During the past few years, there have been growing interests in developing tourism industry in developing tourism economy. This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the effects of different factors including brand awareness, quality perception, brand associate and brand loyalty on developing tourism economy. The proposed study was accomplished in city of Karaj located in province of Alborz, Iran. The study designed a questionnaire consist of 27 questions designed in Likert scale and distributed it among 400 randomly selected people who visited this city during the year of 2012. Using Spearman correlation, they study confirmed that there were some positive relationship between brand awareness and tourism economy (r=0.434, Sig.=0.02), a positive relationship between quality perception and tourism economy (r=0.198, Sig.=0.008), a positive relationship between brand associate and tourism economy (r=0.261, Sig.=0.000) and finally there was a positive and relationship between brand loyalty and tourism economy (r = 0.302, Sig. = 0.05). In addition, the implementation of stepwise regression model has indicated that brand awareness played essential role on tourism economy followed by brand loyalty and quality perception.

Nowadays, selection of an optimal project has become a challenging task for managers and decision makers. Project selection for a decision maker can be viewed as a complicated multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) problem, which requires consideration of a number of conflicting, tangible and intangible selection criteria. Moreover, decision makers tend to use linguistic terms for expressing their assessments because of their different backgrounds and preferences, some of which may be uncertain and incomplete. Hence, this paper focuses on developing a hybrid fuzzy MCDM approach by combining AHP and VIKOR for solving the project selection problem. Finally, A numerical example is proposed to illustrate an application of the proposed method.

A model is a simple and straightforward performance of structure and behavior of the system under study expressed as mathematical relations. In fact, with a model, knowledge and information on modeled phenomenon are prepared and the cost and risk of applying actual phenomenon are eliminated. Petri nets, on the other hand, are used to determine the important information on structure and behavior in modeled system and formal models are mainly state dependent requirements. These requirements are significantly indefinite and can be expressed by language variables. If XML labels can express the formal models (Fuzzy Petri net) as the most valid data format, then we will have relationships with other data format. In this study, characteristics of a Fuzzy Colored Petri Net are expressed by fuzzy developed Markup Language labels. Therefore, in addition to fuzzy XML labels, the concept “color” will be used for them. Application and advantages of suggested method will be determined by a case study in bank facility system. The results of the evaluation indicate the advantages of the suggested grammar for supporting elements available in fuzzy formal models.

Although supply chains disruptions rarely occur, their negative effects are prolonged and severe. In this paper, we propose a reliable capacitated supply chain network design (RSCND) model by considering random disruptions in both distribution centers and suppliers. The proposed model determines the optimal location of distribution centers (DC) with the highest reliability, the best plan to assign customers to opened DCs and assigns opened DCs to suitable suppliers with lowest transportation cost. In this study, random disruption occurs at the location, capacity of the distribution centers (DCs) and suppliers. It is assumed that a disrupted DC and a disrupted supplier may lose a portion of their capacities, and the rest of the disrupted DC & apos; s demand can be supplied by other DCs. In addition, we consider shortage in DCs, which can occur in either normal or disruption conditions and DCs, can support each other in such circumstances. Unlike other studies in the extent of literature, we use new approach to model the reliability of DCs; we consider a range of reliability instead of using binary variables. In order to solve the proposed model for real-world instances, a Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm-II (NSGA-II) is applied. Preliminary results of testing the proposed model of this paper on several problems with different sizes provide seem to be promising.

This paper presents an empirical investigation to the study the effects of various factors such as free cash flow, earnings, Tobin’s Q on predicting stock performance on Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) over the period 2005-2012. The study is performed on data from different industries including basic metals, cements, chemical, auto industry, etc. The proposed model gathers the necessary data from TSE and using various regression models, the study has determined that there was a meaningful relationship between cash value added, Earnings and Tobin’s Q when the level of significance was five percent but there was not any meaningful relationship between stock earnings and free cash flow.

Export is one of the most important indicators of a growing economy and it is the primary source of reaching sustainable growth on the market. This paper presents an empirical study to determine important factors influencing electronic banking in export development of Iranian organizations. The proposed study designs a questionnaire and distributes it among some regular customers who do internet banking with Parsian bank in city of Tehran, Iran. Cronbach alpha is calculated as 0.82, which is well above the minimum desirable limit of 0.70. In addition, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy and Approx. Chi-Square are 0.71 and 1955 with Sig. = 0.000, respectively. Using principal component analysis, the study has detected six factors including customer’s information, building trust, secure internet access, having good internet infrastructure and internet users.

This paper presents an empirical investigation for the implementation of enterprise resource planning among 58 production units in province of Ilam, Iran. The proposed study of this paper considers the readiness in terms of six factors including human resources, financial resources, infrastructures, quality control, and information systems and communication technology. Using structural equation modeling, the study examines six hypotheses and the implementation is accomplished on LISREL software package. Cronbach alpha has been calculated as 0.91, which is well above the minimum desirable level. The results of the survey have indicated that all six mentioned factors influence positively on ERP implementation and for a successful implementation of ERP, it is suggested to consider these factors, seriously.

The hub location problem involves a network of origins and destinations over which transportation takes place. There are many studies associated with finding the location of hub nodes and the allocation of demand nodes to these located hub nodes to transfer the only one kind of commodity under one level of service. However, in this study, carrying different commodity types from origin to destination under various levels of services (e.g. price, punctuality, reliability or transit time) is studied. Quality of services experienced by users such as speed, convenience, comfort and security of transportation facilities and services is considered as the level of service. In each system, different kinds of commodities with various levels of services can be transmitted. The appropriate level of service that a commodity can be transmitted through is chosen by customer preferences and the specification of the commodity. So, a mixed integer programming formulation for single allocation hub covering location problem, which is based on the idea of transferring multi commodity flows under multi levels of service is presented. These two are applied concepts, multi-commodity and multi-level of service, which make the model & apos; s assumptions closer to the real world problems. In addition, a differential evolution algorithm is designed to find near-optimal solutions. The obtained solutions using differential evolution (DE) algorithm (upper bound), where its parameters are tuned by response surface methodology, are compared with exact solutions and computed lower bounds by linear relaxation technique to prove the efficiency of proposed DE algorithm.

During the past few decades, many organizations have attempted to reduce their costs through outsourcing of non-value added activities. This paper presents an empirical investigation to find important factors on reducing production expenses through outsourcing activities. The proposed study of this paper designs a questionnaire in Likert scale consists of 19 questions and distributes it among some experts. Using structural equation modeling, the study investigates different variables and the results indicate that outsourcing could reduce the production cost through time, inventory and human resources. The implementation of Freedman for ranking these factors indicate that time played the most influential factor followed by inventory and human resources. The results of structural equation modeling indicate that there are some positive and meaningful relationship between human capital and cost (B=0.78, t-value = 9.38), a positive and meaningful relationship between inventory and cost (B=0.81, t-value=10.54) and a positive and meaningful relationship between time and cost (B=0.89, t-value = 11.26).

Customer satisfaction plays essential role on the success of industrial products such as milk in todays’ marketing planning. In this paper, we present a conceptual model to measure the relative impact of various factors on customer satisfaction. The proposed study of this paper designs a questionnaire and distributes it among managers of a dairy producer named Pegah in city of Esfahan, Iran. Using Pearson correlation ratio as well as stepwise regression technique, the study has found positive and meaningful relationship between customer satisfaction and price, quality of product, distribution and compatibility with customer expectation. In addition, the study detects a negative and meaningful relationship between conflict and customer satisfaction.