DSpace community: 資訊與管理科學期刊

Reused Smartphones Pricing Analysis — A Duopoly Model Analysis with respect to Apple and Samsung Smartphones

Mon, 13 Feb 2017 08:47:36 GMT

title: Reused Smartphones Pricing Analysis — A Duopoly Model Analysis with respect to Apple and Samsung Smartphones abstract: As technology advances, multi-touch smartphones have rapidly become a necessity in the daily lives of most users. In order to expand their market share and attract new users, new generations of smartphones are being introduced in a much shorter interval. As a result, older phones are discarded in greater speed, and thus creating more electronic waste each year. To reduce waste material, the concept of reused smartphones is proposed. In order to attract users to purchase these reused smartphones, this study aims to look into the pricing strategy for Apple and Samsung products as both are top smartphone brands with the highest market shares. Under the duopoly environment, this study uses the Cournot game model to determine the optimal solution in a price competition with Apple set to be the leader and Samsung the “follower”. While making pricing strategies, manufacturers commonly strive to maximize their profits. Two pricing functions will have a point of intersection, and the solution will be the optimal equilibrium. The model proposed in this study may be taken as reference for manufacturers to understand the reused smartphone market.

Effects of Paid Parental Leave Allowance on Labor Market Outcomes in Taiwan

Mon, 13 Feb 2017 08:43:56 GMT

title: Effects of Paid Parental Leave Allowance on Labor Market Outcomes in Taiwan abstract: In this article we tried to understand the effect of the enforcement of the amendment to the EIA compound with parental/maternity benefits on labor market outcomes in Taiwan. This article provides a new view, which differs from previous studies in Taiwan (Zveglich Jr. and Rodgers [23]; Lai and Masters [12]; Lai [11]) to explain the effect of parental / maternity benefits. We found that the legislation that has guaranteed paid parental leave to workers (viz., the amendment to the EIA) has shown varied effects on the labor market outcomes in Taiwan. The variance was largely attributed to firms’ compliance rate, which was typically dependent on the size of the firms. We noticed that the firms have either complied more or complied less or in the worst case not at all complied with the provisions of the amended EIA. Consequently their effects on labor market outcomes have been diverse and varying. For example, the large firms had longer working hours with higher wages on the one hand, and offered lesser employment opportunities to female workers with high fertility rates compared to other female workers on the other hand. Employers in most of the cases were found to have kept the roles vacant, and haven’t needed many female workers on roll per se. Whereas in those firms that are large in size, the female workers were found to have worked for relatively longer hours and were initially paid higher wages. evertheless, the female workers in large firms have started receiving lower wages with time. We also found that the full-time workers in general have sensed a stronger effect of the legislation on working hours in comparison to the sample of both full-time and part-time workers.

Do the Corporate Performance and Default Risk Impact on Corporate Social Responsibility in China?

Mon, 13 Feb 2017 08:39:11 GMT

title: Do the Corporate Performance and Default Risk Impact on Corporate Social Responsibility in China? abstract: This study mainly discusses the impact of the corporate performance and default risk on corporate social responsibility in China from December 2008 to August 2014. The results showed that the return on equity and return on asset have positively significant influences on corporate social responsibility which is four composing indicators. Moreover, the corporate performance and default risk are positive effect on the corporate social responsibility when the company is central enterprise.

Key Factors to Affect the Adoption of Mobile Banking in the Philippines

Mon, 13 Feb 2017 08:35:24 GMT

title: Key Factors to Affect the Adoption of Mobile Banking in the Philippines abstract: The rapid development of internet and popularization of mobile phones has stimulated the banking and financial sectors towards encouraging customers to use mobile banking. This paper examines empirically the factors that affect the adoption of mobile banking in the Philippines. Data were collected from 421 Filipino using online questionnaires. This study uses factor analysis and multiple regressions to analyze the factors that affect the behavioral intention to adopt Mobile Banking in the Philippines. The results revealed that perceived attitude and perceived behavioral control were key dimensions that affect the behavioral intention to adopt Mobile Banking. In particular, relative advantage, compatibility, observability, and trialability, were found to affect attitude factor. In addition, self-efficacy, technology support and government support were similarly ascertained to affect perceived behavioral control factor. The results of this study will have useful implications for banking industry in the Philippines.

