YEO SOOK FERN
@mmuexpert.mmu.edu.my
Deputy Dean Research & Industrial Collaborations
Multimedia University
RESEARCH, TEACHING, or OTHER INTERESTS
Business and International Management, Marketing, Management Science and Operations Research, Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality Management
Scopus Publications
Scholar Citations
Scholar h-index
Scholar i10-index
Scopus Publications
Muhammad Noman Shafique, Sook Fern Yeo, and Cheng Ling Tan
Elsevier BV
Kay Hooi Keoy, Yung Jing Koh, Javid Iqbal, Shaik Shabana Anjum, Sook Fern Yeo, Aswani Kumar Cherukuri, Wai Yee Teoh, and Dayang Aidah Awang Piut
World Scientific Pub Co Pte Ltd
The rise of online learning has brought about a close connection between micro-credentials and lifelong learning, employability, and new models of digital education. Micro-credentials are considered instrumental in transforming higher education today. This study aims to examine the extent to which micro-credentials have been adopted in Malaysia, focussing on the viewpoint of Higher Education Providers (HEPs). It seeks to identify the challenges faced by HEPs when offering micro-credentials, encompassing technological, organisational, and people-related obstacles. By analysing empirical data, this research intends to propose a conceptual framework that can guide the successful adoption and implementation of micro-credentials within educational institutions. By addressing these recommendations, HEPs in Malaysia can successfully adopt and implement micro-credentials within their institutions. This will not only enhance the learning experience for students but also contribute to the overall transformation of higher education, keeping pace with the demands of the digital age and fostering a culture of continuous learning and skill development.
Hazem Yusuf Osrof, Cheng Ling Tan, Gunasekaran Angappa, Sook Fern Yeo, and Kim Hua Tan
Elsevier BV
Muhammad Noman Shafique, Ammar Rashid, Sook Fern Yeo, and Umar Adeel
MDPI AG
The Sustainable Development Goals and circular economy are two critical aspects of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. They both seek to reduce the waste of natural resources and enhance society’s social, economic, and environmental goals. This study aims to identify, develop, test, and verify the significant antecedents that affect the adoption of supply chain analytics and its consequences for achieving the circular economy. We have divided the conceptual framework into two parts. In the first part, the relationship among data integration and scalability, organizational readiness, and policies and regulations as Technological–Organizational–Environmental factors as antecedents in adopting supply chain analytics. In the second part, the dynamic capabilities view grounded the relationship among supply chain analytics, supply chain integration, and sustainable supply chain flexibility effect directly and indirectly on the circular economy. Data have been collected using the survey method from 231 respondents from the manufacturing industry in Pakistan. Data have been analyzed using (i) partial least square structure equation modeling (ii) and artificial neural network approaches. The empirical findings proved that antecedents (data integrity and scalability, organizational readiness, and policy and regulation) and consequences (supply chain integration and sustainable supply chain flexibility) of supply chain analytics adoption would improve the circular economy performance. Additionally, artificial neural networks have supported these relationships. The adoption of supply chain analytics will enable organizations to supply chain integration. Additionally, organizations with more integration and analytics in their operations tend to have more flexibility and a circular economy. Moreover, organizations and society will obtain social, economic, and environmental benefits and reduce wastage and negative environmental impacts.
Sook Fern Yeo, Cheng Ling Tan, Irene Yoke Chu Leong, Dario Natale Palmucci, and Yu Jian Then
Emerald
PurposeThis study aims to investigate the factors that influence young consumers' purchase intention towards dietary supplements (DS) in Malaysia.Design/methodology/approachThe supplement industry in Malaysia has been growing rapidly recently due to a paradigm shift in healthcare management, from curative to prevention. Thus, it has sparked interest to conduct a study on the factors that influence young consumers' purchase intentions towards DS. With a response rate of 74.5%, a survey questionnaire was used to elicit data from 149 Gen-Y respondents who consume supplements on a regular basis.FindingsThe results revealed that the influencing factors towards purchase decisions among these Gen-Y respondents aged between 17 and 25 are based on product knowledge and product quality. The implications of these findings and directions for future research are outlined at the end of this paper.Originality/valueThis study offers empirical insights from the perspective of an emerging digital economy on the factors that influence young consumers' purchase intentions towards DS in Malaysia.
