Hybrid vs Traditional models on customer experience : an application to the Portuguese Real Estate Market

Technology is impacting industries all over the world and the real estate industry is no exception. This thesis aims to analyze the traditional model of real estate and the new emerging methods where several tasks are performed online (reducing the human contact) and understand the current customer experience with the goal to understand how technology can improve it. Several research methods were used to obtain data. In terms of qualitative search, a focus group was conducted to people who already interacted with the market and 3 in-depth interviews were performed to Millennials with no experience in the real estate industry. The quantitative data was gathered through a survey conveyed to 468 valid participants. Both searches were reinforced by literature on the real estate market, the impact of technology in the industry, customer experience, brand equity and a description of the two generations under study: Millennials and Generation X. The key findings suggest that the overall satisfaction with the mediation process regarding quickness, smoothness and the method chosen is between average and great. There is a considerable number of participants that do not perceive the need for a mediator. There is a limited knowledge of the market. The preferences in the market are not aligned as there are significant differences between sellers and buyers and between generations. To conclude, for Millennials, a hybrid model provides a better customer experience while for Generation X, a traditional model is the one with a superior level on experience.A tecnologia está a ter um forte impacto nas indústrias por todo o mundo e o mercado imobiliário não é exceção. Esta tese tem como propósito analisar o modelo imobiliário tradicional e os novos métodos onde vários passos são feitos online (reduzindo assim o contacto humano) e ainda perceber como é a experiência do consumidor e de que forma a tecnologia pode melhorá-la. Foram usados vários métodos para obter dados. Relativamente à pesquisa qualitativa, foi realizado um “focus group” com pessoas que já interagiram no mercado e ainda 3 entrevistas foram feitas a membros da geração Y que ainda não tiveram qualquer contacto com a indústria. A pesquisa quantitativa foi recolhida através de um questionário online com um total de 468 respostas. Ambas as pesquisas foram reforçadas através de literatura relativa ao mercado imobiliário, o impacto da tecnologia nesta indústria, experiência do consumir, equidade da marca e uma descrição das gerações X e Y. As principais conclusões sugerem que, em geral, a satisfação com o processo de mediação em termos de rapidez, tranquilidade e método escolhido para fazer a transação é entre média a excelente. Há ainda um número considerável de participantes que não vê qualquer valor acrescentado na mediação. Há um conhecimento limitado do mercado. As preferências no Mercado não estão alinhadas dado que há diferenças significativas entre vendedores e compradores e entre gerações. Para concluir, a geração Y tem uma melhor experiência num modelo híbrido enquanto que a geração X tem uma melhor experiência no modelo tradicional

"Do insiders time their trades? Evidence from Euronext Lisbon"

Instituto Superior de Economia e GestãoA questão subjacente a esta investigação é a de saber se os "insiders das cotadas portuguesas usam informação privilegiada para negociarem acções das empresas às quais estão liuados. A investigação procura replicar, para Portugal, estudos académicos já realizados noutros mercados mundiais, muitos dos quais, mesmo em mercados regulamentados, chegaram à conclusão que os "insiders lucram com a informação privilegiada de que dispõem ou a que podem ter acesso. O objectivo final da tese é responder à seguinte questão: será que os designados "insiders" compram (vendem) acções das empresas a que estão ligados antes de uma subida (queda) das cotações dessas firmas? Para isso iremos aplicar a metodologia do estudo de eventos e testar se o ganho "anormal" nos períodos à volta das transacções dos "insiders é signiíicatix amente diferente de zero. A metodologia é aplicada às empresas admitidas à negociação no mercado regulamentado da Euronext Lisbon no período compreendido entre 2001 e 200^. Nesta investigação também procuramos testar se a magnitude e a duração da rendibilidade "anormal" dependem de íactores especiticos da empresa ou das transacções (tais como a classificação sectorial, a dimensão e a avaliação da empresa e o volume de transacções subjacente a cada compra ou venda por parte dos "insiders ).If an insider trades on prixáleged information. then one vvould expect to see insiders purchase in days before the security price increases and sell them in the days before the security price declines. This is the main study hypothesis on which we have based our investiuation. Numerous studies in different countries have found that insiders do trade around events or news that intluence firm value and that on average they do abnormal profits. We try to replicate those investigations in the Portuguese stock market. Our investigation aims to detect and measure the existence ot insider trading abnormal profits during the period from January 2001 to December 2005. It covers. vvhen available. ali insider transactions from companies belonging to the Eurolist írom Euronext Lisbon. To decide whether or not insiders time their trades, we use the traditional methodology of event studies to test the existence of abnormal returns around the days vvhen insiders purchase or sale their company shares. We also tested it the magnitude and duration oí abnormal profits depend signifícantly on firm-specifíc and transaction-specific factors (such as industry classification. firm size, firm valuation and relative trading volume of the insider transactions). The practical objective of our research is to answer the following question; Do insiders buy (sell) shares prior to stock price raise (decline)?N/

Parallel and Distributed Statistical-based Extraction of Relevant Multiwords from Large Corpora

