In the 21 century the amount of research in personalization has grown exponentially. Much of this increased interest is linked with the Internet and other information technologies that enable efficient servicing of customers even on one-to-one basis. This paper reports on a research project, the first part of which studied via focus groups the perceptions of a Nordic bank’s customers towards va...

OBJECTIVE To examine the inappropriate use of antimicrobials by investigating (1) actual utilization pattern and retail sales and (2) antimicrobial resistant information provided by health professionals in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. METHODS We investigated antimicrobial use in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia by surveying 619 consenting customers who attended 250 randomly chosen pharmacies in December 2006....

Demand response is nowadays considered as another type of generator, beyond just a simple peak reduction mechanism. A demand response service provider (DRSP) can, through its subcontracts with many energy customers, virtually generate electricity with actual load reduction. However, in this type of virtual generator, the amount of load reduction includes inevitable uncertainty, because it consi...

This paper studies a queueing system with a Markov arrival process with marked arrivals and PH-distribution service times for each type of customer. Customers (regardless of their types) are served on a mixed first-come-first-served (FCFS) and last-come-first-served (LCFS) nonpreemptive basis. That is, when the queue length is N (a positive integer) or less, customers are served on an FCFS basi...

Internet banking has become the new self-service delivery channel that allows banks to provide information and offer services to their customers with more convenience via the web services technology. An understanding of corporate customer acceptance of Internet banking can assist banks to assess the real business value of Internet banking implementation. This study examines four benefits and th...

Rapidly rising domestic natural gas prices and the development of higher-priced synthetic fuels have made marketability a key issue for the natural gas industry, both for distribution companies and for producers and interstate pipelines in making reserve acquisition decisions. This paper describes the methodology underlying a detailed model that characterizes the interfuel competition between g...

A Service Level Agreement (SLA) between a service provider and its customers is an assurance to customers in fulfills the best services. Customers can get the service they pay for which obligates the service provider to achieve its service promises. Failing to meet SLAs could result in serious financial consequences for a provider and lost customers trust. This paper presents an analysis on per...