UTAR Institutional Repository (Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman)
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The role of service marketing mix attributes（7P）towards Malaysian consumers’ purchase decision for lifestyle store
Get PDFThe study aims to investigate the role that attributes of the service marketing mix (7Ps) play in shaping the purchasing decisions of Malaysian consumers in lifestyle stores. With the phenomenal speed of growth that has taken place in retailing lifestyle products, particularly in skincare, it is imperative to know what really drives consumers’ purchase decision in a competitive retail environment. The research design is quantitative in nature and collected from 384 Malaysian respondents. Data were collected using a structured survey instrument targeting Malaysian consumers who are active in purchasing lifestyle-related products. The data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistical analytical methods to determine the relationships between the service marketing mix attributes and purchase decisions. Findings prove that all seven dimensions greatly affect purchase decisions made by consumers. It supports the significance of 7Ps in the lifestyle retail context which indicates that consumer purchase decision is affected. In this context, the study brings value to the academic domain by bringing the 7Ps into Malaysian consumer research, while at the same time offering practical implications to lifestyle retailers from the results, which emphasize that adopting a more integrated marketing approach has become very important as a means to enhance consumer satisfaction, and overall competitiveness in the ever-changing retail environment. Keyword: service marketing mix(7Ps); consumer purchase decision; lifestyle stores; Malaysian consumers; skincare product Subject Area: HF5410-5417.5 Marketing. Distribution of product
Switching intention towards green fashion: An integrated approach using Push-Pull Mooring and Status Quo Bias
Get PDFOne of the largest contributions to environmental harm worldwide is the fashion sector, and consumers' strong dependence on conventional fashion makes sustainability issues worse. According to recent studies, an increasing percentage of individuals are becoming more aware of environmental issues and are prepared to pay more for green fashion products. This study integrates the Status Quo Bias (SQB) theory with the Push Pull Mooring (PPM) framework to investigate the factors influencing consumers’ switching intentions towards green fashion. The purpose of integrating these two theories is to offer a thorough comprehension of how consumers behave. This study’s target respondents are those Malaysian consumers aged 21 and above who are aware of green fashion. An online structured survey yielded 153 responses in total, and a 7-point Likert scale was applied to measure each variable. The findings show that push factors – dissatisfaction (DS) and environmental risk (ER) – as well as pull factors – cost savings (CS) and social influence (SI) – significantly drive consumers’ switching intention. However, mooring factors, switching costs (CS), have a significant negative impact, while inertia has no significant impact. Keywords: Green Fashion; Switching Intention; Push Pull Mooring (PPM); Consumer Behaviour; Status Quo Bias (SQB) Subject Area: HF5410-5417.5 Marketing. Distribution of product
Development of a book recommender system
Get PDFThis project aims to create a hybrid book recommendation system that addresses key
challenges such as usability and customization. Existing applications frequently fall
short of providing tailored and intuitive experiences, leaving a gap for customers who
want more control over their preferences. By combining collaborative filtering, which
leverages user behavior like reading history and ratings, with content-based filtering
that analyzes book metadata such as genre, author, and title, the system solves
limitations such as data sparsity and the cold start problem. The report's literature
review part includes reviews of applications such as Goodreads, Meet New Books, and
StoryGraph. A review of existing applications demonstrates the need for a more
flexible and user-centered approach. The proposed solution is a mobile application built
with Flutter, Python, Firebase, and PostgreSQL that dynamically adjusts
recommendations depending on ongoing user feedback. The system uses weighted
hybrid methodologies to provide accurate, diverse and personalized book suggestions,
with the goal of increasing user satisfaction and transforming the book discovery
experience
Innovative adaptive threshold based battery energy storage system controller using deep learning forecast for peak demand reductions
Get PDFBattery-based energy storage system (BESS) can reduce daily peak demands when it is managed by an effective controller or a control strategy. However, most existing BESS controllers are implemented in simulation platforms, with limited experimental validations under real operating conditions. Even when implemented experimentally, they are often tested on limited case studies or evaluated without any evaluation metrics. Additionally, majority of the controllers are developed using paid proprietary platforms, and do not
incorporate any advanced load forecasting model. Therefore, this research aims to address these gaps by developing an innovative adaptive threshold-based BESS controller using free, open-source platforms Node-RED and Python,
integrating an advanced deep learning-based one-dimensional convolution neural network (1D-CNN) model for load forecasting. The proposed controller is initially evaluated through simulation using six-months of data, with its
performance benchmarked against four different controllers using two different evaluation metrics: daily peak reduction factor ( ), and monthly failure rate ( ). Subsequently, the controller is deployed on a 200 kW/200 kWh BESS setup at a university campus in Malaysia to evaluate its practical performance over 21 days under real operating conditions. In simulation, the proposed controller performs better than that of those benchmark controllers, achieving an average of 41.62% and of 16.55%. When tested on the actual BESS setup, the controller shows improved performance, with an average
of 49.45% and of just 4.76%. These findings highlight the potential of the proposed adaptive threshold-based controller enhanced with advanced load forecasting model for real-world grid applications and can provide significant benefits to both utilities and end customers.
