Antecedents and consequences of stress in retailing: environmental expectations and promoter scoring

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to examine the effects of the disconfirmation of expectations of crowding and mall accessibility, on stress and two marketing outcomes, satisfaction and promoter scoring. Design/methodology/approach: Data were obtained through two face-to-face surveys from mall shoppers that answered them at two different moments of their shopping experience, before entering the mall and before leaving it. Results are obtained from 230 customers that answered the two questionnaires. Findings: The findings suggest that stress indirectly influences customer promoter scoring through satisfaction, while disconfirmation of expectations influences it directly and indirectly. Practical implications: These results also suggest that stress and disconfirmation of expectations about crowding and accessibility are important in determining promoter scoring. To reduce stress and increase satisfaction and promoter scoring, managers should focus on exceeding customers'' expectations about mall accessibility and on ensuring that customers experience a lower level of crowding than they expected. Originality/value: The article examines Net Promoter Scoring, an outcome that has attracted managers'' attention but little is known about its antecedents. The paper provides evidence of the effect of disconfirmation of expectations and negative emotions on promoter scoring

Atmospheric excitement, customers’ moods and gender: A study of young shoppers

This paper aims to demonstrate how both incidental moods and gender can moderate the relationship between the level of excitement triggered by a mall environment and shopping behaviour. Our method is based on a 4 × 2 between subjects experiment with a final sample of 377 Spanish undergraduates. The study analyses four incidental moods that differ in the dimensions of valence and arousal, and their interaction effects with two atmospheric scenarios in a mall (exciting versus non-exciting atmospheres). Our findings support mood regulation theory for positive low-arousal individuals, and reject this theory for the rest of mood conditions. Additionally, arousal reduces customers’ cognitive capabilities, confirming previous research. This means that high-arousal shoppers are not influenced by a mall environment. Finally, gender differences are only found within more frequent shoppers and for negative low-arousal (NLA) shoppers. Managerial implications are provided regarding the creation of relaxing areas or the stimulation of shoppers

Can social support alleviate stress while shopping in crowded retail environments?

This paper aims to find out whether sales associates and shopping companions, as two factors of the social servicescape, can help customers alleviate their levels of stress while shopping in crowded retail scenarios. Social Impact Theory is used to build a theoretical framework that is tested on a sample of mall shoppers. The findings demonstrate that sales associates can reduce customers’ level of stress in crowded situations by employing their task and interaction competences. Customers with shopping companions feel less stress while shopping. When the companions are similar to the customer in shopping preferences, they can create boundaries to stress created by crowding. Finally, this research offers important implications for store managers as well as for sales associates

Waveguide manufacturing technologies for next-generation millimeter-wave antennas

Some recent waveguide-based antennas are presented in this paper, designed for the next generation of communication systems operating at the millimeter-wave band. The presented prototypes have been conceived to be manufactured using different state-of-the-art techniques, involving subtractive and additive approaches. All the designs have used the latest developments in the field of manufacturing to guarantee the required accuracy for operation at millimeter-wave frequencies, where tolerances are extremely tight. Different designs will be presented, including a monopulse antenna combining a comparator network, a mode converter, and a spline profile horn; a tunable phase shifter that is integrated into an array to implement reconfigurability of the main lobe direction; and a conformal array antenna. These prototypes were manufactured by diverse approaches taking into account the waveguide configuration, combining parts with high-precision milling, electrical discharge machining, direct metal laser sintering, or stereolithography with spray metallization, showing very competitive performances at the millimeter-wave band till 40 GHzThis work was supported by the Spanish Government under Grant TEC2016-76070- C3-1/2-R (ADDMATE); in part under Grant PID2020-116968RB-C32/33 (DEWICOM), Agencia Estatal de Investigación MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033, Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional: AEI/FEDER, UE. This work was also partially supported under Grant S2013/ICE3000 (SPADERADARCM), Madrid Regional Governmen

Aprender Derecho Romano e Historia del Derecho a través del podcasting

Memoria ID2022-221 Ayudas de la Universidad de Salamanca para la innovación docente, curso 2022-2023

The importance of regional differences in vulnerability to climate change for demersal fisheries

Regional differences in climate vulnerability are particularly important in many countries with socio-ecological gradients or geographical and environmental spatial segregation. Many studies are regularly performed at the national level, but regional assessments can provide more detailed information and important insights into intra-national vulnerabilities. They require detailed information of many socio-ecological components that are often neglected at the regional scale but are meaningful and operational at national and international levels. In this work, we developed a climate vulnerability assessment (CVA) to investigate the vulnerability of demersal fisheries based on 19 indicators covering exposure, fisheries sensitivity, species sensitivity (SS) and adaptive capacity (AC) for nine coastal regions of Spain, contrasting the Mediterranean to Atlantic areas. Exposure was consistently larger in the Mediterranean than Atlantic regions, while AC showed the opposite trend. While fisheries and SS did not display a clear Atlantic-Mediterranean pattern, they were critical for capturing regional differences that have an impact on fisheries vulnerability. Our results highlight the generally higher vulnerability of Mediterranean demersal fisheries, mainly due to the lower AC and higher exposure of Mediterranean regions, while providing key regional elements for guiding national and international actions for adaptation. This study demonstrates that the spatial scale considered in the development of CVAs must recognise the spatial heterogeneity in the socio-ecological system within its unit of analysis in order to be a relevant tool for management and policy makers.Preprint2,27