Authors: JoAnna Caster & Dana Linnes Tutor: Setayesh Sattari Title: Internal Branding in Multinational Firms- A Gap Analysis of Internal Stakeholder Perceptions Background: As globalization increases, the topic of internal branding has grown in popularity, particularly as a way for firms to secure a competitive advantage in the global marketplace. The topic is quite new however, and there are many aspects that have not been fully explored, including the influence of internal stakeholder perceptions on a firm’s internal brand and related support activities. Purpose: The purpose of this research study is to 1) identify whether a gap exists between employee and manager perceptions of a firm’s internal brand and internal branding activities and 2) investigate the influence of a firm’s country of origin on those perceptions. Delimitations: The study was limited to only medium and large sized firms that have international operations. Additionally, only internal stakeholders were included in the study and the research was limited to respondent’s perceptions, and not necessarily the actual internal brand and related supporting processes or structures. Method: The research was qualitative and data was collected via 24 in-depth interviews of managerial and non-managerial employees at 10 medium and large sized firms. The data was then analyzed using a pattern-matching technique. Conclusions: Perceptions of both managerial and non-managerial employees did not indicate significant gaps, however there seemed to be an unclear understanding of what an internal brand is and what respondent’s firm’s internal brand represents. Also, the country of origin did not have a significant influence on those perceptions, as most respondents indicated that they perceived their firm’s internal brand as primarily “global.” Keywords: internal branding, internal brand, international marketing, marketing strategy, stakeholder perceptions, internal marketing orientation, human resource management, country of origin

This dissertation examines how the new “multicultural phase” anthologies of American literature treat American history. Anthologies of American literature are more historical, more diverse, and more multidisciplinary than ever before, but they have over-extended themselves in both their historical and representational reach. They are not, despite their diversity and historicism, effective vehicles for promoting critical discussions of American history in the classroom. Chapter One outlines a brief history of anthologies of American literature, while also introducing the terminology and methodology used in this study. Chapter Two explores the role of the headnote as a vehicle for American history in anthologies by focusing on headnotes to Abraham Lincoln in multiple anthologies. Chapter Three examines how anthologies frame Native American origin stories for their readers. Chapter Four focuses on the issues raised by anthologizing texts originally composed in Spanish, and Chapter Five argues for a transnational broadening of the “slavery theme” in anthologies to include Barbary captivity narratives and texts that reference Indian slavery.

Background: Some brands have reached popularity much because of their origin and the "made-in" label can possibly generate a positive differentiating effect to the brand. Adequate examples are the British Burberry or the Italian Gucci, the French Chanel or the American Apple. All these brands strategically communicate their origin as part of their brand and the inspiration for this thesis arose form the Country-of-Origin phenomenon in international marketing (COO). This refers to that brands use cues related to their origin as a component of their brand message. Even the Swedish origin can be a competitive advantage and more companies could perhaps benefit from turning to a COO strategy, as there is a current trend of being local in a global context. This would promote the using of firms' Swedishness to succeed in establishments on foreign markets. The authors of this thesis believe that if more Swedish companies would clearly distinguish as Swedish this could perhaps also enhance the positive image of Sweden. Therefore, this thesis is exploring to what extent some Swedish fashion apparel brands work with their origin as part of their international marketing. Research Question: How do companies exploit their Country-of-Origin as part of their brand in their international marketing communication? Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to explore the exploitation of a Country-of-Origin effect in Swedish fashion apparel brands' international marketing. Methodology: The study ha taken a primarily qualitative research design, which has included two research techniques. A pre-study was conducted, that consisted of a focus group interview where the following issues were discussed: the general view of Sweden, Swedish brands and companies, and their examination with the Country-of-Origin label. The pre-study gave important insights that were used in the main study - semi structured interviews with Swedish companies working in the fashion apparel industry. From the whole population of companies in the Swedish fashion industry, a first sample of 57 companies was made. From this sample a second sample of 11 companies was drawn, that represented approximately 20 percent that was argued to be a fair number of respondents to be able to see some patterns. The data from the interviews were analyzed and interpreted in a qualitative analysis procedure that focused on the finding of keywords and patterns. Results: The results showed that a clear majority of the random interviewed companies, 9 of 11 use their COO in their brand and 8 companies said it is a more or less explicit strategy. The exploitation of their COO was made by using country-related cues in their marketing. The reason why these companies have turned to a COO strategy was that it could give them competitive advantages, since there was a positive match between associations of their brand and Sweden. The general conclusion that could be made was that the benefits from using a COO strategy differ with the product and the country. It can also be assumed that more Swedish companies could benefit from realizing  the potential in using a COO strategy.

