Xiaodong Zhang, Ping Li, Xiaoning Ma and Yanjun Liu
The operating wagon records were produced from distinct railway information systems, which resulted in the wagon routing record with the same oriental destination (OD) was…
Abstract
Purpose
The operating wagon records were produced from distinct railway information systems, which resulted in the wagon routing record with the same oriental destination (OD) was different. This phenomenon has brought considerable difficulties to the railway wagon flow forecast. Some were because of poor data quality, which misled the actual prediction, while others were because of the existence of another actual wagon routings. This paper aims at finding all the wagon routing locus patterns from the history records, and thus puts forward an intelligent recognition method for the actual routing locus pattern of railway wagon flow based on SST algorithm.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the big data of railway wagon flow records, the routing metadata model is constructed, and the historical data and real-time data are fused to improve the reliability of the path forecast results in the work of railway wagon flow forecast. Based on the division of spatial characteristics and the reduction of dimension in the distributary station, the improved Simhash algorithm is used to calculate the routing fingerprint. Combined with Squared Error Adjacency Matrix Clustering algorithm and Tarjan algorithm, the fingerprint similarity is calculated, the spatial characteristics are clustering and identified, the routing locus mode is formed and then the intelligent recognition of the actual wagon flow routing locus is realized.
Findings
This paper puts forward a more realistic method of railway wagon routing pattern recognition algorithm. The problem of traditional railway wagon routing planning is converted into the routing locus pattern recognition problem, and the wagon routing pattern of all OD streams is excavated from the historical data results. The analysis is carried out from three aspects: routing metadata, routing locus fingerprint and routing locus pattern. Then, the intelligent recognition SST-based algorithm of railway wagon routing locus pattern is proposed, which combines the history data and instant data to improve the reliability of the wagon routing selection result. Finally, railway wagon routing locus could be found out accurately, and the case study tests the validity of the algorithm.
Practical implications
Before the forecasting work of railway wagon flow, it needs to know how many kinds of wagon routing locus exist in a certain OD. Mining all the OD routing locus patterns from the railway wagon operating records is helpful to forecast the future routing combined with the wagon characteristics. The work of this paper is the basis of the railway wagon routing forecast.
Originality/value
As the basis of the railway wagon routing forecast, this research not only improves the accuracy and efficiency for the railway wagon routing forecast but also provides the further support of decision-making for the railway freight transportation organization.
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Heng-yang Lu, Jun Yang, Wei Fang, Xiaoning Song and Chongjun Wang
The COVID-19 has become a global pandemic, which has caused large number of deaths and huge economic losses. These losses are not only caused by the virus but also by the related…
Abstract
Purpose
The COVID-19 has become a global pandemic, which has caused large number of deaths and huge economic losses. These losses are not only caused by the virus but also by the related rumors. Nowadays, online social media are quite popular, where billions of people express their opinions and propagate information. Rumors about COVID-19 posted on online social media usually spread rapidly; it is hard to analyze and detect rumors only by artificial processing. The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel model called the Topic-Comment-based Rumor Detection model (TopCom) to detect rumors as soon as possible.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted COVID-19 rumor detection from Sina Weibo, one of the most widely used Chinese online social media. The authors constructed a dataset about COVID-19 from January 1 to June 30, 2020 with a web crawler, including both rumor and non-rumors. The rumor detection task is regarded as a binary classification problem. The proposed TopCom model exploits the topical memory networks to fuse latent topic information with original microblogs, which solves the sparsity problems brought by short-text microblogs. In addition, TopCom fuses comments with corresponding microblogs to further improve the performance.
Findings
Experimental results on a publicly available dataset and the proposed COVID dataset have shown superiority and efficiency compared with baselines. The authors further randomly selected microblogs posted from July 1–31, 2020 for the case study, which also shows the effectiveness and application prospects for detecting rumors about COVID-19 automatically.
Originality/value
The originality of TopCom lies in the fusion of latent topic information of original microblogs and corresponding comments with DNNs-based models for the COVID-19 rumor detection task, whose value is to help detect rumors automatically in a short time.
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Hao Zhang, Qingyue Lin, Chenyue Qi and Xiaoning Liang
This study aims to explore how online reviews and users’ social network centrality interact to influence idea popularity in open innovation communities (OICs).
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore how online reviews and users’ social network centrality interact to influence idea popularity in open innovation communities (OICs).
Design/methodology/approach
This study used Python to obtain data from the LEGO Innovation Community. In total, 285,849 reviews across 4,475 user designs between March 2019 and March 2021 were extracted to test this study’s hypotheses.
Findings
The ordinary least square regression analysis results show that review volume, review valence, review variance and review length all positively influence idea popularity. In addition, users’ in-degree centrality positively interacts with review valence, review variance and review length to influence idea popularity, while their out-degree centrality negatively interacts with such effects.
Research limitations/implications
Drawing on the interactive marketing perspective, this study employs a large sample from the LEGO community and examines user design and idea popularity from a community member’s point of view. Moreover, this study is the first to confirm the role of online reviews and user network centrality in influencing idea popularity in OICs from a social network perspective. Furthermore, by integrating social network analysis and persuasion theories, this study confirms the interaction effects of review characteristics and users’ social network centrality on idea popularity.
