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Consumer value creation through clothing reuse: A mixed methods approach to determining influential factors

2019 , Cruz Cárdenas, Jorge , Guadalupe-Lanas, Jorge , Velín-Fárez M.

Clothing reuse is a consumer disposal behavior that has been underexplored, although it has important consequences for the society. From the perspective of customer-dominant logic, reusing clothing is a consumer value creation behavior. To measure this tendency, we conducted a mixed method study in Ecuador, a developing Latin American country. We used 20 in-depth interviews followed by a survey of 425 adults to identify the factors associated with the tendency to reuse clothing. The study also identified gender differences regarding this behavior. Several factors in consumers' lives were revealed that explained the tendency to reuse clothing, including income, occupation, altruism, and physical environment. The study also showed that various population groups (e.g., lower income groups, younger individuals, students, and women) had a greater tendency to reuse clothing. © 2018 Elsevier Inc.

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Digital Divide: A Bibliometric Approach to Existing Knowledge

2023 , Cruz Cárdenas, Jorge , Palacio Fierro, Andrés , Zabelina E. , Deyneka O. , Ramos Galarza, Carlos

The topic of digital divide - the gap between those who have and those who do not have access to digital technologies - is of growing interest for both public and private sectors. This interest is reflected in an increasing number of academic and scientific publications focused on the topic. This study presents an overview of the digital divide research using a bibliometric approach. Analyzing 9,523 documents from the Scopus database, this study found that 1) there has been an accelerated growth in the publication rate on digital divide since 2018; 2) digital divide is a multidisciplinary field, led by the United States and other developed countries and some emerging countries; 3) the dominant term used to refer to the field, as per our analysis of the relevant keywords, is "digital divide"; and 4) as per our analysis of the evolution of keywords' importance, while topics related to technologies were of interest several years ago, current interest revolves around the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, the elderly, education, and healthcare access. © 2023 IEEE.

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Bibliometric Analysis of Existing Knowledge on Digital Transformation in Higher Education

2022 , Cruz Cárdenas, Jorge , Ramos Galarza, Carlos , Guadalupe-Lanas J. , Palacio-Fierro A. , Galarraga Carvajal, Mercedes

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have been feeling great pressure to advance in digital transformation. This pressure has been intensified with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic at the end of 2019. Because the digital transformation of HEIs has been attracting a growing number of publications, the present study sought to carry out a bibliometric analysis of such titles. For this purpose, 643 relevant documents were identified from the Scopus database in January 2022. The descriptive results show an accelerated growth of the relevant literature, with conference papers being the main form of publication, followed by articles, conference reviews, and book chapters. The areas with which the majority of documents were associated were computer science, followed by social science, engineering, and business and management. An analysis of the co-occurrence of terms based on the titles and abstracts enabled the identification of three thematic areas of interest: 1) digital transformation in teaching, particularly under the pressure exerted by COVID-19; 2) environmental influences on the digital transformation of HEIs; and 3) enabling technologies for digital transformation. A longitudinal analysis also based on titles and abstracts allows us to see how the primary focus shifted from the economic issue (in 2019) to the COVID issue (in 2021). This study concludes by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of the findings, demonstrating as a particularly interesting area for future research the study of the digital transformation of HEIs in a future post-COVID scenario. © 2022, The Author(s).

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From Face-to-Face Learning to Virtual Learning: Students’ Perspective

2023 , Cóndor-Herrera, Omar , Bolaños-Pasquel, Mónica , Ramos Galarza, Carlos , Cruz Cárdenas, Jorge

This article reports the results found in an investigation which analyzed the perception that students have regarding the virtual learning process developed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study involved 38 students from a Latin American institution whose age ranged from 13 to 15 years of age, who carried out their academic activities virtually for a school year, once the school period ended, a survey was applied to collect information on the experience in virtual classes, once the results have been analyzed, it is evident that the vast majority of students issued responses in favor of virtual teaching and that virtual classes served to develop their skills in managing technological resources, on the other hand a number of participants They did not indicate the learning experience as positive or negative. This may be related to the fact that a group of participants did not have good quality internet. In the same way, the results reflect that the students consider that not having adequate equipment and good quality internet quality are a limitation in the learning process virtual lift. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

