JOURNAL OF BUSINESS MANAGEMENT
Year:2018 | Volume:10 | Issue:3 |Papers Count:13

Objective: Healthcare providers are of considerable significance due to the sensitivity of their services. Identifying the desired factors to choose a healthcare center helps managers to develop their own programs and strategies. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the factors influencing the selection of medical diagnostic laboratories. In doing so, the impact of brand evidence, brand hearsay, brand trust and brand image on encouraging customer selection has been analyzed. Methods: The present study is applied In terms of purpose and descriptive survey in terms of data collection. The statistical population consists of diagnostic laboratories in Isfahan. Results: The results indicate that brand evidence and brand hearsay affect brand then again brand trust in fluencies brand image as well. On the other hand, brand image has an impact on customers' selection. Conclusion: Of the nine hypotheses of the study the impact of brand evidence on brand image and the mediating role of brand image on the impact of brand evidence on the customers' persuasion in choosing healthcare services, have not been verified.

Objective: The present study aimed to identify and to investigate different types of favorable and unfavorable relationships between consumers and brand communities on Instagram. Methods: In this research a multi-case study approach has been adopted in which the cases were 8 participants who followed some brands from restaurant and clothing industries on Instagram. Results: The findings revealed 15 different types of relationships between consumers and brand communities on Instagram, among which, 9 items including self, love, best friend, casual friend, fling, colleague, emergent, acquaintance, and animosity, were previously introduced in the extant literature. 6 of which (including two-tier, fan, respectable acquaintance, stranger, potential and declining) were the contributions of this research. These 15 types of relationships were ranked and classified based on their favorability for brands. Conclusion: This research showed that consumers build a variety of relationships with brand communities on Instagram some of which are very positive and some are negative.

Objective: The purpose of this research is to identify anti-marketing strategies and ultimately to prioritize solutions using multi-criteria decision-making techniques. Methods: This research is a hybrid combination of exploratory type consisted of both qualitative and quantitative stages in which a semi-structured interview has been conducted with ten experts as key informants on social harm. The statistical population of this research consists of the experts of Mazandaran University. Identifying smoking antimarketing strategies in a quantitative stage, using BWM and Multi More questionnaires, anti-marketing strategies were prioritized via Excel and LINDO software. Results: The results from this study indicate that social factors are the most important factor influencing tobacco use among students. And, in the meantime, the family has the greatest role, because young people and adolescents are influenced by their family, which is considered to be a reference group for them and their relationship is closer together. Conclusion: The best way to tackle smoking tendency is to change attitude. This is because; smoking has to be regarded as a social factor that involves the entire community, not the individual.

Objective: Production and selling products under a brand earned its equity in a different area of product consumption is a popular strategy among manufacturers that do not have the ability or desire to invest in branding. This strategy is known as merchandising and character merchandising is one of the most common ones. This research is about to identify key success factors of character merchandising strategy in the Iranian market. Methods: As a qualitative research we conducted Grounded Theory in the present study. Data was collected through in-depth interviews with consumers of these types of goods and analyzed using open, axial, and selective coding, based on paradigm approach of GT. Results: Appropriate marketing mix, character origin, cultural fit, medium, competitive capability, and contextual factors have been identified and conceptualized as merchandising key success factors. Conclusion: Success of animation character merchandising in the Iranian market is mainly based on having knowledge about character origins and cultural symbols. Additionally, due to the cultural and social characteristics of the Iranian market, families are paying attention to the cultural appropriateness of the characters-an important factor for the competitiveness of products and characters.

Objective: Provided that, internationalization and expansion of activities to global markets is one of the most important breakthroughs for small and medium-sized businesses, this research aimed to propose an internationalization model for Iranian small and medium-sized enterprises in nanotechnology industries. Methods: The present research is applied in terms of purpose and uses qualitative approach through structured grounded theory. The process of studying the phenomenon was discovered based on the analysis of in-depth interviews conducted with 11 directors of active nanotechnology business with a history of international presence. Results: The pattern obtained from this study indicated that the main issue that triggers business to enter the international markets is sustainable competitive advantage. The effective factors in this process include organizational and individual components, environmental factors including environmental characteristics, and firm characteristics; intermediary factors including management and organizational conditions; powerful entry; market planning, and analysis. Process strategy and internationalization implications including employee empowerment development of technology, brand extension, and growth of capital. Conclusion: The process of internationalization of SMEs requires global sustainable competitive advantage, and at the same time, the existent propulsion in business essence and entrepreneur nature. Depending on the market situation, domestic competition, firm size, and the existing empirical records of the company will intensify.

Objective: Provided that business units encounter problems due to the lack of attention to competitive environment and their failure in crafting accurate strategy as well, one of the most important factors for capturing sustainable competitive advantage is the speed of responding to the needs of the market and customers, according to the resources available. Therefore, Strategic orientation issue is highly practical. The present study aims to design and to explain the strategic orientation model in Iran’ s knowledge-based companies. Methods This study is expletory in nature and considered as fundamental in terms of purpose. The statistical population consists of 19 experts of intensive knowledge-based companies in Iran’ s Science and Technology Park, benefited from considerable experience and expertise in directing their startups to improve performance and market entry. Purposeful sampling was taken by the aid of snowball technique. Data was analyzed using grounded theory methodology and in-depth interviews were conducted in terms of data gathering. Results: Based on the results, these categories discovered: market orientation, casual conditions, cost-oriented and learning-oriented, Formalism and brand orientation, innovation orientation, entrepreneurial orientation, and authoritarian on the market. Conclusion: Based on the research: phenomenon is market orientation, category of futurism is casual conditions, cost-oriented and learning-oriented have been recognized as intervening conditions, and formalism was context and strategies were categories of brand orientation, innovation orientation and entrepreneurial orientation. Consequences were authoritarian on the market.