Exploring the Relationship among Hedonic Shopping Motivation, Impulse Buying, Post-Purchase Regret, and Coping

Mon, 13 Feb 2017 08:31:54 GMT

title: Exploring the Relationship among Hedonic Shopping Motivation, Impulse Buying, Post-Purchase Regret, and Coping abstract: Hedonic shopping motivation often results in impulse buying, and the outcome or the process of impulse buying may results in post-purchase regret and consequently coping to deal with the regret. However, is it possible that when a consumer engages in hedonic shopping motivation, s/he has “prepared” to face the consequence to consider coping, even before impulse buying? Using structural equation modeling (SEM), a total of 310 valid questionnaires were collected to test the initial model of hedonic shopping motivation towards impulse buying, with direct path toward coping, and indirect path mediated by post-purchase regret. Based on the Modification Index, additional path from hedonic shopping motivation toward coping was added and re-analyzed, resulting in better fit. All research hypotheses were supported.

Simulated Annealing for the Blood Pickup Routing Problem

Mon, 13 Feb 2017 08:27:51 GMT

title: Simulated Annealing for the Blood Pickup Routing Problem abstract: Blood service operation is a key component of healthcare systems all over the world. Transporting time-sensitive products like blood presents a specific and unique challenge, as such perishable products have a spoilage time before which they must be used to avoid deterioration. Therefore, if the spoilage time is exceeded, then the product should be discarded. The blood pickup routing problem (BPRP) focuses on the upstream activities of blood logistics, starting from collection or pickup of blood bags at fixed donation sites and then delivering the blood bags to the blood bank. BPRP is an extension of the well-known vehicle routing problem with time windows. In BPRP, the set of vehicle routes are constructed to minimize total distance while at the same time observing time window constraints of donation sites and the spoilage time constraint of the blood. More specifically, each donation site has its time window during which a vehicle can start collecting blood bags at the site. The blood bags must be transported back to the blood bank before the bank’s closing time and the blood’s spoilage time. This study develops a mathematical programming model for BPRP. Since CPLEX can only solve the model to optimality for small instances, this study proposes a simulated annealing (SA) based heuristic approach to solve medium and large BPRP instances. We test the proposed SA heuristic on BPRP instances generated by this study. Computational results show that the proposed SA heuristic performs well on solving BPRP.

Standby System with Imperfect Coverage and Repairable Service Station

Mon, 13 Feb 2017 08:19:28 GMT

title: Standby System with Imperfect Coverage and Repairable Service Station abstract: This paper analyzes the reliability characteristics of a system with imperfect coverage in which a repairable service station is considered. Failure times of primary and standby units are assumed to follow exponential distributions. With a coverage probability c, a failed unit is immediately detected and replaced by a standby if one is available. If the failed unit is not detected, the system enters an unsafe failure state and has to be refreshed by a reboot action. When the service station breaks down, it needs repair at a repair device. We present the expression for reliability function RY (t) and mean time to system failure MT T F. Several cases are analyzed to study the effects of various parameters on the system reliability RY (t) and MT T F. We also perform the sensitivity analysis of RY (t) and MT T F with respect to system parameters. Finally, we present an application example to demonstrate the applicability of investigated model.

Two-Period Pricing Model for Walk-in Potential Consumers with Normal Distribution of the Price of Their Willing to Buy

Mon, 13 Feb 2017 08:14:51 GMT

title: Two-Period Pricing Model for Walk-in Potential Consumers with Normal Distribution of the Price of Their Willing to Buy abstract: The optimal model was mainly constructed for the products, such as real estates, amusement park, or major furniture which themselves cannot be moved or worn to reveal to other consumers in public, to explain their optimal promotional pricing strategy. The study adopted the dual sources of the diffusion power, the number of walk-in potential consumers and the price level of the product, in the extended Bass Diffusion Model. Given periods of [0, T ) and [T, T¯), T < T¯, and T¯ maybe ∞ when a firm attempts to decide price P0 within [0, T ) and price PT within [T, T¯), respectively, to achieve the goal of maximizing discounted profit in the interval [0, T¯), the characteristics of its optimal solution (P ∗ 0 , P∗ T ) at each period were rigorously derived and profoundly discussed. This two-period model pricing could be extended to an infinite multiple-period optimal pricing model to become the issue of price control. The study would further conclude that, after a new product is initialized, its price should decline with time to take advantage of it with exhausting the consumer surplus of consumers.

