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This research tries to observe an advertizing printing company¡¦s business model and understand the interaction between different policies implemented on the company by System Dynamics. Futhermore, building Management Flight Simulatior can let one simulate the situation and policies to find the effective policies. After the simulation and the evaluation, we find that if the company only pays attention to marketing but didn¡¦t make efforts on the employees¡¦ training, it will block the company¡¦s growth, and the manager always ignored this problem. However, if we only make efforts on training the employees or hiring new employees, it will be just a waste of money in the long run. Therefore, the manager should enlarge his thinking boundary, and considerate not only marketing but training, and even many other policies, and the most important is their interaction, at appropriate time.

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In the field of the Total Qualitative Management, like ISO 9000 that enterprises implement. Total Qualitative Management become a model of company, strive for the Total Qualitative Management and reward it as the goal of every company. Recent years, many empirical research results of implementing TQM and their effects on performance have different view points. Some scholars believe that TQM activities indeed have positive impact on firm¡¦s quality and productivity, and reduce production time and then create competitive priorities. The objective of this study is to find out the relationship between TQM practices and business performance, and hope the result of this study could provide some suggestions for the managers.This study sampled 130 the small and medium enterprises manufactures in Taiwan with which had registered ISO 9000 . A total of 130 manufacturing corporations were each sent the questionnaire. There are 129 returned questionnaires, response rate is 99%. The conceptual framework of this study is based on the research model of S.Bruce Han¡BShaw K. Chen¡BMaling Ebrahimpour(2007), that the dimensions of ISO 9000, TQM and Business Performance and significantly correlated.This research adopts the ISO 9000 efforts, TQM practices, competitiveness , and customer satisfaction as business performance of measure perspectives. Using multiple regression analysis, this paper finds that ISO 9000 efforts and TQM practices hasn¡¦t the positive influence to the business performance. Besides, this research finds that the competitiveness and customer satisfaction had positive influences on the business performance. In other words, the firms with high TQM implementation will put more emphasis on competitiveness and customer satisfaction have better business performance.

With the high development of society and economy, the rising level of national education, and the awareness of consumer rights in Taiwan, consumers¡¦ demands for medical and health care is increasing. The role of consumers has transformed to actively select and require medical and health care. The implementation of the National Health Insurance leads to the role change of the medical provider from a price maker to a price receiver, which benefits hospitals with mass product and cost control. Therefore, price-drive medical consumers become quality¡Vdriven ones, which benefits hospitals with good faculty, facilities and service. Nowadays, the hospital business environment is becoming more and more competitive. It is vital not only for hospital substantial business to create customer value of service and quality but also for hospital competitiveness to satisfy customer needs. The business strategy of hospitals is to greatly strengthen internal management and actively seek for the interaction with the external environment to keep survival and growth. Besides, hospitals apply CRM in order to attract new customers, retain old customers and to increase the profits of the customer contribution. Because of the limit of cost and budget tight policy, large hospitals are increasing their scale and the limited resource /number of customers. In this case, it is necessary for hospital¡¦s business strategy to focus on both quality and cost effectiveness. Hospitals build the tight relationship with customers so that they are willing to be diagnosed. Thus, Customer Relationship Management is the core competitive advantage for hospitals. Nevertheless, hospitals are less willing to purchase extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy machines for the sake of the tight finance budget. As far as medical device suppliers are concerned, they have to adopt BOT approach in order to maintain business growth. Regarding the medical service and cooperation model for renal calculus patients, we discover that it is the equipment suppliers that are responsible for CRM rather than hospitals establishment. The retention number and returning frequency is the key to the revenues of the equipment suppliers, which means the relationship between hospitals and suppliers are unbroken. Our research indicates that the business model of extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy machine can apply the concept of CRM. The medical equipment business and medical organization develop the model of the patient service with the base; CRM, the core value: customers and the hospital vision. We construct the ¡§four wins¡¨ model for the hospital, the patient, the Health Insurance Bureau and the business with the decision-making strategy, customer service and IT application.

Since Taiwan joined the WTO in 2002, the market has been gradually deregulated because of the impact of globalization. Take the airfreights forwarding industry as an example, due to the low entry threshold in Taiwan, the foreign investors has been adjusting their business operating strategy by taking Taiwan as a pre-enter step before investing China¡¦s market. The foreign investors are capturing the Asia Pacific Region¡¦s market distinctly with their strong funds and globalized information platform, which severely threatens the local enterprise. Therefore, to adjust operating strategy, to position the market and to promote competitive ability become the crucial tasks for local airfrights forwarding industry. The key element for obtaining customer¡¦s satisfaction and loyalty is to improve our service quality. This research takes airfreight forwarding industry as an object to explore how service quality influences customer satisfaction and enhances customer loyalty, which will further make business more profitable and even more valuable. Collecting and analyzing the related documents construct the primary structure of this research. The hypotheses and questionnaires are analyzed through SPSS statistical methods- reliability analysis, canonical correlation analysis and stepwise multiple regression analysis. The research has demonstrated: 1.The service quality has positive influence on the customer satisfaction 2.The customer satisfaction has positive influence on the customer loyalty 3.The service quality has positive influence on the customer loyalty

