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Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has gradually come to be regarded as a strategic business tool, and has a significant influence on consumers’ behaviours, but few studies discuss CSR regarding consumers’ behaviour in the insurance industry. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of CSR on corporate reputation and customer loyalty.

This paper used a survey to assess consumers’ perception regarding CSR activities from non-life insurance industries. The questionnaires were administered to consumers who have purchased insurance in Taiwan. The survey questions were tested through an exploratory factor analysis. An analysis of variance and multiple regressions were performed to test the hypotheses.

The empirical results demonstrate that CSR activities have significantly positive influences on corporate reputation and customer loyalty. Additionally, CSR activities also have significantly positive influences on brand image. Furthermore, the study indicates the mediating role of brand image on CSR, corporate reputation and customer loyalty.

This paper establishes the mediating role of brand image among CSR, corporate reputation and customer loyalty for non-life insurance industries. Additionally, the empirical results focus on analysing the impact of CSR on customer’s behaviour, and strongly encourage insurers to continue investing; CSR and brand image can be strategic marketing tools and promote the sustainable development of insurance.

In the past few years, several capability indices have been developed for evaluating the performance of multivariate manufacturing processes under the normality assumption. However, this assumption may not be true in most practical situations. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to develop new capability indices for evaluating the performance of multivariate processes subject to non-normal distributions.

In this paper, the authors propose three non-normal multivariate process capability indices (MPCIs) RNMC _p , RNMC _pm and RNMC _pu by relieving the normality assumption. Using the two normal MPCIs proposed by Pan and Lee, a weighted standard deviation method (WSD) is used to modify the NMC _p and NMC _pm indices for the-nominal-the-best case. Then the WSD method is applied to modify the multivariate ND index established by Niverthi and Dey for the-smaller-the-better case.

A simulation study compares the performance of the various multivariate indices. Simulation results show that the actual non-conforming rates can be correctly reflected by the proposed capability indices. The numerical example further demonstrates that the actual quality performance of a non-normal multivariate process can properly reflected by the proposed capability indices.

Process capability index is an important SPC tool for measuring the process performance. If the non-normal process data are mistreated as a normal one, it will result in an improper decision and thereby lead to an unnecessary quality loss. The new indices can provide practicing managers and engineers with a better decision-making tool for correctly measuring the performance for any multivariate process or environmental system.

Once the existing multivariate quality/environmental problems and their Key Performance Indicators are identified, one may apply the new capability indices to evaluate the performance of various multivariate processes subject to non-normal distributions.

The current study investigated the effect of internal marketing practices, specifically the training and rewards system, on job satisfaction, affective commitment and employee turnover intention.

Structural equation modeling analysis was conducted on a sample of 288 responses from employees working in different organizations and diverse industries in Morocco.

The findings revealed that internal marketing positively affected employee job satisfaction and affective commitment and negatively affected employee turnover intention.

The current investigation extends our understanding of the effects of internal marketing practices, especially training and rewards, on an emerging country context and contributes to the organizational behavior and management field. The results may be of interest to organizations and managers who should consider the importance of internal marketing in enhancing job satisfaction, affective commitment and decreasing employee turnover intention.

The current study is the first of its kind to investigate the impact of internal marketing practices on job satisfaction, affective commitment and employee turnover intention in Morocco.

Background music is considered an intangible element but has a close attachment to emotional reaction and memory. Background music is constantly present in our everyday lives, whether for distraction, recreation or mood enhancement. It can be heard in the supermarket, in lifts, cafés or hotels. Music has been identified as important in the construction of autobiographical memories and emotions of individuals. Many premises use music to enhance customers' emotions, and hoteliers try to use music in their lobby to increase the likelihood of customer experience. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the impact of background music as an intangible element in hotel lobbies on customer satisfaction. More specifically, this study aims to draw a connection between the musical variables (musicscape) in hotel lobbies with regard to the gender and age of guests and how hotel businesses can make use of this intangible element to enhance their guest's satisfaction. Sound marketing is an overlooked area in hospitality and tourism research. A mixed-method approach has been employed in this study, including a questionnaire and online interviews. The result shows that background music in hotel lobbies has a significant impact on customer satisfaction and the time they are willing to spend in the lobby. Moreover, different musical variables have obvious influences on the experience of guests of different ages and genders. The results of this study provide theoretical and managerial recommendations on the importance of sound marketing in a hotel lobby setting.

This paper aims to propose a semi-analytical model to investigate the elastic-plastic contact between fractal rough surfaces. Parametric studies have been performed to analyze the dependencies between the contact properties and the scale-independent fractal parameters.

A modified two-variable Weierstrass-Mandelbrot function has been used to build the geometrical model of rough surfaces. The computation program was developed using software MATLAB R2015a. The results have been qualitatively validated by the existing theoretical and experimental results in the literature.

In most cases, a nonlinear relation between the load and the displacement of the rigid plane is found. Only under the condition of larger loads, an approximate linear relation can be seen for great D and small G values. (D: fractal dimension and G: fractal roughness).

