The service quality is one of the important reasons that affect the travelers’ purchase intention of airline service. During each airline service process, however, service failure might results from various reasons and leads to a low customer satisfaction. Thus, it is important to know what kinds of service failure and recovery for airline service. This study used Critical Incident Technique (CIT) as a research method to collect the data of unsatisfied experiences during the international flight of Taiwanese airlines. In addition, the service process is used to draw out more details in each service failures. The collected data from service failure and service recovery were categorized into various types. This study conducted a cross tabulation comparison on service failure and service recovery. With the analysis results, the research provides some managerial implications for the airlines as well as the suggestions for future research.

View full abstract

This study investigated crucial green supply chain management (GSCM) and firm performance dimensions based on global container shipping service. On the basis of a factor analysis, six GSCM dimensions: green policy, green shipping practice, green marketing, green collaboration with supplier, green collaboration with partner, green collaboration with customer, and three firm performance dimensions: reduction of pollutant, decrease of cost, improved competitiveness were identified. According to their factor means in the GSCM dimensions, a cluster analysis subsequently assigned responding firms into four groups, namely, the external green oriented group, the internal green oriented group, the high internal and external green oriented group, and the low internal and external green oriented group. Differences in firm performance and GSCM dimensions among groups were examined.

View full abstract

Sea freight forwarders provide transportation services for less-than-container-load shipment customers by simultaneously routing shipments and placing them in containers booked for travel on sea liner networks. A shipment may be (i) sent directly to the destination for better service, (ii) sent via a transfer hub to allow load consideration for cost saving purposes, or (iii) transferred to partners when it is deemed necessary or beneficial from the financial perspective. This research proposes linear mixed integer programming models that integrate shipment routing and container booking decisions. The models take into account the risks of shipment damage during transfer and keep them below a pre-specified threshold. We propose two solution algorithms for solving these large-scale models and find that they are able to solve larger instances of the problem unsolvable by the traditional branch-and-bound algorithm. Our solutions consistently outperform the solutions from sequential planning by a large margin.

View full abstract