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Consumer value creation through WhatsApp use: A qualitative multimethod approach in a Latin American scenario

2019 , Cruz Cárdenas, Jorge , Guadalupe, J , Zabelina E. , Palacio Fierro, Andrés , Velín-Fárez M. , Staniewski M.W.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand in-depth how consumers create value in their lives using WhatsApp, the leading mobile instant messaging (MIM) application. Design/methodology/approach: The study adopts the perspective of customer-dominant logic (CDL) and uses a qualitative multimethod design involving 3 focus groups and 25 subsequent in-depth interviews. The research setting was Ecuador, a Latin American country. Findings: Analysis and interpretation of the participants’ stories made it possible to identify and understand the creation of four types of value: maintaining and strengthening relationships; improving role performance; emotional support; and entertainment and fun. In addition, the present study proposes a conceptual model of consumer value creation as it applies to MIM. Practical implications: Understanding the way consumers create value in their lives using MIM is important not only for organizations that offer MIM applications, but also for those companies that develop other applications for mobile phones or for those who wish to use MIM as an electronic word-of-mouth vehicle. Originality/value: The current study is one of the first to address the topic of consumer behavior in the use of technologies from the perspective of CDL; this perspective enables an integrated qualitative vision of value creation in which the consumer is the protagonist. © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited.

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Blended Learning and Higher Education: A Bibliometric Analysis

2023 , Cruz Cárdenas, Jorge , Parra-Domínguez J. , Zabelina E. , Deyneka O. , Ramos-Galarza C.

Blended learning is defined as an educational model or a way of teaching that combines in-person education with online education. In recent years, due to its great potential, this type of teaching applied to higher education has aroused great interest on the part of professionals and academics. This growing interest has been reflected in the rapid growth in the number of publications on blended learning and higher education. This article seeks to contribute to the knowledge base by presenting an integrated overview of this growing body of literature, and to this end the authors use bibliometric techniques. As a basis for the analysis, 2,477 relevant articles in the Scopus database were selected. The descriptive results obtained show rapid growth in the number of articles published over the years, a dominance of publications associated with developing and emerging countries, and the leading role of social sciences. An analysis of the co-occurrence of terms allows us to establish four areas of interest: 1) Covid-19 and the challenges and opportunities it poses, 2) the effectiveness and performance of blended learning, 3) the organization and design of blended learning, and 4) the technological tools and forms of delivery of blended learning. An analysis of the overlay visualization of terms makes it possible to establish the evolution of the topics of interest in the research over the years. Initially, interest focused on issues relating to the organization and design of blended learning. Currently, interest is focused on Covid-19 and the challenges it poses. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

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Drivers of technology readiness and motivations for consumption in explaining the tendency of consumers to use technology-based services

2021 , Cruz Cárdenas, Jorge , Guadalupe-Lanas, Jorge , Ramos Galarza, Carlos , Palacio-Fierro A.

This study aimed to identify the way in which the optimism and innovativeness of consumers (drivers of technology readiness) affect their tendency to use technology-based services, an area that merits additional research. The study was conducted in two phases in Quito, Ecuador. In the first phase, three services were selected to be studied: online shopping, online banking, and online music streaming. In the second phase, the hypotheses were tested with a random sample of 754 adults. The results were consistent in the three structural equation models (one for each service). Optimism acts indirectly, through the mediation of hedonic and utilitarian motivations. Innovativeness acts through a similar indirect channel, but it also acts directly. One of the marketing implications of this study is that simply concentrating on consumer attitudes towards technology is not enough, since it is necessary to consider their indirect effects on the tendency to use a service. © 2020 Elsevier Inc.

