June 2011
The exploration of internet marketing strategy by search engine optimization: A critical review and comparison
With the rise of internet, internet marketing has become an important issue, for increasing internet business competitiveness. Recently, SEO (search engine optimization) techniques have become one important technique for improving website ranking. Meanwhile, social networking sites are getting more and more popular. Using keywords effectively can secure a higher ranking website, and increase site traffic and...
June 2011
Geo-metadata in spatial data infrastructure and e-governance
In the whole world the need of the spatial data has been increasing and much more people want to reach the spatial data via internet. At this point, the importance of spatial data for e-government projects is indisputable. SDI provides a basis for spatial data discovery, evaluation, and application for users and providers within all levels of government, the commercial sector, the private sector, academia and...
June 2011
Are Chinese stock markets mature and open? Evidence from mature stock markets
The maturity and openness of Chinese stock markets can be measured by price impact of other mature stock markets on them. The article uses wavelet analysis to eliminate noise in stock price signal and analyzes to what degree Shanghai stock market is affected by volatility of stock markets of Hong Kong, Tokyo, New York and London by using Structural Vector Auto Regression (SVAR), impulse response...
June 2011
Strategic outsourcing investment in high technology industry
In a highly competitive industry, especially high-tech industry, a firm needs to have appropriate outsourcing strategies in order to survive. However, a firm used to have a strategic dilemma between supplier-oriented strategy and production-oriented strategy. Because of increasing complexity in the socio-economic surroundings along with rapidly changing technologies, how to have a suitable outsourcing...
June 2011
Contemporary marketing practice in large manufacturing firms in Iran
The 21st century is bringing dramatic changes in the marketing environment that is leading to a rethinking of the marketing discipline. For example, as markets are becoming mature and customers become scarce resources, the notion of relationship marketing (RM) has increasingly become important (Day, 2000; Dwyer; Gummesson, 1999; Gronroos, 1991; Morgan and Hunt 1994; Webster, 1992). ButConditions in...
June 2011
Tourism in South Africa- time series persistence and the nature of the shocks: Are they transitory or permanent?
This paper deals with the analysis of several time series related with the tourism sector in South Africa. We examine the orders of integration of the series in order to determine if they are stationary or nonstationary, and, more importantly, if the shocks affecting them are of a permanent or a transitory nature. Policy implications based on the results obtained are derived. Key...
June 2011
Analyzing the purchase motivation of online shopping for health food
For the fact that health awareness is on the increase and there is improvement in medical technology, the health food industry is vigorously developing. In the past, traditional physical store was the major means of selling health food, but at present e-commerce has induced the traditional physical store to threat gradually. According to MIT, the growth of online shopping market in Taiwan reached $ 8 billion...
June 2011
International students' choice criteria for selection of higher learning in Malaysian private universities
This study evaluates and extends research on the choice criteria that influence international students’ choice of Malaysian tertiary education providers. Based on an extensive review of both the education services and international marketing, a series of in-depth interviews generated many of the choice criteria. These were tested on a sample of international students from a few private universities on...
June 2011
Inventory model for items with imperfect quality under announced price increases
Previous research for determining ordering policies in response to known announced price increases assumed that the items received were of perfect quality. However, in practice, the above assumption may not be true because the manufacturer’s production process quality is often not perfect. Therefore, the study develops a new model in response to an announced price increase, in which defectives could be...
June 2011
From city branding to e-brands in developing countries: An approach to Qatar and Abu Dhabi
The United Arab Emirates and Qatar both lack natural attractions, their system of governance is almost identical and their efforts at diversification are very similar. For this reasons, in order to compete with the rest of the world, the gulf countries are developing an assertive branding strategy focused on tourism targets, aviation, real estate and high class events and exhibitions in order to put their...
June 2011
Local government efficiency evaluation: Consideration of undesirable outputs and super-efficiency
The efficiency of the personnel involved in local government is considered to be critical for significant progress in global competition and development. This study adopted a super-efficiency Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model with undesirable outputs to evaluate the operating performance of Taiwan’s local governments. We also employed the concept of the Sharpe ratio to combine desirable and...
June 2011
The cascading effect of top management’s ethical leadership: Supervisors or other lower-hierarchical level individuals?
In the past two decades, both academics and practitioners have dedicated great efforts to successfully implementing organizational ethics. Nevertheless, the understanding of how ethical leadership of top management influences the average employee behaviour is still very elusive. Although it is expected that top management’s ethical leadership will affect individuals when it is made perceptible, a...
June 2011
Analysis of the factors that influence venture capital fundraising: An empirical study in China
China is now in a period of economic transition and the promotion of the venture capital (VC) industry embodies the national strategy of building an innovation-oriented country. A sufficient supply of fund capital is a prerequisite to the development of the VC industry, as it is essentially engaged in fundraising activities. It is thus of considerable significance to investigate the supply of the funds...
