Steigende Anspruche und Wunsche der Kunden sowie ein intensiver Wettbewerb im Dienstleistungssektor sind Grunde fur permanent wachsende Anforderungen an ein professionelles Dienstleistungsmanagement der Unternehmen. Dabei reicht es haufig nicht mehr aus, lediglich gute Leistungen zu erbringen, sondern Dienstleister mussen nach exzellenten Losungen streben, damit eine Differenzierung gegenuber dem Wettbewerb stattfindet.
In 32 Beitragen berichten ausgewiesene nationale und internationale Experten aus Wissenschaft und Praxis uber innovative Ansatze, Ideen und Instrumente zur Umsetzung des Konzepts der Service Excellence.
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This volume of Eurasian Studies in Business and Economics presents selected theoretical and empirical papers from the 25th Eurasia Business and Economics Society (EBES) Conference, held in Berlin, Germany, in May 2018. Covering diverse areas of business and management from different geographic regions, the book focuses on current topics such as consumer engagement, consumer loyalty, travel blogging, and AirBnB's marketing communication strategy, as well as healthcare project evaluation and Industry 4.0. It also includes related studies that analyze accounting and finance aspects like bank reliability and the bankruptcy risks of equity crowdfunding start-ups.

This Brief discusses impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Portuguese tourism sector. Taking into account real-world conditions and the importance of the tourism sector for the Portuguese economy, this book highlights the economic contexts of tourism in Portugal at the regional and municipal levels, discussing pre-pandemic economic frameworks and projecting potential implications for the future. Using data provided by Statistics Portugal, the Brief performs econometric analysis on three cases: new paradigms for overnight stays and guests, changes in tourism revenues and prospective alternatives, and a comparison of effects on changes in number of guests and overnight stays at the regional level. Providing cutting edge analysis of a dynamic global situation, this Brief will be useful for researchers interested in tourism economics and European economics as well as policymakers and industry professionals.

This book explores and challenges the concept and experience of liminality as applied to critical perspectives in the study of events. It will be of interest to researchers in event studies, social and discursive psychology, cultural and political sociology, and social movement studies. In addition, it will provide interested general readers with new ways of thinking and reflecting on events. Contributing authors undertake a discussion of the borders, boundaries, and areas of contestation between the established social anthropological concept of liminality and the emerging field of critical event studies. By drawing these two perspectives closer together, the collection considers tensions and resonances between them, and uses those connections to enhance our understanding of both cultural and sporting events and offer fresh insight into events of activism, protest, and dissent.

This book features the latest research in the area of immersive technologies, presented at the 5th International Augmented and Virtual Reality Conference, held in Munich, Germany in 2019. Bridging the gap between academia and industry, it presents the state of the art in augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies and their applications in various industries such as marketing, education, healthcare, tourism, events, fashion, entertainment, retail and the gaming industry. The volume is a collection of research papers by prominent AR and VR scholars from around the globe. Covering the most significant topics in the field of augmented and virtual reality and providing the latest findings, it is of interest to academics and practitioners alike.

This book uses economic theory to analyze the different aspects of organized crime. The theory of rent-seeking is adopted to help understand the origin of criminal organizations, while modern industrial organization theory is used to explain the design of internal rules. The market behavior of organized crime is analyzed, the "crime and economics" approach being applied to the analysis of corruption that occurs when the organized crime sector and the government collude to exploit their monopoly on rule-making. Each chapter outlines the normative results of the analysis in order to design more sophisticated deterrence policies.

This volume offers state-of-the-art research in service science and its related research, education and practice areas. It showcases recent developments in smart service systems, operations management and analytics and their impact in complex service systems. The papers included in this volume highlight emerging technology and applications in fields including healthcare, energy, finance, information technology, transportation, sports, logistics, and public services. Regardless of size and service, a service organization is a service system. Because of the socio-technical nature of a service system, a systems approach must be adopted to design, develop, and deliver services, aimed at meeting end users' both utilitarian and socio-psychological needs. Effective understanding of service and service systems often requires combining multiple methods to consider how interactions of people, technology, organizations, and information create value under various conditions. The papers in this volume present methods to approach such technical challenges in service science and are based on top papers from the 2019 INFORMS International Conference on Service Science.

