educations e-book

B-Flow and Power Doppler in Vascular Imaging

2010-07-25T15:08:00.000-07:00

Introduction

B-mode imaging was combined with pulsed Doppler frequency analysis in the mid-1970s to provide anatomic feedback on the actual site of flow measurement without regard for the actual visualization of the flow itself. Throughout the 1980s, flow was “visualized” by discrete sampling of specific sites by placing the pulsed Doppler sample volume at regions of interest. When color Doppler imaging was introduced in the late 1980s, this allowed for the first time the qualitative analysis of bloodflow characteristics over a larger region of interest. Throughout the 1990s, technology continually improved the quality of color Doppler displays such that it has become as widely used as gray scale imaging for the evaluation of patients with vascular disease.

Download E-Book Lengkap

The Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology

2010-07-19T13:37:00.000-07:00

sychology is one of the most fascinating fields of study. Almost everyone seems interested in understanding his or her own behavior, as well as the actions of others. Psychology is, by far, the most popular of the social and behavioral sciences and one of the most attractive to those who are interested in knowing more about people and their behavior. In college and universities, psychology has been one of the most popular majors for over three decades, and students are more likely to take an elective course in psychology than one from any other field. Not surprisingly, psychology has also become a popular high school offering.

Download E-Book Lengkap

Web Design - The Complete Reference, 2nd Edition

2010-07-19T13:29:00.000-07:00

Create effective Web sites following the latest technologies and techniques. Author, instructor, and Web design guru Thomas Powell has fully-revised this second edition of his highly instructive Web design and development techniques. From determining your needs and planning your site, to the nuts-and-bolts of page development with text, graphics, scripts, and multimedia, everything you''ll need to know is covered in this comprehensive volume. Updated content includes extended coverage of new browsers and technologies, standards-oriented development using XHTML, CSS and XML, emerging design conventions, and the latest Web-serving approaches for speedy site delivery.

Download E-Book Lengkap

Power Electronic Modules: Design and Manufacture

2010-07-19T13:26:00.000-07:00

Designing and building power semiconductor modules requires a broad, interdisciplinary base of knowledge and experience, ranging from semiconductor materials and technologies, thermal management, and soldering to environmental constraints, inspection techniques, and statistical process control. This diversity poses a significant challenge to engineers, and a book that brings together the essential elements of these technologies is long overdue. Power Electronic Modules: Design and Manufacture fills that void. It covers not only the basic technologies, but also the latest advances in these areas. Organized into three main sections, coverage begins with discussions on the materials used and their key properties

Download E-Book Lengkap

2009-11-06T23:31:00.000-08:00

50 Fast Photoshop CS Techniques

A hot seller in previous editions, totally revised and updated for the new-est release of Adobe Photoshop, the world’s most popular image editing application.

Features 50 easy, impressive techniques beginners and experienced image editors alike can implement almost instantly to enhance the quality of their work.

Includes many all-new techniques, all explained step by step with lavish full-color illustrations.

Discusses traditional photo effects, techniques for combining photos, natural media and graphic arts techniques, animating artwork, digital photo blends, and much more, with detailed discussions that help readers learn to adapt the techniques for their own needs

Download E-Book Lengkap

2009-09-19T02:54:00.000-07:00

The Anatomy of Cheaters

WHO ARE ALL THESE CHEATERS?
CHARACTERISTICS OF ACADEMICALLY DISHONEST STUDENTS

ANGELA D. MILLER, TAMERA B. MURDOCK,
ERIC M. ANDERMAN, AND AMY L. POINDEXTER

INTRODUCTION
In the 2000 John Stockwell film, Cheaters, students from an underprivileged, underfunded, rundown public school steal a test in order to win an academic decathlon title that has consistently been defended by an uppity private school. Although talent got them to the state competition, they resort to cheating in this final competition to guarantee a win and then are plagued with investigations, media, and a lawsuit, all in an attempt to obtain glory for the underdog. If the ability to win was apparent, why would students resort to cheating? Certainly this act is aggrandized and sensationalized for the big screen; however, cheating is more than a film topic and far too serious and extensive for it to be considered as only a subject of entertainment. In life, as in the film, many students who are capable of
achieving high grades through their own efforts are cheating as a way to get ahead.