The amount of information available through the Internet has been showing a significant growth in the last decade. The information can result from various sources such as scientific experiments resulting from particle acceleration, recording the flight data of a commercial aircraft, or sets of documents from a given domain such as medical articles, news headlines from a newspaper, or social networks contents. Due to the volume of data that must be analyzed, it is necessary to endow the search engines with new tools that allow the user to obtain the desired information in a timely and accurate manner. One approach is the annotation of documents with their relevant expressions. The extraction of relevant expressions from natural language text documents can be accomplished by the use of semantic, syntactic, or statistical techniques. Although the latter tend to be not so accurate, they have the advantage of being independent of the language. This investigation was performed in the context of LocalMaxs, which is a statistical method, thus language-independent, capable of extracting relevant expressions from natural language corpora. However, due to the large volume of data involved, the sequential implementations of the above techniques have severe limitations both in terms of execution time and memory space. In this thesis we propose a distributed architecture and strategies for parallel implementations of statistical-based extraction of relevant expressions from large corpora. A methodology was developed for modeling and evaluating those strategies based on empirical and theoretical approaches to estimate the statistical distribution of n-grams in natural language corpora. These approaches were applied to guide the design and evaluation of the behavior of LocalMaxs parallel and distributed implementations on cluster and cloud computing platforms. The implementation alternatives were compared regarding their precision and recall, and their performance metrics, namely, execution time, parallel speedup and sizeup. The performance results indicate almost linear speedup and sizeup for the range of large corpora sizes

Finance 4 All

Mestrado em FinançasO projecto Finance4All consiste na criação de materiais pedagógicos que fomentem a literacia financeira. Nesse sentido, foi desenvolvido o jogo de cartas Deal Widit inserido na temática de literacia financeira e aprendizagem baseada em jogos. Optou-se por um jogo de cartas, uma alternativa eficaz e com custos muito reduzidos em comparação com outros tipos de jogos. O jogo tem como base a compra de negócios com elementos de risco e recompensa, poupança, orçamentação e estratégia. Também tem uma componente de figuras corporativas que enriquecerão o valor da empresa. O jogo, ainda na fase de protótipo, foi testado num pequeno grupo do qual se obteve feedback, pretendendo atingir o público em geral acima dos 12 anos.There are many studies that prove that playing games is often better than conventional methods for learning. Playing helps not only to develop knowledge on the theme but also the improvement of soft skills such as problem solving, strategic thinking or perseverance. The main idea of the project was to create a game that spiked the interest on the financial topic. A card based game with a playing board was chosen. The lack of financial literacy, a problem for all age groups, can be tackled by small incentives such as playing a related game. This project is an attempt to make finance in general fun and easy – saving, investing, risk and return and another concepts are very much the main part of the game. The prototype game was tested in a small group several times and got a positive response. As a future objective the prototype should be finished and proceed its development stage with more testing, packing and distribution

Consulting project : recommendations for the services marketing plan do Ginásio Clube Português

The increasing awareness of health problems that are a consequence of obesity and a sedentary lifestyle as well as the snowballing popularity of the concern with aesthetics have been contributing to the growth and development of the Health and Fitness Industry worldwide. Portugal is no exception and, especially due to the contracting economy, new opportunities are emerging for this market. Moreover, in the past few years, motivations towards physical activity have shifted and the fitness centers have to adapt to this change in the customers’ preferences and attitudes. Ginásio Clube Português (GCP) requested a consulting project that involved the development of recommendations for the Services Marketing Plan for the upcoming year that counteracts the challenges stated above. The renowned Gaps Model of Service Quality, developed by Parasuraman et al. (1985), was used as a starting point for this analysis to support future recommendations, by assessing the gap between members’ expectations and perceptions of the service quality of GCP. The research questions that emerged to respond to the problem in hand are: (1) how do GCP members perceive the quality of this health club and what do they expect of such an institution, (2) what is the general opinion on the practice of physical activity, especially in the context of gyms and health clubs, and (3) how can GCP attract new members while retaining the existing ones. The methodology adopted to answer these questions involved the combination of three different research techniques: in-­‐depth interviews, mystery shopping and questionnaires

A Cidade e as Serras enquanto peça radiofónica: a semântica de uma paisagem sonora

Dos três meios de comunicação tradicionais, a rádio apresenta-se como aquele em que a investigação académica é quantitativamente menos significativa. Esta constatação é verdadeira para o panorama nacional, mas também internacional. As análises denotam uma maior preponderância para o aprofundamento de estudos relativos à informação que é veiculada pelo meio radiofónico, ou para os desafios impostos pela tecnologia digital, mas pouco interesse tem existido para a questão da relação criativa implicada entre o ouvinte e o som. A presente comunicação tem como principal objectivo destacar o poder da sonoplastia no desencadear de uma multiplicidade de significações. Desta forma, pretende-se explorar a estética sonora de uma reportagem radiofónica sem nunca esquecer o modo como o som complementa a palavra falada. Para tal, analisar-se-á a peça A Cidade e as Serras, da autoria de João Paulo Guerra, construída com base no último romance de Eça de Queirós. Ao nível sonoro, o enfoque desta apresentação privilegiará a exploração das categorias classificatórias que delinearam o World Soundscape Project – concebido no final da década de 1960, por um grupo de investigadores da Simon Fraser University do Canadá –, e a consequente viabilidade do entrosamento do conceito de paisagem sonora na análise da reportagem radiofónica