Gu-Hong Lin, Cheng-An Chuang, Cheng Ling Tan, Sook Fern Yeo, and Fan-Yi Wu
Emerald
PurposeRefractory materials are now used in all major industries that demand high-temperature resistance, including petrochemicals, steel, cement and aviation. Businesses must decrease operating costs, enhance product technology, sell well and manage corporate risks in decision-making, notably supplier selection, to be more competitive. The study aims to determine the key criteria and factors of supplier selection and to evaluate the importance of the key factor of the supplier selection criteria for the refractory materials manufacturers in Taiwan.Design/methodology/approachAnalytical hierarchy process (AHP) is used to rank these factors for the decision maker. The AHP method is suitable for verifying refractory supplier selection criteria and providing references. The weighted loss scores for each supplier are then determined using the relative importance as the weights. Supplier selection criteria are ranked using their aggregate weighted loss scores. The provider with the lowest loss score should be chosen.FindingsProduct quality is the most significant of the five criteria: product quality, production technology, logistics capacity, service capability and supplier background. Professionalism is the most significant aspect of product quality, whereas equipment and capacity are vital in manufacturing techniques. The studies also show that the delivery rate is essential for logistics and service capabilities.Practical implicationsThis research has important implications for refractory suppliers in promptly fine-tuning the production and service to enhance customer satisfaction, which is key to business sustainability.Originality/valueThe application of an AHP technique to a real-world industrial issue is what makes this research unique. This research addressed one of the most critical topics in supply chain operations by offering better judgement for supplier selection via the use of suitable quantitative methodologies.
Choon Fu Goh, Chiau Ming Long, Nur Aisyah Humaira Fedelis, Halimaton Hamdan, Soo Cheng Chuah, Sook Fern Yeo, Cheng Ling Tan, and Tin Wui Wong
Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services Elsevier BV
Jia En Lee, Mei Ling Goh, and Sook Fern Yeo
Elsevier BV
Cheng Ling Tan, Zhongkai Tei, Sook Fern Yeo, Kee-Hung Lai, Ajay Kumar, and Leanne Chung
Emerald
PurposeDigital transformation (DT) in the semiconductor industry goes beyond traditional business operations and supply chain management (OSCM) to the digital world. Despite significant developments in recent years, blockchain implementations for OSCM remain relatively underdeveloped in the semiconductor industry. Therefore, this research aims to examine the relationships between blockchain visibility, supply chain integration (SCI) and supply chain performance (SCP) in the era of DT in Malaysia's semiconductor industry to shed light on this emerging area.Design/methodology/approachA convenience sampling of 71 operations and supply chain managers attached to semiconductor manufacturing firms in Malaysia were invited to participate in a survey. In assessing blockchain visibility within the industry, key terms namely business intelligence gathering, information exchange, information technology (IT) and knowledge of asset status, were conceptualised from the literature review. The questionnaires developed to collect data were validated by industry and academic experts.FindingsThe results from the analysis confirmed that SCI mediates the link between blockchain visibility (information exchange, business intelligence gathering and knowledge asset status) and SCP. Likewise, the importance-performance matrix analysis (IPMA) outcomes revealed that IT played a minor role. The results suggested that semiconductor manufacturers should pay less attention to IT since this was identified as having the least priority towards improvement.Practical implicationsThe outcomes from this research enable policymakers to strategise and integrate blockchain technology in the era of DT to ensure sustainable SCM in the semiconductor industry in Malaysia.Originality/valueThe research bridge the knowledge gap by revealing the value that blockchain visibility can facilitate SCP and explore SCI as the prevailing factor and demonstrates how Resource-Based Theory and Network Theory can be applied in this study.
Mohsin Ashraf, Fazeel Abid, Ikram Ud Din, Jawad Rasheed, Mirsat Yesiltepe, Sook Fern Yeo, and Merve T. Ersoy
MDPI AG
Music genre classification has a significant role in information retrieval for the organization of growing collections of music. It is challenging to classify music with reliable accuracy. Many methods have utilized handcrafted features to identify unique patterns but are still unable to determine the original music characteristics. Comparatively, music classification using deep learning models has been shown to be dynamic and effective. Among the many neural networks, the combination of a convolutional neural network (CNN) and variants of a recurrent neural network (RNN) has not been significantly considered. Additionally, addressing the flaws in the particular neural network classification model, this paper proposes a hybrid architecture of CNN and variants of RNN such as long short-term memory (LSTM), Bi-LSTM, gated recurrent unit (GRU), and Bi-GRU. We also compared the performance based on Mel-spectrogram and Mel-frequency cepstral coefficient (MFCC) features. Empirically, the proposed hybrid architecture of CNN and Bi-GRU using Mel-spectrogram achieved the best accuracy at 89.30%, whereas the hybridization of CNN and LSTM using MFCC achieved the best accuracy at 76.40%.
