The impact of customer interface quality, satisfaction and switching costs on e-loyalty: Internet experience as a moderator

Customer interface quality has been confirmed to critically influence the success of electronic commerce, and there has been extensive discussion about the effects of customer interface quality on consumer behavior. However, few studies have examined how customer interface quality affects e-loyalty. Furthermore, although satisfaction and switching costs are expected to be antecedents to customer loyalty, few studies have systematically examined how these elements are related to customer interface quality. This study proposes an integrating theoretical framework for testing the relationships among customer interface quality, satisfaction, switching costs, and e-loyalty. Moreover, this study argues that the relationships among these constructs are moderated by Internet experience. Empirical analyses are performed using structural equations modeling analysis. The findings confirm that customer interface quality, including customization, interaction, convenience and character, contributes to generating e-loyalty. Particularly, the results show that convenience directly enhances e-loyalty. Additionally, this study finds that customer interface quality positively influences switching costs for customers with higher Internet experience, a phenomenon that has not previously been explored.     

Understanding factors affecting trust in and satisfaction with mobile banking in Korea: A modified DeLone and McLean’s model perspective

As mobile technology has developed, mobile banking has become accepted as part of daily life. Although many studies have been conducted to assess users’ satisfaction with mobile applications, none has focused on the ways in which the three quality factors associated with mobile banking – system quality, information quality and interface design quality – affect consumers’ trust and satisfaction. Our proposed research model, based on DeLone and McLean’s model, assesses how these three external quality factors can impact satisfaction and trust. We collected 276 valid questionnaires from mobile banking customers, then analyzed them using structural equation modeling. Our results show that system quality and information quality significantly influence customers’ trust and satisfaction, and that interface design quality does not. We present herein implications and suggestions for further research.     

Satisfaction Benchmarking and Customer Classification: An Application to the Branches of a Banking Organization

Banking services constitute a highly competitive market and indicate a representative example of customer–oriented organizations. For this reason, customer satisfaction is of vital importance, offering a quantitative measure for current and future performance of these organizations. On the other hand, classifying customers according to their satisfaction behavior may indicate different client clusters with distinctive preferences and expectations. This approach serves the development of a truly customer–focussed culture by determining a set of improvement strategies that best fit the different customer segments. In this paper, the multi–criteria method MUSA is implemented in order to measure and analyze customer satisfaction in different branches of a banking organization. These results are also used to benchmark these branches according to the provided services. Moreover, segmentation analysis is performed in order to identify the different groups of customers and estimate the homogeneity of preferences in distinct customer segments. Data are based on a pilot customer–satisfaction survey, while the most important results are focussed on the determination of the critical service dimensions.     

A linear goal programming approach to determining the relative importance weights of customer requirements in quality function deployment

Quality function deployment (QFD) is a planning tool used in new product development and quality management. It aims at achieving maximum customer satisfaction by listening to the voice of customers. To implement QFD, customer requirements (CRs) should be identified and assessed first. The current paper proposes a linear goal programming (LGP) approach to assess the relative importance weights of CRs. The LGP approach enables customers to express their preferences on the relative importance weights of CRs in their preferred or familiar formats, which may differ from one customer to another but have no need to be transformed into the same format, thus avoiding information loss or distortion. A numerical example is tested with the LGP approach to demonstrate its validity, effectiveness and potential applications in QFD practice.     

Structural equation modeling the use of a risk assessment instrument in child protective services

Risk assessment instruments have been developed to help human service workers identify risk factors associated with abusive families. Many such instruments have been incorporated into management information systems in the form of Decision Support Systems (DSS). This paper reports findings from a case study that evaluated a risk assessment instrument as a decision support tool. Respondents considered “usefulness” of the information a more important factor than how easy the system was to use, the configuration of reports or whether the system was up or not. Focus groups were used to explore how to increase the usefulness of the information.     