Cheating is also in the news, garnering special segments on major network news programs explaining the elaborate schemes and technological aids used by cheaters. With the arrival of David Callahan's (2004) book The Cheating Culture, discussion of a moral compass and a cheating society has emerged across the country from the classroom to the boardroom.Cheating can be considered an epidemic according to many statistics available on the prevalence of cheating behaviors; one-third of elementary-age students admit to cheating (Cizek, 1999), and approximately 60 percent of middle school students cite cheating as a major problem in schools (Evans
& Craig, 1990). Seventy-four percent of high school students admit to cheating on tests (McCabe, 2001), and among college students cheating rates are as high as 95 percent (McCabe & Trevino, 1997). Cheating rates appear to be increasing because these numbers are substantially higher than those in earlier studies; however, it could be that students are just more willing to admit to cheating these days, perhaps owing to changes in social norms.

This chapter examines the demographic, academic, behavioral, and personality characteristics of students who are either self-identified or observed cheaters in recent research. Studies that examine the personal characteristics of students who engage in cheating behaviors constitute a large portion of the research on academic cheating. Following a large-scale study of academic integrity (Bowers, 1964), most of the research in this area has focused on students' individual factors including gender, GPA, competition, self-esteem, and work ethic. Beginning in 1990, the literature shifted to studies that focused more on contextual factors such as classroom characteristics (Murdock, Miller, & Kohlhardt, 2005; McCabe & Trevino, 1993; McCabe, Trevino, & Butterfield, 2002) and peer group norms (Robinson, Amburgey, Swank, & Faulker, 2004). Across all of the extant research, the majority of the studies have concentrated on students at the college level, including a comprehensive review of the literature in which both prevalence and correlates of cheating were examined (Whitley, 1998).

Reports of cheating behavior vary greatly; Whitley (1998) reported prevalence statistics from 5 to 95 percent across 46 studies of cheating. The variation in these numbers is most likely due to varied definitions of cheating as well as to measurement methods; however, across the studies reviewed, Whitley found that although cheating behavior could be predicted by certain contextual variables, individual characteristics also increased the odds of cheating. Another, more recent, review of the literature reached similar conclusions: even though much of the research has turned to contextual factors, there are still many individual difference variables that are related to cheating behaviors (McCabe, Trevino, &
Butterfield, 2001). These variables, which have been prominent in the last decade of cheating research, are the focus of this chapter.

Each of the first four sections of this chapter discusses one of the categories of characteristics that have been examined in relation to cheating: demographic, academic, motivational, and personality characteristics. Within these sections, we selected those factors that either have been the most studied (i.e., age) or are just starting to emerge in the literature as having promise for predicting cheating (i.e., impulsivity). Our fifth and final section provides suggestions for educators and future research in the field.

Download E-Book Lengkap

2009-09-18T09:16:00.000-07:00

QMail

By : O'Reilly

qmail concentrates on common tasks like moving a sendmail setup to qmail, or setting up a "POP toaster," a system that provides mail service to a large number of users on other computers sending and retrieving mail remotely. The book fills crucial gaps in existing documentation, detailing exactly what the core qmail software does.

Preface
Since its release in 1998, qmail has quietly become one of the most widely used applications on the Internet. It's powerful enough to handle mail for systems with millions of users, including Yahoo Mail and VSNL (the largest ISP in India), while being compact enough to work on even the smallest PC Unix and Linux systems. Its component design makes it easy to extend and customize while keeping its key functions secure.

Qmail's design is rather different from its best-known predecessor, sendmail. People who are familiar with sendmail often have trouble recasting their problems and solutions in qmail terms. In this book, I try first to help the reader establish a qmail frame of mind, then show how the pieces of qmail work, and finally show how qmail can deal with some more complex mailing tasks such as handling mail for multiple domains, mailing lists, and gateways to other services.

