Online reputation of agri-food companies and determining factors: an empirical investigation

In an increasingly technology-oriented society, companies should ensure not only that they have an Internet presence but also that they are conveying the right image. According to the resource-based view, online reputation is a key intangible asset for successful technological business change. The aim of this research is to analyze the online reputation of companies in the agri-food sector, identifying the factors that have an impact on it. For this purpose, fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis is used. The results show that online reputation is conditioned by legal form and attributes associated with the company website. Such attributes include website quality, the presence of information associated with corporate social responsibility, the use of a secure connection, and the sale of organic products. The results provide strategic guidelines for public and private decision makers to exploit the full potential of ICTs.

A Decision-Support System to Analyse Customer Satisfaction Applied to a Tourism Transport Service

Due to the perishable nature of tourist products, which impacts supply and demand, the possibility of analysing the relationship between customers’ satisfaction and service quality can contribute to increased revenues. Machine learning techniques allow the analysis of how these services can be improved or developed and how to reach new markets, and look for the emergence of ideas to innovate and improve interaction with the customer. This paper presents a decision-support system for analysing consumer satisfaction, based on consumer feedback from the customer’s experience when transported by a transfer company, in the present case working in the Algarve region, Portugal. The results show how tourists perceive the service and which factors influence their level of satisfaction and sentiment. One of the results revealed that the first impression associated with good news is what creates the most value in the experience, i.e., “first impressions matter”.