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Temporal Focus as a Mediator between Cultural Values and Subjective Happiness: Evidence from Ecuador and Russia [Временной фокус как медиатор взаимосвязи между культурными ценностями и субъективным счастьем: на материале Эквадора и России]

2022 , Zabelina E.V. , Cruz Cárdenas, Jorge , Guadalupe-Lanas J. , Deyneka O.S.

Though numerous scholars have studied subjective time, its predictors and effects, the general model considering demographic variables, cultural values and level of wellbeing is not presented. This study seeks to bridge this gap by contributing a comparative study of two very different countries: Ecuador (N=745, aged 19—76, 48.7% male), a Latin American developing country, and Russia (N=428, aged 18— 72, 40.2% male), an emerging Eurasian nation. We assumed that temporal focus plays the role of a mediator in the relationship between cultural values and subjective happiness in both countries. To predict the temporal focus (Temporal Focus Scale by Shipp, Edwards, and Lambert, 2009) in both countries, based on the previous literature the study tests the importance of three groups of variables: demographic factors (gender, age, education, income), subjective happiness (Subjective Happiness Scale by Lyubomirsky and Lepper, 1999), and cultural values (Cultural Values Scale by Yoo, Donthu and Lenartowics, 2011). The first stage of analysis involved confirmatory factor analyses and invariance tests for the scales used. Subsequently, multiple regression models made it possible to establish that sociodemographic variables, introduced as covariates, had little influence on the prediction of people's temporal orientation. However, the cultural and psychological variables (long-term orientation, uncertainty avoidance and subjec - tive happiness) introduced as predictors played an important role in the prediction of temporal (current, past and future) focus. Additionally, there are some cultural and psychological predictors of temporal focus specific for each country. Ultimately, structural equation models demonstrated that temporal focus plays the role of the mediator in the relationship between cultural values and subjective happiness in both Ecuador and Russia. © 2022. Cultural-Historical Psychology. All Rights Reserved.

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Impact of Technology on Eating Disorders

2023 , Ramos Galarza, Carlos , López-Cárdenas M.J. , Cruz Cárdenas, Jorge

Eating disorders are a wide range of abnormal behaviors related to food and the vision of the body, and they are diseases that can cause permanent damage to the human being until death. It has been seen that there is a close relationship in the impact of social networks and the use of various technologies that have led new generations to shape their perspective of the body and their food in a different and complicated way. Technology becomes the link that people use to relate to the world and allows them to create and transform themselves around body stereotypes that lead them to modify the quantity and quality of their food. On the other hand, technology also provides the human being with an addictive and possibly sedentary part, which makes the person stop being active, having as a consequence anomalies in their diet such as weight gain. This article aims to consider the role of technology in eating disorders. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

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Consumer expenditures on clothing and footwear: a mixed methods study

2018 , Cruz Cárdenas, Jorge , Arévalo-Chávez P. , Guadalupe J.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to establish the predictors of consumers’ annual monetary expenditures on clothing and footwear in Quito, the capital of Ecuador, a developing Latin American country. Design/methodology/approach: The research followed an exploratory, sequential, mixed methods design. The first phase consisted of in-depth interviews with adult individuals. The second phase involved surveying a similar segment of the population. Findings: The present study supports the importance of demographic and psychological factors as predictors. The study also identifies two new groups of predictors: consumers’ reception of used clothing and physical space at home and its management. Practical implications: In addition to demographic variables, consumer panels that measure expenditures on clothing and footwear should include psychological measures of participants, particularly clothing involvement. Clothing manufacturers and retailers in developing countries should consider the impact of receiving used clothes by consumers. Because clothing buying and disposal behaviors are positively associated, companies should become more involved in their customers’ disposal behavior. Originality/value: The contribution of the present study is twofold. First, it contributes to the understanding of clothing and footwear expenditures by considering the individual consumer as a unit of analysis. Furthermore, it provides insights into this behavior from a little-studied context. © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited.