Noor Azura Azman¹, Osman Mohamad², and Noor Hazlina Ahmad³
¹Department of International Business, Universiti Utara Malaysia, Malaysia (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)
²Graduate School of Management, Multimedia University, Malaysia (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)
³School of Management, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

ABSTRACT

The internationalization process involves the expansion of businesses into a new geographic region and it encourages domestic growth and value-creation of SMEs. Then, it comes to the liability of foreignness effect, which has a huge impact on the operation of SMEs abroad. Foreign firms will endure additional costs arising from the unfamiliarity with new market environments, which is known as the 'liability of foreignness'. Conceptually, the liability of foreignness appears when SME’s knowledge and capabilities are narrowed and differences occur in the new market. These challenges occur when a firm first enters a new market with the differences in respect of political, economic, legal and cultural dimensions. Due to this matter, firms need to adapt to the differences by changing their business strategies in a domestic-context. This concept draws from Erickson et al. (1997), who studied the importance of experiential knowledge for the internationalization process. They postulated that firms engage with liability of foreignness in the initial stage of the internationalization process. Besides, firms will suffer the negative effect of the liability of foreignness in terms of reduction in the economics of scale and the initial learning costs, which lowers firm performance. This paper aims to highlight the importance of identifying the existing liability of foreignness on the survival of Malaysian SMEs.

Keywords: liability of foreignness; internationalization; SMEs

Norsafinas Md. Saad¹ , Christine Ho Lee Xin^2
1,2School of International Studies, Universiti Utara Malaysia, Malaysia (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

ABSTRACT

The rapid growth of the Internet has dramatically changed the retail trend and consumer shopping behavior. In fact, the ways customers view and buy have somewhat shifted from physical store base to online stores. This development has subsequently changed customer shopping experience, habit and preference as customers nowadays spend a lot of time browsing and buying products online. Many retailers and individual sellers have grabbed this opportunity to start a business, increase customer reach and promote their brands and products to a wider market. Despite the fact that online market is growing, the online retail sales in Malaysia is relatively low compared to other countries. This situation shows that online sales and business performance in Malaysia are not as grand as other countries. From the research context, there have been limited studies that integrate the dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and service quality (SERVQUAL), specifically from the perspectives of individual online sellers. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to bring to light on how EO and SERVQUAL affect the business performance of online sellers in Malaysia. Questionnaires were sent out electronically to Lazada and Shoppe online sellers and 146 usable responses were received from the sellers. Based on the multiple regression analysis, out of six, four factors (proactiveness, risktaking, reliability, responsiveness) have significant relationships with online sellers‟ business performance. The regression analysis also shows that the reliability of online sellers comes out as the strongest determinant of their business performance.

Keywords: entrepreneurial orientation; service quality; business performance; online sellers

H Hartini¹ , Marion Beatrice Pereira² , Mathivannan Jaganathan³ , Shazwanis Shukri^4
1,2,4School of International Studies, Universiti Utara Malaysia (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)
³School of Business Management, Universiti Utara Malaysia (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

ABSTRACT

There has been significant growth in the online food services sector in the past few years. Online food services allow consumers to view menus from different restaurants, place their order, and get food delivered to their doorstep. Nowadays, eating nutritious food has become a key element in achieving holistic health and wellness. In acknowledgement of the value of a healthconscious consumer, restaurateurs and food service companies have introduced a new business concept called online healthy food services. This study aimed to investigate the effect of consumers’ attitude on the intention to purchase online healthy food. Data were gathered via survey questionnaires involving 227 respondents from Penang. Findings show that attitude has a positive influence on consumers’ intention to purchase online healthy food.

Keywords: Theory of Reasoned Action, Attitude, Purchase Intention, Online Healthy Food

Hanita Hashim¹ , Yati Ashikin Abdul Wahab² , Hasliza Mohamad Ali³ , Naziz Nashriq Nijar⁴ , Hafizan Hashim^5
1-2Faculty of Engineering and Life Sciences, Universiti Selangor (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)
³Centre for Foundation and General Studies, Universiti Selangor (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)
⁴Centre for Foundation and General Studies, Infrastructure University Kuala Lumpur (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)
⁵Fakulty of Mechanical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Mara (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

ABSTRACT

Perception of the SMART Selangor bus users needs to be examined to ensure the quality of service is always satisfactory, and to suggest improvement on the quality of this free service. Therefore, this study was conducted to determine the level of customer satisfaction on the quality of the SMART Selangor bus services in Shah Alam city. Customer satisfaction is important because organisations sometimes do not understand what goes on in the customer’s mind. Therefore, this study aims to analyse the level of customer satisfaction as well as to analyse the quality of services offered by the SMART Selangor bus. A total of 410 respondents were selected through a simple random sampling method. This study uses five dimensions of SERVQUAL, namely, Reliability, Assurance, Tangibles, Empathy, and Responsiveness. Data were analysed using descriptive, correlation, and multiple regression analysis. The findings show that respondents were satisfied with the overall quality of the SMART Selangor bus services. The results of the regression analysis found that reliability, empathy, and responsiveness have a significant influence on user satisfaction. Based on Pearson correlation results, there is a strong and significant linear positive relationship between user satisfactions with all dimensions of service quality. This study also found that there were significant differences between demographic factors such as gender, employment status, and monthly income in determining the satisfaction of the SMART Selangor bus users. It is suggested that the management of the SMART Selangor bus must improve its quality of services to the passengers.

Keywords: SMART Bus; Passenger Satisfactions; Service Quality, Selangor.