Empirical Evaluation of Fair Use Flat Rate Strategies for Mobile Internet

The fair use flat rate is a promising tariff concept for the mobile telecommunication industry. Similar to classical flat rates it allows unlimited usage at a fixed monthly fee. Contrary to classical flat rates it limits the access speed once a certain usage threshold is exceeded. Due to the current global roll-out of the LTE (Long Term Evolution) technology and the related economic changes for telecommunication providers, the application of fair use flat rates needs a reassessment. We therefore propose a simulation model to evaluate different pricing strategies and their contribution margin impact. The key input element of the model is provided by so-called discrete choice experiments that allow the estimation of customer preferences.     

Status Quo and Potential of XBRL for Business and Information Systems Engineering

The paper examines the current state of research as regards the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) by using the literature review methodology. The results show that an empirical-quantitative research design is used most of the time. The contributions vary in substance in terms of research on XBRL and research with XBRL. Research with XBRL focuses on the development of conceptual XBRL extensions. Work on XBRL considers, for example, the changes in reporting as a result of XBRL as well as the acceptance and enforcement of financial reporting standards. The results point to open issues and are relevant for research and practice.     

Factors Affecting the Extent to which Consumers Incorporate Functional Ingredients into their Diets

This study considers the factors that explain the consumption of food and beverages with functional ingredients to avert or offset health problems. We use an instrumental variables Poisson regression model to deal with the endogeneity of perceived health status in functional ingredient use. The first stage results indicate that perceived health status is associated with attitude towards functional foods, food consumption motives and information seeking and being female. The second stage results suggest that individuals who consume more functional ingredients tend to have a positive attitude towards functional foods, are novelty‐seeking, female and older. As expected, consumption of functional ingredients is more likely when consumers’ self‐reports indicate that they are aware of functional foods’ nutritional value and the link with their own health. Consistent with previous research, most of the socio‐demographics are poor predictors of functional ingredient consumption.     

Should we delight the customer?

Critics have suggested that delighting the customer “raises the bar” of customer expectations, making it more difficult to satisfy the customer in the next purchase cycle and hurting the firm in the long run. The authors explore this issue by using a mathematical model of delight, based on assumptions gathered from the customer satisfaction literature. Although delighting the customer heightens repurchase expectations and makes satisfying the customer more difficult in the future, and the delighting firm is injured by raised customer expectations, the (nondelighting) competition is hurt worse through customer attrition to the delighting firm. If customers forget delighting incidents to some degree from occasion to occasion, the delighting firm suffers if it is in a position to take customers from the competition. If taking customers from the competition is difficult, the delighting firm actually benefits from customer forgetting, because the same delighting experience can be repeated again, with the same effect. Roland T. Rust (Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is the Madison S. Wigginton Professor of Management and Director of the Center for Service Marketing at the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University. His publication record includes more than 60 journal articles and five books. His 1997Marketing Science article, “Customer Satisfaction, Productivity, and Profitability: Differences Between Goods and Services,” won the Best Services Article Award from the American marketing Association, for the best services article in any journal, and his 1995 article, “Return on Quality (ROQ): Making Service Quality Financially Accountable,” won theJournal of Marketing's Alpha Kappa Psi Award for the article with the greatest impact on marketing practice. He has also won best article awards from theJournal of Advertising and theJournal of Retailing. His honors include career achievement awards from the American Statistical Association and the American Academy of Advertising, as well as the Henry Latané Distinguished Doctoral Alumnus Award from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His work has been covered widely in the media and has resulted in aBusiness Week cover story and an appearance onABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. He is the founder and chair of the American Marketing Association (AMA) Frontiers in Services Conference and serves as founding editor of theJournal of Service Research. He also serves on the editorial review boards of theJournal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, andMarketing Science. Richard L. Oliver (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, Madison) is the Valere Blair Potter Professor of Management at the Owen Graduate School of Management, Vanderbilt, University. His research interests include consumer psychology with a special focus on customer satisfaction and postpurchase processes. He holds the position of Fellow of the American Psychological Association for his extensive writings on the psychology of the satisfaction response. He is the author ofSatisfaction: A Behavioral Perspective on the Consumer (Irwin/McGraw-Hill) and coeditor ofService Quality: New Directions in Theory and Practice (Sage). He previously served on the boards of theJournal of Consumer Research, theJournal of Marketing, theJournal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, and theJournal of Retailing and has published articles in theJournal of Consumer Research, theJournal of Marketing Research, theJournal of Marketing, theJournal of Applied Psychology, Psychology & Marketing, Behavioral Science, theJournal of Economic Psychology, Applied Psychological Measurement, Psychometrika, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Advances in Consumer Research, theJournal of Retailing, theJournal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, theJournal of Consumer Satisfaction/Dissatisfaction & Complaining Behavior, theJournal of Advertising, theJournal of Consumer Affairs, and others. He previously taught at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and at Washington University in St. Louis.     

