Agent-based modelling – a new method for investigating environmental problems

The agent-based modelling (ABM) represents a newly emerged domain with multiple applications. They started to develop in late 1940’s and they reached maturity in 2000’s – 2010’s. Nowadays, more and more studies are being made using ABM, proving that they are a powerful tool in exploring patterns, interactions and behaviours. As their name suggest, they rely on agents. There is still no formal definition for agents, but they are considered to be autonomous entities, capable of having a certain behaviour and to interact with other agents and/or with the environment they belong to. The environment, the agents and the interactions established form the ABM. Even though this type of models has evolved from mathematics, thanks to computer development, and especially computer graphics, they now offer the possibility to visually explore certain behaviours and to identify a pattern. Also, of great importance and contributing directly to the ABMs application expansion, is the development of a variety of toolkits used for designing agent-based models. Many of the toolkits are open source and continuously implement more simplified programming language. These are the main reasons for which ABMs are used nowadays in a very wide range of domains – from ecology to healthcare and medicine, from archaeology to stock markets, from combats and air traffic control to emergency situations, from social and natural sciences to robotics

Development of an application that relates fashion stores and fast delivering: Delooks

Living in 2022 is living in a society that fully relies on their cellphones. Whether is to go through social media or keep up with the daily news, cellphones have become a part of the “things I can’t forget when I leave home” such as house keys and wallet. With this evolution of depending on our mobiles most businesses had to keep up with digitalization process and one of them was the fashion industry. One company that was part of the inspiration of this project was Uber Eats. This company presents a transportation service of food from restaurants to consumer’s home. This service is made using an application in which the person selects the restaurant and consequently the exact food that the consumer wants from that restaurant and after the request is completed, it is given an estimated time of delivery. With this thesis our aim is to implement the same model that uber eats uses, but on fashion stores. We aim to discover the prices for transportation and what percentage should be applied on each piece of clothing. After we come to this conclusion, we are going to build our company using accountability tools and discover if the idea is a profitable one.Viver em 2022 é viver numa sociedade que depende totalmente dos seus telemóveis. Seja para navegar pelas redes sociais ou acompanhar as notícias do dia a dia, o telemóvel passou a fazer parte das “coisas que não posso esquecer quando saio de casa”, como chaves de casa e a carteira. Com essa evolução da dependência dos nossos telemóveis, a maioria das indústrias teve que acompanhar o processo de digitalização e uma delas foi a indústria da moda. Uma empresa que fez parte da inspiração deste projeto foi a Uber Eats. Esta empresa apresenta um serviço de transporte de alimentos desde os restaurantes até ao domicílio do consumidor. Este serviço é feito por meio de uma aplicação no qual a pessoa seleciona o restaurante e consequentemente a comida que o consumidor deseja daquele restaurante e após a finalização do pedido é informado um horário com estimativa de entrega. Com esta tese pretendemos implementar o mesmo modelo que a Uber Eats utiliza, mas em lojas de moda. Pretendemos saber os preços de transporte e qual a percentagem que se deve aplicar em cada peça de roupa. Depois de chegarmos a essa conclusão, vamos construir a nossa empresa usando ferramentas de contabilidade e descobrir se a ideia é lucrativa

The influence of online social media platforms on the choice of restaurants

The main objective of this study is to understand how online platforms influence customer choice in the field of restaurants. To this end, various social networking platforms were analyzed, namely TripAdvisor, Zoomato, Facebook and Yelp, these being the most commonly used by consumers when looking for information that will help them to choose a restaurant. The platforms studied are among the most widely used by consumers when searching for information that may guide their next purchase. This analysis was conducted in Portugal, and includes 487 reviews from different users. The support vector machine model provided interesting results due to the effective modelling of the user score, based on the features collected from the platforms, with a mean absolute percentage error of 10.15%. Several variables were analyzed, namely the platform, the location, the number of photos and the day of the week. The most relevant characteristic observed was the ranking that each consumer attributed to each restaurant. Through the results that will be presented we see that the Avg.Rate shows a 24% contribution to other users he most relevant characteristic observed was the ranking that each consumer attributed to each restaurant. The variables "Platform" and "nr.photos" contribute 19% and 18% respectively and therefore do not represent a big difference. It can be confirm that the values coincide with Zoomato, which was the Platform most used by our sample, having studied the following variables: Platform, Location, District, Website, Rank, Cuisine, Avg. Rate, Number of photos, Day and Month. In this way, it was verified that the answer to our initial motivating question, "What is consumer behaviour like and how is it influenced by these platforms?" confirms that consumers won’t go to a new restaurant before checking the ranking that has been attributed to it on the various analyzed platforms.O principal objetivo deste estudo é entender como as plataformas online influenciam a escolha do cliente no Canal dos Restaurantes. Foi realizada uma análise em Portugal que inclui 487 comentários de diferentes usuários. O modelo de máquina de vetor de suporte proporcionou resultados interessantes devido à modelagem efetiva da pontuação do usuário, com base nos recursos coletados das plataformas, com um erro médio de percentagem absoluta de 10,15%. Várias variáveis foram analisadas, nomeadamente a plataforma em análise, a localização, o número de fotos e o dia da semana. A característica mais relevante observada foi o ranking que cada consumidor atribuiu a cada restaurante. No estudo realizado nesta dissertação verificamos que o Ranking pesa 24% na escolha do consumidor no seu restaurante. De seguida, verificamos que a Plataforma escolhida e as fotografias que são mostradas nesta contribuem 19% e 18% respetivamente. Através da análise feita verificámos que a plataforma Zoomato é a mais usada pela nossa amostra. Desta forma, verificamos que a resposta à nossa pergunta inicial realização desta dissertação: "Como é o comportamento do consumidor e como é influenciado por estas plataformas?" consegue ser respondida mais à frente através da análise dos resultados

