Thesis (Ph. D.)--Georgia State University, 2007. / Title from title page. Richard Phillips, committee chair; Larry Wall, Harold Skipper, Robert Klein, Martin Grace, committee member. Electronic text (155 p. : ill. (some col.)) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed Oct. 8, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 104-116).

Service industries have traditionally been viewed as secondary to, and at best supportive of, manufacturing industries. This thesis is designed to challenge this view with regard to a particular group of services, advanced producer services. It contends that this group makes both direct and indirect contributions to economic growth at urban region level by operating in two ways: firstly, by providing intermediate inputs into the production of finished products and secondly, in its own right, selling its services to clients outside of the region. This contradicts the expectations of theoretical models of urban growth such as export base theory which cast services in an entirely dependent role. Analysis of the spatial distribution of advanced producer services reveals a significant degree of regional inequality in their provision which given the contribution they make to growth has potentially serious implications for the economic regeneration of many of Britain's depressed areas.

This dissertation focuses on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ('OECD') transfer pricing methods and its application to Multinational Enterprise ('MNE') groups in the financial sector. This study examines whether the OECD's Base Erosion and Profit Shifting ('BEPS') Action Plan 9 is an appropriate framework for MNE groups in the banking sector or whether it creates further challenges. Additionally, the dissertation scrutinises MNE groups in the financial sector that are involved in the business of global trading of financial instruments. It further explores the functions of a global trading entity, the arm's length principle and the OECD BEPS Action Plan 9. This dissertation concludes that the global trading of financial instruments using the integrated trading model is challenged when the OECD traditional transfer pricing methods are applied. Multinational financial institution groups in the banking sector that are involved in the business of global trading of financial instruments are subject to rigid regulations. Furthermore, the report concludes that these rigid regulations mitigate some of the complications that arise when applying the OECD BEPS Action Plan 9. Taxing authorities need to focus greater attention on the global trading of financial instruments by multinational financial institutions groups. As South Africa's financial institutions expand across borders, the concerns over transfer pricing and BEPS are likely to intensify. It is therefore imperative that the South African revenue authorities prioritise the recruitment of skilled personnel in order to address the complexities posed by the global trading of financial instruments by multinational financial institution groups.

This research seeks to determine what factors and combinations of banking features drive the choice of a financial service provider. Two studies have been devised to explore the research question. The initial study, uses factor analysis and logistic regression to examine the importance of perceived cost, convenience, and relational trust in the choice of a financial services provider. An additional study uses choice-based conjoint analysis to conduct an exploratory study to identify combinations of banking features that potential customers perceive as most attractive. The study simulates real-world buying situations that ask research participants to trade one financial services attribute for another. Results from the first study suggest that a consumer’s choice of banks, prepaid cards, online lending, and the US Postal Service for financial services is associated with a preference for convenience while relational trust and perceived cost drives the choice of “street” AFS providers. In the second study, results from the choice-based conjoint analysis suggest that fees are significantly more important than convenience and level of customer contact across all categorical variables (age, gender, race/ethnicity, employment, income, and education). Additionally, in-person customer service contact is considered more important than convenience. Understanding these factors, optimal combinations and proportions, and trade-offs through the eyes of the consumer, may be of value to both policy makers and industry officials alike when grappling with options to strengthen financial inclusion. / Business Administration/Strategic Management

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Customer retention has been shown by academic researchers to be more profitable than customer acquisition. However, its implementation in the business environment has not been so successful. One of the reasons for this is that customer retention can be achieved in several ways (i.e. loyalty programs, affinity cards and switching costs) and that the translation from the concept of “retaining customers” to the actions and strategies to retain them is not always easy. One of the most attractive strategies to ensure that customers remain within the organisation is through cross-selling and up-selling. In short, the objective is to increase the number (or the value) of the products that a customer buys from a company to make it more difficult for him/her to leave. Whilst academic research has deeply investigated the concepts of loyalty, retention programs and trust, amongst others, cross-selling has not received the same level of attention. Moreover, existing research on cross-selling has been focused on products rather than on services. Finally, this research has mostly been conceptual in nature, with limited attempts to model or design practical cross-selling and up-selling strategies. In order for crossselling and up-selling to be effective retention strategies, they need to be tailored to the needs of the customer. The offer must be adequate in terms of the target (who is going to buy the product), the content (what is going to be purchased) and a time (when is the right moment to offer the new product). This thesis investigates customer retention and cross-selling and up-selling from a practical point of view in the financial services industry. Firstly, it assesses the importance of the concepts of customer retention and cross-selling and up-selling through several interviews conducted with financial services providers (insurance companies, building societies and independent financial industry bodies). Having established the relevance of these concepts in the industry, the next step developed and applied a framework to design cross-selling and up-selling strategies. This framework, named the “Who-What-When” framework, was applied to the transactional and customer data bases of two financial services providers (a Spanish insurance company and a UK building society). The “Who-What-When” method ii begins by segmenting the customer base in order to understand the characteristics and potential of each customer. It then, moves to modelling purchase propensity models, understanding the relationships between products in order to determine what product should be offered to each segment, according to their characteristics and their consumption history. Finally, it analyses the time sequence of the purchases in order to determine the right time (when the purchase is more likely to occur) to approach each customer, bearing in mind how they behave and the maturity of the products already held. The contribution of this thesis is twofold. From an academic point of view, the research demonstrates the importance of customer retention and cross-selling in the financial services industry, being both recognised as key strategic and tactical approaches for the future of the industry. Secondly, from a practical point of view, it contributes by developing an analytical framework to discover and design crossselling and up-selling strategies, aimed at retaining customers. This is achieved through the ‘Who-What-When’ framework which takes into account customer characteristics, consumption patterns and acquisition sequence to model cross-selling activities. Therefore, it refutes the traditional approach that ‘one size fits all’, advocating tailored strategies. Finally, this research highlights, from the empirical analysis, how repurchase decision is highly influenced by the length of the relationship with the provider and the type of products already purchased. Understanding these factors is key to successfully retaining customers via crossselling.

