Driving to the store, finding parking, defective carts, difficulties in finding items, poor product info, long lines for checkout, unclear receipts, carrying heavy shopping bags home, and forgotten items are some of the most common barriers experienced by grocery shoppers. These are also the most common reasons why shoppers decide to switch to alternative retailers or to online grocery channels. COVID-19 accelerated this trend with online grocery shopping and home delivery services became prevalent and grew significantly during the pandemic (Gupta & Mukhejee, 2022). Today, e-grocery has reached 11% of the total grocery sales and being expected to reach 19% by 2025 in US (source: Statista, 2022). Brick and mortar grocery retailers declare to suffer from low loyalty of their customer and margin pressure. On the other side, the recent investments of online pure players such as Amazon and Alibaba in physical retail, including grocery, show that the physical shopping has still potential to lead retailers’ growth, also within grocery. Grocery retailers should therefore find new ways to attract and retain customers to their stores. Offering a better customer experience (CE) may be a valuable strategy to this end. A great CE has emerged at the base of a sustainable competitive advantage for companies, and it is at the heart of customer loyalty (Grewal et al., 2017) in several sectors but has often been neglected within grocery selling.

This research was conducted to examine the antecedents of perceived service quality (PSQ) factors in Airbnb by using Big Data and Artificial Intelligence. The findings include that the SERVQUAL model requires adjustment in this context, and it is well-enhanced by cognitive and attitudinal factors, including intimacy, authenticity, privacy, and security.

The research presented in this manuscript is centered on examining how social sponsorship can be made more commercially effective. To this end, the effects of two leveraging factors are explored by means of an experiment: the extent to which the social sponsorship is seen by consumers as legitimate, and that to which the sponsor is perceived as sincere. The results show that these two factors have a positive and statistically significant impact on consumers’ intentions to purchase the sponsor’s products. In addition, they show that the legitimacy of a sponsorship is enhanced when the cause and its sponsor are congruent, and that the sponsor’s sincerity increases when the sponsorship is combined with philanthropic investments, either in sequence (i.e., philanthropy followed by sponsorship) or simultaneously. These results are discussed in the context of the literature on social sponsorship, and managerial implications for firms that contemplate using social sponsorship as a marketing communication strategy are derived.

The waterworks company is in charge of managing water facilities buried underground, and the management has been centered on manholes. However, since there is no standard management manual, it has been impossible to introduce and operate a systemized managing tool by water service providers and managers, and manhole management has been carried out by individual data recording personnel for each water service provider. When the management is carried out individually, the data to be shared by other waterworks managers tend to be privatized, and consequently, it may become a big obstacle to proceed with many civil works such as emergency leak repair, road excavation, replacement of old buildings. This report introduces RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) system which is based on the magnetic field capable of IOT. It also describes the necessity of leveraging the system for smart managing of pipe management record that has been done by hand writing. The RFID system includes RFID marker, data reader, portable computer operating program, and data base server operating program. In this system, the data is managed with a single communication device, and it would be possible to share the information on the underground facilities and water treatment facilities. This RFID technology is expected to provide water service providers with opportunities to develop more scientific and modernized underground facilities information systems.

With the impact of globalization, businesses nowadays are searching for new ways to compete more effectively in today’s business marketplace. Companies that have already performed successfully in the external market but cannot perform well with their internal market may find themselves at a disadvantage in the long term (Ralston et al., 2006). Whilst businesses often spend significant amounts on their campaigns to attract external customers, they may also need to consider the internal market place and specifically their internal customers’ needs, i.e. employees, as they often have a significant impact on external market performance and profitability (Lings and Greenley, 2009). In light of fairly extensive literature on the employee management, the idea of viewing employees as internal customers was initiated from the concept of internal marketing and there are an increasing number of studies attempting to develop the concept of internal market orientation (IMO) to further facilitate the internal market exchange feasibility.Whilst employment relationship research has been served as a useful proxy for employee attitude and behavior (Choi & Peng, 2015), the notion that IMO could serve as a predictor of firm performance success has not yet been fully examined in the extant literature. Investigating such relationships combines the adoption of marketing perspectives with strategic human resource management across the organization per se. As such, drawing on data collected from 825 respondents across three different managerial levels in 275 organizations, this study contributes to the pertinent literature by developing a framework to measure the impact of IMO on organizational performance from the internal and external perspective as well as at the individual and the departmental level. Specifically, our findings reveal that IMO, consisting of internal information generation, internal information communication and responsiveness positively enhances employee retention, employee commitment, interdepartmental connectedness and significantly reduces interdepartmental conflict. In turn, given the exception of employee retention, these serve to significantly influence organizational performance. Our study provides several implications for scholars and management, as well as outlining some useful directions for future research.

Malaysia is currently implementing the use of the Frog Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) in all government schools in the country. This paper outlines the basis for introducing the VLE in leveraging teaching and learning in Malaysian schools. It discusses the state of current literature associated with the use of VLE. In addition, it articulates the need for programme evaluation as a means for decision-makers to plan and take necessary corrective action to better implement VLE among teachers and students in schools. To sustain the implementation of this endeavour, a monitoring and evaluation mechanism must be put in place. This would determine how the VLE is performing and ascertain key success factors with the use of the Frog VLE among teachers and students. For this purpose, a survey research was undertaken using a sample comprising 426 teachers and 223 students from primary and secondary schools throughout the country. Reliability computations show Cronbach alpha values greater than .90 for the various constructs in the scaled items of the teachers’ and students’ questionnaires. The key findings of the study show significantly different perceptions (p < .05) in the use of Frog VLE as a learning tool between primary pupils and secondary students with significantly higher perceptions from secondary students on all aspects ranging from ease of use of Frog VLE to using Frog VLE as a collaborative tool for interaction within and outside the classroom. Factor analysis via the Principal Component Analysis method shows 3 critical success factors cited by teachers in the use of Frog VLE. The first factor concerns the functionality of VLE as a pedagogical tool; the second is associated with the user-friendliness of the VLE; and the third concerns the VLE as a tool for collaboration. An analysis of ranks derived from the mean computations of the variables within the first factor shows the VLE provides a platform for teachers to share ideas and opinions being ranked first. This is followed by VLE being used by students to obtain learning materials, which is ranked second. Third, the VLE being used by teachers to source for new teaching materials. Other major findings include issues associated with slow and unstable internet connectivity where secondary schools fared worse compared to primary schools and that rural schools tended to have more problems in connectivity as compared to urban schools. This paper puts forth a proposition that educational technology needs continuous monitoring and evaluation and effective change management is imperative to attain success in its implementation.