This book explores the move from manufacturing towards service industry jobs in China's economic development during the 12th Five-Year Plan period. The service industry now makes up the highest proportion of the GDP and employs the largest number of people in China. In the next Five-Year Plan period, it is necessary to actively push forward the strategic transformation by placing emphasis on the service industry to press ahead with system and mechanism reforms and policy innovations and cultivate diverse, sustainable and continuous forces for driving its growth. Efforts are made to upgrade the service industry to better achieve economic and social development in an innovative, coordinated, green, open, and shared way. This book will be of interest to scholars researching China's future.

This book on fintechs shows an international comparison on a global level. It is the first book where 10 years of financing rounds for fintechs have been analyzed for 10 different fintech segments. It is the first book to show the Canvas business model for fintechs. Professionals and students get a global understanding of fintechs. The case examples in the book cover Europe, the U.S. and China. Reviews of the book: FinTech is not the next 'big thing.' It is the big thing now! FinTech is the new business model for the global financial sector, offering clear and enormous potential for vast economies of scale and scope, massive cost savings and efficiency gains, significant risk reduction, and opening the door to banking for literally billions of currently unbanked people. Professor Fischer has done a masterful job of expertly and informatively taking us through all aspects of the revolutionary new FinTech business models. Using state-of-the-art research techniques, he insightfully shows us how FinTech firms are financed and how they aspire to create value. His in-depth case studies unlock the keys to success in the FinTech sector. His fascinating book is a 'must read' for all financial professionals. Dr. Stephen Morrell, Professor of Economics and Finance, Andreas School of Business, Barry University, Miami, USA Matthias Fischer's latest book offers a comprehensive overview of Fintech business models around the world. With a very pedagogical approach, and in a particularly fluid style, the author takes us into the strategic logics of these new entrants to finance, who are carriers of innovation and sometimes of disruption, and whose strategies are focused on the need to always meet the emerging expectations of their customers. This precise and well-documented analysis should enable banks to reposition themselves in their ecosystem by studying these new business models, which will enable them to boost their growth. Professor Dr. Nadine Tournois, Dean of IAE Nice Graduate School of Management, Universite Cote d'Azur, France, Chevalier de la Legion d'honneur Fintech Business Models is a must-have book to understand the rapid and intense changes occurring in the financial sector. New technologies have allowed the birth of new financial species, such as Fintech, more adapted to the new digital economy. The content dedicated to the application of blockchain technology helps to understand its opportunities in the financial sector, not only in the means of payment and cryptoactives, but also in how blockchain can make multiple internal processes improve, allowing to optimize the management, efficiency and even security of operations. Without any doubt, this book offers an extraordinary vision of how the fintech sector has become a catalyst for change in banking in the context of the current Digital Society. Phd. Ricardo Palomo, Full Professor of Finance, Deputy Chancellor for Digital Transformation at Universidad CEU San Pablo, Madrid, Spain and member of the Board of Alastria Blockchain Ecosytem This book provides a detailed and original overview of the most important fintech business models in the major global markets. Through a savvy use of the well-known Business Model Canvas methodology, the author explores the unique ecosystem, business model's components, and sources of competitive advantage of successful fintech firms. The book, in particular, offers an insightful and comprehensive analysis of the winning and losing strategies and performances of fintech firms by segment of activity such as, instant digital payments, crowd-funding, robo-advisory, alternative finance, credit & factoring, social trading, personal finance management, blockchain and cryptocurrencies. It is indeed a very unique and valuable study on the fintech industry, its trends, and its emerging business models. Prof. Ivo Pezzuto, The International School of Management, Paris, France and Adjunct Professor of International Business and Strategic Management Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Department of Business Management, Milan, Italy The emergence of fintechs is one of the most relevant drivers of change in the financial services industry. The book presented here delivers an impressing overview of fintechs' activity areas, business models and funding patterns. The book reflects the state of the art of the current fintech world. Prof. Dr. Jurgen Moormann, Professor of Bank and Process Management at Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, Germany

