A PRELIMINARY SURVEY STUDY ON THE RECEPTION OF INDOOR HYDROPONICS SYSTEM FOR LOW-INCOME HOUSEHOLD IN SELANGOR

Indoor hydroponics system is gaining acceptance and traction in providing practical indoor farming capabilities for urban dwellers, including in low income housing estates. However, for the low income urban dwellers, the size of their residence might restrict the design of the indoor hydroponics system, especially in terms of available floor space. Furthermore, before one starts to develop an indoor hydroponics system, it is imperative to identify users’ preferences, in terms of the types of plants to grow, price, and design to enable the researchers to develop a better indoor hydroponics system. In this study, opinions from 53 participants on indoor hydroponics systems were obtained and analysed. Four aspects were analysed via the survey: (1) customer evaluations; (2) positive value; (3) costing; and (4) purchasing proclivity. The study shows that participants prefer to grow edible plants because of their benefits. Participants also prefer systems priced at below RM100 (60.40% of the respondent). Aloe Vera (56.6% preference) and Brazilian Spinach(49.1% preference) are two types of plants most preferred by the participants. As mentioned previously, the output of this survey will be used to guide the process of developing a suitable indoor hydroponics system for the low-income urban dwellers.

Proactive Complaint Management: Effects of Customer Voice Initiation on Perceived Justices, Satisfaction, and Negative Word-of-Mouth

Customer complaint or customer voice has been recognized as a key response to service failure that activates service recovery. This study aims at investigating how managing customer voice affects service recovery evaluation. Building on the concept of initiation, this study conceptualizes three conditions of service recovery, namely, service recovery based on customer-initiated voice, service recovery based on firm-initiated voice, and service recovery based on no voice. Using an experimental design, the present study investigates how customer evaluations of service recovery vary across voice initiation conditions. The multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) reveals that firm-initiated voice, compared with customer-initiated voice, elevates customer perceived justice and satisfaction while diminishing negative word-of-mouth intention. The research findings emphasize the necessity to activate customer’s voice following a service encounter so that service failure can be identified and addressed, which helps in improving customer evaluation of service recovery attempts.

Effect of online hotel reviews on the relationship between defender and prospector strategies and management controls

Purpose This study aims to analyze the effect of online hotel reviews on the relationship between defender and prospector strategies and management control system (MCS) design. Design/methodology/approach To conduct the study, this paper administered a questionnaire to large Brazilian hotels and analyzed data from 204 hotels using structural equation modeling and fuzzy logic. Findings The main results show that online hotel reviews have a positive and significant effect on the relationship between prospector strategy and personnel and action control. In contrast, online reviews have a negative effect on the relationship between defender strategy and personnel, action and results controls. Thus, it is confirmed that online reviews change the relationship between strategy and MCS design. Practical implications The results show that online reviews play an important role in the decisions of hotel managers regarding MCS design. Customer demand evaluations, which are regularly available online on analysis websites, help managers adapt the MCS design, ensuring that their actions are aligned with the adopted strategy. This study adds to previous studies by showing that hotel managers use the information from customer evaluations to improve their performance. Originality/value The management literature based on the contingency theory indicates that strategy is a variable that affects MCS design. This study extends this discussion by indicating that online reviews, specifically in the hotel industry, can also be a determining factor in defining management controls. In addition, this paper points out that OHR impacts differently, depending on the strategy used and the type of management control.

Early entrants attract better customer evaluations: evidence from the digital camera industry

PurposeIn addition to pioneering, empirical work on entry order increasingly addresses fast followers and laggards and the potential advantages they are able to capture. There is also a growing consensus in the academia, that current measures of firm performance used in the entry order literature to study these advantages are inadequate. This study analyzes the relationship between entry order and customer evaluations, which, depicting the performance of the firm's products in the market, are used as a proxy for firm performance.Design/methodology/approachThe study is set in the digital camera industry, analyzing entries into each new technology level, in terms of the sensor resolution of compact and bridge cameras. The complete dataset consisted of 1,816 digital camera models introduced between January 1996 and December 2017. The data are analyzed using hierarchical multiple linear regression.FindingsThe study finds evidence of early-mover advantage for the compact product category. In the compact camera consumer market, both first-movers and fast followers outperform late movers. Furthermore, the difference in performance in comparison to laggards is greater for first-movers than for fast followers. However, in the bridge category which consists of a more heterogeneous set of products, no significant entry-order effects are detected.Originality/valueThe results clearly indicate that there exists an early mover advantage. Furthermore, the results are not consistent across different product categories within an industry; hence, caution needs to be exercised when analyzing industry dynamics and entry order effects. Finally, our novel conceptualization of firm performance measured as online customer evaluation add new opportunities to investigate firm success

