The rapid growth of the solo economy in the Asia-Pacific area indicates an economic transition. In East Asia, solitary households are growing along with low marital rates and…
Abstract
Purpose
The rapid growth of the solo economy in the Asia-Pacific area indicates an economic transition. In East Asia, solitary households are growing along with low marital rates and birth rates under high economic pressure. Because of these population changes, malls must provide good quality service to meet the specific needs of solitary households and social households. The paper aims to discuss this issue.
Design/methodology/approach
In this study, relationships among service quality, customer satisfaction (CS), perceived value, corporate image and customer loyalty were compared between social and solitary customers of Taiwan click-and-mortar malls. The effects of five service quality dimensions on CS and customer loyalty were investigated by structural equation modeling.
Findings
The analytical results show that all hypothesized relationships among factors were supported with the exception of the impact of perceived value on satisfaction and the impact of the corporate image on satisfaction. Additionally, the comparison between solitary and social customers showed that service quality, corporate image and customer loyalty have strong relationships without differences between both kinds of customers. Solitary and social customers only differed in the impact of perceived value on loyalty.
Practical implications
The managerial implication of this study is that, to satisfy both social and solitary customers and to increase their loyalty, Click-and-mortar malls (CAM malls) should apply different service quality strategies for social and solitary customers. To satisfy both types of customers, a strategy for increasing visible cares should be applied in social customers, and a strategy for increasing the perception of reliability, assurance and visible cares should be applied in solitary customers. To enhance the loyalty of solitary customers, a CAM mall should enhance the value perceived by solitary customers, which can help CAM malls increase the loyalty of solitary customers in the solo economy.
Originality/value
The solo economy is a hot topic in East Asia because the issue of solo economy impacts the market. A CAM mall must evolve its business to attract solitary customers. However, no studies compared perceived quality, satisfaction, perceived value, corporate image and loyalty between solitary customers and social customers. This study is the first study investigated the business model of CAM malls.
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The purpose of this study is that service sectors sectors create queues intentionally as a promotional strategy. Potential buyers might become actual customers after witnessing…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is that service sectors sectors create queues intentionally as a promotional strategy. Potential buyers might become actual customers after witnessing and joining queues. However, the effectiveness of company promotional activities involving queues remains unclear. Despite the innovativeness of this marketing strategy, few companies have adopted this approach, owing to the lack of research on how waiting influences customer behaviors toward waiting in queues.
Design/methodology/approach
Therefore, this study identifies four factors of customer willingness to stand in a queue using questionnaire survey: company promotional activities, improvement of waiting environment, company’ reactions to the queue and customers’ perceptions regarding waiting time.
Findings
This study identifies causal relationships among the aforementioned factors. The results of this investigation reveal that a company’s promotional activities significantly and indirectly reduce customers’ perceived waiting time by improving the waiting environment. Analytical results also show that a company’s queuing management can indirectly reduce customers’ perceived waiting time by improving the waiting environment.
Originality/value
Based on the analytical results concerning causal relationships, improving the waiting environment is critical to affecting positively customers’ perceptions regarding waiting time. Queuing management can indirectly reduce customers’ perceived waiting time by improving the waiting environment. A company’s promotional activities can indirectly reduce customers’ perceived waiting time by improving the waiting environment. Customers who enjoy both the waiting environment and the promotional activities experience much shorter perceived waiting time.
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Chih-Chin Liang and Annie Pei-I Yu
Impulse purchases are a phenomenon of interest in recent years that provides a high revenue stream for companies compared to planned purchases. Airports are a unique shopping…
Abstract
Purpose
Impulse purchases are a phenomenon of interest in recent years that provides a high revenue stream for companies compared to planned purchases. Airports are a unique shopping environment. Travellers usually need to arrive at the airport early and can only utilise limited time to shop at duty-free stores, which makes the shopping experience time-constrained and has the potential to make impulse purchases. The main purpose of this research is to create a model to examine whether “time pressure” and “hedonic shopping motivation” lead to impulse shopping through the formation of “positive emotion” in the context of airport duty-free shops.
Design/methodology/approach
A questionnaire-based survey was conducted in this study. The data collection for this study targeted individuals who had previously used airline services for international travel and visited duty-free shops at international airports. A total of 502 valid subjects participated in this survey.
Findings
The findings indicated that time pressure and consumers’ hedonic motivations have a positive impact on emotions. Positive emotions have a positive impact on the occurrence of impulse purchases. Music and light can moderate the impact of hedonic motivation on emotion but cannot reduce the influence of time pressure on emotion. Social factor significantly moderates the positive association between hedonic shopping motivation and emotion.
Originality/value
The research collected data from various international airports and social media, enabling the findings to be generalised.
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Chih-Chin Liang and Jia-Ping Lee
Due to the increasing awareness of the need to protect the environment, reverse logistics (RL) is being promoted to improve the ecological sustainability of production. RL can…
Abstract
Purpose
Due to the increasing awareness of the need to protect the environment, reverse logistics (RL) is being promoted to improve the ecological sustainability of production. RL can lower the costs of waste disposal, increase market competitiveness, and maintain a good corporate image. Hence, modern companies are focusing on environmental protection to demonstrate social responsibility. According to the OECD report of 2003, buildings consume 32 percent of resources, 12 percent of water, and 40 percent of energy worldwide, and the building waste comprises almost 40 percent of the all waste in the world. Therefore, controlling waste from the interior design sector may help slow global warming. This paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
This investigation models the current and new RL of disposing interior design waste in Taiwan. Modeling the carbon footprint (CF) of disposing interior design waste can help companies be aware of the environmental impact of disposing of waste, and how to improve it through RL. This investigation models the CFs of disposing interior design waste based on studies from Benjaafar et al. (2013), Pishvaee et al. (2009, 2010), and Tascione et al. (2014).
Findings
Analytical results showed that the RL significantly decreases the environmental impact of wastes. Companies can control carbon emission through the findings of this study and find how to improve their recycling process through RL.
Research limitations/implications
This study used the model proposed by Tascione et al. (2014) to develop an RL model for Taiwan. Whereas most studies in the literature analyze the carbon emissions from the comparison between cost and benefit, this study considered the logistics for the whole lifecycle of a product. The analytical results of this study reveal that that RL can reduce the environmental impact of wastes. This case study is the first to obtain results that can be extended to other countries. This study also reveals the importance of recycling plants that can process demolition waste for reuse.
Originality/value
This is the first study to model the RL based on literatures. The findings of this study can be extended to other cases.
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The purpose of this paper is to develop a novel model of a call center that must treat calls with distinctly different service depending on whether they orginate from VIP or…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop a novel model of a call center that must treat calls with distinctly different service depending on whether they orginate from VIP or regular customers. VIP calls must be responded to immediately but regular calls can be routed to a retrial queue if the operators are busy.
Design/methodology/approach
This study’s proposed model can easily reveal the optimal arrangement of operators while minimizing computational time and without losing any precision of the performance measure when dealing with a call center with more operators.
Findings
Based on the results of the comparison between the exact method and the proposed approximation method, the approach shows that the larger the number of operators or inbound calls, the smaller the error between the two methods.
Originality/value
This investigation presents a computational method and management cost function intended to identify the optimal number of operators for a call center. Because of computational limitations, many operators could not be easily analyzed using the exact method. For the manager of a call center, the sooner the optimal solution is found, the faster business strategies are deployed. This study develops an approximation method and compares it with the exact method.