Secrets to design an effective message on Facebook: an application to a touristic destination based on big data analysis

The objective of this research is to identify which are the key variables for designing a message in a social network that can be used by an advertiser to generate Positive/Negative Engagement. The message’s design variables have been classified into four main groups: (i) Message Tools (presence of text, images, video, labels, applications, interactive games and events calendar or others), (ii) Appropriate Message Structure (length and intelligibility), (iii) Informative Cues (links to the brand, orientation towards the product or the brand, topics relevant to the audience, and a remuneration’s promise) and (iv) Persuasive and Emotional Cues (emotional signals, valence, endorsement and influencer mentions). The focus has been a tourist destination: Brand Spain that is advertised through Facebook. A content analysis was carried out and regression analysis with optimal scaling was used on 180 Spain brand’s publications; 57,626 audience reactions to such publications; and 1361 audience comments on the Brand Spain Official Fan Page. According to our results, from the four blocks of predictive variables, only two of them are useful to predict Positive/Negative Engagement: (i) the use of Message Tools (videos), and (ii) the use of informative cues (relevant topics, links on posts, and post’s orientation towards product).     

Financial Instruments and Promotional Banking in the EU are Growing — But is this Justified?

Institutions and the European Investment Bank are at the forefront of EU investment policy. Their role is expanding and it is now a widely-held position that an improvement in the economy will not eliminate the need for their intervention. The proposals for the 2021–2027 MFF launch more financial instruments and present ‘InvestEU’ as a larger more powerful version of the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI). However, promotional banking is often misunderstood and so is the actual size of promotional banking in Europe in which InvestEU will operate.     

Claims Reserving with a Stochastic Vector Projection

In the last three decades, a variety of stochastic reserving models have been proposed in the general insurance literature mainly using (or reproducing) the well-known Chain-Ladder claims-reserving estimates. In practice, when the data do not satisfy the Chain-Ladder assumptions, high prediction errors might occur. Thus, in this article, a combined methodology is proposed based on the stochastic vector projection method and uses the regression through the origin approach of Murphy, but with heteroscedastic errors instead, and different from those that used by Mack. Furthermore, the Mack distribution-free model appears to have higher prediction errors when compared with the proposed one, particularly, for data sets with increasing (regular) trends. Finally, three empirical examples with irregular and regular data sets illustrate the theoretical findings, and the concepts of best estimate and risk margin are reported.     

The equity impacts of bus rapid transit: A review of the evidence and implications for sustainable transport

The paper offers an analysis of empirical evidence on the equity impacts of operational Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems in the Global South. The focus is on vertical equity, i.e. whether BRT systems achieve progressive benefits for poorer segments of the population. Findings from Africa, Asia, and Latin America all suggest that BRT does offer significant benefits to low-income groups, in terms of travel time and cost savings, access enhancement, and safety and health benefits. However benefits are often skewed toward medium-income users and thus less progressive than they might be. Two primary reasons for this are insufficient spatial coverage and inappropriate fare policies. While many features of BRT potentially allow it to deliver pro-poor outcomes, such outcomes only materialize if BRT implementers pay specific and sustained attention to equity. The paper identifies key issues that need to be addressed to steer BRT implementation toward more socially sustainable outcomes—including better integration with other transit, paratransit, and nonmotorized transport services, and with the housing sector.     

Cause-Brand Community: Toward Consumer Citizenship

Brand communities have been proven to be successful with commercial brands. However, a review of the literature indicated that brand community has not been studied in charity organizations. To shed light on this issue, a qualitative research was conducted among stakeholders of an internationally well-known charity organization using three different techniques: in-depth interviews, netnography, and nonparticipant observation at the charity’s brandfest. The results suggest that cause-brand communities exist, sharing the same elements of commercial-brand communities, but the two have some unique characteristics, such as the existence of different stakeholders and small communities that demonstrate an extreme commitment, the promotion of consumer citizenship among them, and the lack of oppositional brand loyalty. A cause-brand community has important managerial implications as it helps build the charity’s brand equity; at the same time, a well-known brand supports the construction of the brand community.     

CONTINUOUS PREFERENCE ORDERINGS REPRESENTABLE BY UTILITY FUNCTIONS

This paper surveys the conditions under which it is possible to represent a continuous preference ordering using utility functions. We start with a historical perspective on the notions of utility and preferences, continue by defining the mathematical concepts employed in this literature, and then list several key contributions to the topic of representability. These contributions concern both the preference orderings and the spaces where they are defined. For any continuous preference ordering, we show the need for separability and the sufficiency of connectedness and separability, or second countability, of the space where it is defined. We emphasize the need for separability by showing that in any nonseparable metric space, there are continuous preference orderings without utility representation. However, by reinforcing connectedness, we show that countably boundedness of the preference ordering is a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a (continuous) utility representation. Finally, we discuss the special case of strictly monotonic preferences.     

Interaction between crop insurance and technology adoption decisions: The case of wheat farmers in Chile

This paper examines relationships between crop insurance and input technology decisions among Chilean wheat farmers. Using nationwide farm‐level data, a bivariate probit model is estimated. We investigate the extent to which the adoption of production input technologies is associated with farmers’ participation in the insurance program. We find that relationships between insurance and technology decisions are significant only for family farmers. In particular, there is a negative relationship between participation in the insurance program and the adoption of modern irrigation. Interpretations based on the role of input technologies on insurance adoption and adverse selection behaviours are discussed.     

Supply chain capabilities for facilitating the internationalisation of retailers – a multiple case study of three Swedish retail companies

ABSTRACT

Market-oriented aspects of retail internationalisation have received a lot of research attention since the 1990s. However, beyond these aspects lies also supply-chain oriented capabilities that are necessary for retailers to successfully internationalise into foreign sales markets. By using a perspective based on resource-based theories, this paper explores supply-chain oriented capabilities that facilitate retail internationalisation. The research is based on a multiple case study of three Swedish retailers. Through the perspective of research based theories, specifically capabilities, the empirical data is studied in a single-case as well as a cross-case analysis. Findings reveal three supply chain-oriented capability categories (leadership capability, integration capability and learning capability) of importance for retail internationalisation. Resources necessary for the capabilities are to be found internally at the retailer, but also externally at other firms. This research adds to the market-oriented knowledge on retail internationalisation by adding a supply-chain oriented perspective. Further, it provides an understanding of the early phases of retail internationalisation.