Aim: The aim of this study is to analyze how a non-reward referral program can be operated without offering a real incentive to one referring someone else to a company. A case of Oneplus smart phone Manufacturer Company is used to illustrate the topic under study in the introduction chapter to give the reader a clear picture of the study. Method: A quantitative data collection of the students in University of Gävle was conducted with Google forms. The data were then transcript to SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Science) for analyzing, the results were in mean value, standard deviation and cluster analysis.  Result & Conclusions: The research concludes that product quality factor is most essential for a functional non-reward referral system. But also what consumer behavior does a company have to create in their customer, in order for such a system should work. Suggestions for future research: A qualitative research from both a company and its customer in an open-ended interview, to have a deeper understanding and insight of a non-reward referral system. Contribution of the thesis: Having limited theoretical literature on referral marketing without rewards, this thesis contributes to fill that gap by making an addition to existing literature on referral marketing. It also shows what a new firm can do to acquire new customers through cheap marketing.

published_or_final_version / Psychology / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

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The biggest challenge facing organizations in service industry today is that of customer retention. Loyalty/reward programmes have been promoted as the ultimate strategic solution towards customer retention by some industry experts, while the others question its influential potential as a customer retention strategy. The primary purpose of this research was to establish whether loyalty/reward programmes, as one of the main contributing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) factors, are either simply a fad or actually a fab solution! Subsequently, the research focused on the evaluation of the three most noted and influential CRM components in current literature and concluded that service quality and customer contact rated higher than loyalty/reward programmes with what should be considered the ultimate critic, namely the customer, or rather 60 of them.

In large, open and distributed systems, agents are often used to represent users and act on their behalves. Agents can provide good or bad services or act honestly or dishonestly. Trust and reputation mechanisms are used to distinguish good services from bad ones or honest agents from dishonest ones. My research is focused on trust and reputation management in decentralized systems. Compared with centralized systems, decentralized systems are more difficult and inefficient for agents to find and collect information to build trust and reputation. In this thesis, I propose a Bayesian network-based trust model. It provides a flexible way to present differentiated trust and combine different aspects of trust that can meet agents different needs. As a complementary element, I propose a super-agent based approach that facilitates reputation management in decentralized networks. The idea of allowing super-agents to form interest-based communities further enables flexible reputation management among groups of agents. A reward mechanism creates incentives for super-agents to contribute their resources and to be honest. As a single package, my work is able to promote effective, efficient and flexible trust and reputation management in decentralized systems.

Leucine injections directly into the brain decrease food intake whereas supplementation of this amino acid in a diet has a negligible effect on food intake. We sought to investigate why orally supplemented leucine is ineffective as an anorexigen. We found that mice consuming leucine exhibited increased cFos immunoreactivity in the ARC and PVN of hypothalamus, areas controlling energy balance. However, real time- PCR analysis of the hypothalamic tissue in mice that were exposed to oral leucine showed changes in expression of genes involved in the regulation of energy balance as well as those mediating feeding reward (TMEM18, MC4R, CRH, FTO, SLC6A15, DOR). This suggests that leucine consumption affects activity of not only brain pathways that control calorie intake, but also those that mediate eating for pleasure. Hence the lack of feeding response to leucine supplementation in a diet may stem from the simultaneous action of this amino acid at brain circuit promoting reward and energy homeostasis.

In large, open and distributed systems, agents are often used to represent users and act on their behalves. Agents can provide good or bad services or act honestly or dishonestly. Trust and reputation mechanisms are used to distinguish good services from bad ones or honest agents from dishonest ones. My research is focused on trust and reputation management in decentralized systems. Compared with centralized systems, decentralized systems are more difficult and inefficient for agents to find and collect information to build trust and reputation. In this thesis, I propose a Bayesian network-based trust model. It provides a flexible way to present differentiated trust and combine different aspects of trust that can meet agents different needs. As a complementary element, I propose a super-agent based approach that facilitates reputation management in decentralized networks. The idea of allowing super-agents to form interest-based communities further enables flexible reputation management among groups of agents. A reward mechanism creates incentives for super-agents to contribute their resources and to be honest. As a single package, my work is able to promote effective, efficient and flexible trust and reputation management in decentralized systems.

Our national commercial and cargo airlines have great revenue because of rapid developed economics. Especially after the open sky policy. Aviation capacity grows very fast. The convenient of air transportation brings booming economics to the general public; however it also brings destructive environment of airport neighborhood, lower the living quality. Under the aircraft noise for a long term would affect people¡¦s life and work seriously, cause people different level of physical and psychological damages. Citizen views the present monitoring operation of aircraft noise and causes serious environmental pollution issues. Although the government studies airside noise improvement and reward system aggressively, the contestation continues for three years. Every individual airport has conflict with close-by residents frequently. The issue of rationality and fairness of the official aircraft noise prevention and airport reward system is important and meet the exigencies of the moment. This study views the past three years document of aircraft noise prevention and airport reward system, refer to varies information of national and international similar system, analysis and study the reasonable standard level of aircraft noise and related regulations for schools, hospitals residents. Further to offering some strategies and methods to improve the aircraft noise prevention and airport reward system.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität zu Münster, 1972. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 290-329).

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