Ownership structure, customer satisfaction and brand equity

This paper studies the interaction between ownership structure, taken as a proxy for shareholders commitment, and customer satisfaction - the main driver of consumer loyalty - and their impact on a firm s brand equity. The results show that customer satisfaction has a positive direct effect on brand equity but an indirect negative one because of reductions in ownership concentration. This latter effect emerges when managers are mainly customer-oriented. Such result gives out a warning signal that highlights the perverse effect of implementing policies, focused excessively on satisfying customers at the expense of shareholders, on a firm s brand equity. The empirical analysis uses an incomplete panel data comprising 69 firms from 11 nations, for the period 2002-2005.

Infrastructure and nation building: The regulation and financing of network transportation infrastructures in Spain (1720-2010)

This paper analyzes Spanish infrastructure policy since the early 1700s: Road building in the eighteenth century, railway creation and expansion in the nineteenth, motorway expansion in the twentieth, and high speed rail development in the twenty-first. The analysis reveals a long-term pattern, in which infrastructure policy in Spain has been driven not by the requirements of commerce and economic activity, but rather by the desire to centralize transportation around the country’s political capital.

Online brands: Branding, possible worlds, and interactive grammars

This paper proposes to reflect from a semiotic perspective on the transformation that brands have undergone since the rise of the Internet. After a brief theoretical introduction to digital communication and the semiotics of brands, the case of the Google brand is analyzed by applying concepts of generative and interpretive semiotics. The paper holds that the iconic and linguistic enunciations are secondary with respect to interaction. In digital media interaction — the interactive experience that the Internet user lives — is a fundamental component of the hypermedia cocktail and occupies a central position in the brand building process. The article concludes with some of the questions and special characteristics raised by so-called eBranding.

AgShare : Building Community and Content with Multiple Partners

Michigan State University and OER Africa are creating a win-win collaboration of existing organizations for African publishing, localizing, and sharing of teaching and learning materials that fill critical resource gaps in African MSc agriculture curriculum. By the end of the 18-month planning and pilot initiative, African agriculture universities, faculty, students, researchers, NGO leaders, extension staff, and farmers will participate in building AgShare by demonstrating its benefits and outcomes and by building momentum and support for growth.

The European Union Police Mission: The Beginning of a New Future for Bosnia and Herzegovina?

The creation, reform and/or restructuring of the police in post-conflict societies remains one of the key challenges for practitioners and scholars in the contemporary fields of peace and security, particularly due to the changing nature of conflicts. Since the 1990s the world has witnessed a proliferation of international police missions, with regional organisations gradually acquiring a prominent role. This paper analyses the 2003-2005 period of the European Union Police Mission (EUPM) in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Much is at stake in this mission, both in terms of the development of the EU´s external identity but also for Bosnia and Herzegovina’s road to EU membership and sustainable peace. This paper will argue that by 2005 the balance sheet was mixed. EUPM fell short of fulfilling its overall goal of ‘Europeanising’ Bosnian police services, and of its desire to be seen as providing that additional ingredient in police matters that would set it apart from the earlier UN mission. Nevertheless, despite its shortcomings, the Mission did not merit the harsh criticisms it was faced with. Its lack of success was not entirely the Mission’s doing. The paper focuses on three aspects: political and economic viability and sustainability, security levels in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and institution and capacity building. The explanatory framework used in this paper is based on the democratic policing discourse. In doing so the argument developed here will also shed light on the nature of so-called “best European practices” in police matters.

The Peace Processes in the Basque Country and Northern Ireland (1994-2006): a Comparative Approach

The peace process in Northern Ireland demonstrates that new sovereignty formulas need to be explored in order to meet the demands of the populations and territories in conflict. The profound transformation of the classic symbolic elements of the nation-state within the context of the European Union has greatly contributed to the prospects for a resolution of this old conflict. Today’s discussions are focused on the search for instruments of shared sovereignty that are adapted to a complex and plural social reality. This new approach for finding a solution to the Irish conflict is particularly relevant to the Basque debate about formulating creative and modern solutions to similar conflicts over identity and sovereignty. The notion of shared sovereignty implemented in Northern Ireland –a formula for complex interdependent relations– is of significant relevance to the broader international community and is likely to become an increasingly potent and transcendent model for conflict resolution and peace building.

How political parties, rather than member-states, are building the European Union

Political party formation and coalition building in the European Parliament is being a driving force for making governance of the highly pluralistic European Union relatively effective and consensual. In spite of successive enlargements and the very high number of electoral partiesobtaining representation in the European Union institutions, the number of effective European Political Groups in the European Parliament has decreased from the first direct election in 1979 to the fifth in 1999. The formal analysis of national party¹s voting power in different Europeanparty configurations can explain the incentives for national parties to join large European Political Groups instead of forming smaller nationalistic groupings. Empirical evidence shows increasing cohesion of European Political Groups and an increasing role of the European Parliament in EU inter-institutional decision making. As a consequence of this evolution, intergovernmentalism is being replaced with federalizing relations. The analysis can support positive expectations regarding the governability of the European Union after further enlargements provided that new member states have party systems fitting the European PoliticalGroups.

Measuring asymmetries in brand associations using correspondence analysis

Correspondence analysis is introduced in the brand associationliterature as an alternative tool to measure dominance, for theparticular case of free choice data. The method is also used to analysedifferences, or asymmetries, between brand-attribute associations whereattributes are associated with evoked brands, and brand-attributeassociations where brands are associated with the attributes. Anapplication to a sample of deodorants is used to illustrate the proposedmethodology.

