Forces Sauces and Eggs for Soldiers: food, nostalgia, and the rehabilitation of the British military

This article identifies, and considers the political implications of, the association of the contemporary British military and British soldiers with nostalgia. This aspect of the discursive project of rehabilitating the British military post-Iraq has not hitherto been theorized. The article analyses a set of exemplifying texts, four military charity food brands (Eggs for Soldiers, Forces Sauces, Red Lion Foods, and Rare Tea Company Battle of Britain Tea) to ask how nostalgic rehabilitation of the British military unfolds at the intersections of militarization, commemoration, and post-2008 “conscience capitalism”. I outline how military charity food brands are a form of “conscience capitalism” through which the perpetuation of militarized logics are produced as a notionally apolitical social “cause”, rendered intelligible within the terms of existing commoditized discourses of post-2008 vintage nostalgia. I then ask what understandings of British soldiers and the British military are constituted within the discourse of nostalgic rehabilitation, and secondly what forms of commemoration are entailed. I argue that a nostalgic generalization of soldiers and the military nullifies the potential unruliness of individual soldiers and obscures the specifics of recent, controversial, wars. Secondly nostalgic civil–military engagement entails a commemorative logic in which forms of quasi-military service are brought into the most banal spaces of everyday civilian life

Customer emotions in service failure and recovery encounters

Emotions play a significant role in the workplace, and considerable attention has been given to the study of employee emotions. Customers also play a central function in organizations, but much less is known about customer emotions. This chapter reviews the growing literature on customer emotions in employee–customer interfaces with a focus on service failure and recovery encounters, where emotions are heightened. It highlights emerging themes and key findings, addresses the measurement, modeling, and management of customer emotions, and identifies future research streams. Attention is given to emotional contagion, relationships between affective and cognitive processes, customer anger, customer rage, and individual differences

Comparative Analysis of American and Spanish Cruise Passenger's Behavioral Intentions

[EN] Earlier studies of cross-national differences in consumer behavior in different consumption sectors have verified that cultural differences have a strong influence on consumers. Despite the importance of cross-national analysis, no studies in the literature examine the moderating effects of nationality on the construction of behavioral intentions and their antecedents among cruise line passengers. This study investigates the moderating effects of nationality on the relationships between perceived value, satisfaction, trust and behavioral intentions among Spanish and (U.S.) American passengers of cruise lines that use Barcelona as home port and port-of-call. A theoretical model was tested with a total of 968 surveys. Structural equation models (SEMs) were used, by means of a multigroup analysis. Results of this study indicated that Spaniards showed stronger relationships between trust and behavioral intentions, and between emotional value and satisfaction. Americans presented stronger relations.[PT] Estudos em distintos setores de consumo verificaram que as diferenças culturais têm uma forte influência sobre os consumidores. Apesar da importância da análise transnacional, não há estudos na literatura que examinem os efeitos da nacionalidade na construção das intenções de comportamento e seus antecedentes entre os passageiros de cruzeiros. Esta pesquisa investiga os efeitos moderadores da nacionalidade nas relações entre valor percebido, satisfação, confiança e intenções de comportamento entre passageiros espanhóis e norte-americanos. Realizaram-se 968 enquetes para provar o modelo teórico, que foi analisado com modelos de equações estruturais, mediante uma análise multigrupo. Os resultados indicam que os espanhóis mostraram relações mais fortes entre confiança e intenções de comportamento, e entre valor emocional e satisfação. Ao contrário dos norte-americanos, que apresentaram relações mais fortes entre qualidade de serviço e satisfação, e entre qualidade de serviço e intenções de comportamento.[ES] Algunos estudios anteriores de diferencias observadas entre países respecto de las conductas de los consumidores de diferentes sectores de consumo verificaron que las diferencias culturales ejercen una poderosa influencia sobre los consumidores. A pesar de la importancia de los análisis transnacionales, no hay en la literatura estudios que analicen los efectos moderadores de la nacionalidad sobre la construcción de intenciones de conducta y sus antecedentes entre pasajeros de cruceros. Este estudio investiga los efectos moderadores de la nacionalidad sobre las relaciones entre el valor percibido, la satisfacción, la confianza y las intenciones de conducta entre los pasajeros españoles y norteamericanos (EE. UU.) de cruceros, que utilizan a Barcelona como puerto de origen y puerto de escala. Se probó un modelo teórico con un total de 968 encuestas. Se emplearon modelos de ecuaciones estructurales (SEM por su sigla en inglés), a través de un análisis multigrupo. Los resultados de este estudio indicaron que los españoles mostraron relaciones más sólidas entre la confianza y las intenciones de comportamiento y entre el valor emocional y la satisfacción. Los americanos evidenciaron relaciones más sólidas entre la calidad del servicio y la satisfacción y entre la calidad del servicio y las intenciones de conducta.Forgas-Coll, S.; Palau-Saumell, R.; Sanchez-Garcia, J.; Garrigós Simón, FJ. (2016). Comparative Analysis of American and Spanish Cruise Passenger's Behavioral Intentions. RAE-Revista de Administração de Empresas. 56(1):87-100. doi:10.1590/S0034-759020160108S8710056