Download E-Book Lengkap

2009-09-15T21:51:00.000-07:00

Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning in Higher Education

By : Tim S. Roberts
Central Queensland University, Australia

Chapter I

Abstract

The rapidly increasing use of computers in education, and in particular the migration
of many university courses to web-based delivery, has caused a resurgence of interest
among educators in non-traditional methods of course design and delivery. This chapter provides an introduction to the field of computer-supported collaborative
learning (CSCL). First, some of the major benefits are listed. Then, some of the common problems are described, and solutions are either given or pointed to in the literature. Finally, pointers are given to some of the more recent research in this area.

Introduction
It is interesting that collaborative learning methods were experimented with, and found to be successful, at least as early as the late 18th century, when George Jardine employed them for his philosophy classes at the University of Glasgow. He came to believe that “...the teacher should move to the perimeter of the action...and allow the students freedom to...learn from one another” (Gaillet, 1994). However, it is only recently, with the advent of the new technologies, that many academics and instructors have become interested in exploring possible alternative methods of course design and delivery.

This renewed interest is evidenced by, among other things, the increasing number of
conferences devoted to this topic; the number of papers submitted to both conferences
and journals; the formation of numerous research groups around the world; and the
number of web-sites devoted to providing resources in this area, such as the Online
Collaborative Learning in Higher Education website (Roberts, 2002).

Benefits
The importance and relevance of social interaction to an effective learning process has been stressed by many theorists, from Vygotsky (1978) through advocates of situated learning such as Lave and Wenger (1991), and many other recent researchers and practitioners. Computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL), if implemented appro-priately, can provide an ideal environment in which interaction among students plays a central role in the learning process.

Ted Panitz, a Professor of Mathematics and Engineering at Cape Cod Community College,
has written extensively about collaborative and cooperative education, mainly as it
relates to the K-12 (Kindergarten to Year 12) sphere. However, much of his writing is equally applicable in higher education. He lists a substantial number of benefits to collaborative learning (Panitz, 2001); the list here is slightly abbreviated and amended:

Download E-Book Lengkap

2009-09-15T19:38:00.000-07:00

Drupal for Education and E-Learning

Teaching and learning in the classroom using the Drupal CMS
By : Bill Fitzgerald

Drupal has its roots in building and supporting online communities. These roots have helped Drupal meet the needs of schools, teachers, and students in countless countries, and in countless different learning contexts. Compared to a traditional Learning Management System, Drupal can feel less restrictive; Drupal has been designed to interact with the Web, and to make the most of the array of possibilities
offered by the Internet.

Drupal allows site administrators to set up as closed or as open a site as they desire. Using Drupal, a site administrator can create a learning environment where no
content is visible outside of the site, and where all courses are entirely private. At the other end of the spectrum, a site administrator can create a learning environment where students and teachers have complete control over the content they share with classmates, other site members, and/or the entire Internet community. The
purpose of this book is not to recommend one approach to teaching and learning over another, but rather to highlight the freedom that comes with having choices. In this text, we will cover the technical approaches to crafting the ideal social learning environment for your specific goals.

Download E-Book Lengkap

2009-09-15T19:24:00.000-07:00

Management Education and Humanities

Paperback: 262 pages
Publisher: Edward Elgar Pub (July 7, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1847203213
ISBN-13: 978-1847203212

Academics and managers who strive for a humanistic management education usually care for people, but they are challenged by sophisticated intellectual subjects and practical problems. The authors' experience, competence and commitment enables them to present an extensive coverage of important views and an in-depth study of these issues.' - Eduard Bonet, ESADE, Spain 'This volume is a timely initiative. It resonates with important questions on globalization and its consequences, on the unrelenting quest for efficiency and productivity, on recent corporate scandals and on the responsibilities of managers and management education. This book is a manifesto for an intellectual revolution. In a complex and open world, managers often bump into the limits of the decontextualized tools associated with mainstream management knowledge and practice. Managers have to navigate in a world that is not only economic but also political, cultural, shaped by history and ethical traditions and preoccupations - not only as a mark of social capital but really as a way to enhance their managerial skills and efficiency. The role of management education should be to prepare them for that odyssey and this volume tells us that humanities could be a powerful tool in that sense. This project is served by a highly legitimate international panel of contributors who collectively point towards an alternative for management thinking and management education.' - Marie-Laure Djelic, ESSEC Business School, France.