Impact of noise on self-rated job satisfaction and health in open-plan offices: a structural equation modelling approach

This study uses a structural equation model to examine the effects of noise on self-rated job satisfaction and health in open-plan offices. A total of 334 employees from six open-plan offices in China and Korea completed a questionnaire survey. The questionnaire included questions assessing noise disturbances and speech privacy, as well as job satisfaction and health. The results indicated that noise disturbance affected self-rated health. Contrary to popular expectation, the relationship between noise disturbance and job satisfaction was not significant. Rather, job satisfaction and satisfaction with the environment were negatively correlated with lack of speech privacy. Speech privacy was found to be affected by noise sensitivity, and longer noise exposure led to decreased job satisfaction. There was also evidence that speech privacy was a stronger predictor of satisfaction with environment and job satisfaction for participants with high noise sensitivity. In addition, fit models for employees from China and Korea showed slight differences.

Practitioner Summary: This study is motivated by strong evidence that noise is the key source of complaints in open-plan offices. Survey results indicate that self-rated job satisfaction of workers in open-plan offices was negatively affected by lack of speech privacy and duration of disturbing noise.     

A systematic approach for improving the quality of official statistics: Case of Korean information and telecommunication industry

With the rapid growth of information and communication technology (ICT) in Korea, there was a need to improve the quality of official ICT statistics. In order to do this, various factors had to be considered, such as the quality of surveying, processing, and output as well as the reputation of the statistical agency. We used PLS estimation to determine how these factors might influence customer satisfaction. Furthermore, through a comparison of associated satisfaction indices, we provided feedback to the responsible statistics agency. It appears that our model can be used as a tool for improving the quality of official ICT statistics.     

Learning through online peer discourse: Structural equation modeling points to the role of discourse activities in individual understanding

Although learning through discourse activities seems well-documented, it is unclear which mechanisms and behavioral variables are involved. What exactly contributes to learning when two or more learners interact in online learning environments? To analyze interrelations between central discourse activities and individual learning outcomes at the level of constructs, we applied structural equation modeling to data collected from 160 dyads engaging in written online learning discourses within a series of homogeneous experiments. We analyzed three theory-based indicators of conceptual elaboration activities during online discourse: the number of questions asked to receive information and expand knowledge, the number of explanations formulated to express individual knowledge, and the amount of on-task discourse. Individual conceptual understanding was represented by objective learning parameters that varied in each particular experimental task. These measured general understanding of the topic addressed and particular understanding of conceptual terms, complemented by the gain in individual self-assessed knowledge. Results of structural equation modeling revealed a strong effect of dyadic conceptual elaboration on individual understanding at the construct level, demonstrating that dyadic elaboration fosters the development of an elaborated individual understanding of specialist concepts and general content knowledge. Moreover, conceptual elaboration was best measured by the number of explanations during discourse. Implications regarding which features of collaborative learning settings promote mutual conceptual elaboration are discussed.     

Exploring the role of customer relationship management (CRM) systems in customer knowledge creation

This study explores how customer relationship management (CRM) systems support customer knowledge creation processes [48], including socialization, externalization, combination and internalization. CRM systems are categorized as collaborative, operational and analytical. An analysis of CRM applications in three organizations reveals that analytical systems strongly support the combination process. Collaborative systems provide the greatest support for externalization. Operational systems facilitate socialization with customers, while collaborative systems are used for socialization within an organization. Collaborative and analytical systems both support the internalization process by providing learning opportunities. Three-way interactions among CRM systems, types of customer knowledge, and knowledge creation processes are explored.     

Assessing the effects of service quality and justice on customer satisfaction and the continuance intention of mobile value-added services: An empirical test of a multidimensional model

Understanding the antecedents and consequences of customer satisfaction in the mobile communications market is important. This study explores the effects of service quality and justice on customer satisfaction, which, in turn, affects continuance intention of mobile services. Service quality, justice and customer satisfaction were measured by multiple dimensions. A research model was developed based on this multidimensional approach and was empirically examined with data collected from about one thousand users of mobile value-added services in China. Results show that all three dimensions of service quality (interaction quality, environment quality and outcome quality) have significant and positive effects on cumulative satisfaction while only one dimension of service quality (interaction quality) has a significant and positive effect on transaction-specific satisfaction. Besides procedural justice, the other two dimensions of justice (distributive justice and interactional justice) significantly influence both transaction-specific satisfaction and cumulative satisfaction. Furthermore, both types of customer satisfaction have significant and positive effects on continuance intention. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