Touseef Tahir, Cigdem Gencel, Ghulam Rasool, Tariq Umer, Jawad Rasheed, Sook Fern Yeo, and Taner Cevik
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Recent reviews of the literature indicate the need for empirical studies on cross-project defect prediction (CPDP) that would allow aggregation of the evidence and improve predictive performance. Most empirical studies predict defects at granularity levels of method, class, file, and module/package during the coding phase, and thereby avoid external failure costs. The main goal of this study is to perform an empirical study on early defect prediction at the beginning of a project at the product level of granularity for using it as input in planning quality activities of the project. Hence, both internal and external failure costs could be avoided as much as possible through proper planning of quality. We first made a systematic mapping study (SMS) on secondary studies (literature reviews) on defect prediction to identify the most used datasets, the project attributes and metrics utilized as estimators, and the supervised learning methods employed for training the data. Then, we made an empirical study on defect density prediction using cross-project data. We collected 760 project data from the International Software Benchmarking (ISBSG) dataset version 11, which reported both defects and functional size attributes. We trained the prediction models using: i) the complete set of project attributes, ii) the individual attributes, and iii) multiple subsets of attributes. We employed classification and regression approaches of machine learning. The machine learning models are trained using original values of the dataset, and z-score and logged transformations of original values to explore the effects of data normalization on prediction. Most machine learning models trained on the z-score transformation of the dataset performed best for classifying defects. The Multilayer-Perceptron (Neural Network) model trained on the z-score transformation of complete dataset predicted defects with the highest F1-score of 0.89 using binary classification. The logged transformation and feature selection methods improved the results for multivariable regression. The multivariable regression predicted defects with the highest Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) and R2 (r-squared) values of 0.4 and 0.9, respectively, with a subset of 11 features using logged transformation. The results of classification and regression approaches indicate that defects can be predicted with reasonable accuracy at the software product level using cross-project data.
Imran Mahmud, Lim Hui Wen, Yeo Sook Fern, Tan Cheng Ling, and T. Ramayah
SAGE Publications
Social networking services (SNS) have multiple benefits. The ease of communication through SNS has led to an increase in their popularity and number of users. As a network continues to grow, users are overwhelmed by the need to pay more attention to the overwhelming volume of social demands to stay connected with friends and family. As a result, many choose to withdraw from social media temporarily or permanently. Based on stress coping theory, this paper proposes a research model to test the relationships between information overload, social overload, and communication overload with disturbance handling, self-preservation, exhaustion, and fatigue, on SNS discontinuation intention. The proposed model was tested in a field study in Malaysia, and data were collected from 159 respondents for all SNS users. The results of this study indicate that social overload has the strongest effect on coping strategy, while the theory of exhaustion and fatigue has a strong effect on discontinuation intention. This study advances the theoretical understanding of SNS discontinuation intention based on coping strategy and strain theory. It also provides suggestions for coping with overload.
Long Kim, Teerasak Jindabot, Sook Fern Yeo, and Songpan Janthong
Assumption University
ATK test kits have been used widely to test for the Covid-19 virus. This has led to a significant demand and strong repurchase intentions for consumption by many people, including Thai people. From the marketing management perspective, repurchase intentions have been regarded as a competitive advantage which can greatly support firms not only to provide sufficient supply to the market but also to achieve business sustainability. Hence, many businesses have continued evaluating certain determinants which significantly influence their customers’ intentions to rebuy their products. In this regard, investigating the factors influencing repurchase intentions is essential to many businesses. Accordingly, this research aims to investigate how switching costs, brand experience, and brand loyalty, influence consumers’ intentions to rebuy antigen test kits (ATK) for testing for Covid-19 among Thai citizens. A google form survey was developed to survey 670 people who had previously bought an ATK. However, there were only 523 responses deemed valid and usable for analysis through a structural equation model. Results revealed that brand loyalty was significantly influenced by brand experience and switching costs. Consumers remained loyal to the same ATK brand if they were satisfied with their experience of using the ATK product. This could happen when they faced a high barrier of switching to another brand. Repurchase intentions were significantly influenced by brand loyalty and brand experience, but not switching cost. People rebought the ATK product when they remained loyal with the current ATK brand. Their intentions to rebuy became even higher once they had a good experience of using the product.
