Rubén Huertas-García

University of Barcelona | UB · Department of Business

This chapter explores the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in market research and its potential impact on the field. Discuss how AI can be used for data collection, filtering, analysis, and prediction, and how it can help companies develop more accurate predictive models and personalized marketing strategies. Highlight the drawbacks of AI, such...

The outbreak of Covid-19 precipitated the use of service robots in customer-facing services as a replacement for employees to avoid human-to-human contact. However, this development has not resolved the debate as to whether robots should be characterized with gender attributes or simply be genderless. This study explores whether endowing a robot wi...

The identification of digital market segments to make value-creating propositions is a major challenge for entrepreneurs and marketing managers. New technologies and the Internet have made it possible to collect huge volumes of data that are difficult to analyse using traditional techniques. The purpose of this research is to address this challenge...

This chapter explores the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in market research and its potential impact on the field. Discuss how AI can be used for data collection, filtering, analysis, and prediction, and how it can help companies develop more accurate predictive models and personalized marketing strategies. Highlight the drawbacks of AI, such...

The digital environment, which includes the Internet and social networks, is propitious for digital marketing. However, the collection, filtering and analysis of the enormous, constant flow of information on social networks is a major challenge for both academics and practitioners. The aim of this research is to assist the process of filtering the...

The ability to install social intelligence protocols in robots in order for them to exhibit conversational skills has made them ideal tools for delivering services with a high cognitive and low emotional load. Little is known about how this capability influences the customer experience and the intention to continue receiving these services. Experie...

In Digital Marketing, the capture of consumers' personal data from social networks is essential for better targeting of commercial actions. The methods for collecting this information are arousing growing interest among the scientific community. This paper offers a comprehensive review of the literature on the issue and its management. To this end,...

In this article, we aim to evaluate the role of robots’ personality-driven behavioural patterns on users’ intention to use in an entertainment scenario. Toward such a goal, we designed two personalities: one introverted with an empathic and self-comparative interaction style, and the other extroverted with a provocative and other-comparative intera...

In recent years, in response to the effects of Covid-19, there has been an increase in the use of social robots in service organisations, as well as in the number of interactions between consumers and robots. However, it is not clear how consumers are valuing these experiences or what the main drivers that shape them are. Furthermore, it is an open...

In recent years, the rapid ageing of the population, a longer life expectancy and elderly people’s desire to live independently are social changes that put pressure on healthcare systems. This context is boosting the demand for companion and entertainment social robots on the market and, consequently, producers and distributors are interested in kn...

The Covid-19 pandemic has stimulated the use of social robots in front-office services. However, some initial applications yielded disappointing results, as managers were unaware of the level of development of the robots’ artificial intelligence systems. This study proposes to adapt the Almere model to estimate the technological acceptance of servi...

The present work aims to empirically analyse the halal food purchase intention from the perspective of Spanish consumers. This is considering the fact that even though Spain is a country where Muslims are not the majority, it still has a big potential to become a major halal tourist destination. The collected data were retrieved through a survey of...

Robots are expected to become part of everyday life. However, while there have been important breakthroughs during the recent decades in terms of technological advances, the ability of robots to interact with humans intuitively and effectively is still an open challenge. In this paper, we aim to evaluate how humans interpret and leverage backchanne...

This quantitative study aims to observe the purchase intention of halal food products in Spain from the perspective of Muslim tourists. 500 Muslim respondents who have visited Spain participated in answering our research questionnaire. The data were analyzed using the PLS-SEM method using SmartPLS 3.0 software. Our result shows that both the halal...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors that influence purchase intention of halal food among Spanish Muslim consumers. Data were obtained from a survey of 228 consumers living in various regions of Spain, then analyzed using the partial least squares technique. Our results showed that product awareness does not have an effect on pu...

The behavior of firms is changing as new kinds of businesses evolve. In particular, companies are now seeking to optimize their value, especially their intangible value—referred to as brand equity value—which has many behavioral drivers. The analysis of brand equity determinants in the financial sector (e.g., ethical investments, sustainability and...

Store flyers are still one of the most important marketing communication tools used by retailers to promote new products, announce new stores, and communicate special offers. Considering the important budget share of store flyers as a promotional tool in retailing, retailers and academics want to understand how their design influences consumers’ be...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between several aspects of store flyers design (presence of a institutional slogan, type of product (national brand (NB) or store brand (SB)) featured on the cover page, the size of the flyer, number of featured NBs, type of brand (NB vs SB) on promotion, and price difference bet...

p class="Abstract">The current model of competency-based learning requires new tools that allow students to develop these competencies and become active subjects of their learning (rather than passive receivers of a contents). Gamification or ludification is becoming an innovative trend in many areas, also in higher education. Games can provide a u...

