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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the quality factors influencing customer satisfaction in the electronic commerce (e-commerce) context using a triadic view of customer-e-retailer-third-party logistics provider, and to investigate the impacts of service quality on customer satisfaction and loyalty in the e-retailing supply chain. Design/methodology/approach – A literature review is used to determine the conceptual model and develop the measurement scales. Data are collected through a web survey mainly conducted in China. Structural equation modeling is used to analyze the collected data and test the research hypotheses. Findings – The results verify the proposed service quality framework, consisting of two dimensions (electronic service (e-service) quality and logistics service quality), in the e-commerce context. The results indicate that e-service quality and logistics service quality are strongly linked to customer satisfaction; that is, with e-service and logistics service, respectively. e-Service quality positively impacts customer satisfaction with logistics services, but logistics service quality negatively impacts customer satisfaction with e-services. Moreover, customer satisfaction with e-services is positively associated with customer loyalty for both e-services and logistics services. However, customer satisfaction with logistics services has no direct impact on related customer loyalty, and negatively impacts customer loyalty with e-services. Research limitations/implications – The survey focusses only on China; future data should verify whether different cultural backgrounds will impact the research results. Practical implications – The results show that e-retailers should not only focus on e-service quality, but also logistics service quality, which is critical to the success of e-commerce. Originality/value – A two-dimensional (e-service and logistics) service quality framework is proposed and empirically assessed in the context of the e-retailing supply chain. These impacts of the path of service quality on customer satisfaction and loyalty are highlighted.

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Intelligent model design of complex system becomes a key issue for organization responsiveness to uncertainties. In the real business world, the rule of competition between one firm verse another is replaced by a chain verse another chain, the cooperation is the same, where does it occur? At industrial cluster, there are a multiple of rivals or potential competitors for each member of value chain, industrial cluster location not only contains a couple of focal firms locating at the same tier, but includes the corresponding upstream and downstream firms as well, all of which concentrate on a close geographical site. For adopting to ever-changing market and sever competition, it is most likely to form multiple paralleled single supply chains for each focal firm of industrial cluster, these paralleled single supply chains compete and cooperate with each other. Recent researches regarding supply chain design mainly focus on a limited tier in single supply chain, which only take into account vertical cooperation and ignore the across-chain horizontal one. This paper, based on cluster supply chain, provides a novel framework and approach to design cluster supply chain without across-chain horizontal cooperation, then by introducing item allocation proportion of vertical and horizontal cooperation (α: 1 − α), the cluster supply chain design with acrosschain horizontal cooperation is developed, then presents a hybrid method to find solution, at last, computational study is presented to investigate values of decision variables and their influence on cluster supply chain design.

An outbreak of 81 cases of angiostrongyliasis cantonensis (AC) occurred in Beijing, China, during June through September 2006. Epidemiological characteristics, clinical signs and symptoms, laboratory tests, imaging, and treatment data from the 81 AC patients were collected and analyzed. All cases had a history of eating raw freshwater snails, and acquired Angiostrongylus cantonensis as a result. The incubation period ranged from 1 to 36 days. The main symptoms were fever, severe headache, neck stiffness, and skin paresthesia. A significant increase in eosinophilia occurred in the peripheral blood of 62 cases and in cerebrospinal fluid of 64 cases; 36 patients presented a linearly enhanced abnormal signal of the leptomeninges site during a cranial MRI examination, indicative of meningitis; 18 cases had a significant nodule shadow and spot flaky ground-glass shadow on chest computerized tomography. All patients were relieved of their illness with a 7-day treatment of albendazole.

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