A Spatial-Contextual Indoor Trajectory Prediction Approach via Hidden Markov Models

Unlike outdoor trajectory prediction that has been studied many years, predicting the movement of a large number of users in indoor space like shopping mall has just been a hot and challenging issue due to the ubiquitous emerging of mobile devices and free Wi-Fi services in shopping centers in recent years. Aimed at solving the indoor trajectory prediction problem, in this paper, a hybrid method based on Hidden Markov approach is proposed. The proposed approach clusters Wi-Fi access points according to their similarities first; then, a frequent subtrajectory based HMM which captures the moving patterns of users has been investigated. In addition, we assume that a customer’s visiting history has certain patterns; thus, we integrate trajectory prediction with shop category prediction into a unified framework which further improves the predicting ability. Comprehensive performance evaluation using a large-scale real dataset collected between September 2012 and October 2013 from over 120,000 anonymized, opt-in consumers in a large shopping center in Sydney was conducted; the experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms the traditional HMM and perform well enough to be usable in practice.

Climate Justice in Durban

This chapter situates itself in the climate justice discourse and unpacks the paradoxes in state and grassroots action. It argues that due to market-orientated and neo-liberal water and sanitation governance, the failure to take into account water and climate change governance as well as ecological and institutional economics resulted in climate change chaos. Due to this paralysis, communities failed to adapt to climate variability. The illogicalities and ambiguities in what the municipality says and does leaves local communities at the vagaries of nature and to deal with the resulting chaos albeit with some doing so in quite inspiring ways. The empirical data is collected through 120 interviews and four participatory action workshops conducted with civil society actors, government officials, academics, and communities of AmaQadi situated in North Central Durban, Umbumbulu in South Durban, Wood Glen and Zamani B in Durban Outer West, Ntuzuma G and Soweto in North Central Durban. The key finding is that the municipal Climate Change Protection Unit adopted a ‘climate-resilient' strategy on the one hand, but on the other, city electricity officials built power stations in flood plains, the Economic Development Unit promoted a shopping mall in a wetland, and eThekwini Water is introducing unpopular UD toilets to deal with water scarcity, without looking at externalities in wetlands and the discharge of faecal waste from broken sewers that compromise biodiversity and ecosystem balances. This chapter is contributing knowledge of climate change resilience and adaptation by communities within the framework of new institutional and ecological economics.

China’s Consumers Have Different Purchase Motivations for International Enterprises and Chinese Enterprises

Many Chinese consumers believe the service attitude of salespeople is very important for consumers to buy a product. However, compare with many local China enterprises, many international enterprises do not seem to realise it. Which generals the question: are consumers’ motivations for purchasing from these two types of enterprises different? The paper describes using an international shopping mall (A) and a Chinese shopping mall (B) as examples. The researchers randomly distributed a questionnaire survey to 110 consumers and analysis questionnaire result via the stepwise regression model. The researchers found consumers purchase goods from international enterprises (A) because of gender, and consumers buy goods from Chinese enterprise (B) as their age and the service attitude of salespeople. This paper confirms that the service attitude of salespeople may not the advantage of international enterprises, but the drawback of the research does not consider consumers to have different purchase motives for different enterprises. In the conclusion, the researchers posit that future research should examine whether consumers’ purchase motivations affect international companies to make profit in the Chinese market

Designing Internet Shopping Mall in the Customer Behavior Perspective

Internet shopping mall (E-mall) is a form of e-shop expansion that has a trading complexity and many product variants. E-mall is still limited in its application because its development requires relatively large capital than building an e-shop. Moreover, the development of application portfolios and architectural design that facilitates how the physical and virtual value chains are elaborated has not been carried out in many system development studies. In designing the portfolio, it is related to the consumer behaviour perspective. The direction of the study is to build an e-mall design concept that elaborates the physical and virtual value chain. The sample of this research is the target consumers who have shopped online as many as 168 respondents in Indonesia. A multivariate statistical study approach using conjoint analysis was employed to develop the E-mall design. This study produces five main dimensions that can be used as a reference for E-mall developers and further develop an application portfolio.

