Making museums attractions to tourists: serious leisure, meaningfulness and emotions as drivers to engagement

The aim of this study is to explore the relationships among the concepts of serous leisure, meaningfulness, emotions, word-of-mouth and passionate desire, as antecedents and outcomes of engagement with museums. The proposed model is tested with a sample of 461 visitors (from Portugal and abroad) in a culturally specific setting of Lisbon museums (where improvements and innovations were implemented). The findings contribute to a better understanding of visitors’ perceptions about museums acting as tourist attractions. Several implications can be pointed out from the study findings, and interesting directions for future research are provided.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Relationship marketing on social software platforms

Relationship marketing strategies are typically designed to gather information in order to help firms to identify and retain customers or guests. Firms organize relationship marketing programmes, described as ‘the ongoing process of engaging in cooperative and collaborative activities and programmes with immediate and end-user customers to create or enhance mutual economic value at reduced cost’ (Parvatiyar and Sheth 2000: p. 9). Examples of programmes include: (1) loyalty card programmes, (2) company credit cards, (3) opting in for personalized offers delivered via mailing and (4) via e-mail lists, and (5) rebate offers (Noble and Phillips 2004).info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

New-age elderly in Germany - how to live better with healthy experiences

This study aims to analyze which potential attributes of anti-ageing experiences (goods, services, and experiences) will tend to be associated with subjective happiness; how cognitive age is associated with mindfulness and the influence of mindfulness on subjective happiness. Senior universities were contacted and approached by the research team to conduct the study. The goals of this study were explained to the managers of the senior universities and the survey collected among the people who participate in the activities and are enrolled in the senior universities. To analyze this theme over two hundred (250) questionnaires were distributed during January 2016 in Hamburg. The findings reveal that (i) mindfulness tend to have a positive effect on subjective happiness among elderly consumers, (ii) cognitive age and chronological age are not overlapped and (iii) the way elderly consumers perceive the anti-aging products and experiences may be correlated with subjective happiness.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Social partner characteristics as facilitatores of the wine co-creation experiences

This study explores a dyadic perspective of wine producers and distributors using conducting and analysing 44 in-depth interviews among members of top managers of wine producers and wine distributors. They represented 22 companies and 11 exchange relationships. Data gathered by the interviews were processed through the application of specialized software (WEBQDA) to develop the content analysis based on the Grounded Theory. Findings identify Personal Social Capabilities and Organizational Social Capabilities as new constructs of Partner Characteristics, employed to describe the Relationship Quality (RQ) between two important players of the market. The main findings highlight Personal and Organizational Social Characteristics as core elements to develop an interactive relationship quality among stakeholders.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

An empiric analysis of the online market for the adventure travel tourism industry in Germany

The present article analyses the potential e-commerce in the tourism industry, particularly in the niche market of adventure travels. Tourists are increasingly booking travels using online platforms, especially Generation Y. This trend leads to the reduction the number of offline and traditional travel agencies and gives the opportunity to maximise the online travel market. E-commerce business is increasing as well as the market for adventure tourism. In this article we analyse existent online platforms for booking adventure travels and employ a survey to get the consumer perception about such platforms. The sample of 310 questionnaires analysed together with the nethnography conducted allow us to have useful information in order to better understand the phenomenon and give insights to managers and improve the service provided.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Insights about destination brand: Madeira case study

The concept of brand as known today is passed through various (re) definitions over the years. Initially, the brand was associated with house products, but with the evolution of society has come to represent industrial products, people, values, and services. Nowadays due to the great offer of tourist destinations, brands also represent countries, cities, and regions. This type of brands, result from maturation and of the coverage of the functionality of the same. Thus, the tourist brands or place brands, come from the necessity to value the places through its unique characteristics, boosting the visit of tourists and the sustainability of the destination. The island of Madeira is a typical tourist destination, which stands out from the competition through its heritage, in terms of culture and patrimony. With its economy based on tourism and to measure the importance of the Brand, an interview was conducted at one of the main actors in this area, specifically the Regional Tourism Director of the Autonomous Region of Madeira. In addition we have interview 118 tourists during July and August 2017 at Madeira airport.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The behavior of academic investigators using an institutional repository