Purpose Companies are increasingly incorporating support for social causes in advertising to improve brand image and increase sales, but it is unclear how these behaviours influence purchase intentions. This paper aims to analyse this relationship from a strategic perspective to assess whether the degree of fit of any of the five strategic dimensio...

The authors propose a Plackett-Burman experimental design to rearrange profiles in blocks in choice-based conjoint analysis as an alternative technique for measuring preferences that accommodate large numbers of options. Although in choice-based conjoint analysis profiles are usually randomly organised in blocks, we propose a manually statistical a...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to understand how an advertising campaign incorporating an ecological message affects heuristic structure of consumer preferences for hedonic (design and aesthetics) and utilitarian benefits (functionality and performance) provided by the product advertised. Also, the second objective is to reach an understand...

Purpose Adaptive conjoint analysis (ACA) is a market research methodology for measuring utility in business-to-business and customer studies. Based on partial profiles, ACA tailors an experiment’s design to each respondent depending on their previously stated preferences, ordered in a self-assessment questionnaire. The purpose of this paper is to d...

This case is an exploratory study of a particular area to identify emerging issues within the world of wine, including opportunities and challenges. These challenges are framed in the context of a tough financial settlement that has paralyzed public investment to the detriment of private investment. For this purpose, it is estimated that a number o...

The purpose of this case study is to promote the entrepreneurial skills of business students in the field of strategic tourism marketing. The case refers to the renowned wine region of Priorat in Catalonia (Spain) and shows a cause - effect situation in the framework of the deep and long crisis that Spanish economy is suffering since 2009.

The use of conjoint analysis for studying strategic decision processes is considered an improvement on the usual post-hoc methods. However, since joint experiments evaluate the perceptions of profiles of the environment, described by sentences, instead of evaluating preferences, arises the problem that the reporting burden generated by these scenar...

El análisis conjunto se ha convertido en la técnica más utilizada pare medir las preferencias de los consumidores sobre los nuevos productos que se van a lanzar al mercado. Uno de los elementos clave para su aplicación en investigación de mercados es su diseño experimental. Se trata de una matriz que describe las combinaciones de atributos y nivele...

Exposing individuals to erotic stimuli modifies perceived time horizons, causing subjects to assign greater value to the present than the future. This can be explained by different models, including the theory of visceral factors and evolutionary psychology. Specifically, evolutionary theory analyses the latest reasons as explanatory variables of t...

Purpose – This purpose of this investigation is to compare the perceptions of competitive advantage through cost leadership and differentiation with sustainable practices of wineries from the USA, Italy and Spain. Design/methodology/approach – Data are collected via self-report web-based surveys in California, Tuscany and Catalonia in 2010-2011 du...

Conjoint analysis is a technique used to study consumer preferences in market research. One of the most important issues is to determine the choice set which respondents must assess; usually factorial designs to estimate part-worth factors have been used. But, if the researcher is also interested in estimating two or more factor interactions, facto...

Confusion about what constitutes sustainability and the lack of incentives are two major factors interfering with the expansion of sustainability efforts in Spain’s wine tourism industry, according to a survey of forty-nine wine practitioners at forty-six small- and medium-size Spanish wineries. The study identified the following four overall strat...

The influence of cause-related marketing campaigns on consumer behaviour is a key topic of interest in recent marketing literature. Both brand- and cause-related individual's involvement are frequently incorporated into consumer response models. However, such involvements are based on the premise of a strong level of affinity towards the brand or t...

Internet has become one of the most important channels for the promotion and sale of services related to tourism. As a result, producers and distributors alike are keen to resolve the question as to which factors will determine website choice by internet browsers. In this paper we develop an experiment to determine the factors that need to be taken...

Netnography is a new qualitative research methodology. It adapts the techniques of ethnographic research to the study of emerging cultures and communities that communicate by computer in response to cultural phenomena associated with the rise of the internet and the increasing number of consumers who use it to keep themselves informed and to build...

La netnografía es una nueva metodología de investigación cualitativa que adapta técnicas de investigación etnográficas al estudio de culturas y comunidades emergentes a través de la comunicación mediada por ordenador, y surge como respuesta al fenómeno cultural del crecimiento de Internet y al creciente número de consumidores que utilizan la Red pa...

