Pricing is a complex yet important process that has a large influence on profitability; however few managers utilize pricing as a strategy to increase competitive advantage. The potential of pricing based on specific customer’s needs should be acknowledged, since it is beneficial for the customers by allowing them to recognize the true value of a product. It is also beneficial for marketers since they can present the price in the content of a total solution tailored for those customer needs. Even though a value-based pricing strategy is considered superior to alternative pricing strategies, few companies practice it. The limited amount of researches that has been conducted in the field of value-based pricing strategies has revealed various obstacles in the implementation phase. However, it is still not proved that these obstacles can be found in all industries. The purpose of this thesis is to present research in the field of pricing, by adding to prior research, practical observations on obstacles when implementing a value-based pricing strategy. A qualitative case study at Volvo Construction Equipment in Sweden was conducted and the results show similarities with prior researches. However additional obstacles were identified and further evidence from this study stresses the importance of possessing fundamental knowledge about value-based pricing strategies; as it impacts a company’s ability to implement it successfully and entirely. Therefore this thesis includes the fundamental knowledge and describes how obstacles connected to the concept are perceived in practice. Further a managerial framework is provided to help companies interested in implementing value-based pricing strategies.

AimThe purpose of this study is to analyze factors that affect the price on tenant-owner apartments in the central parts of Uppsala. Special attention is put on analyzing how the monthly fee and the location affect the price. The hypotheses are that the monthly fee and the distance to the central part of the city have a negative effect on the price. A number of additional price affecting factors was taken in consideration during this study. Method This study is mainly based on data supplied to us by Mäklarstatistik. The supplied data consists of information about tenant-owner apartment sales in Uppsala during a year under 2008 and 2009. Before the Hedonic method was used in order to get the result, we added information, processed it and eliminated unwanted data. The Hedonic method makes it possible to describe the selling price as a function of several price affective factors. To investigate how the monthly fee affects the selling price, several regression equations were conducted. The data supplied to us was processed with the computer program Microsoft Excel. Result and conclusions The investigation shows that there is a negative correlation both between the monthly fee and the apartments selling price, as well as between the selling price and the distances to the Fyrisån and the Stora torget. Suggestions for future research The interest rate on the housing loan is one of the biggest contributing factors in the total monthly cost for most household owners. In this study we have not taken in consideration the effect of the present interest rate for household loan. Therefore we think it would be interesting to investigate its effects on the market. Contribution of the thesis   This study has strengthened the credibility of earlier studies. It has also given a deeper insight into how the monthly fee affects the price on apartments by using more variables than earlier studies.

Because the beer market in Taiwan had been opened up, the monopoly, Taiwan Beer, has been facing intense competition. However, state-owned Taiwan Beer uses flexible strategies to respond to these challenges and always is the leading company in the industry. This study tried to use Game Theory to analyze the competitive strategy of Taiwan Beer in different period of time and find out the relationships between Taiwan Beer and competitor. At the beginning, this research used Game theory to describe the competition in the beer industry. Then, it used Prisoner's Dilemma, the Beach Ice Cream Selling Model, entry-deny strategies, multi-brand strategy and Co-opetition to explain Taiwan Beer¡¦s interaction with others. Finally, this study did not see the competition as the only way that can help companies survive. When the company is thinking about how to defeat others, it also has to be thinking about how to cooperate with others to derive more advantages.

This study is to discuss the correlation between customer orientation, customer satisfaction and sales performance, also discuss the mediating effect of customer satisfaction and moderating effects of customer¡¦s personality of salesperson in the animal health industry. ¡§Customer-oriented¡¨ selling can be viewed as the practice of the marketing concept at the level of the individual salesperson and customer. The marketing concept requires an organization to determine the needs of a target market and adapt itself to satisfying those needs better than its competitors. In the marketing concept, all parts of an organization are oriented toward solving customer problems and meeting the needs of the marketplace. ¡§Customer-oriented¡¨ selling is directed toward providing customer satisfaction and establishing mutually beneficial, long-term relationships with its market. The conclusions of this study and significant to the management are presented as follows: 1.Customer satisfaction and sales performance are significantly related to the practice of customer-oriented selling. 2.Customer satisfaction is significantly related to sales performance. 3.The mediating effect of customer satisfaction is significantly related to sales performance. 4.The interaction between customer personality types (as measured by the MBTI) and customer-orientation were not found to have significant influence. 5.Salespeople might improve customer satisfaction and their performance if they attempted to solve customer problems and meet their needs. 6.Understand the different personal-approach needs of the customers can maintain loyalty and long-term customers and increase sales effectiveness.

