The Use of Logistic Regression Analysis to Evaluate Customer Satisfaction with a Telephone Hotline

Abstract

This article describes a method used to evaluate customer satisfaction with a telephone Hotline that, at the time of the study, received more than 200,000 calls annually. The statistical analysis, which is based on responses to a customer survey, specifies three logistic regression models as a set of recursive equations estimated in a two-stage process. The first stage analysis estimates two equations designed to measure service quality characteristics that contribute to customer satisfaction. The second stage analysis estimates the likelihood that customers were satisfied with their Hotline experience, as a function of the service quality characteristics and other factors. The results of the analysis provided several practical areas lor improving customer satisfaction with the Hotline.     

Economies as an Antitrust Defense Revisited: The Welfare Trade-offs and Safe Harbors

This paper incorporates a Cournot model of oligopoly pricing into Williamson’s (1968a) model to assess the welfare effect of a merger that yields economies and market power simultaneously. The results show: (i) in most cases, economies from mergers can offset price increases due to market power such that there are positive net allocative effects, and (ii) the safe harbors in the merger guidelines may fail to screen out mergers correctly. The reliability, however, can be improved by considering cost savings and price elasticities in addition to the current use of increases in HHI and post-merger HHIs.     

话带Modem技术的发展

语音信道是应用最为广泛的一种通信媒体。其特点是，频带较窄，信噪比较高。为了在语音信道上获得越来越高的传输速率，研究人员和工程人员已为此奋斗了数十年。采用复杂的格状编码调制技术和正交调制技术，带宽利用率已接近3.1kHz语音带宽的Shannon极限：10b/s/Hz。但是所得到的约30kb/s的速率仍不能满足多媒体应用的需求。双绞线可以提供数兆赫兹的带宽，所以Modem的xDSL家庭利用多电平方式实现了每秒数兆比特的速率，本文主要介绍限制语音信道传输速率的因素，以及提高传输速率的方式。     

The Why's of Business Revisited

One can determine the nature of something by asking what it is for. For example one understands what a chair is when one understands it is for sitting on. This involves understanding its purpose. One type of corporation is the for-profit-corporation. This seems to indicate that this type of corporation, the business corporation, has as its purpose to make a profit. Is that as obvious as it first appears? The favorite way for philosophers to arrive at the "purpose" of anything is to ask the question "Why?" But there are at least two answers to the question "Why"? when addressed to a social practice such as business. One might be asking for a psychological account (explanation) of "Why" a person does business, and this is primarily answered by discovering the motives behind business activity; or one might be asking for a justificatory reason (justification) for the practice – what purpose legitimates business as a human activity. These two answers are often conflated and thus the purpose of business is often considered to be answered by giving the psychological account of the self-interested profit-making motive. This paper will attempt to highlight the importance of making the distinction between motive and purpose clearly, show what confusions arise when the distinction is ignored, and hint at some of the structural philosophical reasons why the distinction got blurred in the first place.     

The Ordinality of Effort Revisited

Where effort is an ordinal variable, representations of effort levels cannot be added together and thus the function Q = F(eN) with which efficiency-wage theorists routinely start is incoherent. Furthermore, the ordinality of effort implies that the convexity of the distribution function condition, as invoked by principal-agent theorists, is meaningless.     

The Student Retention Puzzle Revisited: The Role of Institutional Image

This study aims to develop and test a student retention model that includes system and institutional dropout as outcome variables, examining differences in factors that affect them. We also model the image of the institution as influencing institutional commitment and drop/stay intentions. Using structural equation modeling to test the hypotheses, we found that both initial personal and institutional characteristics (such as students' goal commitment and the higher education institutional image), as well as the institutional experience and integration of the student into the academic environment, will have an effect on the level of student performance and institutional commitment, which in turn influence stay/drop decisions. Higher education administrators need to manage not only conventional factors—such as instructional effectiveness, peer interaction, and academic integration—in order to reduce attrition. They also need to manage brand associations with regard to the positioning of their institution in prospects' minds.     