Product Description
"Management Education and Humanities" argues that management teachers and researchers seem to be increasingly dissatisfied with the way managers are usually educated in western countries. It claims that educational practices and methods would greatly benefit from reflection on the implicit assumptions and paradigms behind those practices, and debates the role that humanism and humanities might play in the formation of new managerial elites.

Download E-Book Lengkap

2009-09-15T18:09:00.000-07:00

Encyclopedia of American Education - 3rd Edition

Hardcover: 1400 pages
Publisher: Facts on File; 3 edition (May 30, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0816068879
ISBN-13: 978-0816068876

From Library Journal

The author of this comprehensive encyclopedia, a former professor of English and journalism, has written five books on education, and his column appears regularly in the weekly journal Education. His three-volume set contains over 2000 alphabetically arranged entries covering all aspects of education past and present, including educational movements, biographical information on prominent educators, health issues such as AIDS and sex education, legal issues, publications, organizations, schools, programs, and tests. The final volume includes an extensive bibliography divided into 41 major subject areas, while the four appendixes offer a wealth of information, including a chronology of major dates in the history of education from 1607 to 1994, federal education legislation from 1787 to 1993, and significant U.S. Supreme Court decisions in education. Nothing currently available has the scope of this excellent encyclopedia. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries.?Barbara S. Meagher, Central Connecticut State Univ., New Britain Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist
Education in the U.S. has changed significantly since 1996 when the first edition of this volume was published, so it is no surprise that Facts On File updated it. The surprise rests in the number of entries that did not change. The work still includes about 2,500 entries in about 200 subject areas. Topics range from history to current issues, from leading figures and movements to legislation and Supreme Court cases, from administration to adolescence. About 50 new articles deal with distance learning and other emerging trends. Approximately 500 articles have been updated. Some statistics were revised (although the number of California State University campuses was not updated). Library has some very current information, while Children's literature is severely out of date.

Entries range in length from a couple of sentences to several pages. Length does not necessarily correlate with current importance; for instance, Missionary education movements is longer than Minority education, and Military education is longer than Migrant education. The humanities are covered more extensively than the sciences. Individual colleges and historical aspects of education outweigh research and reform (e.g., there is no index listing for statistics, and ethnography is missing entirely). Literacies are under-represented; computer literacy is included but media, visual, and information literacies are excluded. There is no mention of young adult literature, which continues to be a controversial and important topic. Except for those appended to new entries, lists of references contain few current titles.

Several appendixes follow the entries: a sketchy chronology of significant educational benchmarks (none for the 1980s), a list of significant U. S. Supreme Court decisions in education, a list of education majors and degrees, and a topical bibliography of generally older resources.

Despite some gaps this set covers much ground and is useful for many libraries, but should not be considered the definitive source or the only purchase in this area. Given the limited amount of updating, libraries may choose not to replace the previous edition. RBB

2009-09-14T01:54:00.000-07:00

Analysis and approximation of performance bound
for two-observer bearings-only tracking

