Starting from the publication of this issue Mercados y Negocios becomes a quarterly publication. We hope that this modification will help improve the editorial process to meet international quality requirements.

We are very happy to inform our readers that we have started the inclusion process in Scielo.Mexico . The task of editorial transformation has not been easy, and in this last stage, it has required modifying the flow of the editorial process. This transformation has been crowned with the opportunity to offer the reader the content of recent years in different formats through Marcalyc .

This issue contains four research articles and a bibliographic review, subjected to the peer-review process.

Collective Defined Contribution Schemes as an Alternative to Pension Plans, is the first article, written by Denise Gómez Hernández and Michael Demmler. It explores the financial and actuarial viability of a type of hybrid scheme known as a collective defined contribution (CDC), through the accumulation of a fund following the proposal of Aon (2020). The results show that this plan does achieve the replacement rate defined for all employees. In addition, through the same fund, profits and losses are financed so that this result prevails over time.

The second article was written by Yelly Yamparli Pardo Rozo, Octavio Hernández Castorena and Milton Cesar Andrade Adaime. Its title is Key Factors of Competitiveness and Sustainability in Livestock Systems of The Andean-Amazonian Piedmont. The objective was to identify factors of competitiveness and sustainability in livestock systems of The Andean-Amazonian Piedmont. In a sample of 60 farms in the area, a survey aimed at producers was run to identify internal and external factors for competitiveness and sustainability.

Data envelopment analysis was used to measure technical efficiency and an econometric model to identify the determinants of competitiveness and sustainability. The key factors of competitiveness were the profitability of the cattle and the forest extension within the farms. The main aspects related to sustainability were the reduction of environmental impacts of deforestation to increase carbon storage and the enhancement of ecosystem services. The increase of profitability and the establishment of sustainable systems of livestock production are the rallying points to improve competitiveness and sustainability in livestock of the Amazonian foothills.

Motivation as a Driver of Customer Service: The Impact on Automobile Dealerships is the next article. Its authors are Roxana Dalila Escamilla, Adriana Segovia-Romo and Maria Mayela Terán Cázares. The objective of the research is to analyze the relationship of Motivation as a soft skill that drives Customer Service in car dealerships, specifically in sales area employees.

The survey was applied to a sample of 81 managers from the sales area of automotive agencies in the Monterrey metropolitan area. The proposed model was linear regression. The surveys were processed with SPSS Statistics. The hypothesis about the positive and significant relationship of the predictor variable and the dependent variable, in the employees of the sales area in the automobile agencies was confirmed. The suggestion is to analyze and build a complementary profile of the necessary soft skills of sales collaborators in car dealerships and other sectors.

María Angélica Cruz Reyes, Mary Xóchitl De Luna Bonilla and Vianey Chávez Ayecac wrote Economic and social vulnerability because of Covid-19: poverty and food security, which is the fourth article. The article's objective is to analyze food poverty and the effects in terms of vulnerability because of the Covid-19 pandemic in Mexico City from the capability approach. In the analysis stage, centrality, variability, and correlation parameters were used to identify the effects of the health crisis on food poverty.

The results corroborate that food poverty is a material and immaterial phenomenon, which impacts the economic, sociocultural, and environmental setting of the individual. The State must design strategies with different stakeholders in society for social and economic recovery, not only because of the implications of the pandemic but also because of the economic inequality among the population.

The Bibliographical Review, Cooperate to compete successfully was written by Renata Kubus. The content and development of the work contribute to the objective stated by the authors, that is, explaining to the reader the aspects of cooperation that substantially affect the competitiveness of companies. It is a book that condenses many aspects and leaves the reader with the interest of delving further into the details of the rational act of cooperating, its design as well as the contractual forms of cooperation.

We thank our authors for their papers. We thank the readers for recommending and citing Mercados y Negocios, and our editorial team for not giving up in times of hard work. We want to demand more of ourselves every day and relentlessly aim for achieving more.