Research Paper
Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty
Reza Yazdani; Mohammad Javad Taghipourian; Mohammad Mahdi Pourpasha; Seyed Shamseddin Hosseini
Abstract
In the last decade, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) was used as the most effective tool to help businesses gain a competitive advantage by attracting customers. Thus, ICT has significantly contributed to the growth of e-commerce. Internet access allows e-commerce to spread globally and ...
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In the last decade, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) was used as the most effective tool to help businesses gain a competitive advantage by attracting customers. Thus, ICT has significantly contributed to the growth of e-commerce. Internet access allows e-commerce to spread globally and cheaply. However, many organizations did not realize the potential value created by e-commerce. Since the provision of information and branding at the destination necessarily involves the focused attention of all tourism companies in the destination, e-commerce can lead to the development of a new distribution channel in a virtual network and connects the producer with the customer. To this end, the present study analyzed the factors affecting brand strengthening drivers in e-commerce in the Iranian tourism industry. Brand strengthening drivers were ranked using Shannon’s entropy method. The results indicated that advertising and brand communication are the most effective brand strengthening drivers.
Research Paper
Performance evaluation and benchmarking
Atiyeh Sarparast; Ravil Akhmadeev
Abstract
Considering the position of free zones in the country's commercial development, the present study identifies and ranks the factors affecting the attraction of domestic and foreign investments in the development of Iran's free trade zones and is customized in Amirabad port free zone. The present study ...
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Considering the position of free zones in the country's commercial development, the present study identifies and ranks the factors affecting the attraction of domestic and foreign investments in the development of Iran's free trade zones and is customized in Amirabad port free zone. The present study is in the group of descriptive-survey research in terms of applied purpose and data collection method, which used statistical tests and Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) approach. In this regard, the statistical population of the study includes all actual and potential investors and managers of economic units located in the Amirabad Behshahr Free Zone, of which 385 people were analyzed using a questionnaire. The results obtained in the present study at the second level show that the first and the most important criteria is the management issues, followed by strategic planning, infrastructure, economic policies, laws and regulations, and finally location. Next, the most important factor is related to facilities and infrastructure, followed by the existence of natural resources and public budget allocation.
Research Paper
Quality Control
Chimata Murali Krishna; Satyam Sahu; Mayank Kisnya; Gunwant Mishra; Samyak Jain
Abstract
The objectives of this work are to investigate the status of implementation of quality initiatives by manufacturing firms in Madhya Pradesh, India, and to compare large and small-medium scale industries. Very few researchers have attempted to compare large scale and small-medium scale firms in order ...
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The objectives of this work are to investigate the status of implementation of quality initiatives by manufacturing firms in Madhya Pradesh, India, and to compare large and small-medium scale industries. Very few researchers have attempted to compare large scale and small-medium scale firms in order to know the extent of implementation of quality initiatives for a state like Madhya Pradesh. In this study, the survey questionnaire method was used for the collection of data. Nine quality initiatives were selected for the study. The obtained data are grouped into two groups: 1) large scale firms, and 2) small-medium scale firms. Descriptive and inferential statistics are used for analysis and the results are presented. Hypothesis testing was used to investigate for any significant difference between the two groups of firms in implementing each quality initiative. Results from inferential statistics reveal that there is a significant difference in the implementation of quality initiatives in large and small-medium scale industries. The findings of the present work will guide firms to identify areas where improvement is required at each quality initiative level. The study will help small-medium scale firms in the Madhya Pradesh state of India to conduct training programs in the areas of relevant quality initiatives for improving their quality of products.
Research Paper
Neural Networks
Mohammad Karimi Moridani; Atiye Hajiali
Abstract
In recent years, the use of intelligent methods for automatic detection of sleep stages in medical applications to increase diagnostic accuracy and reduce the workload of physicians in analyzing sleep data by visual inspection is one of the important issues. The most important step for the automatic ...