This study will examine the importance of Country-of-Origin, Price, Quality and Expiration date, in the consumer decision making process for fresh meat. Country-of-Origin has earlier been investigated, however the research has been focusing on manipulating one single cue. With the recent scandals in the fresh meat industry, were animals being abused and expiration dates being changed, it is interesting to investigate how important the consumers find the four attributes; Country-of-Origin, price, quality and expiration date.In order to answer the research questions, and fulfil the purpose, the authors will use a mix of different data collection methods. Qualitative data will be gathered by performing interviews and quantitative data will be gathered by conducting a pilot study and an experiment. The data will be retrieved with the use of SPSS 17.0 and the conjoint analysis procedure. Country-of-origin has been found to be the most preferred attribute for consumers in their purchasing process for fresh meat, closely followed by expiration date. The consumer did find price and quality to be of importance, however the attributes were not found to be as important as Country-of-Origin and expiration date. As Country-of-Origin was found to be the most significant attribute for consumers in their decision making process, this indicates that the consumers are ethnocentric in their behaviour, i.e. they consider their own country and culture to be above others, which leads to a purchase of Swedish meat. It has also been found that the purchasing process of fresh meat is of great complexity, especially with the negative attention the fresh meat industry has induced.

<p>The initiation of two major processes in the eukaryotic cell, gene transcription and DNA replication, is regulated largely through interactions between proteins or protein complexes and DNA. Although a lot is known about the interacting proteins and their role in regulating transcription and replication, the specific DNA binding motifs of many regulatory proteins and complexes are still to be determined. For this purpose, many computational tools for DNA motif discovery have been developed in the last two decades. These tools employ a variety of strategies, from exhaustive search to sampling techniques, with the hope of finding over-represented motifs in sets of co-regulated or co-bound sequences. Despite the variety of computational tools aimed at solving the problem of motif discovery, their ability to correctly detect known DNA motifs is still limited. The motifs are usually short and many times degenerate, which makes them difficult to distinguish from genomic background. We believe the most efficient strategy for improving the performance of motif discovery is not to use increasingly complex computational and statistical methods and models, but to incorporate more of the biology into the computational techniques, in a principled manner. To this end, we propose a novel motif discovery algorithm: PRIORITY. Based on a general Gibbs sampling framework, PRIORITY has a major advantage over other motif discovery tools: it can incorporate different types of biological information (e.g., nucleosome positioning information) to guide the search for DNA binding sites toward regions where these sites are more likely to occur (e.g., nucleosome-free regions). </p><p>We use transcription factor (TF) binding data from yeast chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP-chip) experiments to test the performance of our motif discovery algorithm when incorporating three types of biological information: information about nucleosome positioning, information about DNA double-helical stability, and evolutionary conservation information. In each case, incorporating additional biological information has proven very useful in increasing the accuracy of motif finding, with the number of correctly identified motifs increasing with up to 52%. PRIORITY is not restricted to TF binding data. In this work, we also analyze origin recognition complex (ORC) binding data and show that PRIORITY can utilize DNA structural information to predict the binding specificity of the yeast ORC. </p><p>Despite the improvement obtained using additional biological information, the success of motif discovery algorithms in identifying known motifs is still limited, especially when applied to sequences bound in vivo (such as those of ChIP-chip) because the observed protein-DNA interactions are not necessarily direct. Some TFs associate with DNA only indirectly via protein partners, while others exhibit both direct and indirect binding. We propose a novel method to distinguish between direct and indirect TF-DNA interactions, integrating in vivo TF binding data, in vivo nucleosome occupancy data, and in vitro motifs from protein binding microarrays. When applied to yeast ChIP-chip data, our method reveals that only 48% of the ChIP-chip data sets can be readily explained by direct binding of the profiled TF, while 16% can be explained by indirect DNA binding. In the remaining 36%, we found that none of the motifs used in our analysis was able to explain the ChIP-chip data, either because the data was too noisy or because the set of motifs was incomplete. As more in vitro motifs become available, our method can be used to build a complete catalog of direct and indirect TF-DNA interactions.</p> / Dissertation

