José Antonio Varela González

Impression management tactics and affective context: influence on sales performance appraisal

Purpose – Despite the recognition that the subordinates influence is a particularly noteworthy feature of the social context with considerable potential to affect the performance evaluation process, there are almost no studies that consider this influence in a selling context. Attempting to contribute to address these needs, the model presented here depicts a number of social and situational factors influencing supervisors rating of salespersons performance, primarily operating through affective processes.Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from 122 salespeople and their immediate managers from 35 firms pertaining to nine different industries.Findings – SEM results indicated that supervisor‐focused impression management was positively related to the supervisors liking of the salesperson. Consistent as well with prior research is the positive influence of supervisors affect towards salesperson on the supervisors ratings of sales performance, both directly and indirectly, through the eff...

New services margin/high success discriminators

The present range of services, particularly financial, is subject to high privatisation and competition. Anticipating the future return of new projects is a critical challenge that confronts marketing managers at present. However, the transfer of success models from new products to services has not allowed a global vision of the internal and external environment that best set up the success of new services. Using a sample of 120 new Portuguese financial services (67 successful/57 failures), this study examines the relationships foreseen by a global model of success determinants of new services, i.e., formulates and tests hypotheses relative to the differentiated impact of the strategic and environmental factors on the multiple return indicators. The results of a binary logistic regression analysis suggest that a group of factors that best discriminate between new services of average and high return, through its different indicators that distinguishes the factors, is slightly different and less than one that distinguishes between successful and failed innovations.

Caso de Estudio en la Bahía de Jagua al Sur de Cuba Mediante un Acoplamiento WRF/CALMET

CALMET meteorological model was evaluated during a typical period of dry season in a coastal domain in the Jagua bay at the south of Cuba, for TERRAD parameter. Several resolutions and four different CALMET input datasets were used. The evaluation was focused in terms of model performance of wind and surface temperature issues. As input data, the WRF model results and meteorological measurements of different stations were combined. WRF model surface speed results has been significantly improved by CALMET model. A slightly improvement is obtained with resolution increasing. A high value of TERRAD of 80 km was obtained as the best fit for this parameter that matches with the domain size. The statistical results (both relative and absolute) were calculated on the stations that were not used as input data. Statistical relative values of wind speed were high, due to weak winds over the study period. However, the absolute ones were better. Significant improvement was also observed in wind speed and temperature for relative and absolute statistical values, when more stations as input data were provided.