Consumer brand choice: Money allocation as a function of brand reinforcing attributes

Previous applications of the matching law to the analysis of consumer brand choice have shown that the amount of money spent purchasing a favorite brand tends to match the quantity bought of the favorite brand divided by the quantity bought of all other brands. Although these results suggest matching between spending and purchased quantity, branded goods differ qualitatively among themselves, rendering previous matching analyses incomplete. Consumer panel data containing information about more than 1,500 British consumers purchasing four grocery product categories (baked beans, biscuits, fruit juice, and yellow fats) during 52 weeks were analyzed. All the brands purchased were classified according to the level of informational and utilitarian reinforcement they were programmed to offer. An adaptation of the generalized matching law was adopted, in which the amount of money spent was a power function of the quantity bought, informational level of the brand bought, utilitarian level of the brand bought, and a measure of price promotion

Consumer Behaviour Analysis and the Behavioural Perspective Model

This is the FIRST of TWO linked articles on consumer behavioural analysis. Cognitive theories have dominated the field of consumer behaviour for the last few decades, however, an observed lack of consistency between attitudes and behaviour has suggested the need to investigate more thoroughly situational and behavioural variables. Consumer behaviour analysis can be viewed as an alternative theoretical approach that emphasizes situational variables and measures of behaviour. Within consumer behaviour analysis, the Behavioural Perspective Model (BPM) interprets consumer behaviour as occurring at the intersection of the individual’s learning history and the consumer setting, which signals utilitarian and informational consequences associated with consumption-related responses. Utilitarian consequences are mediated by the product or service and are related to its functional benefits. Informational consequences are social, mediated by other people, and are related to feedback upon consumers’ behaviour, such as social status and prestige

Consumer Behaviour Analysis and Consumer Brand Choice

This is the SECOND of TWO linked articles on consumer behavioural analysis dealing with the Behavioural Perspective Model, which locates consumer behaviour at the intersection of the consumer’s learning history and the consumer situation. As an example of research inspired by the Model, this article presents investigations into consumers’ patterns of brand choice, showing how brand repertoires are formed and how brands are selected within those repertoires

Consumer-based brand equity and brand performance

The relation between consumer-based brand equity and brand performance was investigated across 15 product categories in Brazil and the UK. Brand equity was conceptualized as related to the level of social benefit offered by each brand and was measured with a simple questionnaire that asked consumers to rate brands with respect to their familiarity and quality levels. These measures were then related to brand market share and revenue. Results showed that the relation between consumer-based brand equity and brand performance varies across product categories, indicating that products differ with respect to their level of brandability and suggesting ways to measure it

Consumer Behavior Analysis and Social Marketing: The Case of Environmental Conservation

Consumer behavior analysis represents one development within the behavior-analytic tradition of interpreting complex behavior, in which a specific conceptual framework has been proposed (i.e., the Behavioral Perspective Model). According to this model, consumer behavior occurs at the intersection of a consumer-behavior setting and an individual’s learning history of consumption and is a function of utilitarian (mediated by the product) and informational (mediated by other persons) consequences. The model has been useful in analyses of consumers’ brand choice and reactions to different settings. In the present paper, the model was applied to the interpretation of environmental deleterious behaviors (use of private transportation, consumption of domestic energy, waste disposal, and domestic consumption of water). This application pointed to specific marketing strategies that should be adopted to modify each of these operant classes

Development of an Integrated Set of Indicators to Measure the Quality of the Whole Traveller Experience

AbstractThe EU project METPEX is developing a measurement tool for the perceived quality of the whole journey experience. Special emphasis is given on the contribution to the overall quality perception from different phases of such experience, from pre-trip information acquisition to the eventual joint use of different services, especially for multimodal trips. Differences among travel means and user groups are investigated as well. Rather than exclusively focusing on public transport, the project also investigates quality issues dealing with other modes, especially walk and bike. Within such framework, the paper presents some sets of indicators distilled through Principal Component Analysis that could be used in different assessment exercises, shortly discusses how such indicators are showing us the different facets of the “quality of transport” concept and identifies future research directions for the project

Adaptive path planning for fusing rapidly exploring random trees and deep reinforcement learning in an agriculture dynamic environment UAVs

