Brand equity in the Pakistani hotel industry

Brand equity is considered as the most important aspect of branding, which is a set of brands' assets and liabilities, its symbol or name that subtracts from or adds the value provided by a product or service to a firm and customers. The current research endeavor was to identify the interrelationship of customer-based brand equity dimensions (brand awareness, brand loyalty, brand image, and service quality) in Pakistani hotel industry. Data was collected from 821 consumers who experienced the services of Pakistani five star hotels from multiple locations. Mediating regression and stepwise regression analyses were applied for investigation of study hypotheses. Results pointed out positive and significant influences of service quality on all other dimensions of brand equity whereas partial mediations were endorsed among the variables. Researchers and practitioners implications are discussed.

Impacto de vídeo-jogos com tecnologia Matching Motion na actividade física de adolescentes obesos

Em Portugal, tal como na maioria dos restantes paises industrializados, a prevalência do excesso de peso e obesidade adolescente escalou para números que nos colocam entre os países da comunidade europeia com maiores problemas neste domínio (Matos, 2006). O aumento dos níveis de actividade física (AF) é parte integrante dos tratamentos hoje preconizados, pese embora seja um objectivo extremamente difícil de alcançar (AAP, 2006). Esta dificuldade deriva em parte das muitas actividades sedentárias que hoje em dia competem com a AF para a ocupação do tempo livre dos adolescentes. A maior parte parece motivá-los mais do que a AF. Por exemplo, cerca de 30% dos adolescentes portugueses estão 4 ou mais horas/dia a ver TV, enquanto que 40% estão 1-3 horas/dia a jogar video-jogos ou a usar PCs (Matos, 2006). Ver TV ou brincar a video-jogos sentado tem um impacto reduzido no dispêndio energético, aumentando entre 20-30% da taxa de metabolismo basal. Mas novos tipos de video-jogos estão agora disponíveis, implicando níveis de AF mais elevados para serem jogados, elevando em 120-180% da taxa de metabolismo basal (Lanningham-Foster et al., 2006). Estes novos jogos podem oferecer uma oportunidade para aumentar os níveis de AF numa população que tradicionalmente prefere as actividades sedentárias.

Current trends in the global tourism industry: evidence from the United States

Tourism is one of the largest U.S. industries, serving millions of international and domestic tourists yearly. Tourists visit the U.S. to see natural wonders, cities, historic landmarks, and entertainment venues. Americans seek similar attractions as well as recreation and vacation areas. Tourism competes in the global market, so it is important to understand current trends in the U.S. travel industry. Therefore, this article offers insight into important trends and suggests strategies for policy makers involved in the travel and tourism industry.

An approach to absorptive capacity based on the Portuguese textile industry

The main purpose of this research is to identify the hidden knowledge and learning mechanisms in the organization in order to disclosure the tacit knowledge and transform it into explicit knowledge. Most firms usually tend to duplicate their efforts acquiring extra knowledge and new learning skills while forgetting to exploit the existing ones thus wasting one life time resources that could be applied to increase added value within the firm overall competitive advantage. This unique value in the shape of creation, acquisition, transformation and application of learning and knowledge is not disseminated throughout the individual, group and, ultimately, the company itself. This work is based on three variables that explain the behaviour of learning as the process of construction and acquisition of knowledge, namely internal social capital, technology and external social capital, which include the main attributes of learning and knowledge that help us to capture the essence of this symbiosis. Absorptive Capacity provides the right tool to explore this uncertainty within the firm it is possible to achieve the perfect match between learning skills and knowledge needed to support the overall strategy of the firm. This study has taken in to account a sample of the Portuguese textile industry and it is based on a multisectorial analysis that makes it possible a crossfunctional analysis to check on the validity of results in order to better understand and capture the dynamics of organizational behavior.

An approach to absorptive capacity based on the Portuguese textile industry(Final version)

The main purpose of this research is to identify the hidden knowledge and learning mechanisms in the organization in order to disclosure the tacit knowledge and transform it into explicit knowledge. Most firms usually tend to duplicate their efforts acquiring extra knowledge and new learning skills while forgetting to exploit the existing ones thus wasting one life time resources that could be applied to increase added value within the firm overall competitive advantage. This unique value in the shape of creation, acquisition, transformation and application of learning and knowledge is not disseminated throughout the individual, group and, ultimately, the company itself. This work is based on three variables that explain the behaviour of learning as the process of construction and acquisition of knowledge, namely internal social capital, technology and external social capital, which include the main attributes of learning and knowledge that help us to capture the essence of this symbiosis. Absorptive Capacity provides the right tool to explore this uncertainty within the firm it is possible to achieve the perfect match between learning skills and knowledge needed to support the overall strategy of the firm. This study has taken in to account a sample of the Portuguese textile industry and it is based on a multisectorial analysis that makes it possible a crossfunctional analysis to check on the validity of results in order to better understand and capture the dynamics of organizational behavior.

