The rapid growth of the Internet has provided tremendous opportunities for laptop companies to offer quality of customer service. The prime drivers and motivations for offering such customer service through the web are to reduce service costs and to provide efficient and effective service to customers. In the business of laptop RANGS electronics Limited (REL) is a new company which aims to achieve business excellence through quality product by satisfying customer expectations. But what are the marketing media essential for building a successful customer service operation in REL business? This paper addresses this specific issue by isolating the essential elements from the available literature, and assessing them individually from interviews to obtain better insights and understanding. The respondents were Swedish, Chinese and Bangladeshi students studying in Orebro and Karlstad University. In order to find a suitable media for the REL marketing of laptop, the data gathered was analyzed and compared groups of concepts related to the purpose and the research question. The result suggests that online service delivery has greater charm to customers for its low or limited levels of complexity. The three important concepts to establish the service into customers mind are developing speedy service, increasing customer affiliation through networking and engaging customer into product marketing. This could help REL to design and develop robust foundations on which to build successful customer service operations. The foundations between the service and e-business were sometimes confusing. This paper clarifies some of these opacities.

Alcohol related harm is one of the major public health and societal concerns in the UK. Per capita alcohol consumption has risen considerably over the last twenty years and binge drinking has increased. Alcohol related harms including crime and social disorder, lost productivity, family breakdown and health harms such as rising incidence of liver disease and increases in alcohol related hospital admissions, are considerable. Particular concern has focused upon alcohol and young people, with levels of youth binge drinking in the UK among the highest in Europe and alcohol related hospital admissions of young people increasing. Furthermore, youth drinking behaviours are strong predictors of alcohol dependence in later life and contribute to long term health harms. As a result there has been an increased focus on factors that may potentially influence youth drinking behaviours including alcohol marketing. The evidence base on the impact of alcohol marketing on youth drinking has developed since the topic was first examined in the early 1980s. Recent systematic reviews have suggested a causal link between alcohol marketing and youth drinking behaviour. However gaps in the evidence base remain. The research project presented in this PhD contains six publications which aim to address these gaps, being the first longitudinal consumer study on the impact of alcohol marketing on youth drinking in the UK. The study used a critical social marketing framework to assess the cumulative impact of alcohol marketing on youth drinking, with findings intended to help upstream social marketing efforts, inform policy and regulation and targeted behaviour change interventions. The project examined the impact of alcohol marketing across a comprehensive range of communications channels including less well researched areas such as new media and sponsorship. The project involved three discrete stages of research. First, a brand website and press audit of contemporary alcohol marketing communications in the UK was conducted, supplemented by interviews with key informants from the marketing profession and regulatory bodies. Second, qualitative focus group research was conducted with young people to explore the role and meaning of alcohol in their lives and their attitudes towards alcohol marketing. Third, a two wave cohort study design featuring a questionnaire survey was conducted to assess the impact of alcohol marketing on youth drinking. The survey consisted of a two part interviewer administered and self completion questionnaire in home with 920 second year school pupils at baseline, and follow up of a cohort of 552 in fourth year. The audit revealed that alcohol marketing is ubiquitous in the UK with most brands having a dedicated website featuring sophisticated content that appeals to youth including music, sport and video games. The press audit found that alcopop brands concentrated advertising in youth magazines, and that supermarket advertising of alcohol was considerable in the printed press. Focus group research revealed a sophisticated level of awareness of and involvement in alcohol marketing among respondents across several channels. Marketing activities often featuring content with youth appeal seemed to influence young people’s well developed brand attitudes. Cross sectional regression analysis found significant associations between awareness of, and involvement with alcohol marketing and drinking status and future drinking intentions. Bivariate and multi-variate longitudinal analysis indicated that alcohol marketing was associated with youth drinking behaviour, including initiation of drinking, and increased frequency of drinking between wave one and wave two. The implications of these findings for theory, practice and public policy are discussed.

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In this study, we have examined how Swedish tour operators are using social media as part of their marketing plan. Our purpose was to find out which strategies they use in the area of social marketing. The companies that were examined were Ving, Fritidsresor and Jambo tours, and the social network site that the research focused on was Facebook. The examination was conducted with a content analysis of the companies' Facebook pages and qualitative, structured interviews with the companies. The aim was to compare the various tour operators Facebook pages in order to get a broader overview of the companies marketing strategies. The results varied between the companies, but in many aspects they had similar strategies. The companies primarily use their Facebook pages to disseminate information, but also for communication with their target groups. This is also what previous research shows is an important part of the social media strategy.