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In recent years, the use of intelligent methods for automatic detection of sleep stages in medical applications to increase diagnostic accuracy and reduce the workload of physicians in analyzing sleep data by visual inspection is one of the important issues. The most important step for the automatic classification of sleep stages is the extraction of useful features. In this paper, an EEG-based algorithm for automatic detection of sleep stages is presented using features extracted from the recurrence plot and artificial neural network. Due to the non-stationary of the EEG signal, the recurrence plot was used in this paper for nonlinear analysis and extraction of signal features. Various extracted features have different numerical ranges. Normalization was performed to prevent the undesirable effects of large values of data. As all normalized features could not correctly classify different stages of sleep, effective features were selected. The results of this paper show the selected features and the Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) neural network able to achieve the values of 98.54 ± 1.88%, 99.03 ± 1.43%, and 98.32 ± 2.11%, respectively, for specificity, sensitivity, and accuracy between the two types of sleep, i.e., Non-Rapid Eye Movement (Non-REM) and Rapid Eye Movement (REM). Also, the results show that the selection of Pz-Oz channel compared to Fpz-Cz channel leads us to a higher percentage for the separation of stages I-IV, awake, while the separation of REM stage using Fpz-Cz channel is better. The results show that the proposed method has a higher success rate in classifying sleep stages than previous studies. The proposed method could well identify and distinguish all stages of sleep at an acceptable level. In addition to saving time, automatic analysis of sleep stages can help better and more accurate diagnosis and reduce physicians' workload in analyzing sleep data through visual inspection.
Research Paper
Management and Entrepreneurship
Seyedeh Sara Pourmorshed; Seyed Mojtaba Sajadi; Sonia Sadeghian Esfahani
Abstract
This paper aims to introduce a business model for eco-tourism residences based on Osterwalder’s canvas business model with a creative tourism approach. Despite of the significance of creative tourism and business model of eco-tourism residences, there is still a lack of sufficient attention to ...
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This paper aims to introduce a business model for eco-tourism residences based on Osterwalder’s canvas business model with a creative tourism approach. Despite of the significance of creative tourism and business model of eco-tourism residences, there is still a lack of sufficient attention to this issues in the literature. Moreover, regarding the growing tourism industry in Iran and the importance of creative tourism in cultural and adventure tourism, it is necessary to seek new ideas to improve service quality and the business owners’ knowledge of their industry. In this regard, this multiple case study research is conducted by semi-structured interviews with seven eco-tourism residence owners in Iran. Open and axial coding methods were adopted for data analysis. This research identifies the main components of nine blocks of the Osterwalder’s canvas business model for eco-tourism residences, including, value proposition, customer segments, customer relationships, channels, key resources, key activities, key partners, revenue streams and cost structure. The results of this study show that the supply factors of creative tourism framework including diversity of world cultures, the provision of unique culture, infrastructure, local crafts, hospitality, creative industries, cultural tourism resources, and more types of tourism are connected to the value propositions in the presented business model.
Research Paper
Mathematical modelling
Mohsen Khasteh; Amir Hossein Refahi Sheikhani; Farhad Shariffar
Abstract
In this paper, we proposed a numerical approach to solve a distributed order time fractional COVID 19 virus model. The fractional derivatives are shown in the Caputo-Prabhakar contains generalized Mittag-Leffler Kernel. The coronavirus 19 disease model has 8 Inger diets leading to system of 8 nonlinear ...
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In this paper, we proposed a numerical approach to solve a distributed order time fractional COVID 19 virus model. The fractional derivatives are shown in the Caputo-Prabhakar contains generalized Mittag-Leffler Kernel. The coronavirus 19 disease model has 8 Inger diets leading to system of 8 nonlinear ordinary differential equations in this sense, we used the midpoint quadrature method and finite different scheme for solving this problem, our approximation method reduce the distributed order time fractional COVID 19 virus equations to a system of algebraic equations. Finally, to confirm the efficiency and accuracy of this method, we presented some numerical experiments for several values of distributed order. Also, all parameters introduced in the given model are positive parameters.
Research Paper
Engineering Modeling
Salar Babaei; Alireza Hamidieh
Abstract
The development of cell sites as part of the infrastructure of telecommunication technology is playing a unique role in emerging businesses at present. Natural disasters and crises can disrupt communication equipment and create severe challenges in service provisions, especially health and security, ...
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The development of cell sites as part of the infrastructure of telecommunication technology is playing a unique role in emerging businesses at present. Natural disasters and crises can disrupt communication equipment and create severe challenges in service provisions, especially health and security, by damaging sites. This might lead to traffic congestion in certain network sections, causing chaos and social crises and increasing the commissioning and equipping costs of backup sites for operators. This study developed an integrated location–coverage–allocation model to improve sustainability through maximum coverage, enhanced flexibility, and minimized overhead expense by determining the position of backup sites and mitigating environmental pollution resulting from the establishment of sites. The stochastic robust optimization model was employed to control the effect of nonparametric uncertainty, while acceptable solutions were generated using the Lagrangian relaxation to address complicated model constraints.
