风险厌恶下的供应链收益共享契约协调模型研究

收益共享契约是实现供应链系统绩效改善或完美协调的一种机制.考虑了零售商与供应商分别具有风险厌恶决策偏好情况下,在随机市场需求下建立了由单供应商和单零售商组成的二级供应链的收益共享契约模型,并对模型进行了分析,揭示了供应商和零售商的风险厌恶决策偏好对收益共享契约参数的影响.研究结果表明:当销售商(供应商)的风险厌恶控制在...     

Modern analysis of customer satisfaction surveys: comparison of models and integrated analysis

Customer satisfaction is a key dimension driving business outcomes and performance of processes in service and product organizations. Measuring customer satisfaction is typically based on self‐declared or interview‐based questionnaires where users or consumers are asked to express opinions on statements, or satisfaction scales, mapping out various interactions with the service provider or product supplier. The topic has gained importance in recent years with researchers proposing new models and methods for designing, implementing, and analyzing customer satisfaction surveys. This paper builds on material presented in a recent edited book entitled Modern Analysis of Customer Satisfaction Surveys (Kenett and Salini, 2011). The book provides a comprehensive exposition of a variety of models that have all been applied to the same data set by leading experts. These models generate a variety of management insights. Combining models opens up opportunities for further research and applications. Specifically, we suggest that an integrated analysis, aggregating several approaches to survey data analysis, may prove effective in increasing the information quality derived from of a customer satisfaction survey. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Customer satisfaction measurement in the private bank sector

Customer satisfaction represents a modern approach for quality in enterprises and organisations and serves the development of a truly customer-focused management and culture. Measuring customer satisfaction offers an immediate, meaningful and objective feedback about clients’ preferences and expectations. In this way, company’s performance may be evaluated in relation to a set of satisfaction dimensions that indicate the strong and the weak points of a business organisation. This paper presents an original customer satisfaction survey in the private bank sector. The implemented methodology is based on the principles of multicriteria analysis and preference disaggregation modelling. The most important results are focused on the determination of the critical service dimensions and the segmentation to customer clusters with distinctive preferences and expectations.     

Predicting time-to-churn of prepaid mobile telephone customers using social network analysis

Mobile phone carriers in a saturated market must focus on customer retention to maintain profitability. This study investigates the incorporation of social network information into churn prediction models to improve accuracy, timeliness, and profitability. Traditional models are built using customer attributes, however these data are often incomplete for prepaid customers. Alternatively, call record graphs that are current and complete for all customers can be analysed. A procedure was developed to build the call graph and extract relevant features from it to be used in classification models. The scalability and applicability of this technique are demonstrated on a telecommunications data set containing 1.4 million customers and over 30 million calls each month. The models are evaluated based on ROC plots, lift curves, and expected profitability. The results show how using network features can improve performance over local features while retaining high interpretability and usability.     

The assessment of user-perceived web quality: Application of a satisfaction benchmarking approach

The assessment of website quality is considered as a problem of measuring user satisfaction, in order to analyse user perceptions and preferences. The presented pilot user satisfaction survey concerns the major cellular phone service providers in Greece. The analysis is based on a multicriteria preference disaggregation approach for satisfaction benchmarking analysis and consists of the following parts: (1) the user satisfaction analysis, which concerns the identification of customer preferences and includes the estimation of the relative importance and the demanding level of the different user satisfaction dimensions, and (2) the satisfaction benchmarking analysis, which is mainly focused on the performance evaluation of the competitive organisations against the satisfaction criteria, as well as the identification of the competitive advantages of each company. The results presented in this paper demonstrate how business organisations may locate their position against competition, pinpoint their weak points and determine which website characteristics will improve their global performance.     

