Service quality factors affecting customer attitudes in online-to-offline commerce

Information Systems and e-Business Management - In an online-to-offline (O2O) environment, a company operates multiple channels: online, mobile, and offline. A company attracts customers and...     

Rail human factors: Past, present and future

Rail human factors research has grown rapidly in both quantity and quality of output over the past few years. There was an early base of work at a few institutions carried out over the 1960s and 1970s, followed by a lull in the 1980s and early 1990s. The continual influences of safety concerns, new technical system opportunities, reorganisation of the business, needs to increase effective, reliable and safe use of capacity, and increased society, media and government interest have now accelerated rail human factors research programmes in several countries. In this paper we review the literature on rail human factors research, covering driving, signalling and control, maintenance, reporting systems, passenger interests, planning and technical systems change. Current major rail human factors programmes are summarised and future research needs proposed. It is asserted that general human factors models and methods are being re-assessed, and new ones developed, to meet the requirements of the railways.     

Towards viable, useful and usable human factors design guidance

This paper investigates the factors relevant to producing effective human factors design guidance, using the Engineering Data Compendium (EDC) as a research vehicle. A series of three exploratory experiments focusing on the factors that affect the usability, usefulness and viability of human factors handbooks was conducted. The results of these studies were interpreted in the context of the process by which the EDC was developed, leading to the following recommendations: (a) human factors guidance should be organized in a manner that is steeped in context; (b) human factors guidance should be based on an explicit requirements analysis; (c) the calibration of designers' perceptions of the cost of obtaining human factors information must be improved; (d) organizational policies must be changed to induce more effective information search behaviour.     

Psychology and human factors engineering

Der Beitrag behandelt drei aufeinander bezogene Themen: (1) Das design hoch komplexer sozio-technischer Systeme hohen Gefährdungspotentials, (2) die Merkmale des Human Factors Engineering, (3) theoretische Aspekte von Design Aktivitäten und des kreativen Problemlösens. Das erste Thema artikuliert die spezifischen Schwierigkeiten herkömmlicher Konflikte zwischen einem Technik-getriebenen Design und der Notwendigkeit kognitive und Handlungskompetenzen sowie individuelle Begrenzungen und Bedürfnisse von Operateuren zu integrieren. Das zweite Thema bearbeitet die Anforderungen des human factors engineering im Zusammenhang mit einer Initiative des Vereins Deutscher Ingenieure (VDI) ingenieurwissenschaftliche Design Prozesse aus rein Technik-getriebenen Ansätzen in Richtung ganzheitlicher Ansätze zu orientieren, bei denen in allen Phasen des Designprozesses Human Factor Aspekte berücksichtigt werden. Der Schlussteil reflektiert die psychologischen Aspekte von Kreativität und Design. The presentation deals with three interrelated issues: (1) The design of highly complex socio-technical systems with high hazard potential, (2) the nature of human factors engineering, (3) the theoretical aspects of design and creative problem finding/solving. The first theme articulates the specific difficulties arising from the usual conflicts between purely technology driven demands and the need to integrate the cognitive and action capacities, limitations and needs of the human operator. The second theme addresses the requirements of human factors engineering in the context of a novel initiative of the German Verband Deutscher Ingenieure (VDI). The object of this initiative is to reorient engineering design processes from an exclusively technology driven process towards using a holistic approach which at any design stage takes into account human factor aspects. The concluding section reflects on the theoretical dimensions of creativity and design.     

Human factors in quality management

This article shows the results of research regarding the importance and the role of human factors in quality management in production enterprises. In creating the concept of systematizations of human factors in quality management an anthropocentrism rule was accepted and resulting from it a category of life quality. Acceptance of this rule led to a multiaspect and comprehensive approach to human factors in quality management. An interpretation of the notion of quality was made, adequate to needs, goals, and requirements of a human. Additionally, a cybernetic model of quality management system was elaborated. Human factors was exhibited in the manager's and executor's roles in quality management systems in enterprise as well as to the roles of creators, producers, and users (customers) in product life cycles. An existence of human factors in ISO norms regarding quality management, work safety, and hygiene management and environment management was also shown. The objective of this article is a comprehensive identification and systematization of aspects of human factors in quality management. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Typology of database quality factors

Databases are a critical element of virtually all conventional and ebusiness applications. How does an organization know if the information derived from the database is any good? To ensure a quality database application, should the emphasis during model development be on the application of quality assurance metrics (designing it right)? A large number of database applications fail or are unusable. A quality process does not necessarily lead to a usable database product. A database application can also be ‘well-formed’ with high data quality but lack semantic or cognitive fidelity (the right design). This paper expands on the growing body of literature in the area of data quality by proposing additions to a hierarchy of database quality dimensions that includes model and behavioral factors in addition to process and data factors.