The Dimensions of Service Quality: The Original European Perspective Revisited

The early pioneers of services marketing in Europe, especially the Nordic School, argued that service quality consists of two or three underlying dimensions. Lehtinen and Lehtinen [1985] referred to physical and interactive quality while Christian Grönroos [1984] identified a technical dimension, a functional dimension and the firm's image as a third dimension. In later years, Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry [1988] published empirical evidence from five service industries which suggested that five dimensions more appropriately capture the perceived service quality construct. This study uses an exploratory factor analysis approach to investigate the empirical factor structure of the SERVQUAL instrument developed by Parasuraman et al. [1988] to measure perceived service quality. Based on the results of five exploratory analyses performed on five SERVQUAL data sets, a model for SERVQUAL is proposed. It suggests that the SERVQUAL difference scores are measures of two factors termed ‘intrinsic’ and ‘extrinsic’ service quality. The model is then fitted to the SERVQUAL data obtained from five samples of clients who evaluated the services of five service industries or companies by means of confirmatory factor analysis. The results of this study provide empirical support for the European authors who, in the early 1980s, argued that service quality perceptions are largely determined by two (rather than five) dimensions.     

The Ethics of Insider Trading Revisited

Following Manne (1966, Insider Trading and the Stock Market (New York, Free Press)) we introduce a distinction between insider trading and market manipulation on the one hand and corporate insiders versus misappropriators on the other hand. This gives rise to four types of alleged inside transactions. We argue that the literature on insider trading has often targeted inside transactions type II, III and IV but that these arguments do not necessarily hold for type I transactions. We look for consequentionalist as well as non-consequentionalist arguments against type I transactions and demonstrate that these are hard to find. Throughout the article we refer extensively to the economic literature on insider trading in order to overcome a relative divide between the economic, legal, and philosophical discussion on insider trading.

Malaysian Money Demand Function Revisited: The ARDL Approach

ABSTRACT

This article examines the long-run and short-run behavior of the demand for money (M1, M2, and M3) in Malaysia. In this study we used a robust estimation known as the unrestricted error correction model (UECM) and the Bounds test (Pesaran, Shin, &; Smith, 2001 Pesaran, H., Shin, Y. and Smith, R. J. 2001. Bounds testing approaches to the analysis of level relationships. Journal of Applied Econometrics, 16: 289–326. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) to determine if the demand for money is cointegrated with real income, interest rate, and the price level. Prior to the cointegration analysis, we tested whether the demand for money series had undergone any structural breaks due to the 1997 Asian financial crisis using the Gregory–Hansen structural break approach. The study used annual data from 1970 to 2004. The Gregory–Hansen test suggests that the 1997 Asian financial crisis did not have a significant impact on the cointegration relationship between money demand and its determinants. The Bounds test revealed that the demand for M1, M2, and M3 are cointegrated with its determinants at the 1% level of significance. Thus, the long-run demand for money was found to be stable. This implies that monetary targeting may be a useful for the conduct of the monetary policy.     

The Determinants of Dual Distribution Revisited

This paper examines the use of what has been called “dual distribution” by firms. Dual distribution involves a firm using both company-owned stores and independently owned franchises to sell its product or service. Using panel data from 1048 companies for the years 2005 to 2009, I use a variety of estimators to determine the factors that influence the relative use of franchising by companies. A key focus of the paper is to control for the possible endogeneity of the franchise fee, royalty rate, and franchise ratio for the companies in the respective industries. Using a panel data estimator and lagged values of the franchise fee and royalty rate as instruments, I find that one reason the franchise fee and royalty rate do not appear to influence the relative use of franchising is due to industry- and firm-level fixed effects, which capture the variation in royalty rates and franchise fees at the company level.     

Exploring Country Bias in a Retailing Environment:

The importance of source countries' influences as predictors of consumer attitudes and behavior toward products originating in the respective countries has been amply acknowledged in the global marketing literature, where it is considered a major research stream-known as "country-of-origin" research. Furthering discovery in this domain, the present study compares consumer perceptions of an electronics store originating in an industrially-developed country known for its technological capabilities in this domain (Germany), with perceptions of a similar store from a developing country (Mexico). In the process, differences between managerial and clerical customer groups in terms of store expectations are also assessed and suggestions are advanced for future research.     