Research Framework, Strategies, And Applications Of Intelligent Agent Technologies (IATs) In Marketing

In this digital era, marketing theory and practice are being transformed by increasing complexity due to information availability, higher reach and interactions, and faster speeds of transactions. These have led to the adoption of intelligent agent technologies (IATs) by many companies. As IATs are relatively new and technologically complex, several definitions are evolving, and the theory in this area is not yet fully developed. There is a need to provide structure and guidance to marketers to further this emerging stream of research. As a first step, this paper proposes a marketing-centric definition and a systematic taxonomy and framework. The authors, using a grounded theory approach, conduct an extensive literature review and a qualitative study in which interviews with managers from 50 companies in 22 industries reveal the importance of understanding IAT applications and adopting them. Further, the authors propose an integrated conceptual framework with several propositions regarding IAT adoption. This research identifies the gaps in the literature and the need for adoption of IATs in the future of marketing given changing consumer behavior and product and industry characteristics

Research Framework, Strategies, And Applications Of Intelligent Agent Technologies (IATs) In Marketing

In this digital era, marketing theory and practice are being transformed by increasing complexity due to information availability, higher reach and interactions, and faster speeds of transactions. These have led to the adoption of intelligent agent technologies (IATs) by many companies. As IATs are relatively new and technologically complex, several definitions are evolving, and the theory in this area is not yet fully developed. There is a need to provide structure and guidance to marketers to further this emerging stream of research. As a first step, this paper proposes a marketing-centric definition and a systematic taxonomy and framework. The authors, using a grounded theory approach, conduct an extensive literature review and a qualitative study in which interviews with managers from 50 companies in 22 industries reveal the importance of understanding IAT applications and adopting them. Further, the authors propose an integrated conceptual framework with several propositions regarding IAT adoption. This research identifies the gaps in the literature and the need for adoption of IATs in the future of marketing given changing consumer behavior and product and industry characteristics

Análisis de la demanda de comida preparada adquirida por internet. Estudio de caso en España entre 2015-2021

La llegada de las nuevas tecnologías ha hecho que cambie el comportamiento de los consumidores por completo en todos los sectores, y el sector agroalimentario no ha sido una excepción. Este sector, de vital importancia en la economía española, se está viendo afectado por los cambios de hábitos entre los consumidores.En este trabajo se estudia cómo estos cambios en los hábitos se han materializado en los canales de venta online y en la opción de escoger y comprar comidas preparadas en pos de las habituales compras de comida más clásica. Los aspectos relevantes al uso de internet a la hora de hacer la compra, para terminar, enfocándose en el consumo de platos preparados online. Se trata de presentar, en definitiva, a través de un estudio de caso, cómo a lo largo de los años ha cambiado la forma de consumir, así como los productos consumidos. Se ha evaluado la compra de platos preparados a través de internet en el periodo entre 2015 a 2021 y se ha valorado tanto la tendencia de consumo como las preferencias de los consumidores. Finalmente, se ha realizado un análisis predictivo del consumo utilizando para ello los datos relativos a los últimos 6 meses del año 2021.Una de las principales conclusiones del estudio, obtenidos a través del análisis econométrico, concluye que existe una relación significativa entre el precio de los platos preparados y su consumo. Además factores como la población o las búsquedas realizadas en internet también tienen una relación positiva con la demanda de los platos preparados comprados online.<br /

Mercado editorial e a tecnologia digital

A cadeia de valor do livro era realizada da mesma forma há mais de um século. Com a internet e o mundo digital, como um todo, a indústria editorial vem sofrendo mudanças, de caráter permanente, em sua forma de fazer negócios. A internet agrega diversas inovações na forma de distribuir o produto, enquanto a computação modifica a forma do produto e a acessibilidade das ferramentas de criação. Com o mundo cada vez mais digitalizado, este trabalho visa fazer uma análise do impacto do comércio eletrônico e da teoria da cauda longa no mercado de livros

Cost-Effective Location Management for Mobile Agents on the Internet

Many mobile agent system-related services and applications require interacting with a mobile agent by passing messages. However, an agent’s mobility raises several challenges in delivering messages to a mobile agent accurately. Consisting of tracking and message delivery phases, most mobile agent location management schemes create or receive many update messages and interaction messages to ensure the effectiveness of the schemes. In addition to downgrading the overall performance of a mobile agent location management scheme, excessive transmission of messages increases the network load. The migration locality of a mobile agent and the interaction rate between mobile agents significantly affect the performance of a mobile agent location management scheme with respect to location management cost. This work presents a novel Dual Home based Scheme (DHS) that can lower the location management costs in terms of migration locality and interaction rate. While the DHS scheme uniquely adopts dual home location management architecture, a selective update strategy based on that architecture is also designed for cost-effective location management of mobile agents. Moreover, DHS is compared with available schemes based on formulations and simulation experiments from the perspective of location management costs. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed DHS scheme performs satisfactorily in terms of migration locality and interaction rate