Nuttaprachya Nantavisit, Long Kim, Sook Fern Yeo, and Siwarit Pongsakornrungsilp
LLC CPC Business Perspectives
In the professional activity of a bank teller, the palette of emotional states is extremely large, but the dominant state is the state of emotional tension, which depends on the nature of the performed actions, professional experience and motivation of the employee. This study examines the consequences of occupational stress on employee motivation and job satisfaction across different organizational contexts. It focuses on the role conflict, supervisor support, work-family conflict, and job stress experienced by bank tellers in Cambodia. Data were collected from a sample of 649 tellers working in various Cambodian banks using the snowball sampling technique. The results show that role conflict and supervisor support have a significant impact on work-family conflict, which in turn affects the levels of workplace stress experienced by tellers. Role conflict is identified as the primary factor contributing to occupational stress. The study suggests that banks should address inter-role conflicts among tellers to reduce stress levels and promote a more efficient workplace atmosphere.
Ying San Lim, Sook Fern Yeo, Tuan Hock Ng, and Li Zhou Chong
IEEE
The usage of social media has raised dramatically not only globally, also in Malaysia. The usage of social media gave the retailer an opportunity to promote and sell their products on social media. The selling becomes more interesting when social media also offer the live streaming function where the retailer can show, present, explain, and interact with the audience during the selling process. These new tools created a new wave for retailers. Most of the research on social media are focusing on Generation Y, as they are the known techno-savvy cohort, this research, on the hand, will zoom into Generation X, to see how promotion deals, broadcaster engagement, peers influence, trending and popularity and word of mouth is going to affect the purchase intention of generation X during the social media live streaming. The questionnaire survey was distributed to 150 respondents through WhatsApp and WeChat. The research findings showed broadcasting engagement and promotion deals are going to affect Generation X’s purchase intention in social media live streaming. Based on the results of the study, recommendations were made to the retailer to give an idea of how they can attract Generation X to purchase during the social media live sessions.
Kay Hooi Keoy, Javid Iqbal, Meng Chuan Ho, Pei Boon Ooi, Shaik Shabana Anjum, Yung Jing Koh, Sook Fern Yeo, Wai Yee Teoh, and Siew Yick Kek Lillian
IEEE
Micro-credentials are officially recognized records that demonstrate the completion of learning objectives during shorter, less time-consuming educational or training events. They concentrate on validating competency-based knowledge, outcomes, and/or skills using trustworthy assessments and open standards, which can improve graduates’ chances of finding employment. An institution or organization may accept micro-credential for credit or as an attestation for potential employers. Initially, micro-credentials were first established in online discussion forums and other social media platforms to differentiate average users from advanced users by awarding digital badges to the respondents who completed the necessary assessments and assignments, for the purposes of upskilling, as well as learning new skills. This exploratory research seeks to provide an overview of micro credential adoption among Higher Education Providers in Malaysia
Anushia Chelvarayan, Yeo Sook Fern, and Jeremy Chang Soon Kiat
IEEE
The COVID-19 pandemic led educational establishments to close, severely disrupting entire educational system. This study intends to identify the crucial elements that impact people’s decision to engage in e-learning during COVID-19. 200 tertiary students were surveyed in a cross-sectional fashion to get the data, which was then analysed using SPSS. The conclusions demonstrated that COVID-19-related features, including perceived challenges and COVID-19 awareness, had an impression on undergraduates’ intentions both directly and indirectly through the perceived usefulness and usability of e-learning platforms. Additionally, several findings demonstrated that students’ intentions to join in in e-learning throughout COVID-19 are strongly influenced via the educational institution’s readiness.
Kwee Kim Peong, Sook Fern Yeo, Kwee Peng Peong, Cheng Ling Tan, Sakiru Adebola Solarin, and Kah Boon Lim
IEEE
Malaysian tourism industry has suffered losses of over RM100 billion due to the COVID-19 outbreak, as China and Singapore cancelled their tours to Malaysia. To counter this, the National Tourism Policy (2020-2030) must focus more on domestic travel and digitalisation to strengthen sustainable tourism and drive economic growth. The aim of the study is to investigate the determinants that contribute to smart tourism technologies and propose a framework that can create new revenue streams. Personalisation and digital experience should be prioritised to attract tourists and achieve Malaysia’s goal as a top Mind Ecotourism Destination of the World. The research employs a 400 self-administered survey for data collection from generations X and Y who are travellers by applying purposive sampling and PLS-SEM methods. Malacca, Negeri Sembilan, Perak and Penang are the focus group areas. The study is crucial to meet Budget 2022, KEGA 15, and SDGs 8, 12, 14, and 15, which aim to revitalise the tourism sector and improve economic growth. Tourists employ technology for attaining information on the infrastructure of the desired target destination.