The end of launching Financial Holding Company, FHC is to maximize the synergy of versatile financial services like banking, insurance, securities, and the like by means of cross selling internally to expand product line as well as offering integrated financial services to consumers externally to satisfy their one-stop shopping demands. One of the characteristics in the property is highly counting on people to deliver service, and agents play significant roles during service delivery. Therefore, it merits a better attention to probe into the relationships between the organizational commitment, the professional commitment, the organizational citizenship behavior, and the job involvement in cross selling of agents¡¦. The study is conducted by the questionnaire survey on three FHCs in which insurance business is inner circle in Taiwan. Throughout interviewing the staffs of the three by 500 questionnaires offered and 351 valid ones collected, the datum of the research is made by reliability analysis, descriptive analysis, Pearson correlation analysis, independent sample t-test, ANOVA, and multiple regression analysis to verify the identity degrees of the interviewees on the organizational commitment, the professional commitment, the organizational citizenship behavior, and the job involvement in cross selling. Following are the major findings: 1.Each one of the organizational commitment, the professional commitment, and the organizational citizenship behavior are statistically significant and positive correlated to the job involvement in cross selling. Among them, the organizational citizenship behavior is with the strongest influence on the job involvement in cross selling, then the organizational commitment second, and the professional commitment last. 2.Among the sub-dimensions, the organizational identity in the organizational commitment explains most the variations of the job involvement in cross selling and then the retention on the job. Also, the professional identity in the professional commitment explains most the one and then the retention on the occupation. And, the involvement in the organizational citizenship behavior explains the most the one and then the loyalty. It means that the organizational identity, the professional identity, the involvement and the loyalty of the agents are with significant effects on their involvement in cross selling. 3.The variations in the identity degrees of the organizational commitment and the professional commitment of the agents in the three FHCs are significantly different, however, the ones of the organizational citizenship behavior and the involvement in cross selling are no significant. From the findings of the research, the organizational commitment and the organizational citizenship behavior are proven the most impacts on the involvement in cross selling. Consequently, FHCs should pay more attentions especially to enhance the organizational identity of agents all the time except for advancing their knowledge and ability in cross selling when they want to raise the wills of agents on the job involvement in cross selling. For example, they can disclose the expectation and the requirement of the organization to agents to make them fully understand, follow, and moreover increase their confidence. Besides, building incentive performance assessment and rewarding system is more important than else in stimulating agents to have strong involvement in cross selling.

Because of the economic depression in 2008, many corporations laid off employees to decrease their salary cost. By doing so, companies could only reduce their expenditure but could not increase their income. It is more important and might be the best strategy to tap new resources and economize on expense at the same time. Therefore, more companies started to pay much attention to promote their products, and to place importance on salespeople. The objective is to discuss the relationship between personality, sales skill, selling-customer orientation and sales performance of part-time salespeople. This thesis is conducted through opinion survey, relied by part-time salespeople in integrated marketing company; the findings of the thesis can be summarized as follows: 1.The ¡§big five model¡¨ impacts ¡§sales skill¡¨ positively. 2.The ¡§big five model¡¨ impacts ¡§selling orientation¡¨ positively, and impacts ¡§customer orientation¡¨ partially. 3.The ¡§big five model¡¨ impacts the ¡§sales performance¡¨ partially. 4.¡§Sales skill¡¨ impacts the ¡§sales performance¡¨ positively. 5.¡§Selling-customer orientation¡¨ impacts the ¡§sales performance¡¨ positively.

Internet technology (IT) has changed the way information is disseminated, which has led to changes in transaction-making and the creation of new electronic markets. This has also led to the emer-gence of new types of online intermediaries, and new selling mechanisms. Since most online selling involves commodity goods and the discovery of low prices, the design of selling mechanism primarily focuses on the disclosure of price information. Low-price discovery selling mechanisms, however, have caused buyers to shift from one mechanism to another to get the best deals. Online sellers are facing profit pressures as a result. Price information only addresses a portion of consumer needs though. They need information to identify uncertainties that may harm them during transactions. Consumers also search for products and services that fit their individual preferences and are willing to pay a price premium for such offerings. Sellers have to offer additional information and to do decommoditization, or consumers will abandon selling mechanisms that do not match their needs. This dissertation examines these issues in three essays. It explores two online selling mechanisms: online group-buying auctions and a la carte pricing schemes in airline industry. The a la carte pricing is to offer flexible pricing to consumers. The research employs an Internet-based experimental test bed, a single-firm empirical case study, and an econometric model to test the relevant theories. I evaluate the design of online group-buying auctions, where consumers are more uncertain about group-buying as a mechanism for organizing economic exchange. I also evaluate the design of online selling mechanisms in the air travel services industry, where digitally-intermediation has created problems with suppliers¡¦ ownership of their customers and increasing channel conflicts. The results indicate that the dominance of price in consumer purchase decisions can be mitigated by complementary information, as well as value-added product and service information that an online selling mechanism provides. Consumer information requirements are dynamic and inconsistent though. So an effective selling mechanism must identify how to disclose an adequate amount of information to consumer. Some of the new mechanism designs that have emerged have produced a means for sellers to be more effective. My findings suggest that, in addition to price transparency, online selling mechanisms also affect transaction completion uncertainty, and support the expression of personal preferences.