     

Human factors and usability in service quality measurement

The purpose of this study was to develop a modified measurement instrument for service quality that includes human factor considerations. Tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy were dimensions commonly used to measure service quality through a survey instrument termed SERVQUAL. A sixth dimension, usability, was added in a modified survey instrument termed SERVUSE. To examine the predictive power of both instruments, 200 patients at an on‐campus health clinic were surveyed. The survey measured subject expectations and perceptions regarding the service system. Gap scores were calculated as the difference between these two measures. Positive gap scores reflected the exceeding of customer expectations. Negative gap scores reflected a failure to meet these expectations. The three response variables were perceived quality, satisfaction, and behavioral intention. Usability was found to be a significant predictor of all response variables. It also adds significant predictive value to the regression models when measuring behavioral intention. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

基于可信推荐的服务质量评估模型

由于网络用户多样性和利益诉求的复杂性,部分用户发布的QoS数据不完全可信,以致影响了QoS评估的精度,为此提出基于可信推荐的QoS评估模型TR-SQE。该模型以用户推荐的与众不同程度作为其推荐信任度,隔离推荐信任度低于阈值的用户发布的QoS数据;TR-SQE将修正过的QOS信息作为推荐数据,接着根据用户与推荐者的偏好相似性来评估服务质量。分析和仿真结果表明,TR-SQE的平均绝对偏差MAE较其他方法小,评估结果与真实的服务质量基本相符,TR-SQE有助于用户的服务选择。     

Service quality in P2P streaming systems

Relying on end users to contribute bandwidth to the system peer-to-peer (P2P) overlays provide a cheap and scalable way to distribute live video content in the Internet. However, being inherently dynamic due to peers joining and leaving the system at arbitrary time and running over the best-effort Internet, successful commercial usage of these systems may suffer from unstable media quality provided to end users. In this survey, we consider problems related to providing quality of media delivery in P2P streaming systems. We show that in spite of numerous systems available today no one incorporates mechanisms capable to maintain a certain level of quality of delivered media. We identify reasons behind that and discuss possible solutions to this problem.     

Human factors and quality: Integration and new directions

Interactions between the quality movement and the human factors profession have been discussed in a number of recent papers. This article defines a basis for interaction based on the beliefs and techniques of both fields, and provides recent examples of cooperative efforts. Two specific challenges, one in manufacturing quality and one in service quality, are presented to demonstrate that human factors analyses of quality problems lead to new and useful insights. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Perceived quality factors of location-based apps on trust,perceived privacy risk,and continuous usage intention

Numerous location-based services (LBS) studies have suggested that the risk of disclosing personal privacy hinders consumers from adopting LBS, whereas scant attention has focused on clarifying how to mitigate the perceived privacy risk of using LBS. This quantitative study focuses on the effects of consumer quality perceptions (i.e. information quality, system quality, and service quality) on their trust in LBS, which consequently affects perceived privacy risk and continued usage intention towards LBS. Research data were collected through a market survey website; 1399 valid questionnaires were collected. Structural equation modelling analysis was applied to the data. The results revealed that information quality, system quality, and service quality were positively related to perceived trust. Perceived trust also correlated negatively with perceived privacy risk, but positively with continued usage intention. A managerial implication drawn from the findings is that LBS providers should develop more useful user interfaces or provide timely, personalised services to reduce perceived privacy risk and strengthen LBS continued usage intention.     

Organizational impact of system quality,information quality,and service quality

Increased organizational dependence on information systems drives management attention towards improving information systems’ quality. A recent survey shows that “Improve IT quality” is one of the top concerns facing IT executives. As IT quality is a multidimensional measure, it is important to determine what aspects of IT quality are critical to organizations to help Chief Information Officers (CIOs) to devise effective IT quality improvement strategies. In this research, we model the relationship between information systems’ (IS) quality and organizational impact. We hypothesize greater organizational impact in situations in which system quality, information quality and service quality are high. We also hypothesize a positive relationship between system quality and information quality. We test our hypotheses using survey data. Our structural equation model exhibits a good fit with the observed data. Our results show that IS service quality is the most influential variable in this model (followed by information quality and system quality), thus highlighting the importance of IS service quality for organizational performance. This paper contributes theoretically to IS success models through the system quality-to-information quality and IS quality-to-organizational impact links. Implications of our results for practice and research are discussed.     