Objective: Providing that data mining has been an effective solution of improving the efficiency and the effectiveness of the retail industry, this industry has been the subject of data mining science due to the nature of its data. In this study, the prediction of customer behavior in the retail industry of Fast Moving Consumer Goods is aimed at increasing the quantity and quality of sales in the study of Golpakhsh Avval Co. Methods: The present study is applied in terms of purpose, using data survey to collect data. The research is based on the CRISP-DM process, which uses the RFMCL clustering model, regression classification and regression techniques as well. Eventually, a collaborative recommendation method has been applied for recommendation. Results: The result is a forecasting model recommended to the best customers goods that they have not bought on a particular date and to a certain amount, so that, the order-based sale is changed to hot sale method. The final solution involves three sub models of customer clustering, sale forecasting and a recommendation system. The five variables model – with MSE/Range accuracy of 2. 24% – is solved for recommendation of sales amount. Conclusion: By implementing the developed recommender system in Golpakhsh Avval Co., the proactive production master plan would be possible to execute. In addition, the marketing approach could be transformed from visiting sales to hot sales in the future which provides considerable savings in shipping and personnel costs.

Objective: Attractive environment development as an important retail strategy has a positive impact on consumer purchasing behavior. This study investigates the effect of the shopping center's image on the purchase intention by mediating the utilitarian and hedonic perceived value, customer satisfaction and customer preferences. Methods: The present study is applied in nature, and descriptive in terms of data collection. The statistical population consists of shopping centers customers in Semnan from which, 182 questionnaires were collected randomly. Cronbach's alpha and composite reliability were used to determine the reliability of the questionnaire. To determine validity, convergent and divergent validity has been used. The hypotheses of the research have been tested using structural equation modeling. Results: The results from this study indicate the direct and significant impact of the shopping center image on the purchase intention, utilitarian perceived value, and hedonic perceived value as well. Meanwhile, the direct and significant impact of the utilitarian perceived value and hedonic perceived value on customer satisfaction and customer preference, as well as the direct and significant impact of the customer satisfaction and customer preference on purchase intention was approved. Conclusion: Creating an optimal mental image of the shopping mall in the minds of customers is one of the important factors in attracting new customers and preserving the previous customers, which by increasing the value of customer satisfaction and preferences, increases the willingness of customers to do purchases.

Objective: Colors as one of the most fundamental components of any product (especially apparel) have a significant impact on consumer behavior. These effects can be studied on various aspects, so that with a thorough analysis we can manufacture desirable apparel with appropriate color suited to the needs of customers. In this study, in order to fill the research gap, the effect of color on customer purchase intention is investigated and the difference between the views of men and women about each of the dimensions is analyzed. Methods: Statistical population consists of all store's customers at Setareh store in Shiraz in which we chose 279 individuals. Questionnaire validity is tested by two approaches including face and content methods while we conducted two methods to verify the reliability including Cronbach's alpha: 86%, and split half: 76%. Results: Findings showed that the most important factor among the others affecting customer purchase intention is customer color preferences while color norms does not affect customer purchase intention. Another findings reveals that only about the color norms, women and men have Different opinions. On the other hand, among the cultural, religious, friends and individual interest, individual interest factor is the most effective predictor of choosing a special color. Conclusion: Color, as a low-cost element in apparel products, plays an important role in customer decisions. If a special color is of high importance compare to other colors and it is of customer's interest, it will be preferred.

Objective: Compensation is the most important part of the employment relationship and is, of course, one of the heaviest costs of any organization. Human resource managers as well as management theorists have always sought to answer the question of how compensation for services affects people's performance. This research has been conducted to explain the relationship between service compensation and individual performance in response to this fundamental question. Methods: This research was carried out using hierarchical regression method-based on real salary information. A questionnaire was used to collect data from 1950 employees of Mellat Bank throughout the country. Results: The results of this study indicate that the effects of pay for performance on employee performance are higher than fixed payments. In addition, self-success and the expectation of receiving rewards in the relationship between performance-based pay and individual performance play a moderating role. Also, based on the results of hierarchical regression, the mediating role of internal motivation in the relationship between payment and individual performance was not confirmed. Conclusion: The relationship between payment and performance is positive and significant, and the effect of pay for performance on individual performance is more than base-pay. Selfefficacy also has a moderating role in the relationship between performance pay and individual performance. This is a major consequence of the pay structure of the banking industry in Iran (and of course most of the Iranian organizations).

Objective: Evaluation of marketing channels is a very important and complex task, so far no comprehensive model has been presented in this regard. The present study aims to provide a decision framework for evaluating marketing channels. Methods: With extensive study of literature, effective indicators were identified in the evaluation of marketing channels. Then, the newest multi-criteria decision-making method, fuzzy best-worst method was used to calculate the relative importance of indices. In addition, Fuzzy EDAS technique was applied as a multi-attribute decision-making method to rank distribution strategies in marketing channels. The statistical population of this research consists of directors and experts in the food industry, which due to their limited number, sampling was not performed. Results: Eight criteria were identified for evaluating marketing distribution channels, including trust, conflict, display, delivery, information exchange, product return cost, coordination cost, and profitability as well. Six types of marketing channels are: highlighting the importance of the sales team, expanding the sales team, distributing value added, ordinary distributors, the exclusive web channel, and the shared web channel. Conclusion: According to the result of research conducted by a food company, the strategy of expanding the sales team has first ranked among other strategies.