This study identifies the various elements and factors that a financial services company needs to consider when implementing activity-based costing. This study evaluates the appropriateness of activity-based costing for financial services and proposes an implementation framework for activity-based costing in this environment. Management, in today’s constant changing and competitive world, needs management information to support strategic and pricing decisions. Traditional financial accounting information sometimes hides the economic reality of client profitability and product costs, and does not supply sufficient information for pricing decisions. This study confirmed that activity-based costing can assist in addressing this problem. Activity-based costing was originally developed for the manufacturing environment. By studying available literature, this study proved that activitybased costing can be used successfully in a financial services environment. A manufacturing environment has a higher direct cost input than a services environment. The cost structure in a services environment allows a higher percentage of cost to be allocated by identifying activities and using cost drivers to allocate these costs to cost objects. Activity-based costing models add value to management by supplying them with information that supports strategic decisions, pricing decisions, understanding client profitability and product costs. This study points out that there are crucial success factors that need to be considered before embarking on the implementation of activity-based costing. Finally the study proposes that activity-based costing be implemented in a financial services environment to support management decision making. / Prof. A.L. Boessenkool

Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) is an internationally accepted process of assessing non-formal learning with the intention of matching it to academic credits. This allows the candidate to earn either a full or partial qualification based on knowledge and/or skills acquired outside of the formal classroom. The South African insurance sector was faced with legislation requiring all financial advisers to earn academic credits before they could continue in the industry. The sector believed that the RPL process would suit their circumstances because most financial advisers had many years of workplace experience and had mostly attended many internal, but often unaccredited, product training programmes. However, there was no RPL implementation model to guide a workplace implementation of this nature as most RPL models followed the practices set by formal higher education providers and there was no consideration of the many variables that have an impact in the workplace. This research set out to design a logic model to guide the implementation of workplace RPL in the insurance sector. The data was collected during the evaluation of an RPL implementation programme that had good results but which used the more individualistically inspired RPL approach of formal education. The data was analysed using grounded theory data analysis techniques (Strauss & Corbin, 1998 and Glaser & Strauss, 1967) and the result was the identification of 18 broad categories. Further analysis reduced these to five categories, i.e. reaction to the circumstances requiring the RPL, personal mastery, team support, changing perceptions towards the RPL process, and perceived outcome of the RPL process. These categories were researched by looking at the most influential traditional and workplace learning theorists, as well as the most influential RPL theorists. Finally, a secondary data analysis was conducted on 18 workplace RPL case studies described by Dyson and Keating (2005). The results of this research were formulated into a logic model to guide RPL implementation in the insurance sector. Using this logic model as a guide, further recommendations were made to guide workplace RPL implementation in the future. / Prof. W.J. Coetsee Dr. L. Beekman

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In the interconnected world of today more and more people get on the move. We go abroad for vacations, visits or business trips and we change countries of residence as we pursue new opportunities. Cross-border mobility is becoming part of our life. In recent years consumer researchers have been showing an increasing interest in particularities of consumption in condition of global mobility. Although previous studies have acknowledged the importance of economic capital in enabling global consumer mobility, existing research could be enriched by a deeper understanding of how globally mobile consumers manage their financial consumption across borders. The aim of this dissertation is to is to contribute to the uncovering of the particularities of consumption of financial services in global mobility by documenting globally mobile consumers’ financial consumption patterns, the ways they build and maintain relationships with their financial service providers and the ways in which they navigate cultural norms of service consumption and financial consumption across borders. The study is based on four research articles that develop an understanding of the dimensions of financial consumption and uncover purchasing, relational and acculturative aspects of consumption of financial services in mobility. The overarching chapter further develops the insights from the articles, bringing forward the concept of the cephalopodic consumption mode – a particular way in which globally mobile consumers organize their financial consumption. This work contributes to the domain of research on serially relocating consumers by showing how globally mobile professionals engage in cephalopodic consumption mode (CCM), using their economic capital in order to navigate their international movement. The multipresence, multi-acculturation, instrumentality and camouflage of CCM emerge as an answer to challenges of mobility – the need to reacquaint with new countries every time upon relocation, the future need to leave again and the necessity to organize consumption across borders. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 2: Manuscript. Paper 4: Manuscript.</p>