in China from 2003 to 2016. Feasible generalized least squares was used to estimate the effects of related and unrelated variety on regional innovation.

The results show that related variety in all sectors promotes regional innovation, whereas unrelated variety in all sectors does not play a role. In-depth analyses were performed by comparing the industry and services sectors. Only related variety in the industry sector and unrelated variety in the services sector promote regional innovation, whereas unrelated variety in the industry sector exerts a negative effect. After dividing the country into eastern, central and western regions, different findings appear in the sub-samples.

This study contributes to the literature on evolutionary economic geography and innovation by exploring how related and unrelated variety promote regional innovation in a developing country context (China). It also sheds light on the sectoral and regional differences in the influence of related and unrelated variety on regional innovation.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the mechanism of shared leadership on team members’ innovative behavior.

Paired questionnaires were collected from 89 scientific research teams in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region of China at two-time points with a time lag of 4 months. Then multilevel structural equation model method was applied to analyze the multiple mediating effects.

This study finds that: the form of shared leadership in scientific research teams of universities; shared leadership has a positive impact on team members’ innovative behavior; there are multiple mediations in the relationship including synchronization and sequence of creative self-efficacy and achievement motivation.

According to the “stimulus-organism-response” model, this paper has constructed a multi-level theoretical model that shared leadership influences individual innovation behavior and reveals the “black box” from the perspective of psychological mechanism. It not only verifies that “can-do” shapes “willing to do” but also makes up for the gap of an empirical test of the effectiveness of shared leadership in scientific research teams of universities. Besides, the formal scale of shared leadership in the Chinese situation is revised, which can provide a reference for future empirical research on shared leadership. The research conclusions provide new ideas for improving the management of scientific research teams in universities.

The “open‐door” policy started by the late Deng Xiao Ping has not only been maintained since his death but under the new Chinese leadership it has been encouraged even further. Because of this China has seen an unprecedented number of tourist arrivals which in turn has led to an explosion in the construction of hotels. However, due to poor vocational educational facilities and staff for hospitality subjects there is a dearth of qualified hotel operatives. This work examines Chinese hotel employees’ perceptions of various elements of vocational education associated with the Chinese hotel industry. This was done by asking staff to rank their feelings on a bi‐polar scale and the results examined using Kelly’s Repertory Grid principal components analysis.

Based on the knowledge management (KM) perspective, innovation diffusion theory and technology-organization-environment framework, the purpose of this paper is to develop a research model to investigate the influence of technological (information technology (IT) support and IT effectiveness), organizational (top management support, sharing culture, and reward system) and environmental (competitive pressure) contexts on the two-stage KM diffusion (KM adoption and implementation) in small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

Data gathered from 119 SME senior managers (including owner, vice president, and business manager) in Taiwan were employed to test the relationships between the research model constructs using the partial least squares approach.

The results showed that technological, organizational, and environmental factors have different effects on KM adoption and implementation stages. Specially, IT support has the strongest effect on KM adoption stage, while sharing culture has the strongest effect on KM implementation stage.

IT support continues to be positively related to the level of KM implementation after adoption. KM diffusion requires managers to invest time and effort to link specific IT support and knowledge-based work activities, since effective IT deployment for KM can help SMEs move toward a knowledge society, which is vital in the contemporary knowledge economy.

Theoretically, the findings of this study contribute to empirical research on contextual factors that influence KM diffusion using a broad data set rather than a few isolated SME cases. From the managerial perspective, given the importance of KM diffusion in modern SMEs and also in the future, the findings of this study are designed to enable owner-managers and practitioners to understand how SMEs KM diffusion is influenced by contextual factors, and how the effects may vary across different stages.