Predicting random level and seasonality of hotel prices. A structural equation growth curve approach

This article examines the effect on price of different characteristics of holiday hotels in the sun-and-beach segment, under the hedonic function perspective. Monthly prices of the majority of hotels in the Spanish continental Mediterranean coast are gathered from May to October 1999 from the tour operator catalogues. Hedonic functions are specified as random-effect models and parametrized as structural equation models with two latent variables, a random peak season price and a random width of seasonal fluctuations. Characteristics of the hotel and the region where they are located are used as predictors of both latent variables. Besides hotel category, region, distance to the beach, availability of parking place and room equipment have an effect on peak price and also on seasonality. 3- star hotels have the highest seasonality and hotels located in the southern regions the lowest, which could be explained by a warmer climate in autumn

Application of the european customer satisfaction index to postal services. Structural equation models versus partial least squars

Customer satisfaction and retention are key issues for organizations in today’s competitive market place. As such, much research and revenue has been invested in developing accurate ways of assessing consumer satisfaction at both the macro (national) and micro (organizational) level, facilitating comparisons in performance both within and between industries. Since the instigation of the national customer satisfaction indices (CSI), partial least squares (PLS) has been used to estimate the CSI models in preference to structural equation models (SEM) because they do not rely on strict assumptions about the data. However, this choice was based upon some misconceptions about the use of SEM’s and does not take into consideration more recent advances in SEM, including estimation methods that are robust to non-normality and missing data. In this paper, both SEM and PLS approaches were compared by evaluating perceptions of the Isle of Man Post Office Products and Customer service using a CSI format. The new robust SEM procedures were found to be advantageous over PLS. Product quality was found to be the only driver of customer satisfaction, while image and satisfaction were the only predictors of loyalty, thus arguing for the specificity of postal services

Simultaneous estimation of indirect and interaction effects using structural equation models

Interaction effects are usually modeled by means of moderated regression analysis. Structural equation models with non-linear constraints make it possible to estimate interaction effects while correcting for measurement error. From the various specifications, Jöreskog and Yang's (1996, 1998), likely the most parsimonious, has been chosen and further simplified. Up to now, only direct effects have been specified, thus wasting much of the capability of the structural equation approach. This paper presents and discusses an extension of Jöreskog and Yang's specification that can handle direct, indirect and interaction effects simultaneously. The model is illustrated by a study of the effects of an interactive style of use of budgets on both company innovation and performance

Predicting overall service quality: a structural equation modelling approach

In this article, the results of a modified SERVQUAL questionnaire (Parasuraman et al., 1991) are reported. The modifications consisted in substituting questionnaire items particularly suited to a specific service (banking) and context (county of Girona, Spain) for the original rather general and abstract items. These modifications led to more interpretable factors which accounted for a higher percentage of item variance. The data were submitted to various structural equation models which made it possible to conclude that the questionnaire contains items with a high measurement quality with respect to five identified dimensions of service quality which differ from those specified by Parasuraman et al. And are specific to the banking service. The two dimensions relating to the behaviour of employees have the greatest predictive power on overall quality and satisfaction ratings, which enables managers to use a low-cost reduced version of the questionnaire to monitor quality on a regular basis. It was also found that satisfaction and overall quality were perfectly correlated thus showing that customers do not perceive these concepts as being distinct

An LMI approach to H∞ synchronization of second-order neutral master-slave systems

The H∞ synchronization problem of the master and slave structure of a second-order neutral master-slave systems with time-varying delays is presented in this paper. Delay-dependent sufficient conditions for the design of a delayed output-feedback control are given by Lyapunov-Krasovskii method in terms of a linear matrix inequality (LMI). A controller, which guarantees H∞ synchronization of the master and slave structure using some free weighting matrices, is then developed. A numerical example has been given to show the effectiveness of the method

Proyecto del curso puente virtual “biofarmacia y farmacocinetica” para alumnos master procedentes de otros grados distintos al de farmacia

El Master en Investigación, Desarrollo y Control de Medicamentos del actual Programa Oficial de Postgrado (POP) en Farmacia, y dentro del nuevo marco del Espacio Europeo de Educación superior, viene siendo impartido en la Facultad de Farmacia de la Universidad de Barcelona. El Master objeto de estudio, “Investigación, Desarrollo y Control de Medicamentos”, tiene un carácter interdisciplinar implicando la participación en la docencia de ocho Departamentos de la Universidad de Barcelona

La Interacción entre estudiantes a través de la evaluación innovadora de los foros virtuales: una propuesta para la docencia universitaria en el marco del Master de Formación del Profesorado

La participación activa del alumnado así como su evaluación, correspondiente al Master de Secundaria en la asignatura 'Contexto de la Actividad Docente' se realizara conjuntamente entre los diferentes profesores implicados en el desarrollo teórico-práctico del módulo, el cual consta de cuatro grupos de docencia. Se expone uno de los aspectos más interesantes e innovadores es que el Master se imparte a alumnos de distintas especialidades y carreras de origen, desde Ingenieros hasta licenciados en matemáticas, física, geografía, arte, psicología, etc. a través de los foros virtuales para potenciar la comunidad de aprendizaje de cada participante, así como sus interacciones, favoreciendo el protagonismo de su proceso de aprendizaje