Doina Olaru

From customer value to repurchase intentions and recommendations

Purpose – The paper aims to fill a gap in the literature in relation to the determinants of customer value within the research and development (R&D) industry and word‐of‐mouth. It investigates whether context specific variables, such as organizational type and contract length, change customer value evaluations and the value – intention to repurchase – recommend system.Design/methodology/approach – A survey of Australian customers of a research and development service organization was conducted. Structural equation modelling was used to develop a model investigating factors that affect customer value, intent to re‐purchase, and word‐of‐mouth/recommendation.Findings – Relationship benefits, service benefits and sacrifice all had a significant influence on customer value. Efficient use of time is crucial for sacrifice evaluation. Relationship benefits were larger for government organizations than private organizations. Importance of value to recommend the organization to others was higher for longer contract...

Investigating the Evolution of Hotel Internet Adoption

This article draws upon Diffusion of Innovations and Configurational theories to investigate how website features and email responses by 200 Swiss hotels reflect evolving Internet adoption. Complementary multivariate and artificial neural network (ANN) techniques support classifying the hotels into three clusters based on their website features. These clusters and the results of a structural equation model confirm that Internet adoption evolves from static to dynamic use, as organizations add website features and provide quality responses to customer emails. Practically, differences among these clusters suggest caution in adopting some website features. Academically, the study extends diffusion research and introduces metrics, particularly domain name age and quality email responses, for future research of organizational Internet adoption. Finally, the study illustrates how ANNs complement and help overcome limitations of multivariate techniques.

Lifecycle Stages and Residential Location Choice in the Presence of Latent Preference Heterogeneity

The choice of residential locations is affected by both dwelling and location characteristics. Preferences for these characteristics vary with each households requirements, traditionally attributed to the households lifecycle stage. With a cross-sectional study that identifies lifecycle stages according to household structure, this paper offers an investigation of residential location and shows that not all components of preference heterogeneity can be accounted for by household structure. Latent class choice models examine household segments according to lifestyle preferences. The results reveal the degree of association between identified household lifecycle segments and estimated lifestyle latent classes. The composition of the latent structure differs for each lifecycle segment; income and the age of the head of household strongly affect housing preferences, but do not lead to the same latent class structure for households at different lifecycle stages.

The Relevance of Traditional Town Planning Concepts for Travel Minimization

Abstract The ‘neighbourhood’ and ‘self-containment’ are longstanding town planning concepts aimed at travel minimization. While they remain central to practice, the transit-oriented development concept brings into question the relevance of planning for self-containment. Instead, the intention of transit-oriented development is to provide for travel both within the neighbourhood and within the sub-region. By examining the extent to which Perth residents actually minimize travel, we show that the planning concepts of ‘neighbourhood’ and of ‘self-containment’ need refinement. For the neighbourhood there is a question of scale. For self-containment there is a need to concentrate employment destinations around railway stations and to resist locations that do not meet this criterion. ‘Self-containment’ is an ill-defined concept that must be given clearer focus.

Substance in Business-to-Business Relationships

ABSTRACT The research explores the substance of business relationships within a technical consultancy industry–engineering. Relationships in the engineering industry are project based resulting in close and intense relationships during the project life but with low involvement relationships (if at all) between projects. A model of relationship substance was developed using SEM techniques. The results highlight the actor dimension of the relationships as being essential to overall project performance. Resources, such as knowledge, also played an important role in the relationship model.

Fuzzy Logic for Social Simulation using NetLogo

Fuzzy Logic is a framework particularly useful to formalise and deal with imprecise concepts and statements expressed in natural language. This paper has three related aims. First, it aims to provide a short introduction to the basics of Fuzzy Logic within the context of social simulation. Secondly, it presents a well-documented NetLogo extension that facilitates the use of Fuzzy Logic within NetLogo. Finally, by providing a concrete example, it shows how researchers can use the Fuzzy Logic extension to build agent-based models in which individual agents hold their own fuzzy concepts and use their own fuzzy rules, which may also change over time. We argue that Fuzzy Logic and the tools provided here can be useful in Social Simulation in different ways. For example, they can assist in the process of analysing the robustness of a certain social theory expressed in natural language to different specifications of the imprecise concepts that the theory may contain (such as e.g. “wealthy†, “poor†or “disadvantaged†). They can also facilitate the exploration of the effect that heterogeneity in concept interpretations may have in a society (i.e. the significance of the fact that different people may have different interpretations of the same concept). Thus, this paper and the tools included in it can make the endeavour of translating social theories into computer programs easier and more rigorous at the same time.