Institutional repositories (IRs) are a new strategy for universities to expedite changes in scientific communication. They are digital collections that store, preserve, and make available the intellectual output of one or more universities. Housing this production in an IR can solve problems such as the high acquisition and maintenance costs of collections, and the publication of gray literature, reports and post-prints. However, the IR brings new questions about copyright that are still in discussion. It can also improve the situation of the universities that are responsible for producing 70% of the scientific papers, buying from commercial editors about 90% of the articles they consume, compromising part of the budget in the acquisition of periodicals that bring back the results of their own work. The use of open archives by IRs should stimulate self-archiving, since it assures a more efficient dissemination of digital documents. However, self-archiving is a new task, sometimes perceived as an additional burden in overcrowded schedules, not yet part of the habits and routines of researchers and academic staff. This work is justified in a socio-cultural context, especially in understanding the behavior of investigators from different knowledge areas and cultures in their acceptance and use of IRs, being possible to know important factors in its adoption. This way, we intend to provide the academic managers guidelines that help them to promote a culture of sharing and disseminating the scientific information produced by their institutions, increasing the investigation’s excellence

A crise social desenhada pelas crianças: imaginação e conhecimento social

A crise social e económica que tem atingido o mundo desde 2008, com efeitos especialmente sentidos nos países do Sul da Europa, causou impactos fortes e visíveis na infância, como o aumento das taxas efetivas e de risco de pobreza e a vulnerabilidade e a exposição a fatores de risco social e de perda consistente de direitos. A análise dessas incidências tem vindo a ser trabalhada num conjunto de relatórios nacionais e internacionais, de ONG’s e estudos académicos. No entanto, poucos estudos têm dedicado atenção ao modo como a interpretação das representações das crianças sobre a crise é feita e sobre as expressões específicas que estas assumem na sua vida quotidiana. As crianças são capazes de observar os modos como a crise impacta o seu próprio grupo geracional, bem como os adultos que mais lhe são próximos. Da mesma forma, promovem interpretações económicas sobre os fenómenos, sejam elas mais “ingénuas” ou mais complexas. Este artigo incide sobre as representações das crianças sobre a crise social e económica em Portugal. São especialmente analisadas narrativas gráficas produzidas por crianças oriundas de classes trabalhadoras, com idades compreendidas entre os 6 e os 10 anos de idade. Por meio dessas narrativas, as crianças constroem formas visuais a partir da sua imaginação sobre a sua condição. Assim, a imaginação das crianças é um modo de acesso ao conhecimento na sociedade onde se inserem e aos seus modos próprios de compreensão de realidades complexas.The social and economic crisis that has hit the world since 2008, with effects strongly felt in the countries of Southern Europe, has had fierce and visible impacts in childhood with the increase of the effective rates, the risk of poverty and vulnerability, and the exposure to factors of social risk and consistent loss of rights. The analysis of these incidents has been worked on in a series of national and international reports from NGOs and academic studies. However, few studies have devoted attention to the way in which the interpretation of the representations of children about the crisis is made and the specific expressions that they assume in their daily lives. Children are able to observe the ways in which the crisis affects their own generational group as well as the adults closest to them. In the same way, they promote economic interpretations of phenomena, whether “naïve” or more complex. This article focuses on the representations of children about the social and economic crisis in Portugal. Graphical narratives produced by children from working classes, aged between 6 and 10 years old, are given focus. From these narratives, children construct visual forms from their imagination about their social condition. Thus, the child’s imagination is a way of accessing knowledge in the society they belong to and their own way of understanding complex realities.CIEC - Centro de Investigação em Estudos da Criança, IE, UMinho (UI 317 da FCT), Portugalinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Feeling better while waiting: hospital lobby in Portugal and South Korea

This study aims to explore the effect of three factors of Servicescape on customers’ emotion, perceived quality and image. The proposed model was tested in medical tourism context in Portugal and S. Korea, using a sample of 359fully completed questionnaires. Findings reveal that ambient and design are the most important factors in formation Servicescape itself in the case of Portugal hospitals and design and social factors in the case of S. Korea hospitals. Servicescape is an effective antecedent of customer image, perceived quality and pleasure-feeling. Finally, the article also provides managerial implications and suggests avenues for further research.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio