Case for servise marketing Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Case for servise marketing - Research Paper Example As discussed in the case study that APM grew due to its franchising strategy which not only involved direct franchising but also through Master Franchising. Thus the overall expansion strategy for the business has remained focused on the development of regional franchisees who can deliver the services according to the demand from a particular geographical area in which they can deliver them effectively. APM tend to advertise the franchising opportunities in the local newspapers and other media to attract the potential franchisee. This was achieved through advertisements as well as the word of mouth also. One of the key criteria used by APM to recruit new franchisee was to observe the behavior and attitude of the person willing to apply for the franchise. One of the tasks involved was to assess the willingness of the person to show closer association with dogs. Since APM was mobile services provider for dog washing therefore it was considered as essential that the persons must have so me degree of association with pets and specially dogs. This was also important because the PEOPLE element is considered as one of the key variables in the overall integrated services marketing mix. While recruiting the new franchisee, APM therefore gave a lot of weightage to the people element besides ensuring that processes are performed in accordance with the laid down criteria. This was also duly supported by the subsequent training and development of the franchisees in order to ensure that those who are hired have the requisite degree of knowledge and expertise in delivering the services. Having a relative degree of education, up to 10th grade, was another task involved in ensuring that the franchisee actually can handle the business aspects of delivering the services too. This task again can be considered as a focused approach to offer the franchise only to those individuals who can successfully carry out the task of business management also. One of the key similarities between recruiting new franchisee as well as attracting new customers was the use of advertisement. As discussed above that APM used word of mouth as well as the advertisement to attract the new franchisee therefore relatively same procedure was also applied to attract new customers. The use of colorful mobile vans served as strong advertisement vehicles also attracting the attention of the potential customers. This therefore not only provided APM and its franchisee a cost effective way to reach to new customers but also improve its overall image in the areas where they work. Another important similarity between the two is the use of word of mouth and incentives for attracting the new customers. The use of discounted services as well as the additional care tips provided to the customers ensured that the service providers develop a long term relationship with their customers. As discussed in the case that one of the strategies applied by the franchisees were to advise the dog owners to incr ease the frequency of dog washing so that they can save costs on other issues such health related issues with the dogs. The use of recommendations by the satisfied customers was another important task involved in retaining and attracting customers. This was however, not the case for recruiting the franchisee as they had to meet strict criteria before their applications can be accepted. One of the key contradictions between the two however,

Analyzing the pollution in rivers and lakes by using artificial neural Article

Analyzing the pollution in rivers and lakes by using artificial neural network, fuzzy logic, and regression methods - Article Example The basic approach is to train an ANN unit using a set of already known set of data to predict a similar future event. In this study feed forward ANN could be used to relate the DO measured at each location to predict the other quality parameters as reported. In this method, the (DO)i is considered as the input parameter to the input-neurons which would be passed into the hidden layer of neuron set after multiplying with a correction weight (kj). The main role of the hidden neuron is to add up the weighted sum received from the input set and combines it with a bias (bj) to determine a net value ( netj = ïÆ' ¥ (DO)i kj - bj ). This net value is passed into the output neuron which uses a non-linear function , say, f(net) = 1/ (1+e-net) to determine the output parameters BOD, NO3, NO2 and PO4 (Tayfur and Singh, 2006). The fuzzy logic approach for the prediction of dissolved oxygen level is based on the set of rules that is in built in the model. This process is undertaken in four different steps. Allocation of partial belonging to each input variable in the form of membership function , which takes up values from 0 to 1, is the first step. This process is referred as fuzzification. The allocation is based on intuition and linear triangular functions are the commonly adopted one. The fuzzy rule base is the next requirement to relate the input and the outputs using if-then logical relations. In the present work it could be either as - If BOD is low , NO3 is low and PO4 is low then DO is high - or If BOD is high, NO3 is high and PO4 is high then DO is low. Next is the fuzzy output subset construction by addition of all the fuzzy subsets. The fuzzy output function need to be converted to discrete form of results using defuzzifcation methods. Centre of gravity method (COG method) could be used to this process for the present situation (Tayfur and Singh, 2006, Chen et