This paper aims to clarify and characterize the role of flow in student's behavioural processes in virtual learning environments. To this end, an integral model of flow in e-learning environments is proposed and tested. The empirical part of the research was based on both qualitative and quantitative techniques. The former consisted of seven in-dep...

The purposes of this study are to demonstrate how it is possible to determine which attributes are the most important in the final choices of tourists who use a travel agent brochure as a source of information and how these attributes influence perceived value in a pre-purchase stage. We conduct the study in three phases: (i) a qualitative study, (...

Purpose Internet is set to be one of the main channels of distribution in the future and already greatly facilitates product evaluation thanks to the information available on the net. The main advantages of electronic shopping over other channels include the reduced costs of searching for products and for product‐related information. Research has s...

Identifying relevant attributes or variables is the first objective of conjoint analysis in market research. As a result of technological development, today it is common for researchers to use sequential experimental methods for adjusting design factors in successive phases. In particular, in the field of consumer behaviour these models are used pr...

Preference formation developed during the consumer's evaluation of alternatives is one of the most important stages in models of consumer purchasing behaviour. This is especially true for the purchase of vegetables. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of extrinsic versus intrinsic attributes in the behaviour of consumer when purchasing...

The identification of relevant attributes is the first objective of conjoint analysis. Today, as a result of technological development, it is common for researchers to use adaptive conjoint analysis (ACA) which combines different types of research (e.g. self-assessment questionnaires with an orthogonal design for experiments). ACA, based on partial...

This paper explores users loyalty to airlines’ websites, by examining differences among users belonging to the Y, X and baby boomer generations. The results indicate that to obtain users loyalty to a company’s site, it is necessary to first, affective e-loyalty, through e-trust, which is also positively influenced by offline perceived value, e-sati...

Many studies have used an experimental design to evaluate the characteristics of effective communication and to attempt to identify relationships between specific controllable variables (factors such as the source and the message) and outcome variables (such as attention, comprehension, and attitudes, which affect willingness to purchase). The nove...

Internet has been viewed by many travel organizations as an innovative and competitive marketing tool in offering travel-related information and online transaction opportunities (Doolin et al., 2002). But, Internet also has proportionate opportunities to appear new intermediaries in the new hotel value chain (Connolly et al., 1998). A substantial p...

Customer satisfaction is an important objective in all areas of business and services. A key issue in today's design activities is to achieve customer satisfaction in an economical way by finding the attributes that are most valuable to customers. In this paper we propose a formal and efficient methodology to design a new service, which is an impro...

Customer satisfaction has become one of the main objectives in all areas of business, especially the tourist trade. One of the most difficult problems is to know how to obtain this satisfaction, which involves identifying customers’ needs and desires, and transferring them to our product or service specifications. In order to ascertain the consumer...

Customer satisfaction is an important objective in all areas of business and services. A key issue in today's design activities is to achieve customer satisfaction in an economical way by finding the attributes that are most valuable to customers. In this paper we propose a formal and efficient methodology to design a new service, which is an impro...

La satisfacción del cliente es uno de los objetivos principales de cualquier empresa y, en particular, de la gestión turística. Determinar qué deseos satisfacer y el cómo satisfacerlos es una tarea difícil. Para recoger la voz del cliente se le puede preguntar directamente o deducir sus deseos mediante métodos indirectos como es la experimentación....

Customer satisfaction has become one of the main objectives in all areas of business, especially the tourist trade. One of the most difficult problems is to know how to obtain this satisfaction, which involves identifying customers' needs and desires, and transferring them to our product or service specifications. In order to ascertain the consumer...

Increasing competitive pressure, the constantly accelerating transformation of the economy, and a stronger focus on value added have initiated the search for sustainable sources of competitive advantage. In this context, innovation has emerged as the new paradigm of superior performance, and economically useful knowledge (i.e. intellectual capital,...

Las empresas turísticas necesitan para poder competir ofrecer productos y servicios de calidad que satisfagan las necesidades de los consumidores. Esto implica disponer de un sistema de gestión de calidad que controle todo el proceso de prestación de servicios desde la compra de las materias primas hasta los servicios postventa. Un mecanismo habitu...

This paper addresses the implementation of financial cross functional links with the enterprise value-added chain including retrofitting activities at plant level when scheduling, planning and budgeting in short term planning in batch process industries. The main idea is achieving financial-supply chain integration into advanced planning and schedu...