Title: The effect of personality of woman personal products sales force on job performance-The mediating role of adaptive selling behavior Student: Han-Lin Lu Advisor: Dr. I-Heng Chen For sales-oriented firms, sales force is the key factor in organization to be sustainable, so how to manage sales force effectively and incentive them to improve their performance is the important topic. This study focused on sales force personality relation between job performance. Secondly, understanding the adaptive selling behavior impact on their personality and job performance. This study survey the famous underwear company sales force, process descriptive statistical analysis, reliability analysis, ANOVA analysis and regression analysis for data analysis, by the above analysis, this study obtained the following conclusions: 1. Playfulness has positive influence on adaptive selling behavior, but doesn¡¦t have significant relationship between job performance. 2. Big five doesn¡¦t have significant relationship either between job performance, or on adaptive selling behavior. 3. Personality has significant positive influence on adaptive selling behavior, that shows personality has the impact on job performance through the behavior. 4. Adaptive selling behavior has significant positive influence on job performance. It means when sales force has more adaptive selling behaviors helps improve job performance.

Abstract In every prosperous city of the world , we could see the elevators in the huge buildings and great mansions , the escalators in the department stores and the passenger conveyers in the shopping mall or in the airport. People were dependent on the products of the elevator properties in deep. In this research , we used the analysis of the Delphi to inquire into the elevator property to find out the factors that made this property to be successful. The most important characterists are¡Gthe Global Logistics Management, the Creative Technlogical Management and Selling to the Top. The distinguishing features of the products of the elevator¡¦s property were such as¡G 1. In TAIWAN, the top 8 of the elevator¡¦s factory owners manufactured the elevators and also the related products together with the Global Logistics Management. 2. They paid more attentions to the studying ability and the tempo of the Creative Technlogical Management in order to change with each passing day and to keep improving. 3. The expenses of every project were enormous and the competed tactics were nimble. 4. Except for the top director , no one could make the decision. 5. It was not easy to handle the extensively selling market. 6. The educational background and the professional career of every regional director of the competed factory were all superior. In this study, I sincerely hope that I could do whatever is best for the elevator¡¦s property.

After the promulgation of Financial Holding Company Law at the end of year 2001, the law has liberated the limitation of operations across banking, brokerage, and insurance. In order to cope with the future market competition, these institutions formed in total of 14 financial holding companies (FHCs) through self raising, merging, or acquisition. This research is aiming at the 14 FHCs and their subsidiary banks, security brokerages, and insurance companies, through applying financial ratio analysis to measure the synergy of FHCs¡¦ merging and acquisition. The sources of synergy are divided into three dimensions : operations, markets, and finance. A total of eight years of financial data is collected, including two parts: four years of pre-founding of FHCs from 1998 to 2001 and four years after founding the FHCs from 2002 to 2005. In-depth interview is conducted to look for the differences of operation performance and effect of increasing shareholder wealth after the FHCs merging and acquisition. The conclusions of this study are presented as following¡G 1.Market Synergy Dimension: The revenue increased after founding the FHCs shows that the market synergy exists and fits to expectation. FHCs could operate across fields including banking, brokerage, and insurance to provide cross selling chance for finance products. 2.Operational Synergy Dimension: The operating costs and operating costs ratio are increased after founding the FHCs. Because the FHCs do not reach the economy of scale, the unit operation cost is high and the organization of FHCs becomes large and needs more communication, which makes the decision making process inefficient, the management efficiency still needs to be improved. 3.Financial Synergy Dimension: The profit after tax and ROE are decreased after founding the FHCs, which are mainly contributed from inefficient use of financial resources and human resources as a whole group. 4.Synergy was hard to be seen within short term, which needed three to four years to make it possible. After merging or acquisition, FHCs need some time to reduce the conflicts between its subsidiaries and to conduct more efficient resource application to form FHCs synergy. 5.Market Evaluation: The market value of whole FHCs increases which increases the shareholder¡¦s wealth. This research provides the solution for increasing operation costs, including the following three points: 1.Converging the operation process. 2.Increasing economy of scale. 3.Enforcing the management efficiency.