Emma Zavarrone

The Measure of Economic Re-Evaluation: a Coefficient Based on Conjoint Analysis

During the last 40 years conjoint analysis has been used to solve a wide variety of concerns in market research. Recently, a number of studies have begun to use conjoint analysis for the economic valuation of non-market goods. This paper discusses how to extend the conjoint analysis area of application by introducing a coefficient to measure economic re-evaluation on the basis of utility scores and the relative importances of attributes provided by conjoint analysis. We utilise the suggested coefficient for the economic valuation of a typical non-market good, such as a worldwide cultural event, to reveal the trade offs between its attributes in terms of revenue variation. Our findings indicate the most valuable change to be made to the existing status quo to generate economic surplus.

Satisfaction, Loyalty and WOM in Dental Care Sector

We propose two different measures of the dental care industry: (a) BALG matrix, a new instrument to measure patient loyalty and its extent; (b) SERVQUAL based approach to measure patient satisfaction. Further investigation concerns the link between patient satisfaction and loyalty. The results prove that patient loyalty in the dental care industry is similar to consumer behaviour in all the other B2B and B2C services and furthermore, the results highlight low dependency of patient satisfaction on loyalty.

Sparsity Data Reduction in Textual Network Analysis

In this paper, we propose a new strategy to derive an unweighted adjacency matrix from an affiliation matrix. The strategy is based on the use of a biclustering technique in order to reduce the sparsity of the matrix without changing the network structure. As an example, we implemented this approach to seek the common meaning of the term sustainability by using an affiliation matrix characterized by a core–periphery structure. The application of BiMax biclustering algorithm shows a sparsity reduction of the unweighted adjacency matrix with an invariant network structure.

Latent Growth and Statistical Literacy

In a world governed by thousands of data, the single number can still create fear among students of behavioral and humanities science. This paradox could be removed through the increase of statistical knowledge at both secondary and post-secondary education levels. Statistical knowledge has been studied in depth in the past, and it is well known as statistical literacy. The enhancement of statistical literacy should be realized under new teaching forms more familiar to the digital native generations. This note presents an experiment based on the use of an e-learning tool in order to increase the statistical literacy among Italian students of the humanities. Three cohorts of students were been examined, and the statistical literacy has been tested over time with a dual change difference score model. The results, in limited detail, confirm the initial hypothesis: If the teaching tools are closer to the characteristics of digital native generations, an improvement in statistical literacy can be realized, but the greater the statistical complexity, the less efficient the tools become.