The impact of the internet on students’ enhancement of cultural aspects in design projects: a case study on interior design graduation projects,University of Dammam,Saudi Arabia

The paper explores the impact of the internet on students and their enhancement of their Identity and culture in the world of globalization. It is based on two stages; a theoretical background in the literature that provides criteria for examining the issue of the study. Then, the analytical study is done to the collected data. The paper incorporates two methods of data collection; a questionnaire survey to measure the instructors’ perception of how students should reflect the identity and local culture in their projects in the internet era, and statistical analysis of students’ implementation of cultural knowledge and identity features in their graduation projects in the new millennium before the usage of internet in the design education in the interval of 2001–2007 and after the usage of internet the interval between 2008 and 2015. Consequently, the paper is designed to generate both statistical quantitative and qualitative data. Despite the apparent impact of Globalization and internet based education on abandoning individual identity, yet it might lead to opening new horizons in front of dealing with cultural identity and heritage with a contemporary vision that integrates with nowadays architecture and at the same time refer to the unique identity.     

Line by line,part by part: collaborative sketching for designing

While sketching has an established role in professional design, its benefits and role in design education are subjects that invite research and opinions. We investigated how undergraduates studying to become design educators and textile teachers used sketching to generate and develop design solutions in a collaborative setting. The students were given an authentic design assignment involving three detailed tasks, one of which was 2D visualisation by sketching. Adopting a micro-analytical approach, we analysed the video-recorded visualisation session to understand how teams used sketching to collaborate and to generate and develop design solutions. To that end, we set three research questions: (1) What ways of collaborative working are reflected in actions of sketching? (2) In what ways do sequences of collaborative sketching contribute to designing? (3) What kinds of collaborative sequences of sketching advance designing? Our analysis identified three collaborative ways of sketching (co-ordinated, collective and disclosed) and confirmed that sketching is an important facilitator of mutual appropriation, adaption and adoption. Next, we identified three ways of contributing to designing, as well as three functions and six capacities for advancing designing. Our analysis shows that sketching can lead to invaluable advances in designing, although each team had its own way of using and benefiting from sketching. We further consider that the teams’ diverse sketching processes and rich content owed, at least in part, to the task structure and imposed constraints. We continue to see sketching as an important design tool, one among many.     

Tracing design students’ affective journeys through reflective writing

Affection in learning embraces emotions, attitudes, values and beliefs that emerge during the learning process, and it is a vital and hidden element of learning. Studies focusing on affective, or emotional, aspects of design learning in the context of design education underscore the significance of the affective process and inform us of the connection between the creative dimension and emotions during a design activity. To this point, this paper addresses the following research question: to what extent does reflective writing disclose design students’ affective journeys throughout a semester? An empirical study is conducted to observe first-year industrial design students’ affective processes during a semester using their structured reflective diaries. The longitudinal study results show that the students exhibit certain tendencies in terms of the affective processes throughout a semester. The findings of this study are discussed in reference to peak points, anomalies and tendencies of the affective processes observed based on excerpts from the diaries. It is concluded that affective responses in design learning are multidimensional and wide-ranging.