Knowledge that Transforms

The aim of this paper is to make a scientific contribution for a better understanding of the relationship between the Prospect Theory and SERVQUAL. The first objective is to analyse whether the SERVQUAL scale is an appropriate scale to quantify service quality and customer satisfaction of automobile-insurances. The second objective is to discuss the relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction. With the prospect theory, the relationship is explained and described. Only a negative asymmetric relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction can be explained by the prospect theory. The proposed diminishing sensitivity lacks sufficient significant empirical evidence.

Hub networks play an important role in many transportation and telecommunications systems. This paper introduces a new model called the hub arc location model. Rather than locate discrete hub facilities, this model locates hub arcs, which have reduced unit flow costs. Four special cases of the general hub arc location model are examined in detail. We provide motivation for the new models, and present examples and optimal solutions, using data for U.S. air passenger traffic. Results are used to compare optimal costs, hub locations, and hub arc locations with corresponding hub median optimal solutions. The results reveal interesting spatial patterns and help identify promising cities and regions for hubs. A companion paper (Campbell et al. 2005) presents integer programming formulations and solution algorithms for the new hub arc problems. It also provides details and computation times for these solution algorithms.