<p>This study will examine the importance of Country-of-Origin, Price, Quality and Expiration date, in the consumer decision making process for fresh meat. Country-of-Origin has earlier been investigated, however the research has been focusing on manipulating one single cue. With the recent scandals in the fresh meat industry, were animals being abused and expiration dates being changed, it is interesting to investigate how important the consumers find the four attributes; Country-of-Origin, price, quality and expiration date.In order to answer the research questions, and fulfil the purpose, the authors will use a mix of different data collection methods. Qualitative data will be gathered by performing interviews and quantitative data will be gathered by conducting a pilot study and an experiment. The data will be retrieved with the use of SPSS 17.0 and the conjoint analysis procedure. Country-of-origin has been found to be the most preferred attribute for consumers in their purchasing process for fresh meat, closely followed by expiration date. The consumer did find price and quality to be of importance, however the attributes were not found to be as important as Country-of-Origin and expiration date.<strong> </strong>As Country-of-Origin was found to be the most significant attribute for consumers in their decision making process, this indicates that the consumers are ethnocentric in their behaviour, i.e. they consider their own country and culture to be above others, which leads to a purchase of Swedish meat. It has also been found that the purchasing process of fresh meat is of great complexity, especially with the negative attention the fresh meat industry has induced.</p>

Although COO has been a topic of central interest in international marketing research, most work has focused on consumers in western countries. The concept of product usage experience, though often implied in COO research, has yet to be investigated more directly and explicitly. The goal of the study is to examine the relationships among COO perceptions, product usage experience and purchase intention among Chinese consumers. The study examined two kinds of product usage experiences (usage variety and frequency) pertaining to products (products in general and laptop computers in specific) made in two countries (America and China). Empirical data gathered from a survey were used to test two sets of research hypotheses pertaining to America and China respectively. The results supported the hypothesized interactions between COO ratings and product usage experiences in predicting purchase intention of American products among Chinese consumers. The interactions between COO ratings and usage experience in predicting purchase intention of Chinese products among Chinese consumers were partially supported.

Inledning: Det är viktigt att öka kunskapen om den växande samhällsgruppen individer som är 65 år och äldre enligt Stockholms läns landsting (2013). Studien har undersökt hur denna samhällsgrupp beskriver sina relationer till sin ursprungsfamilj. Frågeställningar: Hur beskriver äldre individer sina relationer till sin ursprungsfamilj retrospektivt? Vilka relationella erfarenheter framstår som signifikanta i deras berättelser? Metod: Studiens metodval är kvalitativ och datainsamlingen utgjordes av en ostrukturerad intervjuform. Totalt intervjuades 5 personer. Resultat: Resultatet redovisas utifrån olika tidsperioder samt tre teman som framkom i analysen: Barndom och uppväxttid, ung vuxen och identitetskap samt vuxenliv och autonomi. Diskussion: Relationen idag bygger på minnen när respondenterna blickar tillbaka på sina liv. Mamma beskrivs ha haft ett alltför stort inflytande under uppväxten och pappa beskrivs som viktig - framför allt längre upp i åldrarna. Banden till syskonen har oftast stärkts under vuxenlivet. Respondenterna beskriver också att de har hittat strategier att acceptera, förlåta och försonas med det liv de hittills har levt, i takt med ju äldre de har blivit, vilket överensstämmer väl med teorin om gerotrancendens (Tornstam, 2010) / Introduction: It is important to increase awareness of the growing social group of individuals who are 65 years and older according to the Stockholm County Council (2013). This study has investigated how this social group describes their relationships with their family of origin. Research question: How to describe older individuals their relationships with their family of origin retrospectively? Which relational experience emerges as significant in their stories? Method: The study's methodological choices are qualitative and data collection was made up of unstructured interview form. Total interviewed 5 people. Results: The results reported from different time periods and three themes that emerged from the analysis: Childhood and adolescence , young adult and identity munity and adulthood and autonomy. Discussion: The relationship today is based on memories when respondents look back on their lives. Mom described having had too much influence during childhood and father is described as important - especially later age. Bands siblings usually have strengthened during adulthood. Respondents also describe that they have found strategies to accept, forgive and reconcile with the life they have lived so far - as the older they become, which agrees well with the theory of gerotrancendens ( Tornstam, 2010).

