Market orientation has been proposed as a major source of achieving sustainable competitive advantage, and also one of marketing's greatest contributions to business strategy. At the same time it is believed that internal marketing is part of the wider concept of market orientation and implies applying marketing-like techniques internally to the organisation in order to foster customer orientation among employees. Empirical evidence for the interconnectedness of internal marketing and market orientation is scant within the literature. Additionally, the impact of both market orientation and internal marketing on the company performance is subject of debate. This study sought to investigate the interconnectedness of internal marketing and market orientation and their impact on company performance. This was done in Egypt as studies of both concepts in Egypt, as in other emerging economies are rare, and provides some interesting results. A questionnaire was designed and after pilot testing, a quantitative survey of 222 Egyptian and western companies in Egypt was carried out. A number of hypotheses were tested and also a number of correlation analyses were carried out. This was followed by 12 qualitative interviews with senior management of Egyptian and western companies. Among the findings of the study were that in general western firms were both more market oriented and internal marketing oriented than Egyptian firms and performed better. Also that there was a positive relationship between market orientation and company performance, as there was between internal marketing and performance and that the two concepts are related. Among the original contributions to knowledge by this study is the finding that the strongest relationship between dimensions of market orientation and overall internal marketing is in terms of inter-functional co-ordination (a dimension of market orientation). The study concludes with a set of recommendations to Egyptian companies to improve their market orientation stances.

In recent years a succession of food and health scares in the UK and elsewhere in Europe have resulted in consumers becoming more concerned about both the food they eat and aspects of the food chain over which they have little or no control. Many of these scares have been related to meat and meat products and, as a consequence, more and more people have reduced their meat consumption of have given up meat altogether. Although meat remains part of the diet for the majority of Europeans, the recent decline in the image of meat strongly suggests that there is now a real need for those involved in the meat industry to take steps to restore and retain consumer confidence in eating meat. This thesis investigates the factors which have had the most influence on meat consumption in Europe during the past two decades. The research is unique in that it takes both a multi-discliplinary and pan-European approach, examining economic and non-economic factors, as well as synthesising information from a variety of literature and statistical sources. Although the thesis is primarily concerned with meat consumption in the UK, reference is also made to the situation in some other Western European countries with emphasis on Germany. Comprehensive secondary research demonstrates how consumer issues are most likely to be responsible for recent changes in average per capita meat consumption. The importance of consumer attitudes is explored in depth, and consideration is given to various ways in which they can be measured and modelled. The results of attitudinal surveys are used to provide both a consumer and industry perspective of consumer attitudes to eating meat, and to highlight the importance of the consumer issues of healthy eating, food safety, animal welfare and vegetarianism. By testing Fishbein and Ajzen's Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) model, the consumer data confirm the hypothesis that consumer attitudes are important predictors of meat consumption. The concept of consumer confidence is discussed and a measure for it proposed. This enables consumer confidence to be incorporated into the TRA model, and thus provides a better understanding of the relationships between consumer confidence, consumer attitudes and meat consumption. It is proposed that rather than being another determinant of meat consumption, consumer confidence can best be conceptualised as the overall positive, negative or neutral feeling a consumer has towards eathing meat. The implications of the research findings for the many public and privately owned organisations associated with the meat industry are outlined. Based on the findings and conclusions of the thesis, an over-arching model, encapsulating the complex behaviour of meat consumption is proposed.

This PhD submission is by publication. It is based on the premise that marketing is fundamentally changing and evolving as a result of the impact of new technology. The conceptual ideas for the research emanated in 1998 and provided the basis for exploration until 1992. From wide ranging research it was found that company distribution strategies were changing as a result of the utilisation of cybermediaries. The Internet offers a cheaper and more radical marketing channel for smaller companies that can offer direct shipping to customers. In terms of undertaking research it was found that research on the Internet posed many problems that were related to individual skill sets, privacy considerations and the extent of email usage, including defunct email addresses. Company marketing effectiveness on the web depends on web capabilities that were identified and also the degree of co-ordination with designers. Companies also adopted reactive, interactive or passive marketing strategies depending on the time that they were in the Internet. Increasingly companies are also using the Internet for PR purposes. To this extent the accepted marketing paradigm of the four Ps is changing irrevocably. The diverse range of research methodologies, reflecting the post modern age and the limitations of the range of research is discussed. The thesis concludes by discussing how ethical marketing, customer relationship management (CRM), reputation and wireless communication are likely to change marketing strategies even further in the future.