Ben-Lian Xu, Qing-Lan Chen, Zheng-Yi Wua, Zhi-Quan Wang

Abstract

This paper presents the analytic recursive formulas of Crame´r-Rao lower bound(CRLB) for the switching models system,in which the target moves either with a constant velocity or with a constant speed and a constant turn rate. For the case of two-observer bearings-only maneuvering target tracking, a reliable maneuver detection method is investigated and then utilized to approximate the theoretic CRLB. Finally, to demonstrate the agreement between the approximated CRLB using the proposed maneuver detection method and the theoretic one, a large number of Monte-Carlo runs under diﬀerent maneuvering scenarios are conducted. Correctness of the analytic recursive formulas of CRLB and eﬀectiveness of the proposed maneuver detection method are veriﬁed from these simulations. 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
For a general nonlinear ﬁltering problem, the optimal recursive state estimator in the Bayesian sense needs the complete posterior density of the state. As is well known, such a problem has no analytic closed-form solution. As a consequence, the solution of the nonlinear ﬁltering is usually approximated by means of extended Kalman ﬁlter, unscented Kalman ﬁlter [9], particle ﬁlter [16] and so on. In practical applications, many researchers usually attempt to derive the theoretically best achievable second-order error performance for nonlinear ﬁltering to evaluate these ﬁlters, and we call it Crame´r-Rao lower bound (CRLB).

The Crame´r-Rao lower bound, deﬁned as the inverse of the Fisher information matrix (FIM), represents an objective lower limit of cognizability of parameters in constant or random parameter estimation. It has been widely used in many cases, such as bearings-only tracking [13,20,21], ballistic target tracking [8] and so on. Due to its ability of predicting the best achievable performance, it is usually utilized as a benchmark to evaluate the performance of an estimation algorithm and can provide guidance to improve the experimental design as well. Therefore, the discussion on CRLB is always a hot topic in the ﬁeld of target motion analysis (TMA).

A complete history of the developments of the CRLB for target tracking would involve more than sixty publications (e.g., [3–7,10,12–15,17–19]), and its attention varies from single target to multiple targets, from constant parameter estimation to random parameter estimation, from clutter-free to clutter, etc. In many practical tracking scenarios, due to high frequency of maneuver occurrence, the corresponding discussion
on the CRLB seems necessary and imminent. However, few reports on the CRLB of maneuvering target tracking can be found so far, even so, most of them are based on such an assumption that the model history is already known [13]. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to investigate the performance bounds of the switching-models-based bearings-only maneuvering target tracking system, in which the target moves either with a constant velocity or with a constant speed and a constant turn rate. It is noted that, in bearing-only tracking, if a single observer is collecting angular measurements, the target state becomes observable only if the observer ‘‘outmaneuvers” the target, i.e., observer motion is one derivative higher than that of target and a component of this motion is perpendicular to the line of sight. However, for a two-observer bearings-only tracking system to be discussed in this paper, it is not the case, and the target is always observable only if the target does not move on the line connecting the two observers, thus the observability will not be addressed later.

This work takes inspiration mainly from Farina et al. [7], in which the detection probability of target was supposed to be less than unity. Thus we suppose in this paper that there is the possibility of target’s maneuver or non-maneuver at each sampling period. On the basis of such assumption, the recursive theoretic formulas
of CRLB for two-observer bearings-only maneuvering target are derived. Since the calculation of the theoretic CRLB relies on the exponentially growing number of maneuver/non-maneuver sequences, a reliable maneuver detector is developed to reduce the possible sequences to further approximate the theoretic CRLB.

The rest of this paper is arranged as follows. The target dynamics and measurement models for bearingsonly target tracking are formulated in Section 2. In Section 3, the recursive theoretic formulas of CRLB for two-observer bearings-only maneuvering target are derived, and moreover, a reliable maneuver detector for bearings-only tracking is developed and utilized to approximate the theoretic CRLB. Finally, performance evaluation and conclusions are given in Sections 4 and 5, respectively.

Download E-Book Lengkap

2009-09-05T21:30:00.000-07:00

A new kind of dynamic matrix algorithm in the
Process Control

Jing Zhang, Zhenxi Chen
Department of Automation Electronic Engineering
Qingdao University of Science and Technology
Qingdao, China
Crystle77@126.com

Abstract—Dynamic Matrix Control algorithm is a predictive control algorithm based on step response of the object,suitable for complex control systems and the process whose mathematical model is difficult to be established precisely. In the article,the
dynamic matrix control algorithm has been studied, we analyse the impact on system control quality using dynamic matrix control algorithms with different setting parameters , and make simulation in the thermal power plants control process. The
simulation results show that dynamic matrix predictive control algorithm can achieve good control effect in the process.