Review Paper
Supply chain management
Reza Tavakkoli-Moghaddam; Javid Ghahremani-Nahr; Paria Samadi Parviznejad; Hamed Nozari; Esmaeil Najafi
Abstract
This paper examines the use of the Internet of Things (IoT) in the Food Supply Chain (FSC) and identifies the strengths and weaknesses of this system. Since this paper is a review study, the papers published from 2014 to June 2021 have been studied and 93 articles related to the field of IoT applications ...
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This paper examines the use of the Internet of Things (IoT) in the Food Supply Chain (FSC) and identifies the strengths and weaknesses of this system. Since this paper is a review study, the papers published from 2014 to June 2021 have been studied and 93 articles related to the field of IoT applications in the FSC have been reviewed. By reviewing the literature, six basic applications obtained for this type of network include transportation procurement, food production, resource/waste management, food safety improvement, food quality maintenance, and FSC transparency. Clustering is used to achieve these. Cluster analysis suggests that researchers should pay more attention to IoT applications for product quality and transparency throughout the supply chain, and consider IT-based systems seamlessly at each level of the supply chain.
Research Paper
Supply chain management
Elham Shadkam; Mahdiyar Cheraghchi
Abstract
One of the stages of crisis management is planning and initial preparation to deal with the crisis. During natural disasters, one of the main activities is the logistics of relief groups and the activities of relief teams to save the lives of the victims of the accident. A review of past events shows ...
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One of the stages of crisis management is planning and initial preparation to deal with the crisis. During natural disasters, one of the main activities is the logistics of relief groups and the activities of relief teams to save the lives of the victims of the accident. A review of past events shows that the chances of rescuing the injured decrease and that a quick and correct decision is important in this situation. This paper presents a two-phase hybrid approach to decision-making and prioritization of affected regions to send relief teams. In this approach, multi-criteria decision-making methods in two phases are used to consider different indicators in achieving the optimal solution. In the first phase, with the help of the primary decision matrix, the AHP, TOPSIS and AHP-TOPSIS methods are used. And in the second phase, according to the results obtained from the first phase, the secondary decision matrix is created. With the CoCoSo method's help, one of the newest methods in this field, areas are prioritized for relief. In order to implement the proposed approach, the city of Amol has been studied.
Research Paper
Case studies in industry and services
K. M. Mustafizur Rahman
Abstract
Job satisfaction of the employees is a concerning issue, accelerates the productivity of any organization. Higher job satisfaction among the employees means the higher chance of profitability of the employers. An effective understanding of factors associated with job satisfaction of the employees is ...
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Job satisfaction of the employees is a concerning issue, accelerates the productivity of any organization. Higher job satisfaction among the employees means the higher chance of profitability of the employers. An effective understanding of factors associated with job satisfaction of the employees is precious to push organizational development. This study based on the data collected from three aluminum industries inRajshahi cityofBangladesh during January 21, 2016 to March 20, 2016 to identify the determinants of job satisfaction among the employees. In this study, age, sex, education, work experience, satisfaction with salary, workplace environment and workplace management system are revealed as the determinants of job satisfaction. For instance, higher aged respondents in more likely to satisfy with job than lower aged (Odds Ratio (OR): 1.30 [0.48-3.57]). Female are more likely (OR: 1.90 [1.03-3.51]) to satisfy with their job than the male. Higher educated employees are less likely (OR: 0.97 [0.56-1.70]) to satisfy with their job than the lower educated employees. Respondents with 15 & above years of experience are more likely (OR: 1.05 [0.33-2.15]) to satisfy with their job than those have less than 5 years of experience. Satisfaction with salary (OR: 1.97 [1.14-3.41]), workplace environment (OR: 1.62 [0.59-6.51]), management system (OR: 1.24 [1.25-3.98]) are significantly associated with job satisfaction of the employees. As the first study, it provides the determinants of job satisfaction among the employees in aluminum industries in Rajshahi city of Bangladesh. Relevant authorities are suggested to consider the study’s findings and recommendations to create new policies regarding job satisfaction.
