Theodoros Koutroumanidis

The adoption of e-commerce for wood enterprises

Lately, the internet has become a major means in electronic commerce (e-commerce), as it offers various advantages and benefits. In Greece, there are many Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) in the context of the timber trade and the wood processing and products sector that have already created a web presence in various stages of maturity. This paper studies the adoption of e-commerce in websites that support e-commerce activities within the timber trade and the wood processing and products sector. Therefore, the paper aims to identify and evaluate their qualitative and quantitative content characteristics, classify them as to their geographical distribution, rank them according to 13 content characteristics/criteria using the multicriteria method of PROMETHEE II and classify them in groups of similar adoption. The case of Greece was selected and the retrieved websites were studied and then ranked and classified accordingly. The findings of this study reveal the rate of adoption of e-commerce in the sector and can be a valuable model for the designers of the websites that promote e-commerce activities within the wider area of wood.

Optimising e-marketing criteria for customer communication in food and drink sector in Greece

In modern societies, internet has become |the key to success| for businesses, as it offers various advantages and benefits in e-commerce through e-marketing. The case of Greece was selected, as there are many enterprises in the food and drinks sector that have already created a web presence in various stages of maturity. This paper studies the use of e-marketing criteria in e-market places in the internet that support e-commerce activities referring to modern network applications and ways of promotion and function of enterprises. Therefore, the paper aims to optimise and evaluate them qualitatively and quantitatively according to six e-marketing criteria using the multicriteria method of PROMETHEE II and further to classify them in groups. Finally we can identify and describe the optimum group of e-market places to be used as a model for designers of websites promoting e-commerce activities within the wider area of food and drinks with enhanced customer communication services.

A multicriteria analysis of productivity of agricultural regions of Greece

A methodology is proposed as a tool of comparison of productivity and ranking of agricultural regions. The specific methodology takes into account more than one category of criteria-variables and it is applied in two stages. In the first stage the more important variables-criteria are selected from a set of variables-criteria using the Factor Analysis of Correspondences and at the second stage the ranking takes place with the application of PROMETHEE II multicriteria analysis method. This methodology was applied for the comparison of productivity and the ranking of the five prefectures of East Macedonia and Thrace in Greece, based on the most important agricultural products of these areas. The results showed that in the period 1990-1999 the prefecture of Kavala surpasses on the productivity and follows, in second place, the prefecture of Rodopi. The prefectures of Evros, Xanthi and Drama posses respectively the firth, fourth and fifth place.

Internet marketing for sustainable development and rural tourism

Internet is very widespread in all business sectors and has been an extremely important tool for the promotion of business sales. Moreover, internet-based marketing is widely accepted by tourism enterprises. Sustainable tourism refers to development in such a manner and at such a scale, that it remains viable over an indefinite period. There is a special relationship between the concept of sustainable tourism and the rural tourism. This paper assesses internet and e-marketing adoption for the sustainability of rural tourism enterprises, for the case of Greece. Rural tourism enterprises are analysed and further ranked as to their e-marketing features and ICT functions accomplished. An integrated-dynamic framework is developed for ranking the enterprises based on the multicriteria method PROMETHEE II and the results are discussed. Finally, we identify and describe the optimum enterprises to be used as a model for designers of websites promoting e-marketing activities for rural sustainability.

Assessment and optimization of e-commerce websites of fish culture sector

Fishculture has been flourishing during the last decades in Greece and EU. Many enterprises in fishfarming sector have already proceeded in employing e-commerce and they have created their websites. This paper aims to assess websites of commercial purpose within fishculture sector and identify their optimum group. As a case study it was selected the paradigm of Greece. Qualitative and quantitative content characteristics were identified in the retrieved websites that were further ranked according to 13 content characteristics/criteria using the multicriteria method of PROMETHEE II. Finally, the retrieved websites were classified in groups, aiming to identify the optimum group of websites concerning content characteristics. The optimum group of fishculture websites will be a useful standard while designing for a fish culture enterprise aiming to initially or further expand their e-commerce activities.

