Variations in seasonality in spa centres of Serbia

Seasonality of tourist demand imposes a number of issues related to the destination?s carrying capacity and business activities of the individual service providers in tourism. As one indicator of seasonal fluctuation of tourist demand, the Gini index is identified in order to establish monthly concentration of tourists. In this study, the Gini index was calculated for four spa tourism destinations in Serbia (Vrnjacka Banja, Sokobanja, Niska Banja, and Prolom Banja), in order to establish variability in the seasonality. The research took into consideration the period 2010-2019. Research results indicate that Niska Banja Spa has the lowest values of the Gini index, while Vrnjacka Banja Spa and Sokobanja Spa have the highest values, whereby no values are higher that .45 (mostly between .30 and .39). Given that the theoretically lowest value of the Gini index is 0 (smallest seasonal concentration) and the highest is 1 (biggest concentration), the selected spas still do not have particularly high degree of seasonal concentration of tourists. Possibilities for reduction of tourist demand seasonality are pointed out, given its impact on tourism planning and its economic effects.

The devil is in the detail. Disclosing the impact of religion on the milk system in Ethiopia

The influence of religion within food systems in developing economies has been understated in scholarly studies. With its different Christian, Islamic, and traditional faiths, Ethiopia offers a promising field for investigating the impact of religion on the milk system, the most important animal protein source in Ethiopian diets. In a first chapter, we investigate how the presence of a religious fasting period influences household milk intake in the country. The second and third chapter explore how milk producers have adapted to the demand seasonality caused by religious fasting practices in two different major milk production areas. In the two final chapters we investigate if and how religious ties facilitate milk transactions. This dissertation concludes that religious fasting practices have a clear impact on milk consumption and production in the country, thereby creating considerable market inefficiencies. Furthermore, we find evidence of market coordination problems along. KEY WORDS: COORDINATION PROBLEMS, DEMAND SEASONALITY, ETHIOPIA, MILK SYSTEM, RELIGION

Neural Network with Specialized Knowledge for Forecasting Intermittent Demand

Demand forecasting is an essential part of an efficient inventory control system. However, when the demand has an intermittent or lumpy behavior, forecasting it becomes a challenging task. Several methods have been developed to solve this issue, but nonetheless, they only consider the information about the occurrence of demand, failing to assess the drivers of the data behavior. With the current digitalization of the industry, more data is available and, therefore, the chances of finding a causal relationship between the available data and the demand increases. Considering that, this paper proposes a single-hidden layer neural network for forecasting irregularly spaced time series with attributes conveying information about the past demand, seasonality of the data and specialized knowledge about the process. The neural network proposed is compared with benchmark neural networks and traditional forecasting methods for intermittent demand using three different performance measures on actual demand data from an industry operating in the aircraft maintenance sector. Statistical analysis is conducted on comparison results to identify significant differences in the forecasting methods according to each performance measure.

A Framework for Classifying Causal Factors of Tourism Demand Seasonality: An Interseason and Intraseason Approach

This study proposes a framework for classifying the causal effects of tourism demand seasonality, linking between season effects (interseason) with within season effects (intraseason). The literature has typically investigated the causes of tourism demand seasonality as isolated static factors, mostly ignoring the possibility of interseason and intraseason impacts. This study contributes to the literature by providing a system of categorizing the drivers of tourism demand seasonality, by introducing additional causal factors, and by using an alternative seasonal smoothing technique. The methodology includes data decomposition, panel unit root tests, and instrumental variable regression, distinguishing between peak and shoulder seasons. The findings, based on a case study, identify vigorous–irregular and moderate–irregular factors being the most prominent drivers of U.S. tourism demand seasonality, which could assist in specific policy recommendations for more sustainable management of tourism demand seasonality.

The Devil is in The Detail: Disclosing The Impact of Religion on the Milk System in Ethiopia

The influence of religion within food systems in developing economies has been understated in scholarly studies. With its different Christian, Islamic, and traditional faiths, Ethiopia offers a promising field for investigating the impact of religion on the milk system, the most important animal protein source in Ethiopian diets. In a first chapter, we investigate how the presence of a religious fasting period influences household milk intake in the country. The second and third chapter explore how milk producers have adapted to the demand seasonality caused by religious fasting practices in two different major milk production areas. In the two final chapters we investigate if and how religious ties facilitate milk transactions. This dissertation concludes that religious fasting practices have a clear impact on milk consumption and production in the country, thereby creating considerable market inefficiencies. Furthermore, we find evidence of market coordination problems along

Religion, Food Choices, and Demand Seasonality: Evidence from the Ethiopian Milk Market