Promoting software quality through a human,social and organisational requirements elicitation process

Human, social and organisational (HSO) factors play a decisive role in software development in terms of determining functional and non-functional characteristics of software products. The significance of these factors is underlined by the need to produce applications that fit nicely in a working setting, supporting the working procedures followed and promoting users' content and productivity. In this context, a new requirements elicitation process is proposed, a part of which utilises a short-scale ethnography analysis. The process introduces specific steps for recording HSO factors based on certain software quality characteristics that are treated as principal components for conducting requirements identification. The output of the process is the HSO document, which can be used in conjunction with the classic requirements document to identify structural and functional aspects of the system.     

Standard and alternative methods of stretcher carriage: performance, human factors, and cardiorespiratory responses

Transporting a casualty on a stretcher is a common task for medical and military personnel. Stretchers are usually carried by hand, but distributing the load to other parts of the body may have advantages. To examine alternative carriage methods, 11 soldiers walked on a treadmill at 4.8 km/h while performing two-person carries of a stretcher containing an 80-kg manikin. In separate trials, soldiers carried the stretcher using: (1) hand carriage, (2) shoulder straps, (3) a specially designed harness that allowed load shifting between the hips and shoulders (hip-shoulder system), and (4) a clip that fitted on the belt of standard military load carrying equipment (LCE) and placed the stretcher mass mainly on the hips. With each system, subjects walked until volitional fatigue or 30 min. While walking, expired gases and heart rates were obtained and subjects rated their perceived exertion (Borg Scale). At the conclusion of all four trials, subjects rated each system on a number of subjective measures. Results showed that average (+/- SD) carriage times were 2.7+/-1.4, 14.5+/-8.3, 25.4+/-8.1, and 21.7+/-9.9 min with the hand, shoulder, hip-shoulder and LCE systems respectively (p<0.01). Hand carriage resulted in considerably more cardiorespiratory stress (higher heart rate and minute ventilation, p<0.05) than the other three systems, but there were few consistent differences among the other three systems. Perceived exertion in the upper body was less with the hip-shoulder and LCE systems than with the other two systems (p<0.05). Subjects preferred the hip-shoulder and LCE systems overall and for specific subjective characteristics such as comfort, ease of use and stability (p<0.01). These data indicate that moving the stretcher load from the hands and placing that load on the shoulders and/or hips results in improved performance, reduced cardiorespiratory stress and favourable subjective evaluations. Further developmental work should focus on the hip-shoulder and LCE systems.     

Standard and alternative methods of stretcher carriage: performance,human factors,and cardiorespiratory responses

Transporting a casualty on a stretcher is a common task for medical and military personnel. Stretchers are usually carried by hand, but distributing the load to other parts of the body may have advantages. To examine alternative carriage methods, 11 soldiers walked on a treadmill at 4.8 km/h while performing two person carries of a stretcher containing an 80-kg manikin. In separate trials, soldiers carried the stretcher using: (1) hand carriage, (2) shoulder straps, (3) a specially designed harness that allowed load shifting between the hips and shoulders (hip-shoulder system), and (4) a clip that fitted on the belt of standard military load carrying equipment (LCE) and placed the stretcher mass mainly on the hips. With each system, subjects walked until volitional fatigue or 30 min. While walking, expired gases and heart rates were obtained and subjects rated their perceived exertion (Borg Scale). At the conclusion of all four trials, subjects rated each system on a number of subjective measures. Results showed that average (±SD) carriage times were 2.7±1.4, 14.5±8.3, 25.4±8.1, and 21.7±9.9 min with the hand, shoulder, hip-shoulder and LCE systems respectively (p<0.01). Hand carriage resulted in considerably more cardiorespiratory stress (higher heart rate and minute ventilation, p<0.05) than the other three systems, but there were few consistent differences among the other three systems. Perceived exertion in the upper body was less with the hip-shoulder and LCE systems than with the other two systems (p<0.05). Subjects preferred the hip-shoulder and LCE systems overall and for specific subjective characteristics such as comfort, ease of use and stability (p<0.01). These data indicate that moving the stretcher load from the hands and placing that load on the shoulders and/or hips results in improved performance, reduced cardiorespiratory stress and favourable subjective evaluations. Further developmental work should focus on the hipshoulder and LCE systems.