Industry 4.0 combines the strengths of traditional industries with cutting edge internet technologies. It embraces a set of technologies enabling smart products integrated into intertwined digital and physical processes. Therefore, many companies face the challenge to assess the diversity of developments and concepts summarized under the term industry 4.0. The paper presents the result of a study on the potential of industry 4.0. The use of current technologies like Big Data or cloud-computing are drivers for the individual potential of use of Industry 4.0. Furthermore mass customization as well as the use of idle data and production time improvement are strong influence factors to the potential of Industry 4.0. On the other hand business process complexity has a negative influence.

https://www.springer.com/cda/content/document/cda_downloaddocument/9783319190266-c2.pdf?SGWID=0-0-45-1512631-p177384986

Industry 4.0 - Potentials for Creating Smart Products: Empirical Research Results

The study investigates on the factors influencing users' IU to adopt SCC.MPC, MU and MPT have significant impact on IU.MEU, MPSR and MPFR are non-significant with IU.MPC and MPFR have significant influence on MU.MPC has significant influence on MEU while MPFR is non-significant with MEU. Smartphone credit card (SCC) is an emerging payment method using NFC-enabled smartphones. The proximity payment allows consumers to pay their products and services by waving their smartphones with a NFC reader. While there are advantageous adopting SCC, the adoption rate has not been encouraging. Interestingly, existing research work on past information technology and system models have so far focused primarily on organizational context and adopted specifically for work. Furthermore, past antecedents were mainly constructed using electronic commerce literatures which do not reflect the actual mobile environment. In contrast SCC is mainly adopted voluntarily by mobile users and for personal purposes. Thus this leads to the difficulty in drawing meaningful conclusion. The study addresses these limitations by proposing a new mobile technology acceptance model (MTAM) which consists of mobile usefulness (MU) and mobile ease of use (MEU) to determine SCC adoption. In anticipating on the complexity which exists in the mobile environment, additional mobile constructs namely mobile perceived security risk (MPSR), mobile perceived trust (MPT), mobile perceived compatibility (MPC) and mobile perceived financial resources (MPFR) were incorporated into the parsimonious MTAM. The integrated model was applied to 459 mobile users through a questionnaire approach and tested using partial least square-structural equation modelling-artificial neural network (PLS-SEM-ANN) has provided a new impact and a possible new research methodology paradigm as it is able to capture both linear and non-linear relationships. While the model confirms the role of MU in MTAM, MEU needs for more attention in practice. The results from the extended model showed that only three of the proposed hypotheses were non-significant in this study and thus warrant further investigation. The study contributes to academia by proposing new mobile constructs that brings together MTAM to assess the likelihood of mobile users to adopt SCC. The study also offers several important managerial implications which can be generalized to the mobile studies of other transportation, hotel, banking, and tourism industries.

Mobile technology acceptance model

Impact of “e-Learning crack-up” perception on psychological distress among college students during COVID-19 pandemic: A mediating role of “fear of academic year loss”

https://cyberleninka.org/article/n/994898.pdf

Authenticity and place attachment of major visitor attractions

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of Malaysian public universities’ service quality on international student satisfaction, institutional image and loyalty. Design/methodology/approach – A total number of 400 questionnaires were distributed to international students, selected using convenience sampling technique, at three public Malaysian university campuses in Kuala Lumpur. Of this, 241 were deemed fit for analysis (60 per cent response rate). Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling was used to analyze the collected data, assess the model and test hypotheses. Findings – The findings show that all the five dimensions of higher education service quality influence student satisfaction which in turn influences institutional image, and together, they influence student loyalty. Research limitations/implications – There are a number of limitations associated with this study. First, the findings of the study are based on data from international students at only three Mala...

Does higher education service quality effect student satisfaction, image and loyalty?: A study of international students in Malaysian public universities

SmartPLS is one of the prominent software applications for Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). It was developed by Ringle, Wende & Will (2005). The software has gained popularity since its launch in 2005 not only because it is freely available to academics and researchers, but also because it has a friendly user interface and advanced reporting features. Although an extensive number of journal articles have been published on the topic of PLS modeling, the amount of instructional materials available for this software is limited. This paper is written to address this knowledge gap and help beginners to understand how PLS-SEM can be used in marketing research.

/pdf/partial-least-squares-structural-equation-modeling-pls-sem-bztfdjasuu.pdf

Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) Techniques Using SmartPLS

The effects of mall personality and fashion orientation on shopping value and mall patronage intension

Prior literature suggests that wireless customers have difficulty in predicting their usage requirements and they often subscribe to rate plans that are not financially optimized. However, the benefits of having wireless customers on optimal rate plans are relatively unknown due to limited research in this area. This paper aims to address this knowledge gap and presents a customer retention strategy for the wireless telecommunications industry. The usage and payment records of 1403 Canadian post-paid wireless customers are examined over a 3.7-year study period. Pearson's χ 2 test and hazard function graph are used to reveal how customer churn rate is influenced by rate plan suitability. The statistical analysis demonstrates that customers who are using optimal rate plans have lower churn rate than those with non-optimal ones.

Fighting churn with rate plan right-sizing: a customer retention strategy for the wireless telecommunications industry

This article studies customer retention in the context of a Canadian wireless telecommunications company and explores the predictors of churn incidence as part of customer relationship management. This research contributes to the existing literature by building a comprehensive retention module that includes several kinds of time-varying covariates related to the customer behavioral and demographic characteristics of customers. Cox regression is used for longitudinal data analysis on 4896 customer records extracted from the wireless carrier's data warehouse. This article reveals that among all factors examined, rate plan suitability plays a key role in influencing customer churn in the wireless telecommunications industry.

/pdf/using-cox-regression-to-model-customer-time-to-churn-in-the-7z0398y7a1.pdf

Using Cox regression to model customer time to churn in the wireless telecommunications industry

The wireless telecommunication industry is highly competitive and managing customer churn is of great concern to wireless carriers as the market matures. Recent research has indicated that wireless rate plans are complicated and confusing to customers, and that wireless carriers are taking advantage of the situation by charging a very expensive per-minute rate for voice minutes beyond the monthly usage allowance. This article revisits an emerging database marketing strategy known as rate plan optimization and explores the importance of having customers on suitable rate plans. After conducting research on 11 525 residential customers from a Canadian wireless carrier, it is discovered that 55.4 per cent of them are subscribing to the wrong rate plans and these customers are churning faster than those with optimal ones. This article argues that proactively matching customers to optimal rate plans can contribute to customer churn reduction, although short-term profitability has to be sacrificed by the carriers in order to realize these benefits.

/pdf/getting-what-you-paid-for-fighting-wireless-customer-churn-4s7jsjrg8a.pdf

Ken Kwong-Kay Wong

Papers

Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) Techniques Using SmartPLS

The effects of mall personality and fashion orientation on shopping value and mall patronage intension

Fighting churn with rate plan right-sizing: a customer retention strategy for the wireless telecommunications industry

Using Cox regression to model customer time to churn in the wireless telecommunications industry

Getting what you paid for: Fighting wireless customer churn with rate plan optimization