Using household survey data for Albania, the paper investigates the effect of remittances on health capital accumulation. Total expenditure is divided into two categories: expenditure on medicines and expenditure on visits and laboratory services. The estimation is presented for two separate sub groups, rural and urban area. In the paper both instrumental variable and propensity score matching are used to give answer to the research question about the impact of remittances in the health capital investment.The findings indicate that households increase their expenditure for medicines and other health services in the presence of remittance income. The positive relationship is statistically significant in the case of remittance receiving households living in the rural area. The magnitude is lower in the case of total expenditure for visits and laboratory. However, total expenditure for visits and laboratory are likely to have significant impact on the health outcome given their prevention nature. These findings show that remittance flows pay a heterogeneous role in the decision making process of remittancereceiving household members. However, these non-labor income flows may play an important role in supporting expenditures, especially for those living in rural areas.
This paper examines the influence of Customer Relationship Management on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty in the Albanian Tourism Industry. Despite the fact that CRM positive influence on customer satisfaction is widely accepted as a rule of thumb, very little research has been done to further investigate on such a theory. Hence, the study tries to find out if an effective Customer Relationship Management strategy indeed influences customer satisfaction and loyalty. The empirical research attempts to unveil the relationship between Customer Relationship Management Effectiveness, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty by analyzing five CRM attributes, namely; Organizational commitment, Customer experience, Processdriven approach, Reliability and Technology Orientation. Results show that not all CRM features influence or equally influence customer satisfaction and loyalty. Furthermore, it proves that customer satisfaction is indeed a strong mediator of customer loyalty. Based on the results of the study, only organizational commitment, customer experience, process-driven approach and reliability influence customer satisfaction while only reliability positively influences customer loyalty. The hypotheses are tested using information collected from customers through structural equation model approach. The empirical results of this study have academic and managerial implications since they add to the existing body of knowledge and at the same time help CRM managers in the decision making process.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.