Reliability Evaluation of a Multicommodity Capacitated-Flow Network in Terms of Minimal Pathsets

Mon, 13 Feb 2017 08:09:46 GMT

title: Reliability Evaluation of a Multicommodity Capacitated-Flow Network in Terms of Minimal Pathsets abstract: Many real-world systems such as transportation systems, logistics/distribution systems, and manufacturing systems can be regarded as multicommodity flow networks whose arcs have independent, finite and multi-valued random capacities. Such a flow network is a multistate system with multistate components and its reliability for level d = (d1, d2, . . . , dk), i.e., the probability that k different types of commodity can be transmitted from the source node to the sink node in the way that the demand level d = (d1, d2, . . . , dk) is satisfied, can be computed in terms of minimal path vectors to level d (named d-MPs here). The main objective of this paper is to present a simple algorithm to generate all d-MPs of such a flow network for each level d = (d1, d2, . . . , dk) in terms of minimal pathsets. Three examples are given to illustrate how all d-MPs are generated by our algorithm and then the reliability of one example is computed.

A New Approach in Multiple Attribute Decision Making using R-norm entropy and Hamming Distance Measure

Mon, 13 Feb 2017 07:57:36 GMT

title: A New Approach in Multiple Attribute Decision Making using R-norm entropy and Hamming Distance Measure abstract: The theory of intuitionistic fuzzy (IF) set is well suitable to deal with the vagueness and hesitancy. In the present communication, we have considered R-norm entropy with both uncertainty and hesitancy degree of an IF set. Using this R-norm entropy, we have solved a multiple attribute decision making (MADM) problem in which attribute values are expressed with IF values. In MADM problem, we mainly encounter with two types of problems. First is when we don’t have any information regarding attribute weights and second is when we have little information about weights, i.e., they are partially known to us. In this paper, we have considered both the cases with examples. For the first case, we have used an extension of entropy weight method to calculate the attribute weights and in second case attribute weights are calculated by using the minimum entropy principle method which is based on solving a linear programming model. The two methods are effectively explained by taking real life examples. Also the two examples are calculated by using the TOPSIS method suggested by Chen and Tsao and shown that the outputs of both the methods coincide.

Stationary Queue Length Distribution for a Discrete-Time Preemptive Priority Queue

Mon, 13 Feb 2017 07:39:34 GMT

title: Stationary Queue Length Distribution for a Discrete-Time Preemptive Priority Queue abstract: This paper considers a discrete-time Geo/Geo/1 preemptive priority queue with two classes of customers. The queue system can be modeled by a quasi-birth-and-death (QBD) process with infinitely many phases. For the QBD process, we obtain explicit form of the joint stationary distribution and then we also get the stationary queue length distribution for lower-priority customers.

Green Performance Assessment for Retail Industry in Taiwan

Tue, 17 Jan 2017 03:45:02 GMT

title: Green Performance Assessment for Retail Industry in Taiwan abstract: The retail industry in Taiwan plays an important role in people’s lives and influences consumers’ purchasing behavior. Due to global warming and the depletion of energy and other resources, most retailers are required to obey the green policy of reuse, recycling, and reduction in their operational process, service, and products. Therefore, we first evaluated the environmental performance of retailers using selected green criteria. Then, we assessed the performance of sustainable environmental practices among ten selected retailers using grey relation analysis and the entropy method to derive objective weights for the selected criteria. Next, for continuous improvement of retailers’ green performance, we extracted and summarized a self-assessment checklist selected from the questionnaire. Retailers can use the checklist for guidelines for continuous improvement.

Interpreting Weights in Multiple Criteria Decision Making

Tue, 17 Jan 2017 03:41:44 GMT

title: Interpreting Weights in Multiple Criteria Decision Making abstract: Many decision making problems of business and management are formulated in terms of Multiple Attribute Decision Making (MADM): given a set of alternatives evaluated with multiple criteria, find the alternative which according to the Decision Maker (DM), has the most preferred combination of criteria values (attributes), or rank alternatives from the most preferred one to the least preferred one. The MADM methods incorporate mechanisms of building preference models based on information obtained from the DM. In a wide variety of such methods, the DM is supposed to provide information in terms of weights of criteria, usually understood as criteria’s priorities. These weights serve as parameters of the method-pecific preference models. The DM can define weights directly, or by using special weight elicitation techniques such as AHP, MAVT and others. Our concerns are that when using weight-based methods, the DM cannot ensure the correctness of the preference model. First, different weight-based methods use different kinds of preference models, which prioritize criteria based on weights in different manners. Second, interpretation of weights in some MADM methods is far from intuitive. Thus, a situation may occur when an inexperienced DM thinks of weights differently than they actually work in the method, and expresses the preference information incorrectly. In this paper we demonstrate the differences between how weights are interpreted in several methods: simple additive weighting, TOPSIS, VIKOR and PROMETHEE. We do it by comparing rankings produced with methods based on randomly generated data. We demonstrate that differences of interpreting weights significantly contribute to differences in produced rankings. A solution to this problem could be twofold: first, increasing awareness of differences between method-specific weight-based prioritizing mechanisms, and second, providing interpretations of weights for popular methods in the language understandable by the DMs.

The Problem of Distribution of Park-and-Ride Car Parks in Warsaw

Tue, 17 Jan 2017 03:38:10 GMT

title: The Problem of Distribution of Park-and-Ride Car Parks in Warsaw abstract: The development of cities and agglomerations brings new problems to be solved. One of them is the excessive road traffic and the related air pollution. Heavy traffic causes ongestions and thus increases the pollution level, because one of the most significant sources of air pollution are car exhaust gases. It is known that the public transport produces less pollution per one passenger then the private one. On the basis of this fact the idea of the Park-and-Ride (P&R or P+R) was developed, where commuters travel to the borders of the city by their cars and from there they continue their trip by public transportation. In this work, we will concentrate on finding the best localizations for P&R points. Our approach is composed of two steps. In the first step, a number of communication hubs is selected where P&R can be located (feasibility analysis). In the second ste a subset of hubs is chosen to actually have P&R points built (commuters’ convenience analysis). We solve the P&R location problem on the first step using some aspects of the Hub and Spoke method by applying a specialized evolutionary algorithm. As the problem of the second step is rather small, we propose to have it solved by experts.

A Queueing Model for Tiered Inspection Lines in Airports

Tue, 17 Jan 2017 03:31:38 GMT

title: A Queueing Model for Tiered Inspection Lines in Airports abstract: This paper proposes a tiered inspection system for airport security, wherein passengers are divided into three classes based on historical security records. A two-dimensional Markov process and a Markov modulated Poisson process (MMPP) queue were used in the formu- lation of the security inspection system. Simulated annealing was then used to obtain near- optimum solution for the model. The efficacy of the proposed model was evaluated using the arrival data of passengers at Taoyuan International Airport and other two international airports. A comparison with two conventional queueing models with regard to the average waiting time demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed security inspection system in enhancing service efficiency and boosting the level of security.

Discovering Time-Interval Sequential Patterns by a Pattern Growth Approach with Confidence Constraints

Tue, 17 Jan 2017 03:27:44 GMT

title: Discovering Time-Interval Sequential Patterns by a Pattern Growth Approach with Confidence Constraints abstract: Sequential pattern mining is to discover frequent sequential patterns in a sequence database. The technique is applied to fields such as web click-stream mining, failure forecast, and traf- fic analysis. Conventional sequential pattern-mining approaches generally focus only the orders of items; however, the time interval between two consecutive events can be a valuable information when the time of the occurrence of an event is concerned. This study extends the concept of the well-known pattern growth approach, PrefixSpan algorithm, to propose a novel sequential pattern mining approach for sequential patterns with time intervals. Unlike the other time-interval sequential pattern-mining algorithms, the approach concerns the time for the next event to occur more than the timing information with its precedent events. To obtain a more reliable sequential pattern, a new measure of the confidence of a sequential pattern is defined. Experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach.