Shopping mall vs Online Retail- Consumer shopping preference in the city of Bengaluru

Ever since the first fully enclosed and climate controlled mall opened in the United States in 1956 It has caught the fancy of consumers. It revolutionized the way retail was looked at. With everything available under one roof, customers thronged the air-conditioned environments to shop in comfort. Slowly they evolved into a recreation space, with multiplex, food courts, gaming zones which ensured that there was something for everyone in a mall. The replicas were erected all across the world, and embraced with much gusto, as malls became the symbol of urbanization and aspirations for developing nations. In the last two decades or so, India has seen a massive boom in no. and size of a shopping mall. It seemed malls are here to stay even though the high value shoppers were decreasing steadily and the only places you could see crowds were the food courts and the multiplexes, or some large lifestyle stores. The mid and smaller size stores renting out exorbitantly priced floor spaces were starting to wear deserted looks. Then the Covid-19 pandemic hit and forced millions to their homes for months. With shops and malls closed, the online retail exploded and became one of the biggest happening of the last two years. Sitting in comforts of their homes, people were buying food, clothes, electronics, furniture from all over the country, offered to them at an eye watering discount which the physical stores could never match. So has the consumer preference changed in favour of online shopping or malls are still favoured once the lockdown is lifted ?Given the Strong commercial impact that malls have had on Indian retail economy, an attempt was made to understand shopping preference of the consumers in the city of Bengaluru through a questionnaire survey collecting 120 responses. The analysis revealed that consumers still prefer offline shopping for clothes, shoes and accessories. While online shopping is preferred for household items. Groceries, Beauty & cosmetics, Electronics were equally preferred through online or offline mode. Participants were also inclined towards having more open public spaces and sports related facilities in the mall indicating that in Bengaluru malls are also places to socialise and spend quality time together rather than mere shopping spaces. Keywords: E-Commerce, Retailing, Consumer Behaviour, Shopping Preferences, Shopping malls

EDAS method based on cumulative prospect theory for multiple attribute group decision-making under picture fuzzy environment

For the long-term development of shopping mall, the managers of shopping mall tend to build a new store to expand the enterprise’s market share in a new city. After holding a preliminary survey of the city, managers have initially identified five sites for construction. In order to select an optimal site, managers invite four experts who come from university, marking statistics, corporate executives and accounting to score sites. And they choose the best site on the basis of scores. The trait of EDAS method is to select an optimal alternative by using the distance of each alternative from the first-rank value. In this manuscript, we build the picture fuzzy EDAS method based on the cumulative prospect theory (PF-CPT-EDAS) for multiple attribute group decision-making (MAGDM) and it can help managers to choose an optimal alternative effectively. During the procedure of PF-CPT-EDAS means, we take advantage of the entropy means to calculate the original weights of all attributes. Ultimately, we testify the effectiveness of the novel model by comparing the overcome of PF-CPT-EDAS means with the results of PF-EDAS approach and other methods.

Sales promotion: the role of equity sensitivity

PurposeThis paper explores how consumer psychographics impact responses to sales promotions (SPs), and specifically whether equity sensitivity (ES) moderates attitudes towards sales promotion in the retail purchase experience (PE).Design/methodology/approachThe study examines data from a survey of 284 Hong Kong consumers, using a shopping mall-intercept method. Every third person walking past the researchers was asked to participate in the survey. After obtaining their permission, those agreeing to take part in the study were surveyed either inside or outside of the shopping complex. The face-to-face intercept surveying method also increases confidence in sample and response reliability.FindingsThe study finds that ES has a significant positive relationship with evaluations of the retail PE. Consumers identified as “Benevolents” were significantly more positive towards SPs and reported significantly higher satisfaction with the PE. In contrast, consumers identified as “Entitled” were less positive towards SP and less satisfied with the PE. In addition, noncash SPs significantly positively influenced Benevolents' PE.Research limitations/implicationsThe current study extends and expands equity theory and ES research by applying these concepts to consumer SPs. The study is limited to an examination of common consumer purchases, across different product categories and SP types. While this allows us to examine the relationship between SP attitudes, ES and purchase satisfaction, future comparisons between individual sales promotion techniques (SPTs) and specific consumer profiles are recommended.Practical implicationsFrom a retail perspective, it is important to understand individual differences and what influences and motivates the consumers' retail PE. Retail managers are advised to track customer purchases and satisfaction levels linked to SPs as this would allow for the identification of which customers are more likely to fit the Entitled or Benevolent psychological profiles and predict their likely responses to SP offers.Originality/valueTo date, there has been little research on individual psychological differences between consumers when offered SPs at retail stores. The current study contributes to the marketing literature by extending the price fairness equity model to the retail PE, thereby addressing a prominent gap in the literature.