Mei Xue

Customer Efficiency: Concept and Its Impact on E-Business Management

The continued development of e-business models has triggered a dramatic transition of customers’roles in a variety of service production and delivery processes. In the coproduction of service, the scale and scope of customers’ participation have been significantly transformed and enhanced by newe-business models and technology. This transition calls for a newunderstanding of customers’ roles in service delivery systems. The concept of customer efficiency is crucial for the successful management of systems where customers are actively engaged in service production and delivery processes. This article presents the concept of customer efficiency management (CEM), studies its relationship with other key customer characteristics, and explores its potential impact on e-business management.

Note: Ranking DMUs with Infeasible Super-Efficiency DEA Models

It has been suggested in the data envelopment analysis (DEA) literature that it is impossible to obtain a full ranking of decision-making units (DMUs) when infeasible subproblems arise in the so-called super-efficiency DEA models under different returns to scale (RTS) assumptions other than constant returns to scale (CRS) andconsequently the application of the super-efficiency DEA models under different RTS conditions other than CRS should be restricted. The implications of the infeasibility in super-efficiency DEA models with respect to the efficiency ranking of the DMUs is explored. Based on the analysis, we show that it is still possible to obtain the full ranking of the entire observation set when infeasibilities arise in super-efficiency DEA models.