Environmental attitudes towards wine tourism

Wine tourism marketers frequently seek new ways to promote destinations, often executing ecologically sustainable practices. As consumer environmental knowledge of a wine tourism destination increases, consumer attitudes change, influencing perceptions of the environmental policies of a wine region. In this consumer-driven economy, it is therefore important to search for effective ways to market destinations, and one approach is selective marketing. By focusing on consumers in this manner, it is possible to understand better their concerns and motivations, which should aid in marketing and advertising efforts. This study investigated wine consumers environmental concerns and attitudes about wine regions. Results suggest environmental attitudes differed by demographics regarding the impact of wine tourism, providing ideas on further marketing efforts for those involved in wine tourism

The Influence of Purchase Confidence on Information Source Selection: Implications for Hospitality Industry

Whether the product of choice is a restaurant, vacation resort or hotel, it is important for hospitality marketers to understand how consumers treat purchase decisions and the influence purchase confidence and situation play on that decision. This study investigated the role purchase confidence plays with knowledge in the selection of sources of information during purchase decisions. The results indicate sources of information are perceived differently by consumers and depending on the purchase situation, subjective knowledge is influenced by purchase confidence affecting the source of information considered when making a purchase decision. The results also indicated that those with high purchase confidence and subjective knowledge will rely on themselves as a source when making a purchase rather than a retail clerk or published material

Integrating Social Responsibility Into Business School Undergraduate Education: A Student Perspective

Organizations and society at large recognize that ethically and socially responsible behavior plays a crucial role in good business practices. Debate about social responsibility centers on the responsibilities of consumers and businesses working towards a sustainable future with a new focus on business education. This realization has led employers to expect and demand that business schools facilitate the training of students in social responsibility. To accomplish this, key components to consider within undergraduate business school programs are the development of curriculum, pedagogy, and delivery methods best practices. The end result of this effort would be graduates possessing a range of perspectives and competences that increase their awareness of good socially responsible business practices. Yet, how best to develop the programs, curriculum, and pedagogy that deliver socially responsible business practices to students is still undecided. Equally important is to understand who these “students” are and what they want from business education programs. To develop a meaningful curriculum model, students from across a large northeast university campus were assessed on their perspectives of socially responsible business programs, curriculum, and pedagogy practices. The results suggest significant differences between the student groups in their interest in social responsible business practices and the importance of environmental issues and topics in the curriculum

A Strategic Approach To Managing Customer Service Quality

Service quality is an essential strategy for success and survival in today's competitive environment. Earlier discussions emphasized what service quality meant to customers and how to develop strategies to meet customer expectations. More recently, the focus has shifted to understanding the impact of service quality on profit and other financial outcomes of the organization. Lowering customer defection rates can be profitable to companies, at the same time lowering employee turnover and improving their satisfaction and loyalty can also reduce customer defection and maintain or increase profits. The purpose of this paper is to put forth an argument that to measure customer service quality is not only an important strategic approach, but is a critical and intertwined link to organizational commitment, communication, and employee satisfaction by improving and maintaining high standards of consistent service quality delivery. This strategic approach pulls together many previously tested models into a single workable assessment and feedback tool, with a particular focus on employee training, by establishing a strategic and measurable benchmarking index for continual monitoring and operational improvement

A Relationship of Wine Ratings and Wholesale Pricing, Vintage, Variety, and Region

Wine reviews, such as those from Wine Spectator and other consumer publications, help drive wine sales. The researchers in this study utilized standardized wholesale “line pricing” from a major wholesale distributor in the Southwest to compare pricing to the ratings published by Wine Spectator and to determine whether there were any correlations among other key attributes of the wine. The study produced interesting results, including that the wholesale price and vintage of a wine are significant in the prediction of the wine’s rating

Superfluid, Mott-Insulator, and Mass-Density-Wave Phases in the One-Dimensional Extended Bose-Hubbard Model

We use the finite-size density-matrix-renormalization-group (FSDMRG) method to obtain the phase diagram of the one-dimensional ($d = 1$) extended Bose-Hubbard model for density $\rho = 1$ in the $U-V$ plane, where $U$ and $V$ are, respectively, onsite and nearest-neighbor interactions. The phase diagram comprises three phases: Superfluid (SF), Mott Insulator (MI) and Mass Density Wave (MDW). For small values of $U$ and $V$, we get a reentrant SF-MI-SF phase transition. For intermediate values of interactions the SF phase is sandwiched between MI and MDW phases with continuous SF-MI and SF-MDW transitions. We show, by a detailed finite-size scaling analysis, that the MI-SF transition is of Kosterlitz-Thouless (KT) type whereas the MDW-SF transition has both KT and two-dimensional-Ising characters. For large values of $U$ and $V$ we get a direct, first-order, MI-MDW transition. The MI-SF, MDW-SF and MI-MDW phase boundaries join at a bicritical point at ($U, V) = (8.5 \pm 0.05, 4.75 \pm 0.05)$.Comment: 10 pages, 15 figure

Mixed initial conditions to estimate the dynamic critical exponent in short-time Monte Carlo simulation

We explore the initial conditions in short-time critical dynamics to propose a new method to evaluate the dynamic exponent z. Estimates are obtained with high precision for 2D Ising model and 2D Potts model for three and four states by performing heat-bath Monte Carlo simulations.Comment: Latex paper, 2 eps figure