Practical implications
This study’s results highlight that users should actively interact and share with reviewers their professional product design knowledge and/or the journey of their design to improve the volume of reviews on their user designs. Moreover, users could also draw more attention from other users by actively responding to heterogeneous reviews. In addition, users should be cautious with the number of people they follow and ensure that they improve their in-degree rather than out-degree centrality in their social networks.
Originality/value
This study integrates social network analysis and persuasion theories to explore the effects of online reviews and users’ centrality on idea popularity in OICs, a vital research issue that has been overlooked.
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Ruby Wenjiao Zhang, Xiaoning Liang and Szu-Hsin Wu
While the proliferation of chatbots allows companies to connect with their customers in a cost- and time-efficient manner, it is not deniable that they quite often fail…
Abstract
Purpose
While the proliferation of chatbots allows companies to connect with their customers in a cost- and time-efficient manner, it is not deniable that they quite often fail expectations and may even pose negative impacts on user experience. The purpose of the study is to empirically explore the negative user experience with chatbots and understand how users respond to service failure caused by chatbots.
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopts a qualitative research method and conducts thematic analysis of 23 interview transcripts.
Findings
It identifies common areas where chatbots fail user expectations and cause service failure. These include their inability to comprehend and provide information, over-enquiry of personal or sensitive information, fake humanity, poor integration with human agents, and their inability to solve complicated user queries. Negative emotions such as anger, frustration, betrayal and passive defeat were experienced by participants when they interacted with chatbots. We also reveal four coping strategies users employ following a chatbots-induced failure: expressive support seeking, active coping, acceptance and withdrawal.
Originality/value
Our study extends our current understanding of human-chatbot interactions and provides significant managerial implications. It highlights the importance for organizations to re-consider the role of their chatbots in user interactions and balance the use of human and chatbots in the service context, particularly in customer service interactions that involve resolving complex issues or handling non-routinized tasks.
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Xin Zhao, Na Fu and Xiaoning Liang
Team leaders play a vital role in achieving superior team performance. However, their role in implementing the organizational customer orientation strategy is not well understood…
Abstract
Purpose
Team leaders play a vital role in achieving superior team performance. However, their role in implementing the organizational customer orientation strategy is not well understood. Drawing on social exchange theory, this study investigates how team leader customer orientation affects team customer orientation climate and team performance (i.e. customer satisfaction) as well as the moderating role of transformational leadership in such effect.
Design/methodology/approach
This study builds on survey data collected from matched team leaders, employees and customers nested in 81 service teams and employs hierarchical multiple regression analysis to test the hypotheses.
Findings
The findings indicate that team leader customer orientation increases team customer orientation climate, which leads to a higher level of customer satisfaction. Leaders' transformational leadership moderates the link between a leader customer orientation and team customer orientation climate in an unexpected way. When a team leader is transformational, the team customer orientation climate is enhanced, regardless of the level of team leader customer orientation. When a team leader's transformational leadership is low, the higher leader customer orientation is and the higher team customer orientation climate is.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the customer orientation, transformational leadership and service literature by unraveling team leaders' roles in boosting team customer orientation climate and team effectiveness.
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Kan Jiang, Dailan Zhou, Xiaoning Bao and Silan Mo
Considering that when endorsing the same product, virtual influencers with different identity types (self-created, collaborative) can have different impacts on consumers'…
Abstract
Purpose
Considering that when endorsing the same product, virtual influencers with different identity types (self-created, collaborative) can have different impacts on consumers' purchasing behaviors, this paper aims to explore how to maximize the impact effects of the VIs' respective identities. It provides companies with new perspectives on endorsement strategies.
Design/methodology/approach
The interaction between VI identity type and post type (informational, storytelling) on purchase intention was analyzed in four experiments (N = 1,007), considering informational and normative social influence as intermediate mechanisms and consumer self-construal as moderators.
Findings
The findings show that self-created VI is suited to informational posts and collaborative VI to storytelling posts. This identity-content match effectively triggers the social influence mechanism: informational posts of self-created VI significantly enhance informational social influence. In contrast, storytelling posts of collaborative VI primarily stimulate normative social influence. Consumer self-construal also moderates the process of influencing mechanisms.
Originality/value
Based on social influence theory and matching theory, this paper confirms the existence of an interaction between VI identity types, which influences consumers' purchase intention through informational and normative social influence. This finding fills the research gap in the field of VI endorsement strategy. It also emphasizes the importance of consumer self-construal and contributes new insights into the related field.
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Xiaoning Xu, Yixiong Nie and Xiangang Peng
The purpose of this paper is to introduce the realizing process of the fuzzy logical reasoning method in relation to the insulation detection of insulator strings, especially…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to introduce the realizing process of the fuzzy logical reasoning method in relation to the insulation detection of insulator strings, especially about the establishment of the fuzzy relation matrix.