Shorter Papers Automobile Quotas Revisited: The Costs of Continued Protection

This paper examines the loss to the U. S. economy and consumers from the third year of the Voluntary Export Restraint (VER) for Japanese automobiles. Losses due to product differentiation were estimated separately for the domestic car market and Japanese car market. Consideration was given to profit taking as well as product upgrading. The welfare loss ranged from $1.8 billion to $2.8 billion which is higher than loss estimates reported for the first year of the VER. The higher welfare loss reflects the impact of improved economic conditions which resulted in higher prices for manufacturers and dealers and the emergence of product upgrading due to quantity restraints. The total loss to consumers ranged from $2.6 billion to $5.3 billion with more than 80 percent of the loss representing transfers from consumers to producers (domestic and foreign). The high cost of the VER has not been offset by employment gains since Detroit responded to the VER by making fewer cars and increasing its reliance on off - shore production.     

The Ultimate Glass Ceiling Revisited: The Presence of Women on Corporate Boards

Has the diversity of corporate boards of directors improved? Should it? What role does diversity play in reducing corporate wrongdoing? Will diversity result in a more focused board of directors or more board autonomy? Examining the state of Tennessee as a case study, the authors collected data on the board composition of publicly traded corporations and compared those data to an original study conducted in 1995. Data indicate only a modest improvement in board diversity. This article discusses reasons for the scarcity of women on boards and concludes that, to enhance strategic decisions, board membership should reflect the corporation's consumer population. Thus, women are a critical but overlooked resource. Areas for future research are also considered.     

Brand Personality and Emotional Attitudes: The Case of Mobile Telephone Operators

ABSTRACT

As part of a brand image, brand personality has aroused for years the interest of scholars and marketers. This article examines this concept in the case of two mobile telephone operators in Tunisia (North Africa). An empirical investigation, based on a sample of 272 students, has shown that brand personality influences and above all is influenced by emotional attitudes within consumers. At a managerial level, this study sheds light on the main brand personality traits (agreeableness, conscientiousness, sophistication, and youth) that make successful product differentiation and communication strategies. An emotion-oriented approach is also indicated as a salient branding management key of success.     

少数民族纹样在“多彩贵州”文化品牌营销中的运用

"多彩贵州"作为贵州省的一张"名片",已成为一个著名的文化品牌。为丰富该品牌内涵,保持其市场价值,通过运用市场营销中的企业形象理论,对"多彩贵州"文化品牌在视觉识别层面上的价值进行研究。结果表明,贵州少数民族纹样具有较强的视觉识别性及艺术性,可以有效提升"多彩贵州"文化品牌的识别度,保护该省原生态文化资源,并开发出具有更高价值的贵州本土旅游产品,以实现产品更大的市场价值。     

The Poverty Curtain Revisited: Reflections on the Doha Development Agenda

This review article makes a contribution to the discussion of economic development especially as it concerns reasons for the currently stalled trade talks of the Doha Development Agenda of the World Trade Organization. This reviews predictions made by Dr. Mahbub ul Haq 30 years ago in a book titled The Poverty Curtain (1976), and by analyzing this work in conjunction with events that have transpired since its original publication, it clarifies areas of progress for the global economy, as well as areas that are still in need of an improvement. The first part of the analysis will discuss why gross domestic product (GDP) is not a panacea in terms of development. The second part of the review discusses the need for an international “new deal,” something that was stressed 30 years ago, and is still applicable today.     

The Decision to Use Alliances as Corporate Entrepreneurship: The Role of Resources and Skills

This aim of this research is to analyse the role of firm resources and skills in the decision to cooperate as a method for developing entrepreneurial activity. We use a sample of 967 entrepreneurial operations undertaken between 2000 and 2004 by 323 EU-15 companies. Results suggest that skills are more important than resources when choosing how to undertake an entrepreneurial activity. While experience in cooperation and possession of technological resources make the choice of an alliance more probable, experience in entrepreneurial activities and possession of physical resources may lead the company to opt for other alternatives.