A Generalized PROMETHEE III with Risk Preferences on Losses and Gains

Tue, 17 Jan 2017 03:23:22 GMT

title: A Generalized PROMETHEE III with Risk Preferences on Losses and Gains abstract: This study aims to generalize the Preference Ranking Organization METHod for Enrichment Evaluations (PROMETHEE) III model by introducing risk preferences of decision makers. The risk preferences are expressed by an S-shaped value function with gain and loss parts. This study then illustrates an environmental evaluation of waste treatment plants for waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) in Taiwan. Sensitivity analysis and the rank test demonstrate that the proposed model is rather stable. The PROMETHEE methods have been involved in various applications, especially in environmental management. One core process of PROMETHEE is to establish a preference difference function with two types of thresholds. The range of the slope lines of the linear preference is within the interval of [0, 1]. Working from the concept of the prospect theory, we extend its S-shaped function to the interval range of [−1, 1] so as to express risk preferences that occur in two quadrants. This research assesses a project on 15 local WEEE treatment plants to promote their recycling capability and technology competitiveness. According to the five aspects, the performance measures of the plants are obtained from a field study. The proposed model has an advantage on rank invariance by changing the thresholds in our case with sensitivity analysis demonstrating the robustness of the model. The generalized PROMETHEE III with risk preferences indeed provides an extension for making a decision in an uncertain environment.

Multiple Criteria Analysis of the Airport Terminal Effectiveness by Multi-objective Optimization and Simulation

Tue, 17 Jan 2017 03:19:23 GMT

title: Multiple Criteria Analysis of the Airport Terminal Effectiveness by Multi-objective Optimization and Simulation abstract: A rational approach to terminal airport management is not a trivial task due to relatively complex interactions between passengers and terminal infrastructure. Such infrastructure may be represented or modelled as a network of service nodes. To make a decision about such a network structure, one has to take into account not only the cost of terminal infrastructure, but also a set of quality indicators depicting passenger service level. Such decision problems may be formulated in the multiple criteria setting. We propose a bi-criteria decision making problem with a discrete-event simulation model of a terminal airport as a base model. The simulation model is used to evaluate a finite set of configurations representing a network of service nodes. To point out the most preferred Pareto optimal configuration, we propose to use an interactive decision making method to navigate Pareto optimal solutions with so-called vectors of concessions and reference points as preference carriers. Such versatile decision making scheme may be used to solve practical multiple criteria decision problems with values of criteria functions obtained by simulation runs.

Market Collective Wisdom Discovery for Portfolio Investments

Tue, 17 Jan 2017 03:15:58 GMT

title: Market Collective Wisdom Discovery for Portfolio Investments abstract: The goal of numerous investing strategies, as opposed to hedging strategies, is “to beat the market”, i.e. to secure returns higher than those guaranteed by tracking market indices. In order to achieve this goal, one needs to identify key factors which drive markets and cause security prices to fluctuate. We assume that distinctive key market factors exist, though it is not known how such factors correlate and aggregate, and eventually push a market from one quotation to another. In other words, we purport that at a given time there is the collective wisdom in a market which shapes the collective investment pattern for the future. We engage ourselves to reverse engineer that wisdom. Specifically, we attempt to reverse engineer it from market returns (which we interpret as collective market wisdom embodiment) with the use of the notions of vectors of concessions and compromise half lines, recently introduced into Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis. We illustrate our approach with preliminary calculations for selecting portfolios of international investment funds.