Buyer–supplier relationship and operational dynamics

This paper examines the effectiveness of business-to-business relationships in reference to the suppliers of office equipments serving the industrial accounts in Mexico. The study addresses broadly the performance-related issues as to what extent is the impact of quality of services responsible for doing business with the organizational buyers. Discussions in the paper also analyse the impact of channel function performance on relationship quality, which is moderated by the extent dependence structure of the relationship. The results of the study showed that the impact of buyer–supplier co-dependency and relationship quality significantly affects the supplier performance. It has been argued in the paper that the market orientation is positively associated with measures of channel performance such as service quality and the extent of buyer satisfaction. The study also demonstrates that in the processes of managing business relationships, cognitive dimensions like trust, commitment, and low level of conflicts provide ‘win-win’ situation for buyers and suppliers. Finally, this study attempts to make contributions to the literature on buyer–supplier relationships towards cognitive and relational perspectives leading to optimizing functional efficiency of a firm.     

Artificial immune algorithm-based credit evaluation for mobile telephone customers

The arrearage problem is a critical concern for China’s mobile communication services industry. Analysis of customer credit evaluation provides this study with a potential viable solution to the arrearage problem in China. By employing an artificial immune algorithm (AIA), a measure of customer credit based on customer attributes is proposed. This method was applied to one China mobile communication services company with approximately 400?000 customers yielding satisfying results. Utilizing traditional predictive accuracy and alternative metrics, performance comparisons of the proposed AIA were made using the feed-forward back propagation artificial neural network and the logistic regression model. A decision tree analysis of anticipated benefits was performed and indicates workability of the proposed method based on customer credit evaluation.     

促销努力成本信息不对称下供应链回购契约

在由一个供应商和一个销售商构成的二级供应链,假设市场需求受到销售商的促销努力水平的影响,销售季节到来之前,销售商根据促销成本和收益决定最优促销努力水平和订货量。在促销成本不可观测时,利用委托代理理论研究信息不对称时如何通过回购契约揭示真实的促销努力成本。研究结果表明销售商有动机将努力促销成本报高,为了吸引销售商显示真实的促销努力成本,供应商必须付出额外的信息租金,随促销成本增大,销售商通过虚报高成本获得的利润减小,故需要揭示真实成本信息所付出的信息租金随之减小。由于信息租金的付出,导致了非效率现象的产生,使得销售商的最优订货量和促销努力水平均小于完全信息下系统的最优水平,只能得到帕累托改进的次优结果。     

Improving the computational efficiency of metric-based spares algorithms

We propose a new heuristic algorithm to improve the computational efficiency of the general class of Multi-Echelon Technique for Recoverable Item Control (METRIC) problems. The objective of a METRIC-based decision problem is to systematically determine the location and quantity of spares that either maximizes the operational availability of a system subject to a budget constraint or minimizes its cost subject to an operational availability target. This type of sparing analysis has proven essential when analyzing the sustainment policies of large-scale, complex repairable systems such as those prevalent in the defense and aerospace industries. Additionally, the frequency of these sparing studies has recently increased as the adoption of performance-based logistics (PBL) has increased. PBL represents a class of business strategies that converts the recurring cost associated with maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) into cost avoidance streams. Central to a PBL contract is a requirement to perform a business case analysis (BCA) and central to a BCA is the frequent need to use METRIC-based approaches to evaluate how a supplier and customer will engage in a performance based logistics arrangement where spares decisions are critical. Due to the size and frequency of the problem there exists a need to improve the efficiency of the computationally intensive METRIC-based solutions. We develop and validate a practical algorithm for improving the computational efficiency of a METRIC-based approach. The accuracy and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm are analyzed through a numerical study. The algorithm shows a 94% improvement in computational efficiency while maintaining 99.9% accuracy.     

基于企业网络舆情的客户满意度分析及管理方法

社交网络平台的迅速发展,促使网络舆情成为企业获取商业情报、扩大竞争优势的重要信息来源。本文针对网络舆情环境下的企业客户关系管理问题展开研究。通过构建企业客户推动式信息反馈模型,描述了企业客户、网络用户与企业网络舆情间的联系,并依据信息反馈模型,提出变尺度聚类算法。该算法将传统聚类方法的求解过程由单一尺度分析扩展到多尺度分析,克服了实际数据聚类应用过程中的聚类结果特征不显著问题。本文选取新浪微博作为数据源,利用企业网络舆情数据集和企业客户数据集进行数据分析实验。实验结果表明,企业可以通过获取与其主营业务相关的网络舆情信息,实现客户满意度预测;同时,变尺度聚类算法结果能够为企业进一步制定销售战略和销售战术提供决策支持。     

