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The purpose of this paper is to report the results of a study aimed at conceptualising and developing valid measurements for two key dimensions of product innovation performance‐efficacy and efficiency – in the context of firm competition.

Data were collected from French biotechnology firms. Using structural equations modeling, the constructs’ measurement models were tested and the scale was validated.

The results of the study indicate that the operational measures developed here satisfy the criteria for unidimensionality, reliability, and validity.

This study contributes to innovation management research by providing a set of valid and reliable operational measures. These measures are expected to help researchers in theory testing. Because of the sample features, final results should be considered with caution.

The proposed measurement scale for product innovation performance could be implemented as an innovation audit tool.

This paper provides a new measurement instrument for product innovation performance.

Analyzing the main determinants that lead a traveler to make a cultural trip is an important issue to understand where the cultural tourism market is going, and where the decision-makers should intervene. This study helps develop a profile of cultural tourism participants, and underscore the changes in this market niche. This information is crucial for the successful marketing and development of cultural tourism in the future.

The authors estimate a binary probabilistic (logit) model to determine the probability of a tourist to travel for cultural reasons, as a function of the traveler's socio-economic characteristic (e.g. age, gender, income or level of studies), of the trip-related characteristics (e.g. distance traveled to destination or mode of transport) and of the characteristics of the province of destination (e.g. weather conditions or existence of cultural sites at destination).

This study’s estimates reveal that middle-aged individuals, with a higher level of studies and with a medium level of income show a higher propensity to travel for cultural reasons. The latter finding evidences that cultural tourism has evolved from a niche market reserved for an elite clientele to a much wider range of people. Additionally, cultural travelers tend to travel statistically much longer distances. They are less prone to visit crowded destinations, prefer visiting destinations with important cultural sites, and are less sensitive to weather conditions. Finally, the authors discover a complementary effect of culture tourism and other activities carried out during the trip such as visiting cities or theme parks; and a substitution effect with “beach-and-sun” tourism.

The information given in this study can be crucial for the successful marketing and development of cultural tourism in the future. A better understanding of the main determinants of being a cultural traveler implies a better and a more efficient implementation of managerial and political measures to attract a kind of tourism characterized by a high spending capacity.

Discovering the main determinants of being a cultural traveler is a topic scarcely treated in the literature. This study has the main originality to include characteristics of the destination (pull factors) to explain the individual's decision to take a cultural trip. Moreover, the authors work at a provincial (NUTS-3) level of analysis, which makes this study original in the field of cultural tourism.

The purpose of this chapter is to shed light on some outstanding patterns of change observed in Spanish agriculture over the last decades, and to discuss the ways in which the productivist rationale is reproduced in them. We start by providing an overall picture of the structural transformations of agriculture revealed by the national statistics, calling attention to the increasing importance of a “hard core” of farms progressing under a rationale of growth and modernization. Later, drawing on the literature, we comment some meaningful trajectories of farm change observed in three selected Mediterranean farming systems, namely horticulture (as an example of a long-consolidated intensive agriculture), vine growing (an orientation which has undergone stunning changes in Spain in recent times), and small ruminant production (an extensive farming system with a high conservation value). The three farming systems are advancing, to a greater or a lesser degree, along intensification, concentration, and specialization pathways. However, the introduction of new elements in the most expansionary farm strategies (such as the participation in quality schemes) will provide interesting elements of discussion of the adaptable nature of productivism and its capacity to accommodate to external opportunities and constrains.

The current depletion of fossil fuels and environmental degradation are requiring greater energy efficiency in buildings, particularly in the residential sector. However, environmental improvement actions for dwellings are usually based on general considerations, without identifying the most appropriate measurements to be taken in each case, or reviewing their application with stakeholders. This article puts forward a strategy to propose effective and feasible modifications in the design or refurbishment of single-family homes to reduce energy use while maintaining indoor comfort. The improvements proposed are based on dynamic energy simulations of individual models adapted to local realities that can be carried out by regular professionals. The process includes the review of studies and information on the geographic area, and compilation of the constructive features and occupancy data of each house to create a proper energy behaviour model. Possible improvements to the building are then simulated separately in each model and the results recorded. Subsequently, a budgetary analysis of these alternatives according to construction costs and financial projections is carried out in order to identify retrofit packages and consult the opinions of residents and builders. The application of this strategy is demonstrated in the study of several houses in Concepción, Chile, where different sets of measures have been identified to achieve high reductions in energy demand while having low cost and being highly appreciated by the participants. This provides a methodology for developing and validating effective solutions for the environmental improvement of existing dwellings and new housing projects.

