The aim of this paper is to provide a practical approach by using an interpretive structural modeling (ISM) approach to prioritize the most critical success factors that influence the supply chain output in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The analysis of MICMAC was also considered for the identification of factors having a high power of influence. The findings show that the most significant factors with the highest driving power are associated with innovation and communication tools. Such findings can assist policy makers, administrators, and practitioners in formulating supply chain effectiveness strategies and policies.

The safety of civil aviation will be more secured if the errors in all the facets can be reduced. Like the other industrial sectors, human resource is one of the most complex and sensitive resources for the civil aviation. The error of human resources can cause fatal disasters. In these days, a good volume of researches have been conducted on the disaster of civil aviation. The researchers have identified the causes of the civil aviation disasters from various perspectives. They identified the areas where more concern is needed to reduce the disastrous impacts. This paper aims to find out the critical factors of human error in civil aviation in a developing country (Bangladesh) as it is accepted that human error is one of main causes of civil aviation disasters. The paper reviews the previous research to find out the critical factors conceptually. Fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) has been used to find out the critical factors systematically. Analyses indicate that the concentration on precondition for unsafe acts (including sub-factors) is required to ensure the aviation safety.

The proposed study of this paper present an empirical investigation to detect important factors impacting on food market using factor analysis. The proposed study designed a questionnaire, distributed among 207 customers who were regular customers of two food chains in city of Tehran, Iran named Shahrvand and Hyperstar. The results of our survey indicate that six major factors including brand loyalty, physical characteristics, pricing effects, performance characteristics, brand relationship and brand position influence food industry, significantly. In terms of the first factor, brand loyalty, “Trust”, “Packaging design characteristics”, “Competitive pricing strategy”, “Stability in quality”, “External relationships” and “Meeting expectations” are important factors in different categories.

These days, there have been tremendous efforts on offering products, which are environment friendly. Green marketing plays an important role for attracting new customer and customer retention. This paper presents an empirical investigation based on the implementation of factor analysis to locate important factors influencing green marketing planning and strategies. building market oriented business units. The study designs a questionnaire including 23 questions and the questionnaire was distributed among 200 people who were visiting organic product exhibition. Cronbach alpha was calculated as 0.845, which is well above the minimum acceptable limit and validates the results. The results of factor analysis reveal four major factors including green labeling, compatibility, product value and marketing component and size.

Building market oriented business units is one of the key successes for creating competitive economy. This paper presents an empirical investigation based on the implementation of factor analysis to detect important factors influencing building market oriented business units. The study designs a questionnaire including 22 questions and after verifying skewness of the data the questions were reduced to 18 and the questionnaire was distributed among 220 experts. Cronbach alpha was calculated as 0.789, which is well above the minimum acceptable limit and validates the results. The results of factor analysis reveal four major factors including knowledge management, customer relationship management, creativity and flexibility.

Customer purchasing behavior plays an essential role on marketing planning in today’s competitive environment. Immediate purchasing behavior is one of the most important components of purchasing behavior. In this paper, we use factor analysis to extract important factors influencing immediate purchasing behavior.The proposed study of this paper designs a questionnaire including 35 questions and through basic investigation, the questions are reduced to 21 ones. The questionnaire is distributed among 200 regular customers and 149 questionnaires have been collected. Cronbach alpha has been calculated as 0.804, which is well above the minimum desirable level of 0.7. The survey is conducted among regular customers who normally make purchases from Shahrvand food chains in city of Tehran, Iran. The results of factor analysis reveals four major factors including intelligence pricing strategy, involvement, promotion margin and consumer behavior. The proposed study of this paper considers “intelligence pricing strategy” for the first time as an important factor in consumer’s purchasing behavior.

For years, e-commerce has generated competitive advantage for many industries especially in insurance industry where people could apply for any sort of insurance, very easily. In fact, insurance industry has become one of the most important sectors in the world. E-commerce, on the other hand, has absorbed various people in insurance industry to develop economic growth. However, applying e-commerce for insurance firms may encounter serious obstacles and it is important to know them properly and setup appropriate actions to remove them. In this paper, we present a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) technique based on DEMATEL with an adaptation of fuzzy logic to find important factors impacting implementation of e-commerce for life insurance industry. The proposed study of this paper designs a questionnaire and distributes it among some insurance experts and then we analyze them using fuzzy DEMATEL technique. Findings indicate that “lack of designing death table based on the existing statistics of population death in Iran”, “lack of variety in protections of life insurance in proportionate to society individual’s requirements by means of low level income of society individuals” and “lack of extensive advertisements for developing the culture of life insurance in country” are the most important factors influencing insurance industry for enhancing e-business.

During the past two decades, e-commerce has revolutionized many industries by providing easy access infrastructures for interested users who wish to place their orders via internet facilities. Insurance industry is one of the most important financial industries in the world. E-commerce has been attracting many in insurance industry and insurance industry has utilized e-commerce because of its own significance in economic growth and health of society. However, enhancing e-commerce into insurance firms may face serious barriers and it is important to detect and setup appropriate actions to remove them. In this paper, we present a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) technique based on DEMATEL with an adaptation of fuzzy logic to find important factors influencing implementation of e-commerce into insurance industry. The proposed study of this paper designs a questionnaire and distributes it among five important insurance experts. Findings indicate that “behavioral-cultural barriers” influence on structural and field barriers. “Problems resulted from obeying government complicated rules” in the group of structural barriers, “low capacity of accepting e-insurance” in field barriers group and “lack of sufficient support of insurance chief managers from e-insurance and relative tendency of insurance staffs to make the insurance affairs electronic” in behavioral-cultural barriers group have the most influence on other factors of group.

With the change of education policy in 1991, more and more technical institutions are being set up in India. Some of these institutions provide quality education, but others are merely concentrating on quantity. These stakeholders are in a state of confusion about decision to select the best institute for their higher educational studies. Although various agencies including print media provide ranking of these institutions every year, but their results are controversial and biased. In this paper, the authors have made an endeavor to find the critical factors for technical institution evaluation from literature survey. A Pareto analysis has also been performed to find the intensity of these critical factors in evaluation. This will not only help the stake holders in taking right decisions but will also help the management of institutions in benchmarking for identifying the most important critical areas to improve the existing system. This will in turn help Indian economy.