Journal of Urban Economics and Management

Identifying the current obstacles in the business atmosphere of urban economy and determining methods of improving it are among the primary measures for achieving operational strategies in improving economic activities. The current study aims at strategic planning to improve business atmosphere in the holy city of Mashhad with regard to its religious tourism potentiality. Therefore, the strong and weak points as well as the opportunities and threats of the business atmosphere of the city were identified based upon focusing on religious tourism through SWOT and quantitative matrix of strategic planning. Following filling-out a questionnaire by 23 experts from related organizations, operational measures and proper executive policies were decided upon. The results indicated that the strategic situation of the business atmosphere of urban economy of the holy city of Mashhad, emphasizing the condition for attracting religious tourists, is in a defensive status therefore, the strategy for supporting the active members in the field of religious tourism is among defensive strategies for this domain. Besides, deregulation, reducing official bureaucracy, and unifying organizational management are among the most important factors in devising strategies for improving business atmosphere in the holy city of Mashhad.

One of the most important indicators of citizens’ satisfaction in metropolises is to provide efficiently banking tools in city.  Keeping cash in ATMs is very important for banks. In this paper, increasing citizens’ satisfaction from Bank Shahr ATMs has been investigated by using questionnaire among 200 citizens who used them before and after implementing inventory control policy of ATMs’ cash. This paper investigates the relationship between citizens’ satisfaction evaluation and active ATMs by presenting a model of minimizing total costs of missed opportunity for ATMs. In order to simulate consumer behavior of ATMs, Arena software was used. The results indicated that this model can present reorder point, money order, and combination of notes for each ATM. One of the most important findings is identification of effective factors on citizens’ satisfaction from ATMs and a model to optimize missed client’s costs and surplus money in them. By the help of this model, satisfaction has been increased. The results represented that citizens’ satisfaction from services has been reached to 80 percent from 25 percent. Finally, daily total cost of each ATM has been reduced from 1859000 Rials for each ATM to 1147000 Rials.