Rising competition among retailers, coupled with the economic recession and its influence on the consumers' cautiousness in consumption causes private label to become a new profit protection policy for the retailer industry. Private label symbolizes that retailers control the channel. As consumers recognize private label more , it will gradually influence the public¡¦s consumption attitude. The research conducted among three successful private label retailers and used the case interview. Aimed at the product features, brand equity, pricing strategy, promotion and channel of private label products and used different dimensions to probe into each case company¡¦s strategy. The private label strategy of retailers is summarized through the categorization analysis . The survey of the consumer behavior are framed six items: product features, brand equity, price, promotion, channel and service , then do the questionnaire survey on Costco consumers who purchase private label. Also view the satisfaction condition from Costco consumer with regards to private label. The results and conclusions are as follows: retailers mainly focus on private label products that provide quicker circulation and economies of scale. As long as the retailer can provide products whose quality is similar to national brand products at a more competitive price, consumers may choose private label products of good quality and price. Furthermore, in the aspect of promotion, retailers commonly adopt the DM , choosing several private label products to sell at a lower price than promotion price. Finally, in the aspect of channel, due to the less popularity of private label products than national brand product, the retailers have to attract consumers through the national brand in order to give a chance to private label through channel advantage. For example, intensive advertisement inside stores can influence the consumer¡¦s choice by placing private label in the area of consumer¡¦s eye sight zone. Lastly, this study and consumer survey proposes recommendations for retailers based on understanding customer need.

IKEA was founded in 1943 by Ingvar Kamprad and is currently retailing in 44 different countries around the globe. With the implementation of 25 year warranty the importance to validate the quality have increased to satisfy the customer. The aim of this thesis have therefore been to find out the critical factors for kitchen worktops through the expectations of the customers. In addition to this the product development process was investigated to gain an understanding on how IKEA deals with customer complaints today. The thesis was divided in four stages. First the customers’ expectations were investigated by using the survey research method. The formulations of the questions are of great importance in this research method so that the information needed can be gathered without confusion and irritation. The critical factors of the kitchen worktops were also located in this survey and are out of the customer point of view. After the survey was done and the critical factors identified a concept generation phase was started to analyze possible ways of solving the issues with the kitchen worktops. Three proposals of concepts was generated; improvement in quality, improvement in the information communicated by IKEA, and a combination of these two. These proposals were analyzed against each other, against the survey and against the possible concrete gains. When the proposals of concepts were completed a decision to investigate the product development process was made and suggestions on how these critical factors could be found earlier in the process were made. Lastly a proposal of a database system for categorizations of the customer complaints when it comes to different defects were made and proposed to IKEA. Out from the information received by the survey these proposals could be made and the conclusion that scratches and to some extent heat was the most critical flaws, which would be the thing to focus further on. The product development process could also be improved to make it possible to take notice of these critical flaws earlier in the process. To summarize the project was successful and IKEA was really happy with the results, and the extra tasks that were added to this thesis. The first problem description was to only find the customers’ expectations but to get something out of this we added the proposals and the attempt to change the product development process when it comes to kitchen worktops.

The face of the workplace has changed dramatically over the past decade and most organisations have to survive in a fiercely competitive global economy. The impact of the competitive changes, especially in the service environment has become critical and quality service is considered an essential strategy for success and survival in today's competitive environment. Organisations are continuously searching for ways to improve their performance and create a sustainable competitive advantage. Consumers are also continuously being made more aware of their rights and in today's fast paced world, with time constraints and increased stress, tolerance levels have been considerably eroded. In view of this, customer satisfaction has become a focus area, in particular, to investigate ways that it can be enhanced to gain a competitive edge. A better understanding of how organisations can apply resources to achieve these goals will be a useful instrument towards gaining sustainable competitive advantage. One way of doing this is for service firms to manage their capacity to achieve maximum and/or optimum utilisation at all times, if possible. But having trained staff on hand at the right times is no easy task. Overstaffing can lead to budget blow-out, while understating adds to staff stress levels, and can contribute to both customer and staff dissatisfaction. As a possible solution many employers tackle this problem by employing casual staff who are more flexible in their working hours and can be deployed to meet peak demands in service. The objective of this study was to investigate the importance of customer satisfaction and whether the utilisation of temporary staffing solutions could positively contribute in improving service levels. A survey research design was used with a questionnaire as data-gathering instrument. The study population consisted of customers (N=507) that visited Absa branches in the Vaal Triangle and were serviced by either permanent or flexi tellers. Contingency tables were used to record and analyse the relationship between the different variables, and statistical significance tests were used to show that the results are significant. Chi-square and Cramer's phi or V test were used as the basis of the analysis. The research confirmed that customer satisfaction has definite financial benefits for an organisation and that the effective application of temporary staffing solutions could further enhance these benefits. The results of the statistical analysis of the survey further confirmed that there was no significant difference in the perceived level of service received from either permanent or flexi tellers. Limitations in the research are identified and recommendations for future research are made. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.

<p>QC 20100813</p>