The portuguese insurance industry: basis for strategic process decision

Nowadays, the Portuguese insurance industry operates in a market with a much more aggressive structure than a few decades ago. Markets and the economy have become globalised since the last decade of the 20th century. Market forces have gradually shifted – power is now mainly on the demand side. In order to meet the new requirements, the insurance industry must develop a strong strategic ability to respond to constant changes of the new international economic order.One of the basic aspects of this strategic development will focus on the ability to predict the future. We introduce the subject by briefly describing the sector, its organisational structure in the Portuguese market, and challenges arising from the development of the European Union. We then analyse the economic and financial structure of the sector. From this point of view, we aim at the possibility of designing models that could explain the demand for insurance, claims and technical reserves evolution. Such models, (even if based on the past), would resolve, at least partly, one of the greatest difficulties experienced by insurance companies when estimating the budget. Thus, we examine the existence of variables that explain the previous points, which are capable of forming a basis for designing models that are simple but efficient, and can be used for strategic planning.

Compression Efficiency Analysis of Wyner-Ziv Video Coding with Motion Compensated Side Information Interpolation

The Wyner-Ziv video coding (WZVC) rate distortion performance is highly dependent on the quality of the side information, an estimation of the original frame, created at the decoder. This paper, characterizes the WZVC efficiency when motion compensated frame interpolation (MCFI) techniques are used to generate the side information, a difficult problem in WZVC especially because the decoder only has available some reference decoded frames. The proposed WZVC compression efficiency rate model relates the power spectral of the estimation error to the accuracy of the MCFI motion field. Then, some interesting conclusions may be derived related to the impact of the motion field smoothness and the correlation to the true motion trajectories on the compression performance.

Statistical motion learning for improved transform domain Wyner-Ziv video coding

Wyner - Ziv (WZ) video coding is a particular case of distributed video coding (DVC), the recent video coding paradigm based on the Slepian - Wolf and Wyner - Ziv theorems which exploits the source temporal correlation at the decoder and not at the encoder as in predictive video coding. Although some progress has been made in the last years, WZ video coding is still far from the compression performance of predictive video coding, especially for high and complex motion contents. The WZ video codec adopted in this study is based on a transform domain WZ video coding architecture with feedback channel-driven rate control, whose modules have been improved with some recent coding tools. This study proposes a novel motion learning approach to successively improve the rate-distortion (RD) performance of the WZ video codec as the decoding proceeds, making use of the already decoded transform bands to improve the decoding process for the remaining transform bands. The results obtained reveal gains up to 2.3 dB in the RD curves against the performance for the same codec without the proposed motion learning approach for high motion sequences and long group of pictures (GOP) sizes.

Occupational exposure to volatile organic compounds in the Portuguese printing industry

In the printing industry, volatile organic compounds main sources are the uses of organic solvents, fountain solutions and cleaning agents. Nowadays, one circumstance which might confuse the exposure reality is that the majority of solvents which are often used have a faint odour. Therefore, the conditions at offset printing in regard to solvent exposure may seem acceptable to workers. Fortunately, general ventilation and local exhaust systems have also become more common, and new printing machines, often with automatic cleaning, have entered the market. The health effects of volatile organic solvents are dependent on the chemicals involved but, normally, are associated with affecting the nervous system, the liver and also the kidneys. The purpose of this study was to document the conditions regarding exposure to volatile organic compounds in an offset printing unit and to permit identify task with higher exposure and with priority for preventive measures application. Exposure assessment was done before and after installation of general ventilation and local exhaust equipments and during printing and cleaning procedure.

MDAI: Model based Design in Automobile Industry

It is proposed a new approach based on a methodology, assisted by a tool, to create new products in the automobile industry based on previous defined processes and experiences inspired on a set of best practices or principles: it is based on high-level models or specifications; it is component-based architecture centric; it is based on generative programming techniques. This approach follows in essence the MDA (Model Driven Architecture) philosophy with some specific characteristics. We propose a repository that keeps related information, such as models, applications, design information, generated artifacts and even information concerning the development process itself (e.g., generation steps, tests and integration milestones). Generically, this methodology receives the users' requirements to a new product (e.g., functional, non-functional, product specification) as its main inputs and produces a set of artifacts (e.g., design parts, process validation output) as its main output, that will be integrated in the engineer design tool (e.g. CAD system) facilitating the work.