CHLfuzzy: a spreadsheet tool for the fuzzy modeling of chlorophyll concentrations in coastal lagoons

CHLFuzzy is a user-friendly, flexible, multiple-input single-output Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy rule based model developed in a MS-Excel® spreadsheet environment. The model receives a raw dataset consisting of four predictor variables, e.g., water temperature, dissolved oxygen content, dissolved inorganic nitrogen concentration, and solar radiation levels. It then defines fuzzy sets according to a collection of fuzzy membership functions, allowing for the establishment of fuzzy ‘if–then’ rules, and predicts chlorophyll-a concentrations, which highly compare to the measured ones. The performance of the model was tested against the Adaptive Neural Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS), showing satisfactory results. An extensive dataset of environmental observations in Vassova Lagoon (Northern Greece), during the years 2001–2002, was used to train the model and an independent dataset collected during 2004 was used to validate CHLFuzzy and ANFIS models. Although both models showed a similar performance on the training dataset, with quite satisfactory agreement between observed and modeled chlorophyll-a values, the best results were obtained using the CHLfuzzy model. Similarly, the CHLfuzzy model depicted a fairly good ability to hindcast chlorophyll-a concentrations for the verification dataset, thus improving ANFIS model forecasts. Overall results suggest that CHLfuzzy can potentially be used as a lagoon water quality forecasting tool requiring limited computational cost.

Malmquist productivity index estimates for European agriculture in the 1990s

In this paper the efficiency and productivity of the agricultural sectors in the EU countries and the thirteen candidate countries is investigated. For this purpose the DEA-based Malmquist productivity index is applied, a non-parametric approach that decomposes productivity changes into a technical efficiency change component and a technical change component, thereby allowing for the assessment of the comparative effectiveness of decision-making units. Results ascertain the differential effectiveness of agricultural sectors in the European countries, enable the identification of those with relative efficient agricultural sectors and provide information on the situation of the convergence process between EU and candidate countries.

Modeling sheep pox disease from the 1994-1998 epidemic in Evros Prefecture, Greece.

Sheep pox is a highly transmissible disease which can cause serious loss of livestock and can therefore have major economic impact. We present data from sheep pox epidemics which occurred between 1994 and 1998. The data include weekly records of infected farms as well as a number of covariates. We implement Bayesian stochastic regression models which, in addition to various explanatory variables like seasonal and environmental/meteorological factors, also contain serial correlation structure based on variants of the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process. We take a predictive view in model selection by utilizing deviance-based measures. The results indicate that seasonality and the number of infected farms are important predictors for sheep pox incidence.

Forecasting Bank Stock Market Prices with a Hybrid Method: The Case of Alpha Bank

The present study aims at constructing Confidence Intervals (C.I) for the predicted values of a Time Series with the application of a Hybrid method. The presented methodology is complicated and thus is completed in different stages. Initially the Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) is applied on the raw time series in order to estimate C.I of the forecasts. Then, the Bootstrap method is employed on the residuals generated by the preceded process. On the upper and lower limit of the estimated C.I., two new ANNs are employed in order to make point estimations (of the upper and lower limits) using of Object Oriented Programming. For the empirical analysis daily observations of the closing prices of Alpha Bank stocks have been used. The sample period is extended from 28/01/2004 until 30/11/2005. The nonstationarity of the time series employed in our study is not a forbidding condition for the estimation of the confidence intervals, in our case, since the level of bootstrap still provides a satisfactory approximation for the roots arbitrarily close to unity (Berkowitz, Kilian 1996). The accuracy of the forecasts was surveyed with the use of different criteria and the results were satisfactory.

Investigating Farmer’s Perceptions of Adopting Alternative Farming Systems

Organic and integrated agriculture are recently developed alternative farming systems aimed at controlling environmental impacts and assuring the quality of agricultural products. Here we aim to: (1) describe the characteristics of certified of organic and integrated farms; and (2) analyze the factors affecting the farmers’ decision to implement either organic, integrated or conventional farming. The survey was based on a multinomial analysis applied to data obtained from a survey of farmers (structured questionnaire) in Greece. The findings confirmed that the decision to opt for one of three forms of agriculture was based on both the farms’ characteristics and the farmer’s attitudes.