How to increase profitability of Golf Industry in Lisbon?

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and EconomicsThe golf industry based in the Lisbon region has been suffering from decreased revenues from some years now, and the goal of this paper is to identify the roots of this problem and to devise possible ways to address it. Based on financial analysis, comparisons with other relevant golf regions in Portugal and Europe, interviews to field experts and a survey to golf amateur players, this paper proposes medium and long-term strategies which generally aim at increasing golf courses’ overall revenues, attract foreign tourist players and reduce operating costs

The influence of packaging on consumer purchase intention of craft beer

The craft beer segment has been growing exponentially in Portugal, with the development of established players and the entrance of new ones. With so many different offers on the market, brands are trying to get noticed and added to shoppers’ carts, with one of the main ways of doing this being through packaging. Packaging has been a widely researched topic in marketing literature as it represents the first physical point of contact between consumers and a product, playing an essential role in attracting consumers’ attention, influencing their opinions, and impacting their decision-making process. Thus, this study aims to research the relationship between packaging/packaging elements and consumer purchase intentions of craft beer, as well as to investigate the relative importance of packaging as a purchase criterion, describe consumers’ preferences regarding craft beer packaging and identify possible trends in these preferences. To answer these questions three methodologies were employed: a semi-structured interview with the marketing manager of a Portuguese craft beer brand, two focus groups with participants of different age groups and a questionnaire of 200 respondents. Qualitative findings suggest that the importance attributed to packaging varies according to the level of consumers’ market knowledge and that, generally, packaging influences consumers’ purchase intentions. Quantitative findings suggest that label layout is the only packaging element that has an impact on consumer purchase intentions of craft beer and that there is a correlation between packaging style preference and consumers' age and gender, with younger/female consumers preferring modern packaging and older consumers preferring classic packaging.O segmento das cervejas artesanais tem crescido exponencialmente em Portugal, com o desenvolvimento de empresas estabelecidas e a entrada de novos concorrentes. Com uma oferta tão variada, as marcas tentam destacar-se e ser adicionadas aos carrinhos dos clientes, sendo um dos principais métodos através da embalagem. A embalagem é bastante investigada em marketing, pois representa o primeiro ponto físico de contato entre produto e consumidores, desempenhando um papel essencial na atração e influência de opiniões/decisões de compra dos clientes. Assim, este estudo pretende investigar a relação entre a embalagem/elementos da embalagem e a intenção de compra de cerveja artesanal, investigar a importância relativa da embalagem como critério de compra, descrever as preferências dos consumidores relativas às embalagens de cerveja artesanal e identificar possíveis tendências nessas preferências. Para responder a estas questões utilizaram-se as metodologias qualitativa e quantitativa: uma entrevista semiestruturada com o gestor de marketing de uma marca portuguesa de cerveja artesanal, dois focus groups com participantes de diferentes idades e um questionário a 200 pessoas. Os resultados qualitativos sugerem que a importância da embalagem varia conforme o nível de conhecimento do mercado dos consumidores e que, geralmente, a embalagem influencia as intenções de compra. Os resultados quantitativos sugerem que o layout do rótulo é o único elemento da embalagem que tem impacto nas intenções de compra de cerveja artesanal e que há uma correlação entre a preferência de estilo de embalagem e idade/género, com consumidores mais jovens/mulheres a preferir embalagens modernas e consumidores mais velhos a preferir embalagens clássicas

Improving the communication reliability of body sensor networks based on the IEEE 802.15.4 protocol

Body sensor networks (BSNs) enable continuous monitoring of patients anywhere, with minimum constraints to daily life activities. Although the IEEE 802.15.4 and ZigBee® (ZigBee Alliance, San Ramon, CA) standards were mainly developed for use in wireless sensors network (WSN) applications, they are also widely used in BSN applications because of device characteristics such as low power, low cost, and small form factor. However, compared with WSNs, BSNs present some very distinctive characteristics in terms of traffic and mobility patterns, heterogeneity of the nodes, and quality of service requirements. This article evaluates the suitability of the carrier sense multiple access–collision avoidance protocol, used by the IEEE 802.15.4 and ZigBee standards, for data-intensive BSN applications, through the execution of experimental tests in different evaluation scenarios, in order to take into account the effects of contention, clock drift, and hidden nodes on the communication reliability. Results show that the delivery ratio may decrease substantially during transitory periods, which can last for several minutes, to a minimum of 90% with retransmissions and 13% without retransmissions. This article also proposes and evaluates the performance of the BSN contention avoidance mechanism, which was designed to solve the identified reliability problems. This mechanism was able to restore the delivery ratio to 100% even in the scenario without retransmissions.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

A smartphone-based multi-sensor wireless platform for cycling performance monitoring

In recent years there has been a significant evolution regarding applications for mobile devices that provide location-based services. The mobile devices available on the market already provide a set of integrated sensors and it is also possible to acquire data from external sensors. This chapter presents the development and results concerning a mobile sensing platform applied to cycling which performs data collection using both sensors integrated in the smartphone and multiple wireless sensor nodes, which are used to acquire relevant performance parameters. The data collected by the developed mobile app is stored in a local database and also uploaded to a remote database, where it can be accessed later using the mobile app or a web browser. This mobile app allows users to share data with friends, join or create events, locate friends, consult graphs and access past routes in a map. Based on these functionalities, this system aims to provide detailed feedback regarding the user performance and enhance the enjoyment of the cyclists.This work has been supported by FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia) in the scope of the project: UID/EEA/04436/2013.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

TVPulse: Improvements on detecting TV highlightsin Social Networks using metadata and semanticsimilarity

