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The current study examined the relationships among role stress, proactive personality, employee creativity, and customer-oriented boundary spanning behaviors (COBSBs) for frontline service employees (FSEs). This study collected data from 382 FSEs in international hotels in Taiwan to test the research model. The empirical results revealed that employee creativity was positively affected by proactive personality but negatively affected by role conflict and role ambiguity. FSEs' creativity positively affects COBSBs, including external representation, internal influence, and service delivery. Internal influence also positively affects service delivery and mediates the relationship between FSEs’ creativity and service delivery.

Emerging marketing perspectives show that customer participation creates new opportunities for value creation. A perspective in the marketing section should be highlighted, a new opportunity must be emphasized, and customer participation should be used as a means to define the relationship benefits through their participation. The goal of customer participation is to create a high-value service process by creating cooperation with customers. This study describes and develops hypothesis verification. In the context of professional financial services in Taiwan, this study explores the effect of customer participation on value creation and satisfaction from customer and employee perspectives. It also analyzes the effects of different customer capabilities and employees’ emotional intelligence. The source of data collection is a total of 383 customer questionnaires from domestic financial institutions of two types of bank (public and private) to verify (1) how customer participation affects customer satisfaction and employee job satisfaction through relationship value creation, (2) how customer ability affects the relationship between value creation and satisfaction, and (3) how employees’ emotional intelligence affects the relationship between relationship value creation and job satisfaction. This study uses the structural equation model to verify the research hypothesis and obtains the following results through empirical research: 1. Customer participation affects customer satisfaction through relationship value creation. 2. Customer participation does not completely create positive employee relationship value, which may increase work pressure. 3. Interference results show that customer ability can promote customer satisfaction, whereas employee emotional intelligence does not necessarily affect the relationship between employee relationship value creation and job satisfaction. These results contribute to the banking industry. Customer participation can promote value creation by arranging customers and financial specialists to have an appropriate interactive relationship and professional services

PurposeThis research analyzes the existing information gap in the backgrounds/experiences of buying counterfeit fashion brands in emerging countries like Pakistan.Design/methodology/approachThe quantitative research method was used to conduct this research. A self-administered close-ended questionnaire was used as a tool for survey and data collection. The data was collected from customers shopping at Saddar Bazaar Peshawar and Arbab Road Peshawar which are the busiest roads having shops selling both original and counterfeit fashion products.FindingsThe results indicated that counterfeit buying behavior and the image of original brands have a significant relationship. Furthermore, other variables like Customer’s attitude, Social status, and Price have significant inter-relationships with counterfeit buying behavior and original brand image.Practical ImplicationsIt can be proposed that despite the significance of brands on buyer's behavior, there is still an existing gap covering the effect of consumer counterfeit buying behavior on the brand image of the original brand. The finding of this research can also be used as evidence in other emerging economies like Pakistan. This study will also be used by, marketers of branded companies to understand the consumer’s mind, buying behavior and attitude while buying a counterfeit product.Originality/ValueThis research study is innovative in this field and it is directed in investigating how personal and brand-related elements, influence the intention to purchase counterfeits and original brands in the developing market of Pakistan.Keywords: Counterfeit; Quantitative Research Method; Counterfeit Buying Behavior; Customer’s Attitude; Social Status.

The concept of customer participation has emerged as an important factor for the success of service firms. Customers have become increasingly empowered in choosing the extent of a service they want to produce for themselves; consequently, service firms may find that they have no choice but to embrace customer participation in organising their service delivery. However, the number of studies related to customer participation in high-contact services remains considerably limited. This study develops an integrated model of customer participation management and is empirically tested in a real estate agency. The research model has four variables, including customer participation, customer satisfaction, customer–company identification, and customer loyalty. A survey questionnaire was employed to collect data for testing the hypotheses contained in the proposed model. Through structural equation modelling analysis, the results indicate that customer participation can be both a driver and a moderator for managing...

Travel agencies are high-contact service organizations and customer orientation plays a critical role in their success. However, not all the academic research on the effect of customer orientation on service performance has been positive. This research examines the effect of customer orientation on customer loyalty through two mediators: customer satisfaction and customer-company identification. The study also investigates how customer participation moderates the relationships between two mediators and customer loyalty. The findings are as follows: (1) customer orientation has significantly positive impacts on customer satisfaction and customer-company identification as well as on customer loyalty; (2) two mediators have significantly positive impacts on customer loyalty; and (3) customer participation moderates the relationships between the two mediators and customer loyalty. The research results indicate that customer-company identification can be used as an additional way to enhance customer lo...

This study proposes a modeling framework based on few radio frequency (RF) tracking devices, such as smartphones or beacon. The proposed framework aims to estimate crowd density continuously where vision analysis is unreliable and the relation between pedestrian speed and density can be at least specified. The crowd density estimated through the modelling framework can not only be used for evacuation commanding at emergency times, but also can be used for commercial usage at a normal time and building/facility layout improvement during design time. In the proposed framework, the application level maps input data spaces into feature spaces. The model level applies multiple data models to increase the accuracy of the estimated states. Moreover, the abstract level fuses the heterogeneous parameters estimated from the model level. The models we included in the framework are cellular automata models, ferromagnetic models, social force models, and complexity models. The model parameters are estimated by Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) methods. The fusion algorithm factory instantiates a data assimilation approach and a continuous receiver operating characteristic (ROC) estimator.

In the fierce competition of the hotel industry, how to increase customers' satisfaction and repurchase intension is critical for hotels to gain competitive advantages. This study developed a research model and hypotheses to investigate how electronic trust (e-trust) and electronic satisfaction (e-satisfaction) could sustain repurchase intention of existing customers and also develop word-of-mouth (WOM) for new customers. Web-based and paper-based survey questionnaires were used to collect data and 300 effective samples (198 web-based and 102 paper-based) were gathered. Structural equation modelling was utilised to test the research hypotheses. The results show that navigation has a positive effect on e-trust and e-satisfaction, and both offline trust and offline satisfaction can be transfer to online context which influence e-WOM and online repurchase intention. Several managerial implications for the operation of a hotel are also provided in this study. For example, a hotel should value its offline satisfaction and offline trust as proceeding in e-commerce business. In addition, a hotel's website needs to contain detail information such as room type, price and discount and the layout should design in simple way so as to make the consumer feel easy to use.

The main objective of the paper is to decipher the military expenditure–economic growth relationship, taking the level of economic development (income) into consideration. Our findings suggest the following: (i) military expenditure has a significantly negative relationship to economic growth for the 23 countries with initial incomes (threshold variable) less than or equal to $475.93; (ii) when the threat level is heightened, economic growth (23 countries) is expected to decrease. However, military expenditure in the presence of sufficiently large threats increases growth; (iii) for the remaining 69 countries whose initial incomes (real GDP per capita in 1992 price) exceed $475.93, no significant relationship exists whether the threat variable is taken into consideration or not.

Considering the strategic importance for supermarket chains and to understanding the critical elements affecting their competitiveness and their relative level of competitiveness, this study tries to assess competitiveness of foreign and local supermarket chains in Vietnam using the fuzzy TOPSIS method. The results show that, even smaller size Vietnamese supermarket chains, when compared to foreign chains, are still slightly higher in competitiveness.