Keywords- dynamic matrix control(DMC); predictive control; setting parameterst.

INTRODUCTION
After 30 years of development, Predictive Control, which has achieved good results in the metallurgy, chemical industry,machinery and oil plants ,and, has also made great progress by leaps and bounds in theory, becomes a model for process control. At present, the typical practical control algorithms are dynamic matrix control (DMC), model control algorithm (MAC), generalized predictive control (GPC), and so on[1].
Dynamic Matrix Control (DMC) algorithm ,which is brought up in 1980 by Cutler, as one of the predictive control algorithms ,is a step response based on the object model, combined with the implementation of a rolling correction of the feedback optimization control algorithm[2]. DMC algorithm is applied to the linear object which is gradually stable. The algorithm, has got very successful application in industrial process control,such as in the metallurgy, chemical industry, machinery and oil plants,because of its more simple, less calculation and robustness[3].

Download Jurnal Lengkap

2009-09-01T04:17:00.000-07:00

Customer satisfaction as an antecedent of price acceptance results of an empirical study

Introduction
Marketing ± defined as a market-oriented management concept ± places the problems and wishes of actual and potential customers at the center of all operational considerations. According to this principle, the satisfaction of consumers' wants is what lays the foundation for a company's long-term success. The challenge facing any company is thus to achieve the highest possible level of customer satisfaction. The significance of the satisfaction rating is that ``. . . customer satisfaction measures are an indicator of future profit . . .'' (Hauser et al., 1994, p. 330). Customers who are satisfied with a purchased product will buy the same product again, more often (Reichheld, 1996), and will also recommend it to others (Oliver and Swan, 1989). The costs of doing business with a buyer with whom a relationship has already
been built up are moreover significantly lower than those entailed by canvassing a new customer (Fornell, 1992; Anderson et al., 1994).

The fact that the price is neglected when analyzing customer satisfaction is astonishing if we consider that price competition rules the market conditions in many branches and sectors, and that cost-effectiveness is one of the criteria that customers rank as particularly important when selecting a product or service. According to the dominant view, attention should be given to a useful performance concept and subsequent recording of customer satisfaction while the price is not considered as a determining factor. Many companies apparently are paying too much attention to the efficiency dimension and neglect the price dimension when thinking about cost efficiency.

The goal of this current study is to extend previous research in two important ways. It attempts to demonstrate the relationship between customer satisfaction Price neglected and price acceptance, and to analyze the implications that result for marketing policy. Particular emphasis is placed on the question of the extent to which an increase in satisfaction with a consumed commodity influences price acceptance by the consumer. Note that while the relationship between pricing policies and satisfaction evaluations seems to be a highly relevant topic, the satisfaction literature offers little insight to explain the relationship (Voss et al., 1998) and there are only a few studies that integrate the price explicitly as a component in the model (Lemmink et al., 1998). Especially, price acceptance has not received the degree of attention paid to other consequences of satisfaction, such as loyalty. Furthermore we close a gap, Voss et al. noticed, when they say ``. . . another shortfall in the extant satisfaction research is that only a small proportion of it focuses on services'' (1998, p. 46). They claim, that this is a major deficiency because the paucity of search qualities associated with services is likely to produce greater performance uncertainty and, thus, decreased accuracy in consumers' predictive expectations. When faced with performance uncertainty, consumers are likely to use heuristics, like the use of price as a cue in forming performance expectations (Rao and Monroe, 1989). As such, the influence of satisfaction on the price formation in service contexts is especially worthy of investigation. The following approach is adopted: First of all, the various methods used to measure customer satisfaction ratings and price acceptance are outlined. Next, hypotheses are derived for describing the relationship between satisfaction and price acceptance. The formulated hypotheses are then verified by means of an empirical study. Finally, the implications of the study's findings for research into purchasing patterns and
pricing policy are discussed.