Children are an often overlooked and understudied population group, whose travel needs are responsible for a significant number of trips made by a household. In addition, children’s travel and activity participation have direct implication for adults’ activity-travel patterns. A better understanding of children’s activity-travel patterns and the linkages between parents and children’s activity-travel needs is necessary for accurate prediction and forecasting of activity-based travel demand modeling systems. In contrast to the need to examine and model children’s activity-travel patterns, existing activity-based research and modeling systems have almost exclusively focused their attention on the activity-travel patterns of adults. Therefore, the goal of this research effort is to contribute to the area of activity-based travel demand analysis by comprehensively examining children’s activity-travel patterns, and by developing a framework for incorporating children within activity-based travel demand modeling systems. This dissertation provides a comprehensive review of previous research on children’s activity engagement and travel by focusing on the dimensions characterizing children’s activity-travel patterns and the factors affecting these dimensions. Further, an exploratory analysis examines the weekday and weekend activity participation characteristics of school-going children. The study focuses on the overall time-use of children in different types of activities, as well as on several dimensions characterizing the context of participation in activities. In addition, the dissertation discusses the treatment of children within current activity-based travel demand modeling systems and conceptualizes an alternative framework for simulating the daily activity-travel patterns of children. An empirical analysis is undertaken of the post-school out-of-home activity-location engagement patterns of children aged 5 to 17 years. Specifically, this research effort utilizes a multinomial logit model to analyze children’s post-school location patterns, and employs a multiple discrete-continuous extreme value (MDCEV) model to study the propensity of children to participate in, and allocate time to, multiple activity episode purpose-location types during the after-school period. Finally, the paper identifies the need and opportunities for further research in the field of children’s travel behavior analysis. / text

Today’s metropolitan areas see changes in populations and land development occurring at faster rates than transportation planning can be updated. This dissertation explores the use of a new dataset from the location-based social networking spectrum to analyze origin-destination travel demand within Austin, TX. A detailed exploration of the proposed data source is conducted to determine its overall capabilities with respect to the Austin area demographics. A new methodology is proposed for the creation of origin-destination matrices using a peer-to-peer modeling structure. This methodology is compared against a previously examined and more traditional approach, the doubly-constrained gravity model, to understand the capabilities of both models with various friction functions. Each method is examined within the constructs of the study area’s existing origin-destination matrix by examining the coincidence ratios, mean errors, mean absolute errors, frequency ratios, swap ratios, trip length distributions, zonal trip generation and attraction heat maps, and zonal origin-destination flow patterns. Through multiple measures, this dissertation provides initial interpretations of the robust Foursquare data collected for the Austin area. Based upon the data analytics performed, the Foursquare data source is shown to be capable of providing immensely detailed spatial-temporal data that can be utilized as a supplementary data source to traditional transportation planning data collection methods or in conjunction with other data sources, such as social networking platforms. The examination of the proposed peer-to-peer methodology presented within this dissertation provides a first look at the potential of many-to-many modeling for transportation planning. The peer-to-peer model was found to be superior to the doubly-constrained gravity model with respect to intrazonal trips. Furthermore, the peer-to-peer model was found to better estimate productions, attractions, and zone to zone movements when a linear function was used for long trips, and was computationally more proficient for all models examined.