Sharing live experiences in social networks is agrowing trend. That includes posting comments and sentimentsabout TV programs. Automatic detection of messages withcontents related to TV opens new opportunities for the industryof entertainment information.This paper describes a system that detects TV highlights in oneof the most important social networks - Twitter. Combining Twit-ter's messages and information from an Electronic ProgrammingGuide (EPG) enriched with external metadata we built a modelthat matches tweets with TV programs with an accuracy over80{\%}. Our model required the construction of semantic profilesfor the Portuguese language. These semantic profiles are usedto identify the most representative tweets as highlights of a TVprogram. Measuring semantic similarity with those tweets it ispossible to gather other messages within the same context. Thisstrategy improves the recall of the detection. In addition wedeveloped a method to automatically gather other related webresources, namely Youtube videos. TVPulse: Improvements on detecting TV highlights in Social Networks using metadata and semantic similarity

Is liquidity associate to profitabilitry? An analysis of the retail industry in Portugal

This Work Project analyses the relationship betweenliquidity, proxied by Cash Conversion Cycle and Liquidity Ratios,and Return on Assets, namely how and to what extent these variables associate.Based on a sample of Portuguese retail companies forthe period 2016-2018,the results show thatDays Payable Outstanding and Days Sales Outstanding havea significant influence in profitabilitywhereasDays Inventory Outstanding doesnot. Moreover, liquidity profiles and sources of profitability differ between smallerand biggercompanies.The research is relevant to working capital management and addresses to managers whocan improve profitabilityby reducing liquidity

Experimental evaluation of ZigBee and IEEE 802.15.4 for data-intensive body sensor networks

This paper presents results concerning an experimental performance evaluation of ZigBee and IEEE 802.15.4 networks applied to the transport of data-intensive traffic generated by body sensor network applications. The experimental platform is based on the Z-Stack and TIMAC software stacks and the CC2530 device, from Texas Instruments. Three quality of service metrics are evaluated: goodput, delivery ratio and delay. Results are provided for both star and tree topologies. It was observed that the overhead introduced by the stack implementation has a significant impact on the performance results. Overall, the performance of the ZigBee star topology was very good, even in the worst conditions, provided the acknowledgement mechanism was enabled. A router deadlock problem detected in other ZigBee implementations was not observed with the Z-Stack. However, we identified two different situations, triggered by periods of high traffic load, on which the ZigBee router stops relaying packets, causing a significant degradation on the network performance.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

Aplicação de um permutador de calor ar-solo no arrefecimento de um armário de telecomunicações

O número de clientes subscritos em planos de telecomunicações móveis tem aumentado a um ritmo intenso, obrigando as empresas fornecedoras destes serviços a montarem cada vez mais instalações com armários de telecomunicações, de forma a abranger todas as necessidades dos clientes. Estes armários estão dimensionados para que a temperatura dos equipamentos no seu interior não ultrapasse os 55 ºC. Para arrefecer os equipamentos no seu interior são usadas diversas técnicas de arrefecimento, como o a utilização de sistemas convencionais de ar condicionado ou a ventilação forçada. Estes métodos consomem entre 25% a 50% do valor total de energia de cada instalação, contribuindo assim para o elevado consumo energético e, como tal, representando custos muito elevados. Não só custos monetários, mas também um enorme consumo de recursos energéticos do nosso planeta influenciado a libertação de gases de ozono para a atmosfera aumentando o efeito de estufa. Face ao pressuposto, a presente tese apresenta uma solução de arrefecimento passiva utilizando a inércia térmica do solo. Assim, foi utilizado um permutador de calor ar-solo para arrefecimento do interior de um armário de telecomunicações. Este foi equipado com uma resistência elétrica de forma a simular a dissipação da carga térmica dos equipamentos que fazem parte dos sistemas de telecomunicação e todos os restantes equipamentos periféricos. Posteriormente, foi analisado o desempenho do sistema de arrefecimento através da monitorização da temperatura no interior do permutador de calor e no armário de telecomunicações, tendo sido efetuados diversos ensaios com diferentes condições. Para além deste trabalho foi também realizado outro trabalho em paralelo, que consistiu em analisar o perfil térmico do solo em três locais distintos na cidade da Covilhã. Este estudo teve como objetivo conhecer a evolução da temperatura do solo nestas localizações e como é que as diferentes propriedades dos solos influenciam a sua condutibilidade térmica.The number of subscribers to mobile telecommunications plans has increased at a very high rate, obliging service providers to set up more and more telecommunications cabinets to cover all customer needs. These cabinets are sized so that the temperature of the equipment inside does not exceed 55 ºC. To cool down the equipment inside, various cooling techniques are used, such as the use of conventional air conditioning systems or forced air ventilation from outside. These methods consume between 25% and 50% of the total energy value of each installation, contributing to the high energy consumption and thus representing very high costs. Not only monetary costs but also a huge consumption of our planet's energy resources influenced the release of ozone gases into the atmosphere by increasing the greenhouse effect. The present thesis presents a passive cooling solution using the thermal inertia of the soil. Work was carried out with an air-ground heat exchanger that was used for cooling the interior of a telecommunications cabinet. The cabinet was equipped with an electrical resistance to simulate the dissipation of the thermal load of the equipments that are part of the telecommunication system and all the peripherals equipments as well. Afterwards, the performance of the cooling system was analyzed through the temperature monitoring inside the heat exchanger and in the telecommunications cabinet. Several tests were carried out with several conditions. In addition to this work, another work was also carried out in parallel, which consisted of monitoring the soil thermal profile temperature in three separate locations in the city of Covilhã. This study aimed to know the evolution of soil temperature in these locations and how the different soil properties influence its thermal conductibility