Customer satisfaction and price acceptance
Measuring customer satisfaction In view of the considerable relevance of customer satisfaction for the success of a company, it comes as no surprise to find that a large number of marketing studies are devoted to measuring customers' perception of the fitness of company performances (Day and Perkins, 1992; Yi, 1990). The scope of these studies ranges from simple mean-value calculations and variance analyses to complex causal models based on the notion that customer satisfaction must always be interpreted as a multidimensional phenomenon, linked upstream and downstream to hypothetical constructs, such as the perceived quality of a service and customer retention.

However, before we can attempt to discuss measuring of customer satisfaction, it is vital that we define the concept of satisfaction. According to Anderson (1994), a satisfaction rating can be described as a decision regarding the fitness of a chosen product for its intended purpose. He postulates that ``. . . consumer satisfaction is generally construed to be a postconsumption evaluation dependent on perceived quality or value, expectations, and confirmation/disconfirmation ± degree (if any) of discrepancy between actual and expected quality . . .'' (Anderson, 1994, p. 20). It thus follows that (dis)satisfaction is the result of a complex information-processing process, which essentially consists of a desired/ actual comparison of a consumer's perception of a product or service (actual)and his expectations with regard to its fitness for its intended purpose(desired). The congruence or divergence yielded by this comparison between the perceived product quality and the anticipated quality is expressed as(dis)confirmation. Since this construct is directly linked to the target, disconfirmation leads to dissatisfaction (Oliver and DeSarbo, 1988). If we accept this view, satisfaction can be interpreted as the result of a comparative process, in which the ``desired'' component serves as a measure for evaluating perceptions of a given relationship between (dis)confirmation and(dis)satisfaction with a particular performance. It can thus be seen that, in the event of his expectations being disconfirmed, a customer's dissatisfaction is considerably greater than his satisfaction, should the anticipated product quality be confirmed to exactly the same degree.

The conjoint measurement as an instrument for measuring price acceptance Measurements of consumer price acceptance represent a direct attempt to establish the potential buyers' willingness to purchase as a function of various prices (Monroe, 1990). The level of acceptance can thus be defined as the maximum price which a buyer is prepared to pay for the product (Monroe, 1990). Several different methods are suitable for determining the price that the consumer subjectively presumes to be appropriate ± observations of the market, experimentation with prices and surveys (either direct or indirect) of experts' or customers' opinions (Monroe, 1990).

Methodological and practical problems render the first two approaches ± namely market observations and price experiments ± unsuitable as means of obtaining valid, reliable information that is relevant to the issue at hand. Since, in a real purchase or consumption situation, a buyer does not decide merely on the basis of a single criterion (e.g. price), but generally also considers up several different performance levels in a complex informationprocessing process, the traditional, direct form of survey can also be ruled out for the purposes of measuring price acceptance.

The conjoint measurement approach (Green and Srinivasan, 1990), on the other hand, appears well qualified for determining the price acceptance of potential buyers, as it takes account of the above-mentioned problem. The respondents do not rate individual product attributes in isolation, but rather jointly as an attribute bundle. This indirect method of investigation enables the influence of the individual levels of several different attributes on the order of preference for a set of surveyed objects to be measured simultaneously. The overall utility of a stimulus is made up of the sum of the partial utility values that are attached by a respondent to the individual product attributes. The conjoint measurement, as a decompositional approach, thus allows the individual partial utility values of the product attributes to be derived from empirically-obtained global judgements. Consumer price acceptance can be represented by means of the individual utility profiles (Kohli and Mahajan, 1991).