Keywords: Battery energy storage system (BESS), bess controller, peak demand reduction, load forecasting, deep learning, 1D-CN
Synthesis, characterization, conformational study, and antioxidant activity of N-acylhydrazone derivatives
Get PDFA series of N-acylhydrazone derivatives (SB 1-SB 8) were successfully synthesized in yields ranging from 68% to 97% through the condensation of a carboxylic acid hydrazide with various benzaldehydes bearing different substituents. The structures of the synthesized compounds were confirmed by FTIR, 1H NMR, 13C NMR, DEPT-135, NOE, HMQC, and HMBC spectral analyses.
Based on the relative configuration of the imine (C=N) double bond and the conformation of the amide [C(=O)–NH] bond, the C=N double bonds of the N-acylhydrazones were assigned the E configuration. Furthermore, the NMR data of all synthesized compounds indicated the presence of both cis and trans conformers. The population ratio of cis conformers ranged from 32% to 60%, while that of trans conformers ranged from 41% to 68%. The rotational barriers of the cis/trans conformers were determined to be between 73.47 and 77.81 kJ/mol. The antioxidant activity of the synthesized N-acylhydrazone derivatives was evaluated using the DPPH assay. Apart from SB 7, which exhibited weak antioxidant activity, the compounds did not demonstrate significant antioxidant properties
Couple's daily life application
Get PDFThis project is a development-based project called Couple’s Daily Life Application project. This project is to develop a mobile application that provides aid for couples to solve their problems that faced in their relationship. Many of them broke up because of lacking new date activity ideas that could refresh the freshness of their relationship. Many of them also fail to manage their shared household tasks well and broke up because one of them is lazy and one of them is too tired of the household tasks. Some of them also fail to maintain their relationship due to the reason of lack of understanding about their partners. Thus, the objectives of this project are to help the couples to maintain the freshness of a relationship and guide the couples on how to reduce the burdens of each other. Another objective of this project is to lead the couples to listen and understand more about each other, so that they can respect each other. Based on the similar applications like Merge, Cobble and Couple Game application, there are three solutions that can be used for the problems mentioned above. Firstly, add the date ideas generator into the application, so that couples can refer to the interesting date ideas generated by the application for their dates. Secondly, allow users to create the shared tasks and sync the tasks together, so that couples can see the shared tasks and their own tasks together. Thirdly, add interesting quizzes in the application, so this could help couples to understand more each other. This project includes home module, games module, tasks module, date ideas module and profile module where the special thing is the date ideas module included date idea generator with the help of AI
Health clinic capacity analysis using simulation
Get PDFThis research presents a comprehensive analysis of health clinic capacity management using
Vensim System Dynamics simulation software to identify operational bottlenecks and develop
improvement strategies for Malaysian public health clinics, introducing dynamic feedback
mechanisms that allow service times to adapt automatically based on patient queue lengths to
create a more realistic representation of how healthcare staff naturally adjust their working
pace during busy periods. The enhanced simulation model systematically identified
consultation services as the primary bottleneck limiting overall clinic performance, with
outpatient consultation wait times reaching peak levels of 97.64 minutes during busy periods,
and through comprehensive sensitivity analysis using 200 simulation runs, demonstrated that
infrastructure improvements, particularly consultation room additions, provided significantly
greater impact than staffing increases, with adding a single consultation room reducing
consultation wait times by 45.5% whilst adding consultation doctors or nurses produced no
measurable performance improvements. The research revealed important bottleneck shifting
behaviour where resolving primary constraints caused bottlenecks to migrate to downstream
service areas, leading to the identification of an optimal resource configuration requiring
coordinated additions across multiple service components that achieved overall wait time
reductions of 37.2% from baseline conditions, reducing average wait times from 43.77 minutes
to 27.78 minutes whilst maintaining clinical quality standards. This methodology demonstrates
the practical value of dynamic feedback simulation for healthcare capacity management,
providing evidence-based guidance for resource allocation decisions that maximise patient care
quality whilst ensuring operational efficiency, and offers a systematic framework for capacity
analysis that can be applied to other Malaysian healthcare settings requiring operational
improvement
Designing agrivoltaic systems to optimize crop productivity and energy generation
Get PDFAgrivoltaics integrates agricultural production with photovoltaic (PV) energy generation, offering a potential solution to the increasing competition for land between food and energy sectors. This study focuses on the design and optimisation of an agrivoltaic system to maximise both crop yield and solar power generation. The implementation of PV panels, however, introduces shading effects that can alter crop’s growth performance. To address this, different PV layouts were designed and evaluated through PVsyst simulations and controlled experimental trials. Crop growth performance under varying shading levels was assessed alongside energy yields to determine the most efficient system configuration. Results indicate that a tilt angle of 15° is optimal for Malaysian conditions, as it minimises thermal losses while balancing energy output and crop productivity. A full-density solar configuration achieved the highest annual electricity generation (702.93 MWh) but significantly reduced crop growth performance. Conversely, a half-density solar configuration provided more favourable growing conditions, with partially shaded crops recording the highest growth performance index (0.60), followed by open-field crops (0.50) and heavily shaded crops (0.19) by recorded the variables such as number of fruits, average fruit diameter, height and number of new leaves per week and conducted Multi Criteria Analysis. The integration scenario combining half-density PV arrays with partially shaded crops produced the highest Land Equivalent Ratio (LER) of 1.64, highlighting superior land-use efficiency compared to full-density arrays (LER = 1.38). For the case study of Hami EcoFarm, prioritising agricultural productivity while maintaining sustainable energy output suggests that the half-density configuration represents the most suitable implementation strategy.