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are a suitable solution for monitoring growing cultures due to the possibility of covering a large area and the necessity of periodic monitoring. In inspection and monitoring tasks, the UAV must find an optimal or near-optimal collision-free route given initial and target positions. In this sense, path-planning strategies are crucial, especially online path planning that can represent the robot’s operational environment or for control purposes. Therefore, this paper proposes an online adaptive path-planning solution based on the fusion of rapidly exploring random trees (RRT) and deep reinforcement learning (DRL) algorithms applied to the generation and control of the UAV autonomous trajectory during an olive-growing fly traps inspection task. The main objective of this proposal is to provide a reliable route for the UAV to reach the inspection points in the tree space to capture an image of the trap autonomously, avoiding possible obstacles present in the environment. The proposed framework was tested in a simulated environment using Gazebo and ROS. The results showed that the proposed solution accomplished the trial for environments up to 300 m3 and with 10 dynamic objects.The authors would like to thank the following Brazilian Agencies CEFET-RJ, CAPES, CNPq, and FAPERJ. The authors also want to thank the Research Centre in Digitalization and Intelligent Robotics (CeDRI), Instituto Politécnico de Bragança–IPB (UIDB/05757/2020 and UIDP/05757/2020), the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal) for financial support through national funds FCT/MCTES (PIDDAC) to CeDRI, and Laboratório Associado para a Sustentabilidade e Tecnologia em Regiões de Montanha (SusTEC) and IPB, Portugal. This work was carried out under the Project “OleaChain: Competências para a sustentabilidade e inovação da cadeia de valor do olival tradicional no Norte Interior de Portugal” (NORTE-06-3559-FSE-000188), an operation to hire highly qualified human resources, funded by NORTE 2020 through the European Social Fund (ESF).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Desingularization of vortices for the Euler equation

We study the existence of stationary classical solutions of the incompressible Euler equation in the plane that approximate singular stationnary solutions of this equation. The construction is performed by studying the asymptotics of equation -\eps^2 \Delta u^\eps=(u^\eps-q-\frac{\kappa}{2\pi} \log \frac{1}{\eps})_+^p with Dirichlet boundary conditions and $q$ a given function. We also study the desingularization of pairs of vortices by minimal energy nodal solutions and the desingularization of rotating vortices.Comment: 40 page

Cooperative heterogeneous robots for autonomous insects trap monitoring system in a precision agriculture scenario

The recent advances in precision agriculture are due to the emergence of modern robotics systems. For instance, unmanned aerial systems (UASs) give new possibilities that advance the solution of existing problems in this area in many different aspects. The reason is due to these platforms’ ability to perform activities at varying levels of complexity. Therefore, this research presents a multiple-cooperative robot solution for UAS and unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) systems for their joint inspection of olive grove inspect traps. This work evaluated the UAS and UGV vision-based navigation based on a yellow fly trap fixed in the trees to provide visual position data using the You Only Look Once (YOLO) algorithms. The experimental setup evaluated the fuzzy control algorithm applied to the UAS to make it reach the trap efficiently. Experimental tests were conducted in a realistic simulation environment using a robot operating system (ROS) and CoppeliaSim platforms to verify the methodology’s performance, and all tests considered specific real-world environmental conditions. A search and landing algorithm based on augmented reality tag (AR-Tag) visual processing was evaluated to allow for the return and landing of the UAS to the UGV base. The outcomes obtained in this work demonstrate the robustness and feasibility of the multiple-cooperative robot architecture for UGVs and UASs applied in the olive inspection scenario.The authors would like to thank the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal) for financial support through national funds FCT/MCTES (PIDDAC) to CeDRI (UIDB/05757/2020 and UIDP/05757/2020) and SusTEC (LA/P/0007/2021). In addition, the authors would like to thank the following Brazilian Agencies CEFET-RJ, CAPES, CNPq, and FAPERJ. In addition, the authors also want to thank the Research Centre in Digitalization and Intelligent Robotics (CeDRI), Instituto Politécnico de Braganca (IPB) - Campus de Santa Apolonia, Portugal, Laboratório Associado para a Sustentabilidade e Tecnologia em Regiões de Montanha (SusTEC), Portugal, INESC Technology and Science - Porto, Portugal and Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro - Vila Real, Portugal. This work was carried out under the Project “OleaChain: Competências para a sustentabilidade e inovação da cadeia de valor do olival tradicional no Norte Interior de Portugal” (NORTE-06-3559-FSE-000188), an operation used to hire highly qualified human resources, funded by NORTE 2020 through the European Social Fund (ESF).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Changes in social groups across reintroductions and effects on post-release survival

Reintroductions, essential to many conservation programmes, disrupt both abiotic and social environments. Despite growing recognition that social connections in animals might alter survival (e.g. social transmission of foraging skills, or transmission of disease), there has thus far been little focus on the consequences of social disruption during reintroductions. Here we investigate if moving familiar social groups may help a threatened species to adjust to its new environment and increase post-release survival. For a reintroduction of 40 juvenile hihi Notiomystis cincta (a threatened New Zealand passerine), we observed social groups before and after translocation to a new site and used social network analysis to study three levels of social change: overall group structure, network associations and individual sociality. We also tested alternate translocation strategies where birds were kept temporarily in aviaries in either a familiar group, or where their prior association was mixed. Although social structure remained similar among juveniles that remained at the source site, we detected significant changes in translocated birds at both the group- and individual- level post-release. However, our holding treatments did not affect these social bonds so we remain unable to maintain or manipulate social groups during translocation. Crucially, there was a small tendency for translocated juveniles that gained more associates during re-assortment of social groups to be more likely to survive their first year post-release. We suggest that prior sociality may not be important during translocations, but rather individuals that are most able to adapt and form associations at a new site are most likely to be the surviving founders of reintroduced populations.Peer reviewe