Addressing building energy use is a pressing issue for building sector decisionmakers across Europe. In Sweden, some regions have adopted a target of reducingenergy use in buildings by 50% until 2050. However, building codes currently donot support as ambitious objectives as these, and novel approaches to addressingenergy use in buildings from a regional perspective are called for. The purpose ofthis licentiate thesis was to provide a deeper understanding of most relevant issueswith regard to energy use in buildings from a broad perspective and to suggestpathways towards reaching the long-term savings objective. Current trends inbuilding sector structure and energy use point to detached houses constructed before1981 playing a key role in the energy transition, especially in the rural areas ofSweden. In the Swedish county of Dalarna, which was used as a study area in thisthesis, these houses account for almost 70% of the residential heating demand.Building energy simulations of eight sample houses from county show that there isconsiderable techno-economic potential for energy savings in these houses, but notquite enough to reach the 50% savings objective. Two case studies from ruralSweden show that savings well beyond 50% are achievable, both when access tocapital and use of high technology are granted and when they are not. However, on abroader scale both direct and indirect rebound effects will have to be expected,which calls for more refined approaches to energy savings. Furthermore, researchhas shown that the techno-economic potential is in fact never realised, not even inthe most well-designed intervention programmes, due to the inherent complexity ofhuman behaviour with respect to energy use. This is not taken account of in neithercurrent nor previous Swedish energy use legislation. Therefore an approach thatconsiders the technical prerequisites, economic aspects and the perspective of themany home owners, based on Community-Based Social Marketing methodology, issuggested as a way forward towards reaching the energy savings target.

This project critically examines the question Are HIV/AIDS prevention campaigns more effective at engaging gay men if they use colloquial language and sexually explicit imagery? by investigating the impact of sexually explicit campaigns on the Sydney gay community. The project approaches the question in three parts: 1. A review of literature exploring the circumstances in which and for what reasons sexually explicit HIV/AIDS campaigns are produced. 2. An analysis of seven interviews with producers of HIV prevention campaigns exploring how, why, where and for what reasons explicit campaigns are produced. 3. An analysis of eight interviews with homosexually active Sydney men exploring how HIV prevention campaigns are viewed, consumed and understood. The interviews were in-depth, semi-structured and conducted over one hour per interviewee. The findings are dominated by two interrelated and at times conflicting themes. First, that there is a strongly held belief by campaign producers that the most effective HIV prevention campaigns targeting gay men are produced by the community and reflect that community and as a result must at times be sexually explicit. Second, that it is no longer sufficient for HIV prevention campaigns to rely on explicit sex to attract attention. In an environment where visual images, and sexually explicit visual images especially, are becoming more accessible, and media and communication is more prevalent and complex, safe sex campaigns are forced to deliver ever more sophisticated and stimulating creative materials in order to maintain the engagement of gay men. The interviews revealed that both campaign producers and consumers participated in the production of a visual literacy of safe sex campaigns. This literacy was necessary to both effectively produce and comprehend the campaigns. The interviews showed that while HIV prevention campaigns that use sexually explicit language and imagery can be highly effective at engaging gay men, the success of sexually explicit campaigns is contextual that is, dependent on where, to whom and in what circumstances the materials are delivered. The audience??s accumulation of knowledge and cultural experience when viewing the campaigns, in other words their safe sex campaign literacy, significantly influenced their capacity to understand, appreciate and be engaged with sexually explicit HIV prevention campaigns.

Abstract Nature-based tourism and wildlife tourism are becoming increasingly popular worldwide and are often promoted as a means of protecting and preserving environmental resources. These forms of tourism are usually accompanied by interpretation such as signs, presentations and activities specifically designed to raise visitors‟ awareness of, and concern for, environmental issues. The rationale behind this approach is that enhancing visitors‟ environmental knowledge, understanding and attitudes prompts the adoption of environmentally responsible behaviours. This is supported by a growing body of research that suggests that environmental interpretation has considerable potential to impact upon visitors‟ conservation knowledge and attitudes, and that well-designed interpretive experiences and messages are an effective means of reducing a range of negative „on-site‟ behaviours such as littering, straying from walkways and feeding wildlife. However, there has been little exploration of whether environmental interpretation influences the uptake of conservation practices „off-site‟ or how the positive impacts of nature-based tourism can be maintained over time. Until recently, tourism research exploring post-visit behaviour has used visitors‟ immediate post-visit intentions as a measure of behaviour change. There is increasing evidence, however, that stated intentions to engage in conservation behaviours rarely manifest as actual behaviour, and that visitors‟ on-site enthusiasm and commitment tends to wane following their visit. The current research aimed to investigate whether providing visitors with post-visit support in the form of learning materials and reminders would prevent this decline and enhance long-term conservation learning (hereby defined as knowledge, attitudes and behaviour). This research explores short and long-term changes in families‟ conservation knowledge, attitudes and behaviour following their visit to Mon Repos Conservation Park, a world renowned turtle rookery in Queensland, Australia. Stage one of the study involved surveying 100 Australian families to identify barriers and benefits associated with six conservation practices (re-using containers, buying minimal packaging, reducing use of plastic bags, picking up litter, recycling and composting). Using Community-based Social Marketing theory, responses informed the development of printed and online post-visit action resources specifically designed to reinforce the wildlife tourism experience and support families‟ conservation learning. Resources focused on the six conservation behaviours outlined above but also included other environmental activities and conservation information of relevance. v In stage two, two hundred Australian families visiting Mon Repos in December 2007 and January 2008 were sampled and assigned to either a treatment group (provided with post-visit action resources and regular contact) or the control group (no post-visit support). All families were asked to complete pre-visit, post-visit and follow-up questionnaires to enable the researcher to ascertain short-term and long-term changes in their conservation knowledge, attitudes and behaviour and to identify factors contributing to the uptake of off-site conservation practices. The final sample comprised the one hundred families who completed all three questionnaires. Comparisons between responses of the control and treatment groups revealed that post-visit action resources reinforced respondents‟ knowledge of threats to turtles and enhanced their attitudes towards protecting wildlife and the natural environment. Families who received post-visit support were also significantly more likely to pick up litter and introduced more conservation actions than those who did not receive this support. Aspects of the post-visit action resources that were particular effective were updates of turtle activity at Mon Repos, emails, fact sheets and the newsletter. Other factors that prompted the adoption of conservation practices included Mon Repos‟ interpretation and the opportunity to view wildlife in its natural surroundings. The influence of other family members and pre-visit knowledge and interest were also found to be associated with subsequent uptake of conservation behaviours. Implications for wildlife interpretive practice and the design and delivery of post-visit support are discussed and recommendations for future research presented.

