Service Delivery Strategies for Alleviating Pandemic Suffering While Maintaining Profitability

The postpandemic world requires a renewed focus from service providers on ensuring that all customer segments receive the essential services (food, healthcare, housing, education, etc.) that they need. Philanthropic service providers are unable to cope with the increased demand caused by the social, economic, and operational challenges induced by the pandemic. For-profit service providers offering no-pay services to customers, allowing them to self-select a service option, is becoming a popular strategy in various settings. Obtaining insights into how to efficiently balance societal and financial goals is critical for a for-profit service provider. We develop and analyze a quantitative model of customer utilities, vertically differentiated product assortment, pricing, and market size to understand how service providers can effectively use customer segmentation and serve the poor in the lowest economic strata. We identify conditions under which designing the service delivery to be accessible to the poor can simultaneously benefit the for-profit service provider, customers, and the entire society. Interestingly, we observe that the increasing customer valuation of the no-pay option because of a superior quality service offered by a service provider need not benefit customers. Our work provides a framework to obtain operational, economic, and strategic insights into socially responsible service delivery strategies.

Role of Technology Readiness in Airline Passengers’ Perceptions of Self-service Technology Quality

Self-service technology (SST) is more crucial now than before for the service delivery of airlines. Many airlines employ various types of SSTs so that passengers can perform certain services on their own. Although many passengers enjoy using the self-service option, some are not ready to adopt such a technology. This study aims to investigate how passengers possessing different characteristics perceive technology readiness (TR) and examine the influence of TR on perceived SST quality. Questionnaires were used to collect data from airports in Bangkok, Thailand. A total of 382 usable data were analysed using one-way ANOVA and multiple regression analysis. Results indicate significant differences in TR across age, education, occupation, income, types of SSTs and air travel frequency. This study also reveals that TR dimensions, namely, optimism, innovativeness, anxiety and insecurity, are important factors influencing airline passengers’ perceptions of SST quality.

Cloud-BIM Enabled Cyber-Physical Data and Service Platforms for Building Component Reuse

While the Circular Economy in the built environment is often viewed in terms of recycling, more value can be obtained from buildings and physical components by their reuse, aided by stewardship and remanufacture, to ensure optimum performance capability. The use of cyber-physical information for online identification, examination and exchange of reusable components may improve their life-cycle management and circularity. To this end, a bi-directional data exchange system is established between physical building components and their virtual Building Information Modeling (BIM) counterparts, so that their life-cycle information—including history of ownership, maintenance record, technical specifications and physical condition—can be tracked, monitored and managed. The resultant prototype Cloud-based BIM platform is then adapted to support an ongoing product-service relationship between suppliers/providers and users/clients. A case study from a major new hospital, focusing upon an example of internal framed glazed systems, is presented for ”proof of concept” and to demonstrate the application of the proposed method. The result of the case study shows that, informed by the life-cycle data from the Cloud-BIM platform, a “lease with reuse” service option is able to deliver a lower total cost and less carbon intensity for each unit of frame-glazed module. This leads to a higher level of eco-efficiency, coupled with decreased consumption of material resources and reduced generation of waste. The research is expected to serve as a step forward in the era of Industry 4.0 and illuminate a more sophisticated way to manage building assets.

Discourse Representation of Consumerism in Mobile Telecommunication Television Advertisements

Telecommunication advertisements have bifurcating relations, functioning as a buoyant part of the capitalist market, and as instruments indexing consumerism, which bridges the gap between service providers and subscribers. Previous linguistic studies on the subject have focused on speech acts, mainly locutionary and illocutionary acts, and the lexical and stylistic resources in telecommunication advertisements. This study focuses on the representations of consumerism in MTN and GLO advertisements. The study adopts a model labeled as conceptual-textual meaning in advertisements, which annexes the principles of critical stylistics, pragmatic acts, and multimodality to analyse both textual and multimodal excerpts from ten (10) MTN and GLO television advertisements. These were downloaded from youtube, where they are streamed to reach a vast majority of internet users after they had been aired on mainstream television and cable stations. The study reveals that consumerism is the most pivotal feature projected in the advertisements of MTN and GLO. Advertisements and services are principally designed to condition choice of the subscribers to expand their consumptions. Consumerism is metaphorised, using food substances and materials co-opted from the socio-cultural milieus that condition the advertisements. Conceptual-textual functions like naming and describing, enumerating and exemplifying and prioritising, and direct acts, indirect acts, conversation, emotional and psychological acts, as well as the textual resources of inference, metaphor, reference, relevance, and metapragmatic joker are used extensively to show consumerism. The study concludes every service option is aimed at expanding consumerism, while the cost of services, interest, and use of the services are the shades of consumption of telecommunication services

Design of Flexible Vehicle Scheduling Systems for Sustainable Paratransit Services

The aging population has led to an increase in the variety and volume of transportation demands by people facing travel difficulties. Hence, transportation organisations need to provide flexible and sustainable paratransit services to meet these increasing demands. In this study, we investigate the design of flexible vehicle scheduling systems in order for a community organisation to serve more people and achieve higher operational efficiency. We analyse and propose a system design based on user requirements for different types of paratransit types. Further, we identify an integrated service option and process flow for dial-a-ride passengers to ride on a vehicle with schedule route passengers. Because this option involves a complex decision, we formulate the problem as a two-stage decision model. To verify the effectiveness of our proposed design, we perform numerical simulations and conduct a case study by collaborating with a transportation organisation. We found that the proposed system would enable the organisation to serve more people with fewer vehicles but without an increase in the travelling time. These results demonstrate the importance of a flexible vehicle scheduling system for accessible transportation organisations to sustain their service operations.

Determining the Market Uptake of Demand Responsive Transport Enabled Public Transport Service

Demand responsive transport (DRT) alternatives offer improved mobility to travellers through station-to-destination or door-to-transit operations. In particular, door-to-transit DRT service acts as a feeder to major public transport hubs, making public transport more accessible and attractive to travellers. This work aims to study the mode choice behaviour of travellers between their current modes and a new service, which is a combination of DRT and public transport. The study is conducted in the Northern Beaches area of Sydney, Australia where DRT is expected to serve as a feeder to the newly introduced express bus service called B-Line. A stated preference (SP) experiment is designed where multiple-choice scenarios involving two modes, status quo (SQ) and the new service (combined DRT and public transit), are presented to the participants. The survey uses trip specific information obtained from Google API to form the attributes for the new service. The collected data are analysed using a latent class choice model (LCCM), which segments the observed sample into distinct groups where each group has its own taste and preferences towards the new service option. Results from the study reveal that one of the identified user segments shows 96 percent uptake towards the new service option, while the other user segment shows an uptake of 44 percent. Results also show that individuals making work trips are more likely to opt for the new service. Findings from this study can provide information to urban planners regarding the market uptake of DRT services. Furthermore, the findings can also help planners in implementing segment specific policies aimed at further improving uptake towards DRT along with public transport.