Hypotheses
One of the frequently named consequences of satisfaction is the increase of price sensitivity (Fornell et al., 1996; Fornell 1992). This is based on the fact that companies with higher satisfaction values are able to receive higher prices from customers. Price acceptance is closely related to the economic concept of consumer surplus: ``. . . the excess of the price which a man would be willing to pay rather than go without having a thing over what he actually does pay is the economic measure of his satisfaction surplus'' (Marshall, 1980, p. 260). Thus we expect customers who are satisfied with a product or a service to accept a higher price. According to Anderson (1996), the following hypothesis can be formulated:

H1: The greater a customer's satisfaction, the greater his price acceptance.

An increase in customer satisfaction is accompanied by an increase in price acceptance. The more satisfied a buyer is with a product or service, the more he or she is willing to pay. Furthermore, it is interesting to find out, if the relationship between the two constructs is monotonic linear or S-shaped. The second possibility can be explained by Assimilation Contrast Theory (Sherif and Hovland, 1961). Transferred to our problem this means, that within a range of acceptance a change on the scale of satisfaction affects the willingness to pay only to a small degree (Kalwani and Yim, 1992). In contrast, the values which are outside the acceptable range show a much higher slope of customer satisfaction. Figure 1 illustrates the modification of the linear relationship. Further hypotheses can be formulated:

H2: If the value of customer satisfaction is low, an increase of satisfaction produces a very large increase in price acceptance.

H3: If the satisfaction values are in a middle range, an increase of satisfaction only produces a small increase in the willingness to pay.

H4: And finally, if the value of customer satisfaction is high, an increase of satisfaction produces a very large increase in price acceptance.

It would seem advisable to analyze the relationship between satisfaction and price acceptance with a linear or piecewise linear regression, respectively.

Download Jurnal Lengkap

2009-01-01T21:45:00.000-08:00

Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy for whe-educationsbook.blogspot.com

If you require any more information or have any questions about our privacy policy, please feel free to contact us by email at whe.imuetz@gmail.com.

At whe-educationsbook.blogspot.com, the privacy of our visitors is of extreme importance to us. This privacy policy document outlines the types of personal information is received and collected by whe-educationsbook.blogspot.com and how it is used.

Log Files
Like many other Web sites, whe-educationsbook.blogspot.com makes use of log files. The information inside the log files includes internet protocol ( IP ) addresses, type of browser, Internet Service Provider ( ISP ), date/time stamp, referring/exit pages, and number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, track user’s movement around the site, and gather demographic information. IP addresses, and other such information are not linked to any information that is personally identifiable.

Cookies and Web Beacons
whe-educationsbook.blogspot.com does use cookies to store information about visitors preferences, record user-specific information on which pages the user access or visit, customize Web page content based on visitors browser type or other information that the visitor sends via their browser.

DoubleClick DART Cookie
.:: Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on whe-educationsbook.blogspot.com.
.:: Google's use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to users based on their visit to whe-educationsbook.blogspot.com and other sites on the Internet.
.:: Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy at the following URL - http://www.google.com/privacy_ads.html

Some of our advertising partners may use cookies and web beacons on our site. Our advertising partners include ....
Google Adsense
Commission Junction
Widget Bucks
Adbrite
Clickbank
Azoogle
Chitika
Linkshare
Amazon
Kontera

These third-party ad servers or ad networks use technology to the advertisements and links that appear on whe-educationsbook.blogspot.com send directly to your browsers. They automatically receive your IP address when this occurs. Other technologies ( such as cookies, JavaScript, or Web Beacons ) may also be used by the third-party ad networks to measure the effectiveness of their advertisements and / or to personalize the advertising content that you see.

whe-educationsbook.blogspot.com has no access to or control over these cookies that are used by third-party advertisers.

You should consult the respective privacy policies of these third-party ad servers for more detailed information on their practices as well as for instructions about how to opt-out of certain practices. whe-educationsbook.blogspot.com's privacy policy does not apply to, and we cannot control the activities of, such other advertisers or web sites.

If you wish to disable cookies, you may do so through your individual browser options. More detailed information about cookie management with specific web browsers can be found at the browsers' respective websites.