Recovery of used products has steadily become interesting issue for research due to economic reasons and growing environmental or legislative concern. This paper presents a closed-loop logistics network design based on reverse logistics models. A mixed integer linear programming model is implemented to integrate logistics network design in order to prevent the sub-optimality caused by the separate design of the forward and reverse networks. The study presents a single product and multi-stage logistics network problem for the new and return products not only to determine subsets of logistics centers to be opened, but also to determine transportation strategy, which satisfies demand imposed by facilities and minimizes fixed opening and total shipping costs. Since the deterministic estimation of some parameters such as demand and rate of return of used products in closed loop logistics models is impractical, an uncertain programming is proposed. In this case, we assume there are several economic conditions with predefined probabilities calculated from historical data. Then by means of expert & apos; s opinion, a fuzzy variable is offered as customer & apos; s demand under each economic condition. In addition, demand and rate of return of products for each customer zone is presented by fuzzy-random variables, similarly. Therefore, a fuzzy-random programming is used and a priority-based genetic algorithm is proposed to solve large-scale problems.

Nowadays, management of funds in different governmental organizations plays essential role in accessing desirable objectives and in controlling operations efficiently and effectively. Performance-based budgeting (PBB) is the practice of developing budgets based on the relationship between planned funding levels and anticipated results from the plan. The performance-based budgeting process is a technique where the administrators can apply to manage more cost-efficient and effective budgeting programs. In this paper, we present an empirical investigation to find out whether it is possible to apply PBB in various Iranian municipalities or not. The proposed study detects different barriers in terms of strategy, execution and monitoring through a questionnaire and investigations whether removing the important trouble making issues could help management team apply PBB with an adaptation of activity based cost method or net. The results indicate that management of some Iranian municipalities could successfully implement PBB within organization when major barriers are removed.

During the past few years, there has been tremendous increase in advertisement expenses all over the world. Therefore, it is important to examine, to investigate and to evaluate the performance of advertisement to reach organizations’ objectives. This paper presents an empirical investigation using highly reliable and efficient method called AIDA, which consists of four factors: attention, interest, desire and action. The study is implemented for one of Iranian food suppliers called TABAROK located in city of Mashad, Iran. The survey selects a sample of 300 regular customers and distributes a standard questionnaire among them. Cronbach alpha has been calculated as 0.93, which is well above the minimum desirable level. Using Spearman correlation test, the study confirms that all four components of the survey influences consumer behavior, positively. The study also indicates that there were some positive and meaningful correlations among various components of the survey. In addition, applying Freedman test indicates that advertisement has the highest impact on convincing consumer to purchase product.

Alcohol is the most prevalent abused drug in the world and brings out a large amount of medical expenses to the society. This paper presents an empirical investigation to devise preventive measures and identify the groups at risk. In this study, a descriptive study was conducted among people who were arrested by the police because of committing illegal actions and were suspected of alcohol usage were referred to the organization of forensic medicine. The studied variables include gender, age, state of affair, marital status, type of crime, the time of drug use, tranquillizer drugs and the times of psychiatrist visit. Out of 305 subjects, 204 (66.9%) cases had a positive respiratory test result and 101 (33.1%) were negative. The results showed that committing crimes due to quarrel and wrangling (34.3%) and being drunk in the public (29.7%) were prevalent among the people who used alcohol. Driving accidents also had 18% prevalence. 32.7% of the people who had a negative respiratory test result had committed crimes because of being drunk and 29.7% of them had quarrel and wrangling. The high rate of alcohol use in people who referred from the disciplinary office to the organization of forensic medicine demonstrated that it was necessary to devise a plan in order to improve a person & apos; s awareness of harmful alcohol use and to identify the vulnerable groups in the society.

This study determines the optimal investment portfolio in Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) industries. For this purpose, a conditional capital asset pricing model (CAPM) with time-varying covariance, according to a Multivariate GARCH approach has been formulated. According to this conditional CAPM, the conditional variance-covariance matrix and mean of returns are calculated for some industries. By using the Mean-Value at Risk portfolio selection model, the optimum proportion is detected. Results showed that the Pharmaceutical Industry, Financial Group and Cement Industry have the most quotas in portfolio since they maintain the minimum variance and maximum return among all other industries.

Application of indigenous knowledge is an example of knowledge-based-ness considered as the main agenda in most current urban and climate planning as well as geographical studies. It is one of the interesting topics in research on the role of climate on human dwelling and immediate environment. Indeed, building ecology emphasizes the ability to combine climate and environmental factors and rendering them to spatial qualities and structural comfort. This paper investigates the application of indigenous knowledge and the correspondence between traditional texture of Naeen city and its climate. In this regard, the climatic conditions in Naeen were studied in terms of temperature, humidity, wind and tourist comfort index (TCI) of climatourism. The data was collected from Isfahan Meteorology Website over the period 1985-2005. Subsequently, the traditional texture of Naeen, construction materials and building styles were studied through considering the special architectural conditions and compatible materials. Eventually, the correspondence between architectural styles and climatic conditions was studied. The results show that traditional architecture based on indigenous knowledge was consistent with climatic conditions. In this regard, using such materials as mud bricks and thatch with suitable heat capacity as well as using wind catchers, high walls around houses, dome construction, southward direction of houses were consistent with east-west wind direction. In addition, concentration of the traditional texture of the city, wall thickness, corridors, long hallways, courtyard ponds and roofed alleys are evidence of the effect of climatic conditions on urban texture in order to provide comfort in different seasons.

During the past few years, there has been growing competition between two primary sources of mobile service providers including Hamrah Aval and Irancell in Iran. The competition is so tight that both service providers have spent significant amount of money on marketing planning. Therefore, it is necessary to find important factors influencing on better marketing planning. This paper presents an investigation to analyze the effects of marketing communications on market share adjustment. The proposed study of this paper has used principle component analysis and it has detected four factors environment issues, marketing organization, market development and relationship oriented.

One of the most important techniques for development of internet banking is to encourage people to do their daily banking transactions through internet facilities. In this paper, we present an empirical study to find out whether perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness as well as trust could influence on internet banking. The proposed study was implemented in one of Iranian banks in city of Tehran, Iran using structural equation modeling. Cronbach alpha has been calculated as 0.90, which validates the overall questionnaire. Using structural equation modeling, the survey has concluded that perceived ease of use (B=0.18, p-value=0.000), perceived usefulness (B=0.24, p-value=0.000) and trust (B=0.55, p-value=0.000) had positive and meaningful impact on internet banking.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between corporate governance and Intellectual capital in the pharmaceutical companies accepted in Tehran Stock Exchange over the period 2004-2009 using a regression based model. The study investigates the impacts of three some independent variables of the corporate governance (i.e. the number of board members, the relative extent of nonexecutive to executive directors, the auditing committee). The results suggest that corporate governance had no special effect on intellectual capital in the pharmaceutical companies. Furthermore among corporate governance & apos; s variables, the first one (i.e. board size) had negative impact on firms & apos; intellectual capital and the second and the third variables had no effects on intellectual capital.

In this paper, we present an empirical investigation to study the effect of various factors influencing customer loyalty and quality of services on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. The proposed study is implemented in one of Iranian insurance firms by choosing a sample of 171 randomly selected customers of this insurance firm. We use SERVQUAL standard questionnaire to measure customer satisfaction. The study examines three hypotheses associated with the proposed study using one-way t-student as well as path analysis, and the results have confirmed all three hypotheses. The study also uses Freedman test to rank the most important factors and detects that value was the most important issue followed by trust, customer satisfaction, empathy, value and resistance to change.