Matching Portuguese retail e-businesses to online consumers

E-commerce is being rapidly diffused geographically and is shaping all sort of industries that seek solutions to meet increasing society demands. Due to its growing importance, researchers are finding ways to track the impacts and variations of this technology all over the world. Some approaches focus on specific industries including e-grocery shopping that function as a branch for e-retail with a large number of product categories. With so many variables, there are still gaps on the research of certain product categories and countries. This research fills the gap of the online grocery retailing literature in Portugal. The research contributes to a clarification of what consumers are valuing online, for grocery shopping, in comparison to what retailers are offering. Through an extensive literature review, it was developed a tool that combines the 41 most important attributes for online consumers into 5 different dimensions: Shopping Experience, Accessibility, Security, Interactions and Customer Service. This study allows to conclude that there are three different maturity stages regarding the online supply of groceries. On a more mature phase it can be found Continente and Jumbo e-retailers that greatly exceed customer expectations. Secondly it can be found El Corte Ingles that is not as mature as the previous competitors but demonstrates a clear vision and strategy for development. Finally, with the least mature offer, it can be found Intermarché, which does not meet customer expectations. Matching Portuguese retail ebusinesses to online consumers is a starting point to understand and predict the potential of the online grocery retail market in Portugal.O comércio eletrónico está a ser rapidamente difundido em termos geográficos e está a moldar vários tipos de indústrias que procuram soluções para fazer face às necessidades da sociedade. Devido à crescente importância, investigadores procuram formas de acompanhar os impactos desta tecnologia a nível mundial. Algumas abordagens centramse em indústrias específicas como o mercado alimentar online, que funciona como uma ramificação do retalho online mais abrangente, que engloba um número grande de categorias. Com tantas variáveis, existem ainda lacunas na pesquisa de determinadas categorias de produtos e países. Este trabalho preenche a lacuna sobre o mercado alimentar online em Portugal. Visa clarificar o que os consumidores valorizam no mercado alimentar online, por comparação com a oferta dos retalhistas online. Através de uma extensa revisão de literatura, desenvolveu-se uma ferramenta que agrega os 41 atributos mais importantes para os consumidores online em 5 dimensões: Experiência de Compra, Acessibilidade, Segurança, Interações e Apoio ao Cliente. Este estudo permite concluir que existem três diferentes estádios de maturação no mercado alimentar online. Numa fase mais madura encontram-se o Continente e o Jumbo que excedem as expectativas dos consumidores. Em seguida, o El Corte Inglês cuja oferta não se encontra tão amadurecida como a dos seus concorrentes anteriormente mencionados, mas demonstra uma visão e estratégia claras para o seu desenvolvimento. Finalmente, a oferta menos madura do mercado provém do Intermarché, que não vai ao encontro das expectativas dos consumidores. Comparar os modelos de negócio retalhistas existentes com os consumidores online é um ponto de partida para compreender e prever a potencialidade do mercado alimentar online em Portugal

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear un derstanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5–7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8–11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world’s most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepre sented in biodiversity databases.13–15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may elim inate pieces of the Amazon’s biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological com munities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple or ganism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region’s vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most ne glected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lostinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear understanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5,6,7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8,9,10,11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world's most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepresented in biodiversity databases.13,14,15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may eliminate pieces of the Amazon's biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological communities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple organism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region's vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most neglected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lost