Funerary Practices in Serbia is the first book to offer a concise yet highly informative study of the historical development and current state of funerary practices in Serbia. Situated in a constant dynamic struggle between traditional cultural customs and modern legislation, funerary practices in Serbia represent a particularly interesting field of research. In this study, Pavicevic combines an investigation of long-term developments and recent changes to place contemporary practices in their wider historical context, emphasizing the complicated geo-political, demographic and cultural factors that have shaped funeral traditions in Serbia over time. In particular, she demonstrates how the country's frequent changing of borders and life under the rule of two great empires - the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman - fostered the emergence of colorful funerary traditions, such as open-casket burial and vigils around the body, that persist to this day in spite of government attempts to modernize funerary practice since the end of the 19th century. The book also provides illuminating insights into the legal framework surrounding current funerary practices in Serbia, the relationship between the state and private sectors, the ownership of cemeteries and gravesites, the role of churches and religious communities, religious and ethnic variations in funerary culture and traditions, and the development of modern cremation practices in Serbia. This book provides a useful and original resource for policymakers and practitioners interested in the historic, legal, technical and professional aspects of the Serbian funerary industry, and to researchers in cultural anthropology, history, sociology and cultural management.

This open access book is the proceedings of the International Federation for IT and Travel & Tourism (IFITT)'s 28th Annual International eTourism Conference, which assembles the latest research presented at the ENTER21@yourplace virtual conference January 19-22, 2021. This book advances the current knowledge base of information and communication technologies and tourism in the areas of social media and sharing economy, technology including AI-driven technologies, research related to destination management and innovations, COVID-19 repercussions, and others. Readers will find a wealth of state-of-the-art insights, ideas, and case studies on how information and communication technologies can be applied in travel and tourism as we encounter new opportunities and challenges in an unpredictable world.

To meet the rising demand for scientific evidence in the context of rural tourism research, this book explores tourism and tourism-related diversification activities performed by farming households and entrepreneurs in rural communities. To do so it adopts a consistent conceptual and empirical microeconomic approach and employs econometric methodology. Community-based rural tourism (CBRT) is attracting increasing interest in both developed and developing countries, since tourism is considered an effective way to promote rural development in all parts of the globe. Further, because information and communication technologies are developing rapidly, new types of communities are now formed more easily than ever. As such, this book covers not only traditional, closed agrarian communities, but also emerging communities formed by local nonprofit organizations (NPOs) and national networks of farmers who provide educational tourism for consumers. These emerging communities are beyond the range of traditional agrarian communities and complement each other, which helps overcome obstacles to rural tourism for farm operators and urban residents. Those communities also nurture the rural entrepreneurship that eventually will create a sustainable urban-rural relationship. This study-the first of its kind-contributes to the advancement of research on rural tourism from a microeconomic perspective. It presents a conceptual framework for understanding rural tourism from a microeconomic perspective; empirically clarifies the specific issues and constraints for the development of CBRT; and also investigates how to overcome these issues.

This book interrogates the impact of tourism on local lives and environments along the southern Pacific Coast of Nicaragua. Nicaragua has turned to tourism to earn needed foreign exchange and to provide jobs. The unplanned boom, however, has come with costs to local environments. Using an in-depth case study of the community of Gigante and nearby tourism developments, the chapters delve into the impact of recent unregulated booms in tourism on groundwater, household water security, local economies, culture, land ownership, and artisanal fisheries.

This book analyses the structure and motive forces that shape the global arms transfer and production system. The author distinguishes three tiers of arms producers, defined by such factors as defence production base, military research and development capabilities, and dependence upon arms exports. These factors interact with underlying political, economic, and military motivations to drive states to produce and export arms, and provide the force which directs the international trade in arms. The author discusses the United States and the Soviet Union, the European arms suppliers, and the emerging arms producers of the developing world. Although it concentrates on the contemporary period, the book covers a wide historical span, from the development of military technologies in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to twentieth-century revolutions in weaponry. By focusing on the processes of technological innovation and diffusion, the author shows the evolutionary nature of the spread of military technologies, and situates the current arms transfer system in a broad historical context.