Abstract Nature-based tourism and wildlife tourism are becoming increasingly popular worldwide and are often promoted as a means of protecting and preserving environmental resources. These forms of tourism are usually accompanied by interpretation such as signs, presentations and activities specifically designed to raise visitors‟ awareness of, and concern for, environmental issues. The rationale behind this approach is that enhancing visitors‟ environmental knowledge, understanding and attitudes prompts the adoption of environmentally responsible behaviours. This is supported by a growing body of research that suggests that environmental interpretation has considerable potential to impact upon visitors‟ conservation knowledge and attitudes, and that well-designed interpretive experiences and messages are an effective means of reducing a range of negative „on-site‟ behaviours such as littering, straying from walkways and feeding wildlife. However, there has been little exploration of whether environmental interpretation influences the uptake of conservation practices „off-site‟ or how the positive impacts of nature-based tourism can be maintained over time. Until recently, tourism research exploring post-visit behaviour has used visitors‟ immediate post-visit intentions as a measure of behaviour change. There is increasing evidence, however, that stated intentions to engage in conservation behaviours rarely manifest as actual behaviour, and that visitors‟ on-site enthusiasm and commitment tends to wane following their visit. The current research aimed to investigate whether providing visitors with post-visit support in the form of learning materials and reminders would prevent this decline and enhance long-term conservation learning (hereby defined as knowledge, attitudes and behaviour). This research explores short and long-term changes in families‟ conservation knowledge, attitudes and behaviour following their visit to Mon Repos Conservation Park, a world renowned turtle rookery in Queensland, Australia. Stage one of the study involved surveying 100 Australian families to identify barriers and benefits associated with six conservation practices (re-using containers, buying minimal packaging, reducing use of plastic bags, picking up litter, recycling and composting). Using Community-based Social Marketing theory, responses informed the development of printed and online post-visit action resources specifically designed to reinforce the wildlife tourism experience and support families‟ conservation learning. Resources focused on the six conservation behaviours outlined above but also included other environmental activities and conservation information of relevance. v In stage two, two hundred Australian families visiting Mon Repos in December 2007 and January 2008 were sampled and assigned to either a treatment group (provided with post-visit action resources and regular contact) or the control group (no post-visit support). All families were asked to complete pre-visit, post-visit and follow-up questionnaires to enable the researcher to ascertain short-term and long-term changes in their conservation knowledge, attitudes and behaviour and to identify factors contributing to the uptake of off-site conservation practices. The final sample comprised the one hundred families who completed all three questionnaires. Comparisons between responses of the control and treatment groups revealed that post-visit action resources reinforced respondents‟ knowledge of threats to turtles and enhanced their attitudes towards protecting wildlife and the natural environment. Families who received post-visit support were also significantly more likely to pick up litter and introduced more conservation actions than those who did not receive this support. Aspects of the post-visit action resources that were particular effective were updates of turtle activity at Mon Repos, emails, fact sheets and the newsletter. Other factors that prompted the adoption of conservation practices included Mon Repos‟ interpretation and the opportunity to view wildlife in its natural surroundings. The influence of other family members and pre-visit knowledge and interest were also found to be associated with subsequent uptake of conservation behaviours. Implications for wildlife interpretive practice and the design and delivery of post-visit support are discussed and recommendations for future research presented.