El valor percibido de un servicio

En los últimos años, las empresas y los académicos son cada vez más conscientes de los beneficios que se derivan de la creación y entrega de valor a los clientes. Sin embargo, la investigación empírica desarrollada sobre el valor de un servicio es todavía escasa. Este articulo se orienta hacia esta cuestión, centrándose en la medida del valor percibido en el ámbito del consumidor de servicios (telefonía móvil) y desde una perspectiva relacional. Después de una revisión de la literatura relevante sobre el concepto de valor percibido, proponemos dos instrumentos alternativos de medida del mismo y utilizamos la estrategia de modelos estructurales competitivos para comparar y apreciar la validez y fiabilidad de los modelos alternativos propuestos

Análisis de la influencia de la imagen en la cadena de lealtad en un mercado heterogéneo

Son numerosas las investigaciones que han analizado la cadena de lealtad como instrumento que profundiza en el comportamiento futuro del cliente y en las interrelaciones entre sus variables intermedias: la calidad de servicio percibida y el grado de satisfacción del cliente. Tomando como referencia estos estudios, en esta investigación se persiguen tres objetivos concretos: en primer lugar, analizar la influencia indirecta que tiene la imagen percibida por el cliente sobre esa cadena de lealtad; en segundo lugar, estudiar la heterogeneidad del mercado en función de las características personales de los individuos, realizando una segmentación ‘a priori’ a través de la ‘necesidad de variedad’ o ‘nivel óptimo de estimulo’; en tercer lugar, analizar el comportamiento dispar del modelo propuesto en función de los cluster alcanzados. Para la contrastación de las hipótesis se realiza un estudio empírico en el sector turístico. Las conclusiones ponen de manifiesto que la influencia de la imagen sobre la cadena de lealtad está condicionada a la heterogeneidad del mercado.There is plenty of evidence analyzing the loyalty chain as a valid instrument to study customer’s future behaviour. Building on this framework, authors pursue three research objectives: first, to study the indirect influence of perceived image on this loyalty chain; secondly, to explore the effect of market heterogeneity according to customer’s personal characteristics, conducting an “a priori” segmentation through “variety seeking” or “optimum level of stimulus”; finally, we analyze how these clusters account for the significant differences in the model. An empirical study is conducted within the tourism industry in order to test the hypotheses. Results evidence that image has a strong influence on the loyalty chain, although this influence is partially conditioned by market heterogeneity

Does hotel management matter to overcoming the COVID-19 crisis? The Spanish case

This paper analyses the influence that the initial actions and strategies pursued by hotel managers have on the recovery of occupancy after a crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic. To do this, a specific survey is carried out on managers of Spanish hotels. The main findings show that labour actions, especially plans for temporary employment regulations, innovation and differentiation strategies, reorientation to closer markets and obtaining information from official sources as a guarantee of their certainty, are the measures that have a greater impact on the possibilities of recovering hotel activity. In addition, government measures that contribute to the improvement of the financial situation of firms can also play a relevant role in hotel recoveryThis research was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (Research Project ECO2017-82445-R). We appreciate the comments of three anonymous reviewers who have significantly improved the articl

Smart vest for respiratory rate monitoring of COPD patients based on non-contact capacitive sensing

In this paper, a first approach to the design of a portable device for non-contact monitoring of respiratory rate by capacitive sensing is presented. The sensing system is integrated into a smart vest for an untethered, low-cost and comfortable breathing monitoring of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) patients during the rest period between respiratory rehabilitation exercises at home. To provide an extensible solution to the remote monitoring using this sensor and other devices, the design and preliminary development of an e-Health platform based on the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) paradigm is also presented. In order to validate the proposed solution, two quasi-experimental studies have been developed, comparing the estimations with respect to the golden standard. In a first study with healthy subjects, the mean value of the respiratory rate error, the standard deviation of the error and the correlation coefficient were 0.01 breaths per minute (bpm), 0.97 bpm and 0.995 (p < 0.00001), respectively. In a second study with COPD patients, the values were -0.14 bpm, 0.28 bpm and 0.9988 (p < 0.0000001), respectively. The results for the rest period show the technical and functional feasibility of the prototype and serve as a preliminary validation of the device for respiratory rate monitoring of patients with COPD.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación PI15/00306Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación DTS15/00195Junta de Andalucía PI-0010-2013Junta de Andalucía PI-0041-2014Junta de Andalucía PIN-0394-201

The efect on firms' Productivity of accessibility. The Spanish manufacturung sector

This paper evaluates the impact of accessibility on the productivity of Spanish manufacturing firms. We suggest the use of accessibility indicators to workers and commodities, integrating transport, land use, and individual components in their measurement, and computing real distances or travelling times using the Spanish full road network. The estimation is carried out in two steps. In the first one we estimate almost a hundred production functions using a panel of 155,937 firms along the 1999-2009 period from SABI database, applying Levinsohn and Petrin technique. From these estimations we derive the Total Factor Productivity function for year 2009, which is then explained in the second estimation step as a function of the accessibility indicators and additional control variables. Results evidence the crucial role of the accessibility to commodities, and a lesser but significant effect of workers’ accessibility on firms’ productivity