Honorable Mention, Mirra Komarovsky Book Award, given by the Eastern Sociological Society 2021 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Magazine How workers navigate race, gender, and class in the food service industry Two unequal worlds of work exist within the upscale restaurant scene of Los Angeles. White, college-educated servers operate in the front of the house—also known as the public areas of the restaurant—while Latino immigrants toil in the back of the house and out of customer view. In Front of the House, Back of the House, Eli Revelle Yano Wilson shows us what keeps these workers apart, exploring race, class, and gender inequalities in the food service industry. Drawing on research at three different high-end restaurants in Los Angeles, Wilson highlights why these inequalities persist in the twenty-first century, pointing to discriminatory hiring and supervisory practices that ultimately grant educated whites access to the most desirable positions. Additionally, he shows us how workers navigate these inequalities under the same roof, making sense of their jobs, their identities, and each other in a world that reinforces their separateness. Front of the House, Back of the House takes us behind the scenes of the food service industry, providing a window into the unequal lives of white and Latino restaurant workers.

This open access book discusses service design capabilities in innovation processes, and provides a framework that guides design students, practitioners and researchers towards a better understanding of operational aspects of service design processes. More specifically, it revisits service designers' capabilities in light of the new roles that have opened up in innovation processes on different scales. After years of being inadequately defined, the professional profile of service designers is now taking shape. Today private and public institutions recognize service designers as essential contributors to their innovation and development processes. What are the capabilities that characterize a service designer? These essential capabilities are what service designers should acquire in their education and can sell when looking for a job.

A major problem in health economics is how to give a value to changes in health. This is the first book to examine all the money measures that are used in such evaluations. Changes in health might be caused by medical treatments, by public safety programmes and by anti-pollution programmes, and the cost-benefit analysis of such programmes involves the use of money measures. The author defines the properties of these money measures, examining them in both a certain and a risky world. He evaluates available empirical approaches for the assessment of the value of health changes, and considers measures such as quality-adjusted life years (qalys) and healthy-years equivalents (hyes). This book raises the important question of whether we are willing to pay the costs for our health care system. It will be of interest to advanced students of health economics and related disciplines, and will also be useful for professionals working on projects that affect human health.

This book offers the first comprehensive study of Czech funerary practices to be published in English. It provides an in-depth account of the historical development of funeral traditions and customs in the Czech Lands from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day. Czech funerary practice is today characterised by a very high cremation rate, the predominance of secular funerals and the increasing popularity of cremation with no funeral ceremony. Combining investigation of both long-term developments and recent changes, this book places these contemporary practices in their wider historical context, highlighting the complicated religious, political and cultural factors that have influenced funeral traditions over time. Nesporova draws attention to the extent to which the turbulent political background of the 20th century shaped funerary culture, focusing particularly on the cremation movement and the increase in popularity of civil funerals during the Communist era. The book explores the contemporary legal framework of Czech funerary practices, the typical funeral, burial sites and commemorative practices and recent developments in Czech funerary practice. The book will appeal to a multi-disciplinary audience, including those working in the fields of cultural anthropology, history, sociology and architecture.

This volume comprises a selection of papers describing the main features of the Lanzarote and Chinijo Islands Geopark (Canary Archipelago, Spain). Of all the Global Geoparks worldwide, it is the only one that has officially evaluated and characterized specific areas as analogues for the geological and astrobiological exploration of Mars. The identification and characterization of terrestrial sites that can be used as planetary analogues are currently considered vital study areas of planetary geology and astrobiology. Written by experts in the various fields, this multidisciplinary book is a unique resource for graduate students and professionals alike.

This textbook reviews and systematically presents the use of the Internet in public administration and politics. Further, it employs a process-oriented layer model to define the opportunities for exchange and participation for all stakeholder groups, covering the following topics: eAssistance, eProcurement, eService, eContracting, eSettlement, eCollaboration, eDemocracy, and eCommunity. In turn, real-world case studies demonstrate the practical applications in industry, administration and research. The second edition of this book has been completely revised and extended, and includes several new case studies. It offers a valuable asset for students in Business, Economics and Political Sciences courses, as well as practitioners interested in emerging opportunities for digital exchange and participation in the knowledge society.

This book explores the understanding, description, and measurement of the physical, sensory, social, and emotional features of motorcycle and bicycle journey experiences in tourism. Novel insights are presented from an original case study of these forms of tourism in the Sella Pass, a panoramic road close to the Dolomites UNESCO World Heritage Site. A comprehensive mixed-methods strategy was employed for this research, with concurrent use of quantitative and qualitative methods including documentation and secondary data analysis, mobile video ethnography, and emotion measurement. The aim was to create a holistic knowledge of the features of journey experiences and a new definition of the mobility space as a perceptual space. The book is significant in that it is among the first studies to explore the concept of journey experiences and to develop an interdisciplinary theoretical foundation of mobility spaces. It offers a comprehensive understanding and a benchmarking of the features of motorcycling and cycling journey experiences, a deeper market knowledge on motorcycling and cycling tourists, and a set of tools, techniques, and recommendations for future research on tourist experiences.

The book provides unique insights into the culture of computer-mediated hospitality and how this has begun to transform contemporary tourism and travel practice. Focusing on Couchsurfing.org, one of the largest online hospitality communities worldwide, the authors explore how social relations, intimacy and trust are built in the online environment and then extended into the offline contexts of actual tourism and travel. Being active couchsurfers themselves, the authors scrutinise the candid claim by much of the online hospitality community that couchsurfing creates a better world. The book is key reading for anyone interested in how computer mediated communication is changing contemporary forms of contact, travel and hospitality, and the kinds of cosmopolitism it brings into being. Authors: David Picard, Sonja Buchberger, Jennie Germann Molz, Dennis Zuev, De-Jung Chen, Bernard Sch?ou, Jun-E Tan, Paula Bialski and Nelson Graburn

This book is devoted to the analysis of the three main tasks of China's tourism development: Firstly, the theory of tourism development since the initiation of reform and opening-up. Secondly, the practice and problems in infrastructure building. Thirdly, the mold and policy used in the course of development. The book pursues three major objectives: firstly, to portray the stage of development; secondly, to analyze the specific experience in China's case; thirdly, to review theory and try to put forward advice on investment and management.

To meet increasing competition and the increasing demands of customers, Woodruff and Gardial argue that businesses must redesign and improve information processes to help managers learn about customers and markets, and these processes must be linked to key customer value dimensions.

"Know Your Customer" incorporates newer approaches to customer value measurement into an new, integrated information process called customer value determination, basing satisfaction measurement on the concept of value. Every step of customer value determination is discussed in depth, with guides to both qualitative and quantitative measurement techniques. The book also discusses applications of customer value determination to decisions across the entire organization, ranging from strategic to tactical.

Do you want to turn your passion for food into a career? Take a bite out of the food world with help from the experts in this first-of-its-kind What Color Is Your Parachute? for food related careers. Maybe you're considering culinary school, maybe you're about to graduate, or maybe you're looking for an exciting career change. How can you translate your zest for flavor into a satisfying profession? Should you become a chef or open a specialty foods shop, write cookbooks or try your hand at food styling? Culinary careers are as varied as they are fascinating—the only challenge is deciding which one is right for you. Filled with advice from food-world pros including luminaries such as Alice Waters, Chris Kimball, Betty Fussell and Darra Goldstein. Food Jobs will set you behind the stove of your dream career. Chalmers provides essential information for getting started including testimonials from the best in the field, like Bobby Flay, Todd English, Gordon Hamersly, Francois Payard, Danny Meyer, Anthony Bourdain, and more.