Social media usage among wine tourism DMOs

Social media is an important tool for tourism destination promotion. The usage and the contents published on these platforms have an important role in visitors’ decision-making process. Information and communication technologies are changing DMOs’ markets and communication paradigm, since they allow the interaction between these organizations, visitors, and stakeholders. Therefore, social media are increasing their relevance on DMOs’ marketing strategies. This purpose of this study is to analyze comparatively social media platforms’ usage by six wine tourism DMOs. The results were provided by the analysis of secondary data available on these platforms and DMOs posts on the four most popular social media platforms to tourism industry: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. Results indicate that DMOs use their official accounts on these platforms on different ways. This study also reveals that Facebook is more interactive than other platforms, and YouTube achieves less engagement levels.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Pecking order theory versus trade-off theory : are service SMEs’ capital structure decisions different?

This paper seeks to analyse if the capital structure decisions of service small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are different from those of other types of firm. To do so, we consider four research samples: (i) 610 service SMEs; (ii) 126 service large firms; (iii) 679 manufacturing and construction SMEs; and (iv) 132 manufacturing and construction large firms. Using the two-step estimation method, the empirical evidence obtained in this study shows that the capital structure decisions of service SMEs are different from those of other types of firm. Service SMEs’ capital structure decisions are closer to the assumptions of Pecking Order Theory and further removed from those of Trade-Off Theory compared with the case of other types of firm

Why and How UK Firms Hedge

"This paper attempts to differentiate among the theories of hedging by using disclosures in the annual reports of 400 UK companies and data collected via a survey. I find, unlike many previous US studies, strong evidence linking the decision to hedge and the expected costs of financial distress. The tests show that this is mainly because my definition of hedging includes all hedgers and not just derivative users. However, when the tests employ the same hedging definition as previous US studies, financial distress cost factors still appear to be more important for this sample than samples of US firms. Therefore, a secondary explanation for the strong financial distress results might be due to differences in the bankruptcy codes in the two countries, which result in higher expected costs of financial distress for UK firms. The paper also examines the determinants of the choice of hedging method distinguishing between non-derivative and derivatives hedging. My evidence shows that larger firms, firms with more cash, firms with a greater probability of financial distress, firms with exports or imports and firms with more short-term debt are more likely to hedge with derivatives. Thus, differences in opportunities, in incentives for reducing risk and in the types of financial price exposure play an important role in how firms hedge their risks." Copyright Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 2006.