Considering the importance of international activities for the small and medium-sized firms in the modern economy, the present research project tries to identify the degree in internationalisation and the main international marketing strategies used by the small and medium-sized biotechnology enterprises (SMBEs). The biotechnology sector cannot be considered as a homogenous industry, but rather as a series of different industrial applications centred around the specific use of biological organisms in producing and improving existent products and processes. Biotechnology is also a high technology sector, with complex and unpredictable changes in innovation financing and commercialisation. The specific characteristics of biotechnology products and markets increase the importance of international activities for the SMBEs. This research project investigates three main issues related to the process of globalisation: 1. What is the degree of globalisation of the UK SMBEs? 2. What are the international marketing strategies used by the UK SMBEs? 3. What are the role of the manager and the board of directors in the internationalisation process of the UK SMBEs? A number of research hypothesis related with these objectives were formulated. Using a large European base in order to identify the degree of SMBE's globalisation, the study concentrates later on UK firms alone. The reason for this choice is the high level of development of the UK biotechnology sector. In order to build a comprehensive model of the international marketing strategies used by the UK SMBEs, the degree of globalisation of the European SMBEs, the organisational and functional profile of these firms, as well as the main global regions in which they initiated and developed international operations has been initially investigated in the fist place. In the second stage, the main international marketing strategies used by the UK SMBEs have been identified. 7 Case studies of globalised and fully internationalised UK SMBEs, identified in the first stage, have been developed and are presented in the Part III of the thesis. The main elements that influence the design, implementation and control of international strategies were identified and analysed in order to build a complete picture of the strategic operational processes in biotechnology. The role of the management in the internationalisation process and the use of Internet technology to expand business activities were investigated and discussed in relation to their capacity in increasing the international competitiveness of biotech companies. The positive results obtained in this study as well as the interest and support shown by the industry, provide a good basis for the further development of research into biotechnology business. The novelty of biotechnology products and applications and the high dynamism of the market environment create the need for a permanent flow of information among industrialists, government representatives and academic. This can only help to increase the understanding of this sector, and to improve the competitiveness of UK Biotechnology worldwide.

As depicted in Chapter I, 2-oxoglutarate- (2OG) dependent oxygenases are ubiquitous in living systems and display a wide range of cellular functions, spanning metabolism, transcription, and translation. Although functionally diverse, the 2OG oxygenases share a high degree of structural similarities between their catalytic sites. From a medicinal chemistry point of view, the combination of biological diversity and structural similarity presents a rather challenging task for the development of selective small molecules for functional studies in vivo. The non-selective metal chelator 8-hydroxyquinoline (8HQ) was used as a template for the generation of tool compound <b>I</b> for the KDM4 subfamily of histone demethylases via application of the Betti reaction. Structural analogue <b>II</b> was used as the corresponding negative control (Figure A). These compounds were characterised in vitro against a range of 2OG oxygenases and subsequently used for studies in cells. <b>I</b> displays selectivity for KDM4 and increases the level of the H3K9me3 histone mark in cells. It has an effect on the post-translational modification pattern of histone H3, but not other histones, and reduces the viability of lung cancer cells, but not normal lung cells, derived from the same patient. <b>I</b> also stabilises hypoxia-inducable factor HIF in cells via a mechanism which seems to be independent from prolyl hydroxylase inhibition. This work is described in Chapters II and III. The chemical biology research in epigenetics is complemented by qualitative analysis conducted in the social sciences at Said Business School. With a global view on how innovation occurs and may actively be fostered, Chapter IV focuses on the potential of epigenetics in drug discovery and how this process may actively be promoted within the framework of open innovation. Areas of focus include considerations of incremental and disruptive technology; how to claim, demarcate, and control the market; how knowledge brokering occurs; and insights about process, management, organisation, and culture of open innovation. In contrast to the open-skies approach adopted for the development of a tool compound in Chapters II and III, a focused-library approach was taken for the generation of a tool compound for the OGFOD1 ribosomal prolyl hydroxylase. The development of a suitable in vitro activity assay for OGFOD1 in Chapter V enabled the development of lead compound <b>III</b> in Chapter VI. <b>III</b> is selective for OGFOD1 against the structurally closely related prolyl hydroxylase PHD2.