Social responsibility allocation in two-echelon supply chains: Insights from wholesale price contracts

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is considered in a two-echelon supply chain consisting of an upstream supplier and a downstream firm that are bound by a wholesale price contract. CSR performance (the outcome of CSR conduct) of the whole supply chain is gauged by a global variable and the associated cost of achieving this CSR performance is only incurred by the supplier with an expectation of being shared with the downstream firm via the wholesale price contract. As such, the key issue is to determine who should be allocated as the responsibility holder with the right of offering the contract and how this right should be appropriately restricted. Game-theoretical analyses are carried out on six games, resulting from different interaction schemes between the supplier and the firm, to derive their corresponding equilibriums. Comparative institutional analyses are then conducted to determine the optimal social responsibility allocation based on both economic and CSR performance criteria. Main results are furnished in a series of propositions and their implications to the real-world business practice are discussed. The key findings are threefold: under the current model settings: (1) the optimal allocation scheme is to assign the supplier as the responsibility holder with appropriate restrictions on the corresponding rights to determine the wholesale price; (2) inherent conflict exists between the economic and CSR performance criteria and, hence, the two maxima cannot be achieved simultaneously; and (3) although integrative channel profit is not attainable, the system-wide profit will be improved by implementing optimal social responsibility allocation schemes.     

Profit allocation games in supply chains

The paper considers a supply chain where a number of agents are connected in some network relationship. Game theory is a very powerful framework for studying decision making problems, involving a group of agents in a supply chain. Allocation games examine the allocation of value among agents connected by a network. The ongoing actions in the supply chain are a mix of cooperative and non-cooperative behavior of the participants. The paper proposes a two-stage procedure for profit allocation based on combination of non-cooperative and cooperative game approaches. In the first stage, retailers meet customer price-dependent stochastic demand and seek to maximize total profit from the sale. Retailers are trying to align goals with producers on a contract basis and share the total profit with them. In the second stage, the cooperating producers allocate individual profits.     

基于TAM理论的顾客心理契约形成机理研究——B2C情景下的实证研究

基于TAM理论研究了B2C情景下顾客心理契约的形成机理。通过相关文献评述,提出了B2C情景下顾客心理契约形成机理模型及假设,通过实证分析验证模型及假设。结果表明:感知易用和感知风险对感知有用具有显著的影响作用;感知有用以及感知易用通过顾客价值观/态度对顾客心理契约具有显著的影响;同时,感知风险和感知易用对顾客心理契约具有显著的直接影响作用。研究结论对B2C情景下服务商保持和维护客户关系具有积极作用,为网络商家建立积极地调控干预机制,促进顾客心理契约正效应感知提供参考。     

Linking customer satisfaction, employee appraisal, and business performance: an evaluation methodology in the banking sector

The linkage among customer satisfaction, employee evaluation, and business performance data is very important in modern business organizations. Several previous research efforts have studied this linkage, focusing mainly on the financial or business performance in order to analyze the efficiency of an organization. However, recent studies have tried to consider other important performance indicators, which are able to affect business operations and future growth (e.g., external and internal customer satisfaction). In the case of the banking industry, studying the relations among the aforementioned variables is able to give insight in the performance evaluation of bank branches and the viability analysis of the banking organization. This paper presents a real-world study for measuring the relative efficiency of a set of bank branches using a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach. In particular, a multistage DEA network model is proposed, using a set of performance indicators that combine customer satisfaction, employee evaluation, and business performance indices. The main aim of the presented study is to evaluate the relative efficiency of each customer service delivery step, in the environment of a bank branch. The results are also able to estimate the contribution of the assessed performance indicators to the branch’s overall efficiency, and to determine potential improvement actions.     