The role of human factors in stereotyping behavior and perception of digital library users: a robust clustering approach

To deliver effective personalization for digital library users, it is necessary to identify which human factors are most relevant in determining the behavior and perception of these users. This paper examines three key human factors: cognitive styles, levels of expertise and gender differences, and utilizes three individual clustering techniques: k-means, hierarchical clustering and fuzzy clustering to understand user behavior and perception. Moreover, robust clustering, capable of correcting the bias of individual clustering techniques, is used to obtain a deeper understanding. The robust clustering approach produced results that highlighted the relevance of cognitive style for user behavior, i.e., cognitive style dominates and justifies each of the robust clusters created. We also found that perception was mainly determined by the level of expertise of a user. We conclude that robust clustering is an effective technique to analyze user behavior and perception.     

Understanding the role of an IT artifact in online service continuance: An extended perspective of user satisfaction

Given increasing investment in an IT (information technology) artifact (i.e., online service website), it is becoming important to retain existing customers. In order to help link website design and investment decisions to the strategy for retaining customers, we propose a model by extending the user satisfaction perspective into research on online service continuance. We empirically tested the model within the context of a social network service. The analysis results found that website information satisfaction and system satisfaction play key roles in forming continuance intention through perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment. It is also noted that computer anxiety serves as an important moderator toward continuance intention. Theoretical and practical implications are offered for better understanding of the role of the IT artifact in online service post-adoption phenomena.     

On the optimal choice of quality metric in image compression: a soft computing approach

Images take lot of computer space; in many practical situations, we cannot store all original images, we have to use compression. Moreover, in many such situations, compression ratio provided by even the best lossless compression is not sufficient, so we have to use lossy compression. In a lossy compression, the reconstructed image ? is, in general, different from the original image I. There exist many different lossy compression methods, and most of these methods have several tunable parameters. In different situations, different methods lead to different quality reconstruction, so it is important to select, in each situation, the best compression method. A natural idea is to select the compression method for which the average value of some metric d(I,?) is the smallest possible. The question is then: which quality metric should we choose? In this paper, we show that under certain reasonable symmetry conditions, L ^p metrics d(I,?)=∫|I(x)??(x)| ^p dx are the best, and that the optimal value of p can be selected depending on the expected relative size r of the informative part of the image.     

Factors affecting the appreciation generated through applying human factors/ergonomics (HFE) principles to systems of work

This retrospective study examined the levels of appreciation (applause) given by clients to Human Factors/Ergonomic (HFE) specialists after they have modified the systems of work. Thirteen non-academic projects were chosen because the HFE interventions involved changed the way workers work at their workplaces. Companies involved range from multi-national corporations and military organizations with thousands of employees to small trading companies with less than 10 employees. In 5 cases the HFE recommendations were fully adopted and well appreciated. In 4 they were largely ignored and not appreciated, with partial adoption and some appreciation in the other 4 cases.     

An assessment of the influence of perceived enjoyment and attitude on the intention to use technology among pre-service teachers: A structural equation modeling approach

This study examined the influence of perceived enjoyment on pre-service teachers’ intention to use technology, in addition to re-appraising the role of attitude toward use in the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM; Davis, Bagozzi, &; Warshaw, 1989). One hundred and fifty-three participants in Singapore completed a survey questionnaire measuring their responses to five constructs from a research model that was developed specifically for the study. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) showed that perceived enjoyment was a significant predictor of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and intention to use technology. The findings of this study support the view of Davis et al. (1989) from over 30 years ago that attitude toward use contributes only modestly to the TAM.     