Keywords: Agrivoltaic, Solar Energy, Crop, Land Equivalent Ratio, land use efficiency, PVsyst.
Subject Area: TJ807-83
Investigating sustainable construction : benefits, challenges and strategies
Get PDFDriving sustainable construction in the Malaysian industry is essential to address growing challenges. The construction sector is one of the largest contributors to carbon emissions, waste generation and resource depletion in
Malaysia, which makes sustainability a pressing issue. Although awareness of green practices is increasing, adoption is still limited due to high initial costs, lack of knowledge and restricted access to green products. This study examines sustainable construction in Malaysia by identifying its benefits, assessing the main challenges and analysing strategies that support adoption. A quantitative approach was used through a structured questionnaire distributed to developers, consultants and contractors in the Klang Valley,
with 120 valid responses collected. Data were analysed using Cronbach’s alpha reliability test, mean ranking, Shapiro-Wilk Test, Kruskal-Wallis test and Spearman’s correlation test in SPSS. The findings highlight three main benefits: health improvement, carbon footprint reduction, and waste
minimisation. Key challenges include high upfront costs, low consumer awareness and weak policy enforcement. Other than that, the key strategies are increase incentives, improve regulation and policies, and loan with low interest rate. Factor analysis revealed five strategic dimensions: capacity
building and innovation, innovative financing and smart delivery, institutional and organisational support, policy and environmental governance, and collaboration and market development. These findings contribute to policy development and industry practice by providing evidence-based recommendations to strengthen sustainable construction
adoption. The originality of this study lies in bridging the gap between theoretical sustainability goals and practical applications in Malaysia’s construction sector
Exploring sustainable processes in construction projects: emerging technologies and opportunities
Get PDFSustainability and innovation are increasingly shaping the future of the construction industry, with emerging technologies offering new opportunities to enhance environmental, economic, and social performance. This study explores the role of emerging technologies in promoting sustainability in construction projects by identifying key advancements and assessing their practical impacts.
Adopting a pragmatic paradigm with a quantitative approach, the study uses a literature review to deductively identify relevant technologies and sustainability potentials, forming the basis for a structured questionnaire. An online survey
was conducted among 120 experienced construction professionals, including clients, contractors, and consultants across Malaysia to gather perceptions of the
relevancy and effectiveness of smart technologies in sustainability management. The data collected is analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics to derive meaningful insights. Key findings highlight major drivers such as regulatory and market influences, economic and competitive factors, technological advancements, environmental considerations, and strategic motivations. Exploratory factor analysis revealed four underlying factors
influencing technology adoption such as policy, innovation and resource-based drivers; environmental and efficiency commitments; market and stakeholder influence; and human awareness and capacity building, offering empirical
evidence on industry readiness. The study addresses the gap between technological advancement and sustainability implementation by drawing on industry expertise and identifying key influencing factors. Its novelty lies in
presenting a data-driven view of how smart technologies can be strategically integrated to improve sustainability outcomes in construction project management. By aligning industry perceptions with innovation trends, this
study offers valuable insights for practitioners and policymakers, supporting a shift toward a more resilient and eco-friendly built environment.
Keywords: Sustainable construction, emerging technologies, resource efficiency, sustainability management, innovation
Subject Area: TD194-195 Environmental Effects of Industries and Plant