Assessing Customer Satisfaction in a V-commerce Environment

This article describes the design and implementation of a non-intrusive method of assessing customer satisfaction in a voice-enabled electronic commerce environment. After recording a customer's speech voice during his or her interaction with a voice-enabled Web system (VWS), a subsequent questionnaire survey was immediately administered to identify the satisfaction level of the customer. Afterward, a collection of recorded customer voice files and the corresponding values of customer satisfaction were used to construct an artificial neural network-based expert system, the satisfaction level assessment system (SLAS), which was thereafter integrated into VWS for automatically detecting the satisfaction level of VWS users. Experiments were performed to test the feasibility and applicability of the proposed method, and good preliminary results were derived. Instead of using the conventional questionnaire-based approach, SLAS is non-intrusive because it does not require users to fill out any questionnaire. The proposed method can be used by various voice-based business applications, such as call centers and customer relationship management, to achieve the business objective of improving customer satisfaction, enforcing customer loyalty, increasing re-purchase rate, and enhancing enterprise's benefits. The proposed SLAS (including method and system) that was filed for patent application was recently approved by the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office under Patent No. I268478.     

Political Marketing Strategies in Africa: Expert Opinions of Recent Political Elections in Ghana

This study focuses on expert views of the importance of political marketing and electoral victory in African nations with an emphasis on Ghana. There is a particular focus in this article on understanding political marketing communication issues pertaining to the 2008 Ghanaian presidential elections. Following Peng and Hackley (2007 Peng , N. , & Hackley , C. ( 2007 ). Political marketing communications planning in the UK and Taiwan: Comparative insights from leading practitioners . Marketing Intelligence and Planning , 25 ( 5 ), 483 – 498 .[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), we used “elite interviews,” dyadic depth interviews with highly regarded marketing and communication practitioners who were also MBA students at Ghana's premier business school. We also employed Butter and Collins' (1994 Butler , P. , & Collins , N. ( 1994 ). Political marketing: Structure and process . European Journal of Marketing , 28 ( 1 ), 19 – 34 .[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) political marketing structure model in eliciting and analyzing the study findings. We found that all four of the themes discussed by Butler and Collins (1994) played a role in the defeat of the incumbent party—New Patriotic Party (NPP). Product factors was the key theme followed by organizational, process, and market factors, respectively. This paper is an important initial step in highlighting the significance of political marketing to the fortunes of political parties in Africa.     

An index number framework for explaining changes in input productivity– an application to energy efficiency

Lott (2009) finds that nonvoted ballot rates for down-ballot races are greater than those for presidential races, and newer technologies that reduce nonvoted presidential ballots create even greater rates of nonvoting down-ballot than the same older voting technologies. The conclusion is momentous: adopting voting technologies that minimize under-voting in presidential races actually increases under-voting across all races on the same ballot. This study extends Lott's by examining the Congressional vote on the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA 2002), which established a program to provide funds to states in order to replace punch card voting systems with newer technologies. We focus on the racial component of Lott's finding, specifically that Hispanic-American voters exhibit greater rates of voter fatigue than do white voters. This study posits that, given the large Hispanic-American populations in California and Texas and their propensity to support Democrats in these states, House Democrats from these states would not view the HAVA 2002 as favourably as House Democrats from other parts of the US. Among other results presented here, the data show that support for HAVA 2002 among California and Texas House Democrats was 11.6 percentage points below that of House Democrats from the other 48 states.     

Degrowth,the past,the future,and the human nature

In the last years, different sources point to a same message: industrial civilization has entered an overshoot mode, the natural limits to growth have been already surpassed. This frontier does not wait for us in the future; it already belongs to our past. If population and the economy are truly beyond the limits, then current visions and theories of social change would be deeply perturbed. If the development era is approaching its end, then many sociological theories on current societies will share the same destiny, sustainable development doctrines between them. It is worth to examine theories that explicitly look at the social world this way or that – at least – are not incompatible with it. Differences between these theories depend on sociological, psychological and anthropological questions; or, in other words, they depend on the human nature. Exploring the relationship between degrowth and the human nature gives rise to debates about selective pressures under conditions of scarcity (human evolution), historical and anthropological evidence, philosophy, and sociology (institutional resilience, utopies as whole society experiments…). As its conclusion, the argument accepts that an evolutionary perspective supports that there are some potentials for conscious social change even in a way-down era, but it does not justify the belief in a particular only line of history. This conclusion does not satisfy the desire of knowing the future; nevertheless it may be the only one possible. The future is not written. Neither in history nor in evolution; not even in the mixture of history and evolution that conforms us as inhabitants of the Earth.     

THE IMPACT OF TAX PRICE CHANGES ON CHARITABLE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE NEEDY

Eliminating or reducing the federal charitable deduction can have serious impacts on the level of charitable donations. Tax price elasticity estimates from a multivariate sample selection model indicate that changing the deduction to a 12% tax credit would have reduced individual donations in 2012 by 18.9% if applied to itemizing taxpayers and by 10.5% if extended to nonitemizers. Elimination of the deduction would have led to a 35% reduction in individual charitable donations. Even if coupled with cuts in marginal tax rates, eliminating the charitable deduction will still likely result in substantial reductions given the inelastic income elasticities of charitable donations. The estimates justify the ardent opposition of many in the nonprofit sector to the more radical proposals for changing the tax treatment of charitable contributions. (JEL D34, C34)     

New telecommunications services in Austria : A technology assessment

Public fears have grown up surrounding the uncertain potential benefit or harm of recent rapid technological advances in Austrian telecommunications. A technology assessment was called for, to proffer comprehensive and balanced information on the current state of, and future developments in, Austrian telecommunications. This paper explains the organization of the Austrian PTT, discusses successful new services, considers their relationship to the law and the economy, and analyses their social impact.