Mathematical Computation of Fuzzy Statistics for Sensory Evaluation

Tue, 17 Jan 2017 03:12:19 GMT

title: Mathematical Computation of Fuzzy Statistics for Sensory Evaluation abstract: Sensory evaluation is an essential need for accepting processed food products having desired quality specifications. Human perceived sensation depends on physiological and physical properties of food as well as demographic characters of consumers. In this paper, a mathematical computation method of fuzzy statistics for sensory evaluation is proposed. It illustrates the quality of sensory variables such as color, texture, flavor, taste etc. of a product with consumers’ demographic characters on a hedonic scale.

Bus Service Model with Rectangular Service Zone under Exponential Relation

Tue, 17 Jan 2017 03:08:28 GMT

title: Bus Service Model with Rectangular Service Zone under Exponential Relation abstract: Most researchers developed bus service models with a rectangular service zone that re- lations among different costs are related by a linear relation. A bus service model had been constructed with a rectangular service zone where costs are synthesized by an exponential relation. An accepted paper had point out that a previous model without capacity constraint is unreasonable. This paper examines another model with capacity constraint to show that previous formulated optimal solution contains questionable findings and then we provide our solution approach. The key feature of our paper is to point out that using the route width as a continuous variable will derive unreasonable results. Our improved approach is to use the partition number for the zone width as a discrete variable. A numerical example is provided to illustrate our proposed approach.

Smartphone Market Analysis Using Dynamic Multi-Criteria Decision Methods

Tue, 17 Jan 2017 03:05:40 GMT

title: Smartphone Market Analysis Using Dynamic Multi-Criteria Decision Methods abstract: The iPhone introduced an innovative multi-touch interface to satisfy customers’ attractive requirements. Thereafter, most smartphone manufacturers begin to mimic this innovation in their new generation products for a dramatically increasing demand market. Although the smartphone market includes many types and functions of products, there are no smart- phone selection methods to support customers to select an effective smartphone. In order to cope with such a problem, this paper proposes a multi-criteria selection method to evaluate operating systems and hardware and software specifications using AHP and SMART-ROC, respectively. For illustration, this paper uses the proposed methods to analyze the customer utility and benefit-cost of 24 popular smartphones in the market. The results show that the most popular smartphone does not have the best cost-benefit. This paper suggests customers select smartphones by referring to the cost-benefit approach except when they are looking for a communications product for a special purpose.

A Hybrid Approach for Knowledge Recommendation

Tue, 17 Jan 2017 03:02:19 GMT

title: A Hybrid Approach for Knowledge Recommendation abstract: Knowledge sharing is critical to knowledge management as it enables employees to share their knowledge. However, knowledge searching is a very time-consuming work. Additionally, in the context of an unsolved puzzle or unknown task, users typically have to determine the knowledge for which they will search. Therefore, knowledge management platforms for enterprises should have knowledge recommendation functionality. Hybrid recommendation systems (RS) have been developed to overcome, or at least to mitigate, the limitations of collaborative filtering. Because Genetic Algorithm (GA) is good at searching, it can cluster data according to similarities. However, the increase in the amount of data and nformation reduces the performance of a GA, thereby increasing cost of finding a solution. This work applies a novel method for incorporating a GA and rough set theory into clustering. In this paper, this work presents a hybrid knowledge recommendation model, which has a two-phase model for clustering and recommending. Approach implementation is demonstrated, as are its effectiveness and efficiency.

Efficient Method for Testing the Batch-Processing Process Yield

Tue, 17 Jan 2017 02:57:00 GMT

title: Efficient Method for Testing the Batch-Processing Process Yield abstract: Batch manufacturing processes have been widely used in various manufacturing processes, such as wafer fabrication, IC fabrication, and gridline printing process in the solar battery fabrication. In a batch manufacturing process, products are produced batch-by-batch. Thus, total process variations are generally divided into batch-by-batch variation and within-batch variation. The main purpose of this study is to provide an efficient method for testing the batch-processing process yield. Base on the one-way random effect model, the generalized pivotal quantity is utilized to establish the generalized confidence interval for assessing the process yield index. By simulations, the proposed method shows that its empirical coverage probability is not affected by the batch effect, and is still close the nominal coverage probability as the batch size increases.