Expanding the Net: Building Mental Health Care Capacity for Veterans

In this brief, Senior Fellow Phillip Carter calls upon the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to expand its mental health care resources to meet the growing needs of veterans across the country. Although the VA will spend nearly $7 billion this year on mental health care for veterans, Mr. Carter argues that this is not likely to be enough. The report urges the VA to rely more on the private sector and work more closely with local community and private philanthropic organizations

An IoT-based solution for monitoring a fleet of educational buildings focusing on energy efficiency

Raising awareness among young people and changing their behaviour and habits concerning energy usage iskey to achieving sustained energy saving. Additionally, young people are very sensitive to environmental protection so raising awareness among children is much easier than with any other group of citizens. This work examinesways to create an innovative Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) ecosystem (including web-based, mobile, social and sensing elements) tailored specifically for school environments, taking into account both theusers (faculty, staff, students, parents) and school buildings, thus motivating and supporting young citizenś behavioural change to achieve greater energy efficiency. A mixture of open-source IoT hardware and proprietary platforms on the infrastructure level, are currently being utilized for monitoring a fleet of 18 educational buildings across 3 countries, comprising over 700 IoT monitoring points. Hereon presented is the system's high-level architecture, as well as several aspects of its implementation, related to the application domain of educational building monitoring and energy efficiency. The system is developed based on open-source technologies andservices in order to make it capable of providing open IT-infrastructure and support from different commercial hardware/sensor vendors as well as open-source solutions. The system presented can be used to develop and offer newapp-based solutions that can be used either for educational purposes or for managing the energy efficiency ofthebuilding. The system is replicable and adaptable to settings that may be different than the scenarios envisionedhere (e.g., targeting different climate zones), different IT infrastructures and can be easily extended to accommodate integration with other systems. The overall performance of the system is evaluated in real-world environment in terms of scalability, responsiveness and simplicity

Smart Geographic object: Toward a new understanding of GIS Technology in Ubiquitous Computing

One of the fundamental aspects of ubiquitous computing is the instrumentation of the real world by smart devices. This instrumentation constitutes an opportunity to rethink the interactions between human beings and their environment on the one hand, and between the components of this environment on the other. In this paper we discuss what this understanding of ubiquitous computing can bring to geographic science and particularly to GIS technology. Our main idea is the instrumentation of the geographic environment through the instrumentation of geographic objects composing it. And then investigate how this instrumentation can meet the current limitations of GIS technology, and offers a new stage of rapprochement between the earth and its abstraction. As result, the current research work proposes a new concept we named Smart Geographic Object SGO. The latter is a convergence point between the smart objects and geographic objects, two concepts appertaining respectively to

Understanding Mobile Showrooming Based on a Technology Acceptance and Use Model

Showrooming is an increasingly popular behaviour in the omnichannel era. The purpose of this paper is to understand the consumer intention to showroom through a technology acceptance and use model based on UTAUT2 that includes value consciousness and purchase involvement as drivers of showrooming intention and mobile dependency as a moderator. Data collected via a survey answered by 659 showroomers were analysed using Partial Least Squares (PLS). Results show that value consciousness, purchase involvement, hedonic motivation and social influence explain mobile showrooming intention and mobile dependency moderates the impact of value consciousness on mobile showrooming intention. Our results offer suggestions for multichannel retailers to deal with showroomers visiting their stores to try to turn them into buyers

Tell me what they are like and I will tell you where they buy. An analysis of omnichannel consumer behavior

In the past, consumers used to go to brick-and-mortar stores to gather information and often concluded their shopping there, with the physical store probably being one of their few sources of product information. Nowadays, with the arrival of digital devices, the number of sources of information has grown. Consumers tend to combine these with brick-and-mortar establishments both to search and buy, leading to the emergence of omnichannel behavior. In this context, there is a lack of research which considers online and mobile devices separately. The aim of the present study is to analyze how two individual traits –impulsiveness and need for touch– influence the use of each device in the omnichannel decision-making process. Results from a sample of 284 real digital (online and/or mobile) shoppers of clothes confirm that personal traits influence omnichannel consumer behavior. Results show that impulsive shoppers make greater use of mobile devices whereas individuals with high need for touch are more predisposed to use online devices in their omnichannel process. Besides, the effect of individual demographics is taken into account. Finally, we discuss the paper's contributions and outline the actions which managers can engage in so as to succeed in omnichannel retail.Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (Research Projects ECO2012-36275 and ECO2014-53060-R

Hybrid jobs in the retail industry. Redesigning organizations, processes and work

Retail industry is changing, as a consequence of online competition, customers' behavior and technological advancements, and retail jobs are transforming as well, with a change of the skills required. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how these jobs are changing and how they will likely become in some years

Mobile Research Methods

Daily activity sees data constantly flowing through cameras, the internet, satellites, radio frequencies, sensors, private appliances, cars, smartphones, tablets and the like. Among all the tools currently used, mobile devices, especially mobile phones, smartphones and tablets, are the most widespread, with their use becoming prevalent in everyday life within both developed and developing countries. Shopping, reading newspapers, participating in forums, projecting and completing surveys, communicating with friends and making new ones, filing tax returns and getting involved in politics are all examples of how ingrained mobile technology is to modern lifestyleMobile devices allow a wide range of heterogeneous activities and, as a result, have great potential in terms of the different types of data that can be collected. The use of mobile devices to collect, analyse and apply research data is explored here. This book focuses on the use of mobile devices in various research contexts, aiming to provide a detailed and updated knowledge on what is a comparatively new field of study. This is done considering different aspects: main methodological possibilities and issues; comparison and integration with more traditional survey modes or ways of participating in research; quality of collected data; use in commercial market research; representativeness of studies based only on the mobile-population; analysis of the current spread of mobile devices in several countries, and so on. Thus, the book provides interesting research findings from a wide range of countries and contexts. This book was developed in the framework of WebDataNet’s Task Force 19. WebDataNet, was created in 2009 by a group of researchers focusing on the discussion on data collection methods. Supported by the European Union programme for the Coordination of Science and Technology, WebDataNet has become a unique, multidisciplinary network that has brought together leading web-based data collection experts from several institutions, disciplines, and relevant backgrounds from more than 35 different countries

Product characteristic determinants of South African showroomers’ behaviour: a brick‐and‐click value perspective

Abstract : Showrooming as consumer behaviour phenomenon in multichannel retailing has grown in importance in South Africa. In showrooming, consumers visit an offline retail store (“brick”) for product information gathering purposes and consequently purchase online (“click”) at a competing retailer. This study draws on Daunt and Harris’ (2017) research, employing a value‐based service‐dominant theoretical lens. Showrooming is conceptualised as a two‐stage process of in‐store value taking and online value co‐creation/co‐destruction. Utilising survey data from 225 South African showroomers, SPSS is employed to assess a research model, consisting of 4 hypotheses. The paper’s findings reveal that Daunt and Harris’ (2017) developed market findings are mostly aligned with the product characteristic determinants of emerging market consumers’ showrooming. However, the product speed of technological change, is not substantiated in an emerging market such. The study’s value lies in it being the first empirical investigation of consumer showrooming behaviour in an emerging market, through a service‐dominant logic lens. It appears to be the first empirical measurement of Daunt and Harris’ (2017) model of consumer showrooming, focusing on product characteristics as antecedents of showrooming behaviour. Lastly, it contributes to theoretical and managerial inquiry of in‐store value taking and online value co‐creation/co‐destruction behaviour in an emerging market