This paper aims to explore the concept of push and pull satisfaction and relates it with a uni-dimensional measure of satisfaction.

A factor structure is derived, comprising push and pull satisfaction factors which are related to the level of overall satisfaction. The empirical study was performed in Lisbon, one of the main cultural cities in Europe.

Results suggest that overall satisfaction reflects the tourist assessment of push and pull dimensions of satisfaction. Furthermore, results also demonstrate that satisfaction arose within the opportunity to experience the cultural and social specificities of a destination considering the appropriate facilities. Based on the study findings, implications for management and marketing are presented.

This study comprises various methodological limitations mainly concerning the sample size that was restricted to 323 cases as well as it only considers the cultural city of Lisbon. Thus, to improve and enhance the model, future works should consider a comparison between multiple cultural destinations. Future research may comprise a broader time window to undertake the possible variation of data.

This study represents a step forward to understand and predict tourist behaviour. Tourism scholars and practitioners should be aware that there is a need to consider further studies to develop more effective measurement scales to assess the considered constructs. For instance, the suggested assessment of overall satisfaction can be better to measure overall satisfaction by considering the idea of equity theory.

The study contributes to the literature in two major directions. First, the present study is one of few works that attempt to develop a scale to measure satisfaction issues through the use of an adaptation of push and pull motivations. Second, results demonstrate that all the factors present high loading values competing to explain overall satisfaction. Such empirical evidence has the value to propose that the functional attributes contribute to satisfy the most intrinsic desires of learning about a culture, art or even the famous traditional music Fado in a balance novelty. Thus, several attributes contributing to distinct factors are willing to be grouped under the same theoretical umbrella when tourists draw the evaluation of overall satisfaction, e.g. tangibles (entertainment) and intangibles (learn about music, art or museums).

Purpose – The main aim of this chapter is to analyse the implications of innovation and, directly and indirectly, of cooperation on the internationalisation of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS). Specifically, we analyse the potential impact of innovation capability on the propensity of KIBS to internationalise. We also look at whether cooperation has any influence on the international growth of these firms or on their innovation results.

Methodology/approach – This is an empirical research. Empirical analyses are based on information provided by the Spanish Technological Innovation Panel data for the period 2003–2005. Tobit and probit models are estimated to test our hypotheses.

Findings – The empirical findings support all our theoretical hypotheses. A positive relationship between cooperation, innovation and internationalisation of KIBS is also found. Thus, the results confirm the relevance of innovation for internationalisation. KIBS that establish collaborative relationships find access to international markets easier and improve their innovation capability. In these terms, cooperation is found to be directly and indirectly related with internationalisation in KIBS.

Originality/value of paper – The services sector is the most important sector in Spain and Europe nowadays, and it is the sector that has experienced the fastest growth in recent years. However, the research efforts it has received have not been commensurate with its size and role in international commerce. In general, the literature has paid scant attention to the relationships between innovation and internationalisation in services sectors, and more specifically, among KIBS. This chapter sheds light on this topic.

This chapter presents a global insight of the processes used in Lanzarote of Spain, a typical mass tourism destination which has combined growth with environmental protection and political commitment to sustainability. Tourism has been the key element of the development of the Canary Islands and helped in the construction of cultural identity and current social dynamics, as well as being the main source of direct and indirect economic resources. However, a detailed analysis reveals the paradox of tourism development and a progressive increase of the economic dependency of the industry, limited by the action of the local population who has seen improvements in their standard of living due to the implementation and development of tourism.

This paper aims to study the effect of imbalanced data in tourism quality models. It is demonstrated that this imbalance strongly affects the accuracy of tourism prediction models for hotel recommendation.

A questionnaire was used to survey 83,740 clients from hotels between five and two or less stars using a binary logistic model. The data correspond to a sample of 87 hotels from all around the world (120 countries from America, Africa, Asia, Europe and Australia).

The results of the study suggest that the imbalance in the data affects the prediction accuracy of the models used, especially to the prediction provided by unsatisfied clients, tending to consider them as satisfied customers.

In this sense, special attention should be given to unsatisfied clients or, at least, some safeguards to prevent the effect of the imbalance of data should be included in the models.

In the tourism industry, the strong imbalance between satisfied and unsatisfied customers produces misleading prediction results. This fact could have effects on the quality policy of hoteliers.

In this work, focusing on tourism data, it is shown that this imbalance strongly affects the prediction accuracy of the models used, especially to the prediction of the recommendation provided by unsatisfied customers, tending to consider them as satisfied customers; a methodological approach based on the balance of the data set used to build the models is proposed to improve the accuracy of the prediction for unsatisfied customers provided by traditional services quality models.