June 2011
Emotional intelligence and employee participation in decision-making
This study was conducted to explain the effect of emotional intelligence on employee's participation in decision making. The sample size was 50 employees on different managerial levels. Questionnaire was made on Likert scale to check the effect of emotional intelligence on employee's participation in decision making. The data were analyzed by using SPSS in which correlation and regression test were...
June 2011
Smart specialisation and global competitiveness: Multinational enterprises and location-specific assets in Cape Town
Multinational enterprises can play an important role in increasing the global competitiveness of cities through knowledge spillovers. The extent of spillovers depends on firm strategies, created assets and other local attributes. The paper focuses on six key sectors that account for a large share of the Cape Town metropolitan economy in South Africa. Forty -four lead firms were interviewed to assesses...
June 2011
Developing a strategy for Mobin Petrochemical Company by using Balanced Scorecard attitude
Petrochemical industry as one of the largest and most important sectors is in need of the application of new managerial tools for strategic planning. There are different models and tools for strategic planning. The model of Balanced Scorecard (BSC) has been noticed by various organizations in recent years due to its special attention to intangible assets of organization like customer, internal processes,...
June 2011
Optimal promotional time for maximum sales response with an initial market share in internet marketing
Most products usually have an initial market share at the beginning in marketing. In order to increase and maximize sales response, sellers can set an optimal promotional time limit. This paper aims to explain how an existing initial market share with vital parameters affects the range and shape of sales response curve to reach optimal promotional time. We use two opposite negative exponential growth...
June 2011
Exploring factors that influence customer loyalty among Generation Y for the fast food industry in Malaysia
The consumption of western fast foods has been on the upward trend. As such, it is vital to identify the determinants of the customer loyalty among Generation Y in Malaysia, especially in the western fast food industry. The aim of this research is to evaluate and validate the determinants of the customer loyalty in the western fast food industry. The study also evaluates the roles of perceived switching cost...
June 2011
Using the Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) approach to measure the service quality of mobile application stores in Taiwan
The key purpose of this research is to apply importance-performance analysis (IPA) approach to empirically study the service quality of mobile application stores in Taiwan based upon the customers’ perspective. To facilitate the main issue for evaluating service quality of mobile applications stores in Taiwan, a list of thirty-six service quality attributes is summarized. Then, the IPA approach in...
June 2011
Women in informal cross-border trade: Evidence from the Central Africa Region
Following the 1980s economic crisis and the implementation of structural adjustments, several people shifted to the informal sector with the hope to earn a living. Among such groups are the cross-border traders. What are the opportunities offered through informal cross-border trade-ICBT? What are the business and institutional constraints hindering the achievement of these opportunities? What are the coping...
June 2011
Estimating exchange curve for inventory management through evolutionary multi-objective optimization
Inventory management involves trade-offs between conflicting objectives such as cost minimization and service level maximization. The trade-off analysis of cycle stock investment and workload, so called the exchange curve, possibly dates back to several decades ago. These analyses seldom formulated inventory trade-offs as a multi-objective optimization problem and their solution procedures were all based on...
June 2011
Distinguishing between state dependence and unobserved heterogeneity in a discrete choice model
This paper proposes a methodology to distinguish state dependence from unobserved heterogeneity in the estimation context of a discrete choice model using household scanner panel data. With traditional maximum-likelihood approaches, the individual effects become correlated with the covariates. In contrast, the proposed estimation method formalizes the correlation structure and thereby enables its...
June 2011
Scheduling in flexible job-shop manufacturing system by improved tabu search
Key words: Flexibility, job-shop, sequencing, scheduling, tabu search, meta-heuristics.
June 2011
The impact of hospital brand image on service quality, patient satisfaction and loyalty
In the competitive health care industry, the impact of hospital brand image on the attitudes and behaviours of patients towards hospitals has become an important issue. The aim of this study is to examine the relationship among hospital brand image, service quality, patient satisfaction, and loyalty. Survey data gathered from large private hospitals in Taiwan are used to test the relationship. The results...
June 2011
The quality of service level of mass passenger public transport station
This paper presents a model for defining the quality of service level of mass passenger public transport (MPPT) station for passengers and vehicles. Comprehensive studies were conducted regarding passengers and vehicle operations at multi-modal interchange stations in MPPT system in Belgrade, Serbia during morning and afternoon peak hours. The paper gives the results of model implementation in real system...
June 2011
The role of quality management for effective implementation of customer satisfaction, customer consultation and self-assessment, within service quality schemes: A review
Quality management is mainly examined in a business and service context. Therefore, the determining parameters of defining quality schemes are the business and services provision, the customer satisfaction, the effective assessing of information, as well as the successful monitoring of all participating managerial systems within the business environment. In the present study, references of Quality Management...