The contact model of the cylindrical joints (conformal contact) with radial clearance is constructed by using the fractal theory and the Kogut-Etsion elastic-plastic contact model, which includes purely elastic, elastic-plastic and fully plastic contacts. The present method can generate a more reliable calculation result as compared with the Hertz contact model and a higher calculation efficiency as compared with the finite element method for the conformal contact problem.

Currently, attention to customer experience management is one of the most important management approaches in the business field. Focussing on improving customer experience and having a customer experience management strategy is one of the actions that service providers can take to improve their marketing performance by providing superior experiences to customers. The nature of customer experience is very important for the retail industry, especially for sportswear stores, because sports products are mostly experience-oriented and can be classified as a general experience. Despite the importance of consumption experience in consumer behaviour studies, the design of sports customer experiences has received less attention from researchers. Therefore, this chapter seeks to answer the question of what aspects of creating and developing customer experience in sportswear retail stores are. To answer this question, this chapter attempts to identify the areas of creating customer experiences in sports stores by using the views of sports marketing experts through qualitative research and using content analysis techniques. The findings indicate that sports stores try to provide the best experience for their customers by considering six aspects of human resources and employees, products, interior design, exterior space, technology and interaction and communication in their strategic marketing plans and investing in creating and developing these aspects. They create a distinct experience for customers and provide a basis for purchasing, satisfaction, loyalty and other positive marketing consequences for customers.

This chapter explores the strategic motives behind the decision of hotels to internationalize. It approaches the subject from the perspective of the soft-service sector and aims to develop an understanding of this phenomenon. The literature covers several different factors that stimulate the decision to expand operations abroad. The process requires a trigger that will initiate the process and control the assignment until completion. Eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with international hotel chains to develop an understanding of the process. The findings reveal factors that can be distinguished between proactive and reactive and also be categorized under the four major motives behind internationalization: seeking natural resources, markets, efficiency and strategic assets or capabilities. The international strategy of hotel chains provides a roadmap for expansion and often acts as a trigger. The findings also reveal the significant role of vice presidents (VPs) of international development, development directors, agents and networks in initiating the process of internationalization and stimulating the chains towards specific parts of the world. One of the main differences between manufacturing and soft services is the wide variety of entry modes that are at the disposal of services. The findings are consistent with the literature published and provide an insight into the initial steps towards internationalization by hotel chains, in the post-COVID era.

Research question: What are the strategic motives behind the decision of hotels to internationalize?

The purpose of this paper is to search an energy balance routing in the wireless sensor networks (WSN) and lengthen the life of the networks.

To save energy in the WSN, some routing protocols search routing with the minimum total energy consumption of the network, and others reduce data redundancy by data aggregation. But if the distribution of energy consumption was not even, the energy of some nodes would be exhausted rapidly and thus the whole network would break down. Thus, an energy balance routing notion, including communication energy cost of the routing, remaining energy of communication sensors and sensor load have been involved. Then a new algorithm, mouse colony optimization and simulated annealing (SA), is advanced to solve the problem of energy balance routing in the network.

The energy balance routing, based on mouse colony optimization and SA, performs well and yields better performance than other congener algorithms.

The appointed times of the algorithm is the main limitation which increase the complexity of the algorithm.

A very useful routing in wireless sensor networks.

The new approach of energy balance routing notion, including communication energy cost of the routing, remaining energy of communication sensors and sensor load. The new algorithm, mouse colony optimization algorithm, simulated mice action, was proposed to solve the energy balance routing of the network.

In this chapter, we will review the history, deregulation, policy reforms, and airline consolidations and mergers of the Chinese airline industry. The measurement of airline competition in China’s domestic market will also be discussed. Although air deregulation is still ongoing, the Chinese airline industry has become a market-driven business subject to some mild regulations. Then, we will review the impressive development of the high-speed rail (HSR) network in China and its effects on the domestic civil aviation market. In general, previous studies have found that the introduction of HSR services has a significant negative impact on airfare and air travel demand in China. The rapidly expanding network of HSR has important policy implications for Chinese airlines.

Prefabricated construction is often hindered by scheduling delays. This paper aims to propose a schedule delay prediction model system, which can provide the key information for controlling the delay effects of risk-related factors on scheduling in prefabricated construction.

This paper combines SD (System Dynamics) and BP (Back Propagation) neural network to predict risk related delays. The SD-based prediction model focuses on dynamically presenting the interrelated impacts of risk events and activities along with workflow. While BP neural network model is proposed to evaluate the delay effect for a single risk event disrupting a single job, which is the necessary input parameter of SD-based model.

The established model system is validated through a structural test, an extreme condition test, a sensitivity test, and an error test, and shows an excellent performance on aspect of reliability and accuracy. Furthermore, 5 scenarios of case application during 3 different projects located in separate cities prove the prediction model system can be applied in a wide range.

This paper contributes to academic research on combination of SD and BP neural network at the operational level prediction, and a practical prediction tool supporting managers to take decision-making in a timely manner against delays.