Time-domain approach to microwave circuit modeling: A view of general relations between TLM and FDTD (Invited article)

The author's research on the time-domain methods for electromagnetic simulation is reported with focus on the expanded-node FDTD and TLM approaches. The theorem of formal equivalence of FDTD and TLM together with its fundamental consequences (published recently or yet unpublished) is summarized. As an example of application of the theorem, a new family of nonequidistant TLM algorithms with controlled stability margin is originally derived by transformation from FDTD. Several meshing techniques for the modeling of irregular geometries are compared, and the locally modified grids based on local integral approximations are shown to provide optimum accuracy to computer resources ratio for practical microwave problems. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Attitudes, satisfaction and usage: factors contributing to each in the acceptance of information technology

This research tests and develops the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), introduced by Davis (1986), which attempts to explain end users' attitudes to computing technologies. It introduces several new variables, including compatibility, user characteristics, system rating and the enduser computing satisfaction (EUCS) construct, a surrogate measure for IT success and acceptance. A questionnaire with over seventy items was completed by a large number of users and LISREL, a technique for modelling a system of structural equations, was used to analyse the responses. The output shows the model as a whole fits the data very well and indicates significant relationships between variables in the model. These results confirm that TAM is a valuable tool for predicting attitudes, satisfaction, and usage from beliefs and external variables. They also show that relative advantage of the system contributed most to attitudes and satisfaction. Compatibility (of the system to the task performed) contributed most to usage and was the most important antecedent of the belief variables, including relative advantage.     

Age as a moderator of attitude towards technology in the workplace: work motivation and overall job satisfaction

Given the prevalence of technology in the workplace, an understanding of employees' attitudes towards technology is essential. Such attitudes have been linked to such important issues as the successful implementation of new technologies in the workplace, employee intent to use technology, and the actual usage of technology by employees. As a result of the rapidly aging workforce, and because age has been linked to computer use and comfort, it is important to examine the relationship that may exist between age and attitudes towards technology. This study examines age as a moderator of 612 employees' attitudes towards technology in relation to work motivation (intrinsic and extrinsic) and overall job satisfaction. Further, given the technological socialisation of the Generation X (Gen X) versus the Baby Boomers, our sample comprised these two demographics. Hierarchical moderated multiple regression indicates age moderates the relationship between attitude towards technology and intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and to a lesser extent, overall job satisfaction. In each instance, older employees exhibit the strongest relationships with the outcome variables when possessing a high attitude towards technology. In contrast, older employees exhibit the weakest relationships when possessing a low attitude towards technology. These results are supportive of the moderating effect of age on attitude towards technology. Lastly, implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

“To disclose or not to disclose, that is the question”: A structural equation modeling approach to communication privacy management in e-health

Driven by communication privacy management (CPM) theory and regulatory focus theory (RFT), this study examined important antecedents of information withholding and truthful disclosure in the novel context of e-health communication. Structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses revealed that health consumers’ behavioral activation system (BAS) and favorable evaluation of an e-health website are positive predictors of truthful disclosure and that health consumers’ prevention regulatory focus and self-concealment tendency are positive predictors of information sensitivity. Theoretical contributions regarding the relevance of CPM and RFT to computer-mediated communication (CMC) and practical implications for the design of persuasive e-health websites are discussed.     

The relationships among the Big Five Personality factors,self-esteem,narcissism, and sensation-seeking to Chinese University students’ uses of social networking sites (SNSs)

It has been suggested that personality factors are related to an individuals’ use of social networking sites (SNSs). The present research explores the relationships between the Big Five Personality factors, narcissism, self-esteem, and sensation seeking and individuals’ use of specific features of SNS. Self-reports were collected from 265 SNS users from a university in China. Regression analyses revealed that personality factors play an important role in how SNS are used. Specifically, extraverts are more likely to use the communicative function of SNS including status update, comment, and adding more friends. Neurotic are more likely to use the feature of status update as a way of self-expression. Agreeable individuals tend to make more comments on others’ profiles. Individuals with high self-esteem are more likely to comment on others’ profiles. Users scoring high on openness and sensation seeking are more likely to play online games on SNS. Narcissistic users are more likely to upload their attractive photos on SNS and tend to use update status more frequently for self-presentation. Gender also played an important role in predicting types of SNS use. Males reported more SNS friends and were more likely to play online games than were females, who were more likely to upload self-photos and update their status.