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The purpose of this paper is to explain how to model moderating effects of composites using partial least squares (PLS) path modeling. It provides the methodological underpinning of moderating effects in general and describes the various approaches for forming the interaction term, i.e., the product indicator approach, the two-stage approach, and orthogonalization.

The paper discusses the use of standardized vs unstandardized construct scores and introduces spotlight analysis as a useful way to report findings.

Researchers should rely on unstandardized estimates when analyzing moderating effects. Centering or orthogonalization can help improve the interpretability of path coefficients.

PLS software implementations should facilitate unstandardized estimates.

This paper formulates step by step guidelines for analyzing moderating effects of composites using PLS path modeling. It is the first to propose spotlight analysis for PLS path modeling.

Although practitioners and scholars alike embrace service customization as a possibly powerful management instrument, its impact on customer relationships as well as contingencies for its effective application are not well understood. Drawing from relationship marketing and exchange theory, this paper aims to develop a model of customer relationship outcomes of service customization and the efficacy of service customization.

Two large‐scale, representative, cross‐sectional studies in different service industries based on the European Customer Satisfaction Index framework are conducted, and PLS path modeling is applied to test the model.

Customization increases perceived service quality, customer satisfaction, customer trust, and ultimately customer loyalty toward a service provider. Customization has both direct and mediated effects on customer loyalty and interacts with the effects of customer satisfaction and customer trust on loyalty.

Service customization is a viable instrument for relationship marketing. Its efficacy depends on customer satisfaction and customer trust. While this study solely focuses on the impact of service customization, future research could assess the relative importance of service customization in the presence of other relationship marketing instruments.

Service providers can use service customization as an effective instrument for achieving not only higher customer satisfaction, but also higher customer loyalty. Service customization is most effective for companies that have deficits in satisfying their customers, while at the same time their customer relationships are characterized by a high level of trust. These results help managers to decide upon resource allocation to enhance customer satisfaction, trust and loyalty.

This paper investigates the simultaneous effects of service customization on customer loyalty and other relationships variables and offers new insights relatively to the nature and size of customization effects. It fills an important gap in the knowledge of customization outcomes, and clarifies under which circumstances service customization is most effective. The paper is of great value for service providers that face the decision whether to customize their offering or not.

To investigate the effect of service personalization on loyalty, and to measure some of the psychological dynamics of the process.

Structural equation modeling.

It is shown that the effect of service personalization on loyalty exists, but that the effect is not all direct. Personalization works through improving service satisfaction and trust. Personalization and improved communication act together in such a way that they account for the variance in loyalty that would be otherwise explained by corporate image.

Data, though comprising a very large probability sample, are from one economic sector in one European country.

Service personalization is a powerful way to retain customers in its own right. In addition, the other results show that personalized service can partially replace the effects of communication and corporate image on loyalty. This argues that personalized service can be a powerful addition to mass communications.

Growing conventional wisdom in marketing argues that customer loyalty is responsible for large fractions of the profits of many service businesses. Constructs such as satisfaction, trust, customer collaboration, customer interaction, firm image, personalization, learning relationships, and so forth, have all been proposed as intermediate objectives, or as tools to build loyalty. Yet, to date, only some of these constructs have been measured and shown to be related to loyalty. This paper fills a portion of the empirical gap by showing that service personalization, indeed, affects loyalty, above and beyond the other explanatory variables.

The purpose of this study is to numerically and experimentally investigate the natural convection heat transfer in flat plates and plates with square, trapezoidal and triangular corrugations.

This work is an extension of the previous studies by Verderio et al. (2021a, 2021b, 2021c, 2021d, 2022a). An experimental apparatus was built to measure the plates’ temperatures during the natural convection cooling process. Several physical parameters were evaluated through the experimental methodology. Free and open-source computational tools were used to simulate the experimental conditions and to quantitatively and qualitatively evaluate the thermal plume characteristics over the plates.

The numerical results were experimentally validated with reasonable accuracy in the range of studied RaLP for the different plates. Empirical correlations of Nu¯LPexp=f(RaLP), h¯conv=f(RaLP) and Nu¯LPexp⋅(A/AP)=f(RaLP), with good accuracy and statistical representativeness, were obtained for the studied geometries. The convective thermal efficiency of corrugated plates (Δη), as a function of RaLP, was also experimentally studied quantitatively. In agreement with the findings of Oosthuizen and Garrett (2001), the experimental and numerical results proved that the increase in the heat exchange area of the corrugations has a greater influence on the convective exchange and the thermal efficiency than the disturbances caused in the flow (which reduce h¯conv). The plate with trapezoidal corrugations presented the highest convective thermal efficiency, followed by the plates with square and triangular corrugations. It was also proved that the thermal efficiency of corrugated plates increases with RaLP.

The results demonstrate that corrugated surfaces have greater thermal efficiency than flat plates in heating and/or cooling systems by natural convection. This way, corrugated plates can reduce the dependence on auxiliary forced convection systems, with application in technological areas and Industry 4.0.

The empirical correlations obtained for the corrected Nusselt number and thermal efficiency for the corrugated plate geometries studied are original and unpublished, as well as the experimental validation of the developed three-dimensional numerical code.

The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical insights about service branding from higher education administrators (HEAs) perspectives and to identify the main factors involved in their strategic thinking in this sector.

Adopting a qualitative approach, 22 in-depth interviews were performed in Brazilian HEAs to analyze service branding as a strategic institutional process in this context.