Swiss Hotels’ Web-site and E-mail Management: The Bandwagon Effect

© 2003, CORNELL UNIVERSITY Hotels the world over clearly have embraced the idea that information technology will drive a brave, new world of marketing—provided marketers figure out how IT can help them. At this point, few hoteliers are questioning whether to support a web site, but they seem to be struggling over how best to use the worldwide web. As internet technologies race forward, supported by faster and cheaper computers, the possibilities for adding web-site features grow in number and complexity. A hotel could, for example, offer multimedia, tie in with a GDS database, or tie into the hotel’s customer-relationship-management system. Issues to address include on-line strategies, such as distribution models and dynamic pricing, as well as which fancy web-site features to incorporate. Given that web-site bells and whistles can be expensive to purchase, implement, and maintain, the problem is that the benefits of web-site enhancements are hard to measure. There is no guarantee that any particular feature will increase sales or reduce marketing expense. Rather than propose that a hotel make its web site’s appearance more spectacular, we suggest that enhancing customer communications will generate greater returns. The is-

Innovation network trajectories: the role of time and history

Purpose – This article aims to describe patterns of change in innovation networks and to clarify the roles of time and history in shaping network trajectories. The authors test seven predictor variables and their interactions to examine their influences on network performance over time. Design/methodology/approach – A fuzzy simulation of innovation networks and investigations of different network types, using two classes of growth modeling techniques, help refine understanding of innovation as an interactive, developmental process. Findings – Innovation network trajectories are influenced by self-reinforcing, contradictory and damaging forces. History affects network trajectory development, particularly with regard to financial resource access. The temporal processes reveal three contrasting classes of developmental trajectories for innovation networks. Research limitations/implications – The study methodology can account for theoretically derived factors leading to innovation, in and across types of netw...

How information foraging styles relate to tourism demographics and behaviours

Scholars have investigated information search in tourism for decades and recently, the web’s role in information search. Rather than information search with a particular source, this study adds to the literature by focusing on information foraging across multiple sources including the web. Drawing on an analogy of animals foraging among different foods, tourists forage among different information sources. A cluster analysis of 882 tourists’ information foraging prior to visiting Yellowstone National Park reveals three styles. One cluster has little hunger for information; the two other clusters tend to forage for information aggressively or passively. The aggressive foragers resemble sharks and hunt constantly for information, particularly external information. The passive foragers resemble spiders, waiting for personal information that comes their way or drawing on internal information. Similar to past information gathering research, the three clusters differ signifi cantly in demographic and behavioural characteristics. Finally, rather than being a distinct source, the web serves as an additional and complementary food in the sharks’ information diet.

A Theoretical Framework of Factors Relating to Internet Adoption Stages by Malaysian Hotels

Drawing upon the Stage Model, Miles and Snow business strategy typology and Diffusion of Innovations (DOI), this paper proposes a theoretical framework for relationships among Malaysian hotels’ business strategies, organisational characteristics and stages of Internet adoption. As innovations diffuse based on situational and environmental characteristics, existing research may not generalise to hospitality organisations. Further, Internet tourism research is at an embryonic stage in developing countries such as Malaysia. In addition to existing business strategy and organisational characteristics, this framework includes domain name age as a temporal measure of Internet adoption. Practically, the stages suggest pragmatic Internet use for hoteliers. Academically, this paper adds to the paucity of research on Internet tourism in developing countries, and proposes extending Miles and Snow’s typology to hotels, the online environment and DOI research.