Kah Boon Lim, Sook Fern Yeo, Chiu Shuang Tay, and Cheng Ling Tan
IEEE
Digital bank is an emerging trend in the global banking industry. Digital bank is the digitisation of every scheme and activity carried out by both the financial institution and its customers included. Malaysia is a cash-based society, so digital banking will be a disruptive digital transformation for Malaysians. Hence, the purpose for this study is to investigate the key factors affecting Malaysian consumers“ intention to use digital bank. The model included eight constructs, which are performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, hedonic motivation, price value, habit and trust. On the other hand, the dependent variable in this study is intention to use. A total of 203 questionnaires were collected for this study and the data collected were analysed by Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM 4). The results of the study revealed that hedonic motivation and performance expectancy were significantly related to intention to use. This study will contribute to the government and developers to help the government and companies that will be involved in this area to understand the consumer's intention and concern towards digital bank and the direction of development and improvement of digital banking.
Sook Fern Yeo, Cheng Ling Tan, Kah Boon Lim, En Yu Teo, and Tze Wei Liew
IEEE
The number of mobile shopping among online consumers has risen and shopping through mobile devices has become a common activity around the world. Nowadays, consumers are more relying on recommendations online, especially from social media influencers. Therefore, the product or brand presented by the social media influencers will directly impact the consumers buying decisions. The purpose of this research is to provide a better understanding of the impact of social media influencers on the consumer mobile buying decision in Malaysia. The factors that have been shown in this research include influencer interactivity, emotional attachment, brand trust, and product efficacy. In the overall research, there are a total of 255 respondents participated in the study. The findings exhibited that influencer interactivity, emotional attachment, and brand trust have a positive effect on consumer mobile buying decisions. On the other hand, influencer interactivity and product efficacy have negative effects. In short, this research will provide a clearer insight into the trend of e-commerce in society and the impact of social media influencers on consumers buying behaviours nowadays
Ghulam Rasool, Yasir Hussain, Tariq Umer, Jawad Rasheed, Sook Fern Yeo, and Fatih Sahin
MDPI AG
Software design patterns have a proven impact on the quality of software applications and the development process of an application. The success of design patterns in the software industry has attracted mobile game developers and researchers to apply patterns in the context of mobile games. Researchers have already proposed different frameworks and design patterns, but they are not truly beneficial for game developers. The high-level taxonomies can be adjuvant while proposing useful design patterns. The existing taxonomies for mobile games do not consider different parts of a game that outline top-level structure. In this paper, we propose a new taxonomy that emphasizes the top-level structure for identifying new design patterns for mobile games. We propose five novel generic design patterns that might be applied to the development of mobile games and other software applications. The presented design patterns are, in a true sense, programming patterns that outline top-level generic classes and interfaces, and that could be the basis for the development of new games. We developed four demo games by using these patterns for the realization of taxonomy and design patterns.
Sook Fern Yeo, Cheng Ling Tan, Ming-Lang Tseng, Steven Tam, and Weng Kuan San
Emerald
PurposeIn recent years, consumers today recognise organic foods as high-quality products which can benefit them in various aspects. The tendency to switch consumption behaviours from conventional to ecological food products or organic food has largely been due to the claims that organic crops are grown in eco-friendly and sustainable environments. Thus, the study highlighted unique results on young consumers' purchasing intentions from a new perspective. The paper aims to investigate the factors influencing consumers' purchase decision towards organic food, particularly amongst Generation Y consumers.Design/methodology/approachThe underlying fuzzy set theory is employed to handle the fuzziness of consumers' perceptions since the attributes are usually expressed in linguistic preferences. Overall, the study focussed on five important aspects – health consciousness, environmental concern, social influencing and ethical concern – that also include twenty criteria that had been identified and introduced after a thorough review of related literature.FindingsThe results reveal that the most important criteria in the selected firm are environment protection, chemical instrument, buying attitude and animal testing. In comparison, the cause group includes criteria such as environment protection, natural food and support for training programmes, whilst the effect group includes production practices, monitoring protections and ethically produced food.Research limitations/implicationsThe sample collection from the study focussed on Generation Y consumers who consume organic food in Malaysia. This could lead to the limitation towards external generalisability. The study will provide numerous advantages to the communities. The policy maker should develop a proper marketing strategy to promote organic food as food that is healthier, better in nutrition and safer for society.Originality/valueUtilising fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) in analysing the fuzziness of consumers' perceptions towards consumers' purchase decision can be expected to expand the breadth of knowledge to both academic and practical.