Enhanced internal marketing (IM) practice may deliver a competitive advantage for budget airline operators through increased employee satisfaction. This study examines the relationship between IM practice and employee satisfaction in a budget airline setting. A survey was administered to 252 flight attendants to investigate and analyse their perceptions of IM practice and current satisfaction with their employer. Data were analysed via structural equation modelling. The results indicate that IM practice impacted significantly on an employee's satisfaction with the budget airline. The findings suggest IM practice can be used by budget airline managers to deliver increased employee satisfaction, which in turn will enhance competitive advantage. Limitations and future research directions are outlined.

This paper describes the design of an ellipsis and coreference resolution module integrated in a computerized virtual patient dialogue system. Real medical diagnosis dialogues have been collected and analyzed. Several groups of diagnosis-related concepts were defined and used to construct rules, patterns, and features to detect and resolve ellipsis and coreference. The best F-scores of ellipsis detection and resolution were 89.15 % and 83.40 %, respectively. The best F-scores of phrasal coreference detection and resolution were 93.83 % and 83.40 %, respectively. The accuracy of pronominal anaphora resolution was 92 % for the 3rd-person singular pronouns referring to specific entities, and 97.31 % for other pronouns.