Managing Consumer Complaints: the Case оf Tripadvisor

Today’s Internet technologies make it easier for firms and customers to interact with each other. The second generation of web based services is characterized by having complaint management which allow people to share information and opinions. Online social travel networks are changing the way travellers plan their trips. These websites provide tourists to see other tourists’ reviews, who stayed in hotels before. One of these social networks is Trip Advisor which is well known around the world. The aim of this study is to investigate online complaint management practices emerging in Trip Advisor. It wa selected two hotels that are one-five stars an done-four stars operating in the city center of Çanakkale. For this purpose, it was examined first fifty assessment belongs to gusets stayin gin both hotels. It was evaluated regarding attitudes and complaint management of hotels by analyzing by analyzing the answers given by the hotels to costumer reviews. A total of hundred costumer review were analized. Qualitative data analysis methods were used in the study. Customer comments were transferred to Excel program and reviews were analyzed by content analysis, which is one of the qualitative research methods. The research is based on the first fifty reviews of the two hotels made in Trip Advisor between July 15 and July 25 2019. According to customer reviews in Trip Advisor operating in Çanakkale province, as a result of the findings obtained from the first fifty customer reviews of one five-star and the other four-star hotel business, it was determined that there was no response to the comments of Turkish guests. On the other hand, it was concluded that some foreign guests’ evaluations were returned. The findings of the research are examined, it is among the other findings that both hotels don’t give required importance to customer evaluations and don’t pay attention to customer complaints. In the study, it was concluded that customer complaints are generally related to the features of the rooms, personnel behavior and service quality. Another finding is that customer satisfaction is related to the hotel’s location, cuisine, services (such as tennis courts, spas) and personnel features.

Incremental Fairness in Two-Sided Market Platforms: On Smoothly Updating Recommendations

Major online platforms today can be thought of as two-sided markets with producers and customers of goods and services. There have been concerns that over-emphasis on customer satisfaction by the platforms may affect the well-being of the producers. To counter such issues, few recent works have attempted to incorporate fairness for the producers. However, these studies have overlooked an important issue in such platforms -- to supposedly improve customer utility, the underlying algorithms are frequently updated, causing abrupt changes in the exposure of producers. In this work, we focus on the fairness issues arising out of such frequent updates, and argue for incremental updates of the platform algorithms so that the producers have enough time to adjust (both logistically and mentally) to the change. However, naive incremental updates may become unfair to the customers. Thus focusing on recommendations deployed on two-sided platforms, we formulate an ILP based online optimization to deploy changes incrementally in η steps, where we can ensure smooth transition of the exposure of items while guaranteeing a minimum utility for every customer. Evaluations over multiple real world datasets show that our proposed mechanism for platform updates can be efficient and fair to both the producers and the customers in two-sided platforms.

Consumer responses to strategic customer extensions

Purpose This study aims to examine how brands attempt to extend their customer set not through the typical route of adding brands, but through the strategic extension or enlargement of their target customer set. Building on theories from both reference group perceptions and brand identification, this research explores the impact of strategic customer extensions on current target market consumers. Design/methodology/approach Two scenario-based experiments explore strategic customer extensions for a packaged goods brand and a well-known retail brand. The analysis involves both analysis of variance and SEM methods. Findings Current target market consumers’ evaluations of strategic customer extensions are informed by reference group perceptions relating to the proposed customer extension. When current target market consumers perceive strategic customer extensions as potentially attracting a dissociative reference group, consumers have weaker evaluations and brand identification measures and, subsequently, weaker future intentions towards the brand. Originality/value The brand identification literature is augmented by incorporating theories from the reference group literature to demonstrate how to reference group perceptions drive a current target market consumers’ evaluations of strategic customer extensions to affect the strength of the identification that current target market consumers have with a brand. Brand identification is also demonstrated as mediator customer evaluations and subsequent intentions towards the brand.

Highlighting Effort Versus Talent in Service Employee Performance: Customer Attributions and Responses

Firms often attribute their service employees’ competent performance to either dedicated effort or natural talent. However, it is unclear how such practices affect customer evaluations of service employees and customer outcomes. Moreover, prior work has primarily examined attributions of one’s own performance, providing little insight on the impact of attributions of others’ performance. Drawing on research regarding the warmth–competence framework and performance attributions, the current research proposes and finds that consumers expect a more communal-oriented and less exchange-oriented relationship when a service employee’s competent performance is attributed to dedicated effort rather than natural talent, as effort (vs. talent) attribution leads consumers to perceive the employee as warmer. The authors further propose customer helping behaviors as downstream consequences of relationship expectations, finding that effort (vs. talent) attribution is more likely to induce customers’ word-of-mouth and idea provision behaviors. The findings enrich existing literature by identifying performance attributions as a managerially meaningful antecedent of relationship expectations and offer practical guidance on how marketers can influence consumers’ relationship expectations and helping behaviors.