Muhammad Muazzem Hossain

Consumer Acceptance of RFID Technology: An Exploratory Study

Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is used in numerous applications and offers a plethora of interesting potential new applications. However, this potential raises issues that require addressing to achieve its widespread acceptance by consumers. This paper investigates the factors that affect consumer acceptance of RFID technology. The purpose of this effort is to develop and test a theoretical model that contextualizes the technology acceptance model (TAM) within the context of RFID technology. The research model proposes that convenience, culture, privacy, regulation, and security are the principal factors influencing the consumerspsila acceptance of RFID. However, the results show that convenience, culture, and security are significant predictors. This study is the first in the RFID literature to use the TAM for explaining consumer acceptance of RFID technology. The findings suggest that: (1) higher perceived convenience of RFID technology leads to greater acceptance of this technology; (2) societal beliefs, value systems, norms, and/or behaviors influence the extent of consumer acceptance of RFID technology; and (3) higher perceived importance of and less willingness to sacrifice personal information security lead to lower intention to use RFID technology. Contextualization of TAM to RFID technology makes this study relevant to practitioners because the results can provide insight to organizations using or exploring the use of RFID technology.

Why do shoppers abandon shopping cart? Perceived waiting time, risk, and transaction inconvenience

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to explore the factors leading to the consumers propensity to abandon the shopping cart at the transaction completion stage.Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected using a self‐administered survey distributed through the internet. The sample consisted of consumers who shopped online at least once during the preceding one‐year period.Findings – The results indicate that perceived transaction inconvenience is the major predictor of shopping cart abandonment. The other predictors are perceived risk and perceived waiting time. Positive relationship was found between perceived transaction inconvenience, perceived risk and propensity to abandon the shopping cart. It was also found that propensity to abandon the shopping cart is negatively associated with the perception of waiting time.Practical implications – The paper provides transaction completion stage specific guidance to the managers operating in an online environment to prevent shopping cart abandonment a...

The development and research tradition of statistical quality control

The purpose of this study is to fill three gaps in the literature of quality control. First, this study expounds the chronological development of statistical quality control (SQC) to date, for there is a paucity of an up-to-date chronology of SQC in the literature. Second, the concept of statistical quality control has been analysed from the perspective of scientific inquiry to determine whether SQC has evolved or has been evolving as an evolutionary, revolutionary or progressive research program. Third, this paper discusses whether the discipline of statistical quality control has its own research tradition. We employed a qualitative method to address our research questions. We argue that the concept of statistical quality control has emerged as a scientific revolution in the arena of quality control and that the discipline of statistical quality control has its own research tradition. This study provides both practitioners and academicians with not only an up-to-date account of SQC but a sense of the legitimacy of SQC as a discipline. SQC provides a systems perspective to quality control and has paved the way for enterprise-wide quality philosophies such as TQC, TQM, zero defects, Six Sigma, ISO, etc.

Pervasiveness of SERVQUAL and its potential for the standards for functional quality of service

This study examines how pervasive the applications of SERVQUAL are in the service industries and explores if SERVQUAL items can be used to derive standards for service quality. SERVQUAL has been used to measure service quality in a wide variety of service industries in many different countries. However, there is a limited effort to examine how pervasively SERVQUAL has been utilised since its inception in 1988. This study collected data on the applications of SERVQUAL from ABI/INFORM Complete and found that SERVQUAL has been extensively utilised for measuring service quality. Researchers have also criticised SERVQUAL due to its use of the gap approach to assess service quality. Nonetheless, SERVQUAL items contain service measures, which, when stripped of the expressions of expectation and perception, can provide standards for service quality. This study identified the functional standards quality of service and proposed a theoretical model for measuring the functional fitness of service.

Measuring and exploring factors affecting students’ willingness to engage in peer mentoring

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to measure students’ willingness to mentor their peers and explores key factors to student peer mentoring effectiveness. Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses a hybrid research methodology consisting of a survey and a focus group discussion. The survey was conducted with students of a bachelor of commerce (BCom) program of a North American university to analyze the impact of organizational culture and altruism on their willingness to mentor their peers. The focus group discussion was carried out with students of the same program to explore the objectives, focus, and factors contributing to their willingness to mentor and to peer mentoring effectiveness. Findings – Organizational culture and altruism significantly affect students’ emotional and intentional willingness to mentor their peers. Peer mentoring can help students prepare their transition from high school to university, guide them through university programs, and help them prepare their transition from...

Towards developing a business performance management model using causal latent semantic analysis

Business performance management (BPM) helps organisations achieve improved effectiveness and competitiveness by bridging the gap between strategy and execution. Though several industry-specific practitioner BPM frameworks exist, there is little research in the academia on BPM. This study fills this void by developing and testing a generic BPM model using causal latent semantic analysis on textual data obtained from both practitioner and academic sources. The BPM model developed in this study provides a structure for enhancing responsiveness and flexibility because it embodies the process of managing an organisations strategy. Since the BPM process embodies a closed-loop process with the objective of continuously adjusting business strategies, it helps organisations to enhance their agility. Therefore, with the implementation of the BPM framework, organisations can quickly adapt to changes. This study posits that the proposed BPM model will help managers create an agile organisation that is capable of developing and increasing competitive advantage.

Consumer Acceptance of More-Than-Voice (MTV) Services: Evidence from the Bottom of Pyramid in Bangladesh

More-than-voice (MTV) services are becoming widespread in the developing countries among individuals who represent the bottom-of-pyramid (BoP). The BoP comprises individuals whose income is less than

An empirical investigation of the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award framework using causal Latent Semantic Analysis

2 per day. Despite the widespread use of MTV services among the consumers at the BoP, there is no study on what affects their adoption of these services. Therefore, this study investigates the factors that influence consumer acceptance of MTV services at the BoP. The research model proposes that perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived social influence, perceived acumen to use, perceived value and perceived facilitating conditions are the principal factors influencing the consumer acceptance of MTV services at the BoP. Secondary data collected by Teleuse@BOP4 from Bangladesh were used to validate the proposed model. Multiple regression analysis was conducted to test the hypotheses. The results indicate that the acceptance of MTV services at the BoP is positively influenced by perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived acumen to use, perceived facilitating conditions and perceived value. The results also indicate that perceived social influence has no significant influence on the acceptance of MTV services by consumers in the BoP.

The Adoption of Mobile Commerce Service among Employed Mobile Phone Users in Bangladesh: Self-efficacy as a Moderator

Numerous studies have investigated the linkages implied in the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) framework. Those studies posited that the MBNQA quality experts defaulted to the premise that each construct is related to all others in the MBNQA framework because of the lack of specific knowledge about the causative relationships. Therefore, there is a need for both academicians and managers to explore the MBNQA framework as a non-recursive causal model as it was originally developed. This study uses a causal latent semantic analysis methodology to test the MBNQA as a non-recursive causal model using textual data obtained from scholarly MBNQA publications. Though the MBNQA framework is yet to be fully explored by both academicians and practitioners, this is the first study to show that the cumulative finding of prior research supports the contention that the constructs in the framework have substantial influence on each other.