TOWARDS COMPLETE, GEO-REFERENCED 3D MODELS FROM CROWD-SOURCED AMATEUR IMAGES

Despite a lot of recent research, photogrammetric reconstruction from crowd-sourced imagery is plagued by a number of recurrent problems. (i) The resulting models are chronically incomplete, because even touristic landmarks are photographed mostly from a few “canonical” viewpoints. (ii) Man-made constructions tend to exhibit repetitive structure and rotational symmetries, which lead to gross errors in the 3D reconstruction and aggravate the problem of incomplete reconstruction. (iii) The models are normally not geo-referenced. In this paper, we investigate the possibility of using sparse GNSS geo-tags from digital cameras to address these issues and push the boundaries of crowd-sourced photogrammetry. A small proportion of the images in Internet collections (≈ 10 %) do possess geo-tags. While the individual geo-tags are very inaccurate, they nevertheless can help to address the problems above. By providing approximate geo-reference for partial reconstructions they make it possible to fuse those pieces into more complete models; the capability to fuse partial reconstruction opens up the possibility to be more restrictive in the matching phase and avoid errors due to repetitive structure; and collectively, the redundant set of low-quality geo-tags can provide reasonably accurate absolute geo-reference. We show that even few, noisy geo-tags can help to improve architectural models, compared to puristic structure-from-motion only based on image correspondence

TOWARDS COMPLETE, GEO-REFERENCED 3D MODELS FROM CROWD-SOURCED AMATEUR IMAGES

Despite a lot of recent research, photogrammetric reconstruction from crowd-sourced imagery is plagued by a number of recurrent problems. (i) The resulting models are chronically incomplete, because even touristic landmarks are photographed mostly from a few “canonical” viewpoints. (ii) Man-made constructions tend to exhibit repetitive structure and rotational symmetries, which lead to gross errors in the 3D reconstruction and aggravate the problem of incomplete reconstruction. (iii) The models are normally not geo-referenced. In this paper, we investigate the possibility of using sparse GNSS geo-tags from digital cameras to address these issues and push the boundaries of crowd-sourced photogrammetry. A small proportion of the images in Internet collections (≈ 10 %) do possess geo-tags. While the individual geo-tags are very inaccurate, they nevertheless can help to address the problems above. By providing approximate geo-reference for partial reconstructions they make it possible to fuse those pieces into more complete models; the capability to fuse partial reconstruction opens up the possibility to be more restrictive in the matching phase and avoid errors due to repetitive structure; and collectively, the redundant set of low-quality geo-tags can provide reasonably accurate absolute geo-reference. We show that even few, noisy geo-tags can help to improve architectural models, compared to puristic structure-from-motion only based on image correspondence

Obszar roszczeń pasażerów w masowych, publicznych węzłach komunikacyjnych

The article presents the results of the first period of a research carried out at The Czech Technical University in Prague, Faculty of Transportation Sciences, which is aimed to set the optimal dimensions of waiting areas in the premises of public mass transport change nodes. It is aimed especially at a structure of passengers using public transport expressing the percentage of each of the groups for which different areal demands are characteristic. Such survey has not been carried out in the Czech Republic so far. Application of the research, of which the first outputs are presented in this article, allows us to upgrade an outdated methodology for setting an appropriate dimensions of public parts of railway station buildings, which is still used in the Czech Republic.Artykuł przedstawia rezultaty pierwszego okresu badań przeprowadzonych w Czeskim Uniwersytecie Technicznym w Pradze (Wydział Nauk Transportowych), którego celem było określenie optymalnych wymiarów przestrzeni oczekiwania w lokalach publicznych masowych transportowych węzłów wymiany. Ma to na celu, zwłaszcza w strukturze pasażerów używających transportu publicznego, procentowe wyrażenie każdej grupy, dla której charakterystyczne są różne wymagania przestrzenne. Takie badanie nie zostało jeszcze wykonane w Republice Czeskiej. Zastosowanie badania, którego pierwsze wyniki zostały zaprezentowane w tym artykule, pozwala nam na uaktualnienie przestarzałej metodologii w celu opracowania odpowiednich wymiarów dla publicznej części budynków stacji kolejowych, które są w Czechach nadal używane