June 2011
Valuation of investment on a firm with trade credit under uncertainty: A real options approach
This paper intends to propose a corporate valuation framework by incorporating both the stochastic product price and the stochastic interest rate in a delay payment context. By using Ito-Isometry theorem, we derived the analytical solution for corporate value, based on which sensitivity analyses and further simulations for the real option value are performed. Some critical factors were considered in the...
June 2011
The role of information searches in investment choice variation: Digital information, advice seeking and heuristics
Purchasing risky investments can be a means to maximize individual wealth; but when faced with uncertainty about the investment outcome, individuals search for information on risk-reducing strategies. Most studies focus on digital information and advice-seeking information. This study extends the investigation of information search to discuss heuristics reliance, a simplified information search method. We...
June 2011
A novel nonlinear forecasting model for output of bike industry by Grey model and Taguchi-differential evolution algorithm
Global marketing status shows that over 120 million bikes are being produced around the world yearly. Taiwan applied a cross-strait division of labor to manufacture about 30 million bikes in 2009. Since many study applied forecasts are basic inputs for many kinds of decisions and policy in business and government. This paper proposed a novel nonlinear forecasting model, known as Taguchi-differential evolution...
June 2011
Religiosity as a moderator of work-family demands and employees’ well-being
The current study was conducted to examine: (1) the relation of work-family demands, that is, long working hours, inflexible work schedule, office work overload, household work, issues related to children and husbands with employees’ well-being, and (2) the role of religiosity as a moderator of work-family demands and employees’ well-being. The following hypotheses were proposed: (a) work-family...
June 2011
Social capital and entrepreneurship: An exploratory analysis
This study explores the relation between social capital and entrepreneurship. We construct a measure of social capital which incorporates indicators of; trust (generalized and institutional); associational activities (passive and active membership); and civic norms. Self-employment is used as a proxy for entrepreneurship. Before empirically testing the relation between social capital and entrepreneurship,...
June 2011
Assessing the opinions of social studies teacher candidates in relation to their definition and features of a democratic citizen
The objective of the study is to determine the opinions of social studies teacher candidates about the definitions of democratic citizen. The study was conducted with 50 teacher candidates enrolled in a social studies teaching program in a state university in the province of Ankara. In the study, which is of a general scanning type, an open-ended data collection tool was used. According to results of the...
June 2011
Empirical study on personality traits, job satisfaction, and reward system preferences
This paper empirically examines the relationship among personality traits, job satisfaction, and preference for reward system using a sample of direct selling employees. A survey is administered to 318 salesmen of direct selling in Taiwan. These findings include 1. If a direct seller’s personality trait is more agreeable, he/she will have higher job satisfaction. 2. If the direct seller’s...
June 2011
The ability of EVA (Economic Value Added) attributes in predicting company performance
In this study the major question is, can positive EVA (economic value added) outperform negative EVA in predicting company performance and either the period of study may play a vital role in explaining the variation of the stock return. The study found that neither value creator nor value destroyer had a relationship with stock return, as both models prove to be statistically insignificant. This finding...
June 2011
A study of intellectual capital’s impact on listed banks’ performance in China
This paper uses Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and the intellectual capital measurement to study the impact of intellectual capital on the performance of China’s banking industry and propose changes to improve the efficiency of the banking industry. The conclusions are as follows: capital employed efficiency (CEE) and structural capital efficiency (SCE) have a negative correlation with the technical...
June 2011
Designing fuzzy multi criteria decision making model for best selection of areas for improvement in European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) model
In a growingly competitive business environment, numerous organizations adopt the total quality management (TQM) approach, to struggle for business excellence. To monitor the progress towards business excellence, thousands of organizations across the world use self-assessment on a regular basis. There are a few popular business excellence models, that provide standard criteria against which an organization...
June 2011
A look out for academic impacts of Social networking sites (SNSs): A student based perspective
This study implies the exploration of relationship between SNSs usage and educational performance of the student users. A sample of one thousand students was selected from different universities of Pakistan. In first step of Multistage Sampling Technique, simple random sampling technique was used to select 6 universities i.e. 2 from private sector and 4 from public sector. To form clusters, these universities...
June 2011
Technical transfer in the mold industry: Grey theory and extension engineering
For a long time, the low price of mold industry is the major marketing competitive advantage on Taiwan. At the same time, the lower productive cost in Asian country will replace Taiwan's low-price advantage. This research indicates that the parameters’ influence is to discuss the competitive ability for mold industry, including day of test mold for middle mold, day of test mold for small mold,...
June 2011
Can supportive management contribute to the well being of Muslim working women in Malaysia?
The trend of married working women in Malaysia will become an increasingly common scenario. This is because the current statistics show that women comprise 50% of the workforce, and that 70% of them are married working women. Hence, bringing more women into the workplace is not a choice but a necessity for economic and global competition. Nevertheless, many studies in both the West and the East have only...
Advertisement
Advertisement