Using entropy for quantitative measurement of operational complexity of supplier–customer system: case studies

The paper concerns with analysis of operational complexity of company supplier–customer relations. Well-known approach for measuring of operational complexity is based upon entropy. However, there are several approaches thereon. In the first part, we discuss various general measures of uncertainty of states, the power entropies in particular. In the second part, we use Shannon entropy as a base framework for our two case studies—the first, a supplier–customer system which implements managerial thresholds for processing product delivery term deviations, the second, a supplier system of the most important commodity in brewery industry, the malted barley. In both cases, we assume an existence of problem-oriented databases, which contain detailed records of all product orders, deliveries and forecasts in quantity and time having been scheduled and realized. Our general procedure elaborated consists of three basic steps—pre-processing of data with consistency checks in Java, calculation of histograms and empirical distribution functions, and finally, evaluation of conditional entropy. The last two steps are realized by Mathematica modules. Illustrative results of operational complexity measurement using entropy are provided for both case studies.     

Assessment and improvement of employee job-satisfaction: a full-scale implementation of MUSA methodology on newly recruited personnel in a major French organisation

During the last 20 years, a large number of studies have investigated the relationship between employee satisfaction and specific job characteristics, with often contradictory results. The aim of this paper is the assessment of job satisfaction of recent recruits in a large French company. The approach adopted here is to view employees as internal customers of an organization, and their satisfaction as an important driver for business success. Using the MUSA multicriteria methodology for customer satisfaction evaluation, the study aimed (1) to identify and measure satisfaction criteria of newly recruited personnel, and (2) to determine new organisational policies based on the findings.     

网络上的选址博弈模型

研究了具有竞争关系的两公司在由客户组成的网络上先后进行选址的情形,将这种情形建模成一个S tackelberg博弈.由于商店选址之后,客户的行为是自发的,在这种情况下,客户之间往往会有合作,以降低车辆路径费用.提出利用车辆路径合作博弈来模拟客户的行为,从而确定各商店的客户集,并将这种方法与直接利用客户到商店的距离来确定商店的客户集的方法进行了统计意义上的比较.     

Modeling customer satisfaction with new product design using a flexible fuzzy regression-data envelopment analysis algorithm

The success of new products depends greatly on customer satisfaction and meeting the customer needs is vital for new product development. By incorporating customer needs in the design and development process, organizations can improve productivity for their new products and reduce the risks associated with new product markets. Hence, design teams require methods to model customer satisfaction when setting the associated product design attributes. Thus, different approaches have been developed for modeling the relationship between customer satisfaction and product design parameters. In this study, 16 well-known fuzzy regression (FR) models are considered to understand the relationship between customer satisfaction and new product design. The design of FR models is based on the 4Ps marketing mix (product, price, place, and promotion) concept in fuzzy environments. A flexible algorithm is then presented based on the index of confidence, error measures, and data envelopment analysis for selecting the best FR model. The applicability and usefulness of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated experimentally based on an actual case study, where the flexible algorithm is employed to predict customer satisfaction with a new product design in the freezer/refrigerator industry.     

考虑预算约束的旅游服务质量提升决策方法

通过对Kano模型的定量化分析,从最大化顾客满意视角提出考虑预算约束的旅游服务质量提升决策方法。采用问卷调查方式获取顾客旅游服务质量因素的评价信息;依据Kano模型,对评价信息进行处理并建立顾客满意度与旅游服务质量满足水平的关系函数(S-CR);基于S-CR函数构建考虑预算约束条件下、顾客满意最大化的旅游服务质量提升决策模型,通过求解确定最优的预算分配方案。最后,通过实证验证模型的可行性与有效性。     

A model for maintenance service contract design,negotiation and optimization

A model is presented in this paper for maintenance service contract design, negotiation and optimization. The model was developed under the assumption that there are one customer and one unique service provider who is the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) and is called the agent in this paper. This is typically applied to the situation where the OEM is the only possible service supplier such as in the case of major military equipment in the defense sector. Three contract options were considered, depending on the extent of outsourced maintenance activities. From an agent point of view, they are, (1), the agent carries out all repairs and inspections; (2), the agent carries out failure based repairs, and (3), the agent does inspections and repairs to the defects identified at inspections. For options two and three, the customer does the rest of maintenance. The relationship between inspections and failures was modeled using the delay time concept and a numerical example was illustrated. The cases of perfect information to both parties and information asymmetry were also discussed in the example. The model developed can be used for contract design, negotiation and optimization.