The impact of religious behavior on food systems in developing economies has been understated in scholarly studies. With its different Christian, Islamic, and traditional faiths, Ethiopia emerges as a suitable country to investigate the impact of religious practices on demand. The inclusion of livestock products in Ethiopian diets is extremely low, even by African standards, a phenomenon often explained by supply and marketing problems combined with low income levels. We deviate from this dominant narrative and single out the impact of religion. We show how fasting practices of Orthodox Christians, the largest religious group, affect milk intake decisions and channels through which consumed milk is sourced. Employing country-wide data collected by the Living Standards Measurement Studies, we find, as expected, that Orthodox fasting adversely affects milk consumption and decreases the share of milk sourced from own production in Orthodox households, an effect we quantify in this paper. Moreover, we observe spillover effects of Orthodox fasting on other religious groups in dominant Orthodox localities. Our findings improve understanding of the broader societal implication of religiously inspired consumption rituals and underscore the challenges resulting from religion-induced demand cycles to design policies that aim at developing the livestock sector.

Optimizing Inventory for Chicken Egg Livestock Industry

This study is to give an alternative of an optimum inventory model for chicken egg livestock industry. The characteristic of the egg livestock industry is very unique; since the chicken breeding performance varies. In a particular span of time, the industry might have ameliorating and deteriorating characteristics. Some farmers nourish several generations at the same time. This study generates a mathematical model to optimize the length time between purchases of a chicken generation to get optimum cost by considering demand seasonality. This study is also generating the algorithm to find the optimum solution in a simple way. Future potential researches are also stated.Keywords: Optimization, inventory, egg, chicken, ameliorating

DETERMINANTS OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOR: TRENDS AND DEMAND SEASONALITY

The article is devoted to forecasting demand based on the study of consumer behavior and the factors that determine this behavior. Identifying trends and assessing the impact of seasonality on demand generation is the first challenge in describing typical consumer choice behavior. The consumption effect describes how Habitual buying behaviour is Identifying trends and the seasonality of demand. The solution to the current task was to a retrospective analysis of retail sales. Such issues how the assessment of seasonality, the identification of a general trend, the interdependence of sales of alternative fuels have been researched under this article. The trends noted to decrease in the volume of fuel consumption, differences in the structure of retail turnover, and the total demand for motor fuel should be viewed as behavioral changes in the end-users. While gasoline and gas are mainly sold through the filling stations, the share of diesel fuel sales through filling stations is less than a fifth of the total sales. Structural changes in the retail fuel implication are that the fuel market is being replaced by cheaper substitutes - gas. In this article, we consider that the analysis of seasonality is the initial stage of forecasting the dynamics of demand. Seasonality was estimated for each fuel and for the group of motor fuels as a whole, for retail sales and total fuel consumption. The results of the analysis showed that gasoline and gas sales are moderate seasonality. Diesel fuel is characterized by the greatest amplitude of seasonal fluctuations. The seasonal activity the consuming-industries of diesel fuel explains the dynamics of demand, which is typical for secondary demand goods. Studying seasonality to determine its effect on demand includes: applying a multiplicative seasonality model for analyzing time series of demand and building a model for time series components; calculation of seasonality indices based on the average annual consumption level for prepare data and forecasting dynamics; comparison of peaks of seasonality and the amplitude of non-seasonal demand fluctuations to assess the impact of market factors. The study did not confirm that the seasonality of fuel consumption determines the seasonality of prices; no correlation was found between price fluctuations and the seasonality factor.

The perceived effectiveness of social couponing campaigns for hotels in Italy

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effectiveness of social couponing campaigns for hotels. In particular, the perceived effectiveness related to four specific objectives is explored (acquiring and retaining new customers, building brand awareness, balancing seasonality and stimulating demand among existing customers). Design/methodology/approach – A questionnaire-based survey was conducted that involved 108 hotels, each of which has run at least one social couponing campaign through Groupon in Italy. The importance-performance approach was applied to analyze the data. Findings – Overall, the perceived effectiveness of social couponing for hotels is quite low. Social couponing is useful to increase brand awareness but does not encourage customer behavioral loyalty. Larger hotels can successfully use this marketing tool to balance demand seasonality. Research limitations/implications – The sample size is limited but includes approximately one-fourth of all Italian hotels that have run social coupon campaigns through Groupon. Only social couponing campaigns run through one daily deal site (Groupon) in one country (Italy) were considered. Practical implications – Social couponing is not perceived as equally effective for all hotels. This study provides hotel managers with suggestions for deciding whether to allocate a share of their marketing resources to social couponing. Originality/value – To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to present field data to complement the available theoretical knowledge on social couponing for hotels.