Design/methodology/approach
Utilizing fuzzy logical reasoning method, the online fault diagnosis of the transmission line insulator strings can be realized efficiently, although the insulation status of the insulator strings is influenced by many factors and the relation between the measured electric parameters about the insulator with the degree of the deterioration is ambiguous.
Findings
Utilizing the pattern recognition method to build the fuzzy relation matrix after choosing the probability of the corona current, the root‐mean‐square value and the peak value and the pulse frequency of the leakage current as the fuzzy operating input variables, using the fuzzy reasoning method to estimate the insulation status proves to be a practical approach.
Practical implications
The experiments verify the correctness of this method by simulating work conditions of insulator strings on an 110 kV transmission line.
Originality/value
This paper proves that using the fuzzy reasoning method to estimate the insulation status of the online insulator strings is a practical approach. The results of the laboratory and the field tests verify the correctness of this approach and the validity of the identification method to build the fuzzy relation matrix.
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Xiaoning Li, Xinbo Liao, Qingwen Zhong, Kai Zheng, Shaoxing Chen, Xiao-Jun Chen, Jin-Xiu Zhu and Hongyuan Yang
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the influencing factors of patients’ financial burden through a case study of hospital on public‒private partnerships (PPP) model (Chaonan…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the influencing factors of patients’ financial burden through a case study of hospital on public‒private partnerships (PPP) model (Chaonan Minsheng Hospital of Guangdong Province) and provide some useful information to policymakers for better development of hospitals on PPP model.
Design/methodology/approach
There are total six indicators that are defined as patients’ financial burden, basing on the policy of “indicators of medical quality management and control on the third level large general hospital (2011 edition),” issued by Chinese Government. In total, 23 potentially influencing factors of patients’ financial burden for hospital on PPP model were chosen from the above policy. The five-year (2007‒2011) data for the above 29 indicators come from statistic department of hospital on PPP model. Grey relational analysis (GRA) was applied to analyze the influencing factors of patients’ financial burden for hospital on PPP model.
Findings
A clear rank of influencing factors of patients’ financial burden is obtained and suggestions are provided from results of GRA, which provide reference for policymakers of hospital on PPP model. The five main influencing factors of patients’ financial burden for hospital on PPP model, in sequence, are rescuing critical ill patients on emergency, rescuing critical ill inpatients, inpatient bed occupancy rate, working days per bed and medical building area.
Originality/value
The study on the influencing factors of patients’ financial burden for hospital on PPP model not only provides decision-making for policymaker of hospital and controlling of medical expenditure but also contributes to release patients’ financial burden for hospitals on PPP model.
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Driven by the growing pressure to justify the contributions of marketing activities, marketers have shown considerable interest in improving their marketing performance…
Abstract
Purpose
Driven by the growing pressure to justify the contributions of marketing activities, marketers have shown considerable interest in improving their marketing performance measurement systems (MPMSs). The purpose of this study is to examine the neglected mediating effect of marketing capabilities on the MPMS–firm performance relationship and to focus on specific aspects of MPMSs that have been largely omitted in the prior research, namely, the comprehensiveness and uses of MPMSs.
Design/methodology/approach
A survey was conducted with marketing and senior managers from 210 Irish-based companies. The proposed research model was tested by using the SPSS Process macro and structural equation modeling in AMOS 24.
Findings
The three characteristics of MPMSs influence firm performance in different manners: while the diagnostic use of MPMSs hinders the development of market-linking capability and thus negatively influences firm performance; the comprehensiveness of MPMSs positively influences firm performance through its impact on architectural marketing capability; and the interactive use of MPMSs via externally focused learning and market-linking capabilities.
Research limitations/implications
Although this study used objective firm performance data to validate subjective data, the use of single-informant and self-reported measures may still be a concern, as the strong relationships between variables may be because of single-informant bias.
Practical implications
This study provides insights into how companies can use a comprehensive MPMS to cultivate specific crucial marketing capabilities and thereby enhance firm performance.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the marketing performance measurement literature by proposing and empirically validating the mediating effect of marketing capabilities on the MPMS–firm performance relationship.
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Xiaoning Song, Jiangyan Li and Xue Xia
Notwithstanding its significance as a form of strategic human capital investment, employee training has not yielded consistent conclusions among scholars regarding its impact on…
Abstract
Purpose
Notwithstanding its significance as a form of strategic human capital investment, employee training has not yielded consistent conclusions among scholars regarding its impact on organizational performance. Some studies deem it effective, while others regard it as ineffective. We contend that distinct types of training impact various facets of firm performance.
Design/methodology/approach
In this study, we categorize employee training as either exploitative or explorative. Specifically, we examine their impact on two aspects of organizational performance: short-term performance and long-term competence, using a quasi-experimental setting and a difference-in-differences (DID) method.
Findings
We find that exploitative training is more effective in improving firms’ short-term performance (e.g. firms’ sales revenue), while explorative training is more effective in enhancing firms’ long-term competence (e.g. firms’ innovation output).
Originality/value
The findings of this study illuminate concrete benefits of training for practitioners, suggesting that firms can strategically select employee training category to maximize returns on their investment in strategic human capital based on their strategic orientations.