Creating customer value through service experiences: an empirical study in the hotel industry

The main research objectives of this paper are: first, to identify the three levels of a service evaluation: attributes (service value), outcome (service experience), and values (developing service relationships); secondly, to differ and to relate the perceptions of service value with service experience components. According to the ‘theory of cognitive schemata’ and the ‘means-end theory’, the components of a service experience are hierarchical in nature. Thus, customers evaluate their experiences – and build their service relationships – taking into account not only the attributes of the service (first level of abstraction), but also the outcomes and consequences that those attributes cause on them (highest level of abstraction). Marketing research has been mostly focused on the detection of affective aspects of quality and satisfaction. However, little attention has been devoted to the cognitive organization of the structure of evaluative judgments in the customer’s mind. According to our results, servicescape provides the strongest driver of service value when creating service experiences, followed by service equity. Elements such as the service atmosphere, hotel facilities, etc. are significant contributors to customer’s easiness to relax and escape from routine, which are the two major factors in the service experience. Similarly, hotel managers should take note of the importance of service equity by developing strong brand images which capitalize on customer’s experiences rather than service attributes

Reversibility of the zinc-blende to rock-salt phase transition in cadmium sulfide nanocrystals

CdS nanoparticles prepared by a mechanochemical reaction in a planetary ball mill have been investigated by x-ray diffraction, optical absorption, and Raman scattering under high pressure conditions up to 11 GPa. The zinc-blende (ZB) to rock-salt phase transition is observed around 6 GPa in all experiments, the transition pressure being similar to the one measured in CdS colloidal nanocrystals, and much higher than in bulk (around 3 GPa). The direct optical energy gap in ZB-CdS increases with pressure, and suddenly drops when the pressure is raised above 6 GPa, according to the high-pressure indirect-gap behavior. A linear blue-shift of the CdS Raman spectra is observed upon increasing pressure. Both Raman and x-ray diffraction studies indicate that the phase transition has a large hysteresis, making the ZB phase barely recoverable at ambient conditions. Cell parameters and bulk modulus measured in CdS nanoparticles clearly show that the nanoparticles at ambient conditions are subject to an initial pressure in comparison to CdS bulk.This work was financially supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (Projects MAT2008-06873-C02-01/MAT, MAT2011-28868-C02-01 and CTQ2009-14596-C02-01), the Comunidad de Madrid and European Social Fund (Project S2009/PPQ-1551 4161893 (QUIMAPRES)), and the MALTA-Consolider Ingenio 2010 (Reference CSD2007-00045). R.M.-R. thanks the Spanish MEC for a FPI research grant (Reference BES-2006-13359). The expert assistance of L. Rodríguez at the SERTEM is gratefully acknowledged

Multifunctional areas as a tool to enhance biodiversity and promote conservation in alfalfa fields.

The present study analyses the effects of multifunctional areas (MA) for three years (2013-2015) on an intensive multi-crop farm in Portugal. The implementation of MA resulted in a wide range of enhancements in the insect community, such as significant effects as a reservoir, allowing an increase of 102.47% in the number of species and 97.64% of individuals. MA play an important role in conservation strategies and help increase the population of rare and threatened arthropod species

Stern-Gerlach Experiment

This work is about modelling an experiment composed by multiple Stern- Gerlach devices using Membrane Computing. We will study the behaviour of a set of independent particles passing through three linked Stern-Gerlach devices and discarting the spin down particles after passing through the first one, taking profit of the Membrane Computing’s ability of running parallel processing. Using a cell-like model to describe the system and testing it using the P-lingua framework we have obtained the theorically predicted results when the number of initial multisets is high enough

Curved nanographenes: Multiple emission, thermally activated delayed fluorescence, and non-radiative decay

The intriguing and rich photophysical properties of three curved nanographenes (CNG 6, 7, and 8) are investigated by time-resolved and temperature-dependent photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. CNG 7 and 8 exhibit dual fluorescence, as well as dual phosphorescence at low temperature in the main PL bands. In addition, hot bands are detected in fluorescence as well as phosphorescence, and, in the narrow temperature range of 100–140 K, thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) with lifetimes on the millisecond time-scale is observed. These findings are rationalized by quantum-chemical simulations, which predict a single minimum of the S1 potential of CNG 6, but two S1 minima for CNG 7 and CNG 8, with considerable geometric reorganization between them, in agreement with the experimental findings. Additionally, a higher-lying S2 minimum close to S1 is optimized for the three CNG, from where emission is also possible due to thermal activation and, hence, non-Kasha behavior. The presence of higher-lying dark triplet states close to the S1 minima provides mechanistic evidence for the TADF phenomena observed. Non-radiative decay of the T1 state appears to be thermally activated with activation energies of roughly 100 meV and leads to disappearance of phosphorescence and TADF at T > 140