Findings reveal that service branding depends on several factors, e.g., in this case, deep integration between branding and services, leadership involvement, strong value propositions, sharing of strategic guidelines, branding experiences and, finally, credibility and reputation. Excellence of service is considered essential in higher education (HE) and, therefore, service branding faces the challenge of promoting the provision of quality services.

Although there have been many studies relating to HE and branding, few authors have studied service branding in educational sector and which issues must be observed in a competitive marketplace.

This study aims to achieve a “pseudo-ductile” behaviour in the response of hybrid fibre reinforced composites under uniaxial traction by solving properly formulated optimization problems.

The composite material model is based on the combination of different types of fibres (with different failure strains or strengths) embedded in a polymer matrix. The composite failure under tensile load is predicted by analytical models. An optimization problem formulation is proposed and a Genetic Algorithm is used. Multi-objective optimization problems balancing failure strength and ductility criteria are solved providing optimal mixtures of fibres whose properties may come either from a pre-defined list of materials, currently available in the market, or simply assuming their continuum variation within predefined bounds, in an attempt to attain unprecedented performance levels.

Optimal solutions of hybrid fibre reinforced composites exhibiting pseudo-ductile behaviour are presented. It is found that a fibre made from a material exhibiting relatively low stiffness combined with high strength is preferred for hybridization. Furthermore, the ratio of the average failure/critical strains between the low and high elongation fibres to be hybridized must be equal or greater than two.

Typically, a ductile failure is an inherent property of metals, that is, their typical response curve after the linear (elastic) region exhibits a yielding plateau still followed by an increase in stress till collapse. In stark contrast, composite materials exhibit (under some loading conditions) brittle failure that may limit their widespread usage. Therefore, a “pseudo-ductility” in composites is valued and targeted through optimization which is the main original contribution here.

The purpose of this study is to numerically investigate the geometric influence of different corrugation profiles (rectangular, trapezoidal and triangular) of varying heights on the flow and the natural convection heat transfer process over isothermal plates.

This work is an extension and finalization of previous studies of the leading author. The numerical methodology was proposed and experimentally validated in previous studies. Using OpenFOAM® and other free and open-source numerical-computational tools, three-dimensional numerical models were built to simulate the flow and the natural convection heat transfer process over isothermal corrugation plates with variable and constant heights.

The influence of different geometric arrangements of corrugated plates on the flow and natural convection heat transfer over isothermal plates is investigated. The influence of the height ratio parameter, as well as the resulting concave and convex profiles, on the parameters average Nusselt number, corrected average Nusselt number and convective thermal efficiency gain, is analyzed. It is shown that the total convective heat transfer and the convective thermal efficiency gain increase with the increase of the height ratio. The numerical results confirm previous findings about the predominant effects on the predominant impact of increasing the heat transfer area on the thermal efficiency gain in corrugated surfaces, in contrast to the adverse effects caused on the flow. In corrugations with heights resulting in concave profiles, the geometry with triangular corrugations presented the highest total convection heat transfer, followed by trapezoidal and rectangular. For arrangements with the same area, it was demonstrated that corrugations of constant and variable height are approximately equivalent in terms of natural convection heat transfer.

The results allowed a better understanding of the flow characteristics and the natural convection heat transfer process over isothermal plates with corrugations of variable height. The advantages of the surfaces studied in terms of increasing convective thermal efficiency were demonstrated, with the potential to be used in cooling systems exclusively by natural convection (or with reduced dependence on forced convection cooling systems), including in technological applications of microelectronics, robotics, internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence, information technology, industry 4.0, etc.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the results presented are new in the scientific literature. Unlike previous studies conducted by the leading author, this analysis specifically analyzed the natural convection phenomenon over plates with variable-height corrugations. The obtained results will contribute to projects to improve and optimize natural convection cooling systems.

The study aims to show how organisational corporate social responsibility (CSR) can influence workers’ attitudes, especially in terms of turnover intentions (TI). A second aim is to explore the social exchange process that may underlie this relationship, by examining the mediating role of leader–member exchange (LMX) and the moderation role of perceived external prestige (PEP).

The authors use structural equation modelling based on survey data obtained from 315 Portuguese individuals.

The findings show that the perceptions of CSR predict TI through the mediating role of LMX. Seemingly PEP appears to be moderating the relationship between TI and its determinants. These findings suggest that managers should implement CSR practices because these can contribute towards reducing TI.

This study enriches the existing knowledge about relationships in organisational contexts and responds to the need of understanding the underlying mechanisms linking CSR with workers’ organisational outcomes, by analysing CSR practices in a holistic stakeholder perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the determinants of per capita expenditures with disaggregate food away from home (FAFH) including variables such as family structure.

The authors estimated a system of expenditure equations (SUR method) with data from the latest Consumer Expenditure Survey of 2008–2009 – (or Pesquisa de Orçamentos Familiares – POF), considering the complex sample design in estimation procedures.

The authors found a positive relationship between woman’s opportunity cost of time and FAFH spending only when the authors considered the effects of wife’s education in higher income class. Hiring domestic help diminishes FAFH spending, mostly for lunch and dinner time meals. The presence of children in the household decreases the consumption of most FAFH categories.

Even though, Brazilian FAFH consumption has been increasing, the presence of women in the labor market seems to play a small role in the determining this type of food consumption. Family structure plays an important role in determining FAFH.

The contribution of the paper is to estimate FAFH expenditures at the disaggregate level and by income class for Brazil. The authors also included alternative family structure specifications as determinants in the model. The authors considered the sample design characteristics in estimation.