Narrating urban entrepreneurship: a matter of imagineering?

The battle between cities with regard to their creative possibilities has evolved into a process of multiplying ever-new images and variegated stories of urban attractiveness and success. Engineering “cool” images and “hot” stories about one’s city is now a central endeavor in the narratives of urban policy-making that center more and more on the idea of the entrepreneurial city. The making of an entrepreneurial image is enacted through various narrative genres that lie somewhere between place making and place marketing, between branding and boosting, between restoration and revanchism, between iconic architecture and mega-spectacle. This “imagineering” is not only part of the way cities try to (re)present themselves as entrepreneurial to various audiences through a real “image inflation” (Zukin, 2008, p. xii) but is 1 Forthcoming in: B. Lange,.A. Kalandides, B. Stoeber, I. Wellmann (Hrsg.) (2009): Governance der Kreativwirtschaft. Diagnosen und Handlungsoptionen. Transcript-Verlag, Bielefeld. 2 also inscribed in the various ways urban creativity and entrepreneurship can be studied, researched and imagined. In this chapter we aim to differentiate the political narratives of the entrepreneurial city as we emphasize the need to understand the politics of narration and make a plea for critical reflexivity in our forms of researching and theorizing. We will thus try to investigate how the politics of narration is intertwined with the narration of political concepts and will argue that the narrating of urban entrepreneurship can raise very different images and discourses of city life beyond those that are currently engineered. We will distinguish between a grand narrative, a counter-narrative, and an assemblage of more ambivalent little narratives, which we call prosaic narration. While the distinction between these three types might be seen as a bit too simple and “straight”, we believe that by juxtaposing these different forms of narration and alternating between them, we can help problematize the engineering of the city as entrepreneurial and imagine alternative views both of city life and of what is understood as its creativity.

Generic drugs in Spain: price competition vs. moral hazard

This paper examines competition between generic and brand-name drugs in the regulated Spanish pharmaceutical market. A nested logit demand model is specified for the three most consumed therapeutic subgroups in Spain: statins (anticholesterol), selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (antidepressants) and proton pump inhibitors (antiulcers). The model is estimated with instrumental variables from a panel of monthly prescription data from 1999 to 2005. The dataset distinguishes between three different levels of patients’ copayments within the prescriptions and the results show that the greater the level of insurance that the patient has (and therefore the lower the patient’s copayment), the lower the proportion of generic prescriptions made by physicians. It seems that the low level of copayment has delayed the penetration of generics into the Spanish market. Additionally, the estimation of the demand model suggests that the substitution rules and promotional efforts associated with the reference pricing system have increased generic market share, and that being among the first generic entrants has an additional positive effect.

Instal·lacions d'un local social

Projecte de construcció d'un edifici social per a activitats socials, de relació, culturals i esbarjo al municipi de Vilaür (Alt Empordà)

Autosuficiència energètica en una edificació aïllada

Estudi d’una masia aïllada, sense xarxa elèctrica ni sanejament urbà. Càlcul del pressupost de les instal.lacions per tal que la casa tingui una xarxa de sanejament, electricitat i aigua calenta de generació pròpies, sempre re manera respectuosa amb el medi ambient

Projecte d'instal·lacions d'un taller mecànic

Disseny de les instal•lacions per a un taller de reparacions mecàniques i deplanxa en una nau industrial a Esponellà, un poble prop de Figueres.Es tracta d’una nau de 352 m2 de planta baixa, amb un altell de 153 m2 on s’hiinstal•laran la oficina i un magatzem per recanvis. Les instal.lacions són les següents: Il•luminació, Elèctrica, Aigua freda sanitària, Aigua de sanejament, Aire comprimit, Renovació d’aire i Contra incendis

Projecte de construcció i instal·lacions d'una nau industrial

Aquest és un document composat per dos projectes independents. La partprincipal del document, un projecte de construcció d’una nau industrial iuna altra part secundària que és un projecte d’instal•lacions de la nauindustrial objecte del projecte de construcció.En el projecte de construcció s’estudia la construcció d’una edificacióindustrial destinada a la recuperació de palets de fusta. En el projecte deconstrucció es dissenya a partir de les característiques del terreny, lesnecessitats del client i els requeriments de l’activitat, una nau industriald’estructura mixta de formigó. Una part de l’estructura està formada perelements estructurals prefabricats per una empresa externa mentre, qued’altres elements estructurals, com és el cas de les sabates de fonamentació,es fabriquen a l’obra

Ocio y participación social de las personas mayores. Evaluación de un programa de Animación Sociocultural y Desarrollo Comunitario en la ciudad de Granollers

En este artículo se presenta una investigación que evalúa un programa de ocio y participación social (“Implica-Acción”) dirigido a personas mayores de Granollers. Dicho programa se implementó durante 7 años (2001-2008) siendo evaluado su impacto a los dos años siguientes de su finalización. Utiliza como base de su actuación la metodología de la Animación Sociocultural desde la que se promueve un modelo de Desarrollo Comunitario basado en los principios de participación, corresponsabilidad y construcción de ciudadanía. El objetivo ha sido verificar cómo la aplicación de dicha metodología en un contexto determinado puede promover procesos de participación ciudadana y actividades de ocio desde la perspectiva de la democracia cultural, incrementando a su vez la iniciativa social en barrios, territorios y/o espacios comunitarios