Baigiamajame magistro darbe nagrinėjamas produkto koncepcijos formavimas tarptautiniame automobilių gamybos ir prekybos versle. Remiantis mokslinės literatūros šaltinių, statistinių duomenų analize, empiriniais tyrimais siūlomi strateginiai sprendimai, skirti produkto koncepcijos tarptautiniame automobilių gamybos ir prekybos versle tobulinimui bei pateikiamos naujausių perspektyvių mokslinių tyrimų kryptys, skirtos plėtoti tarptautinį marketingą, bei leisiančias nustatyti strategines priemones, kurių reikia imtis, norit automobilių gamintojams susigrąžinti rinkos dalį ir buvusių pardavimų apimtį. Atliktas mokslinės literatūros šaltinių autorių nuomonių apibendrinimas, kuriame teigiam, kad pagrindinės trys sritys, kurias reikėtų tobulinti automobilių gamyboje, yra technologijos, kaina bei aplinkos apsauga. Atlikus empirinius tyrimus pagal originalų teorinį modelį, skirtą kompleksiškai analizuoti vartotojo elgseną tarptautiniame automobilių gamybos ir prekybos versle, nustatyti pagrindiniai vartotojų sprendimo priėmimą pirkti naują automobilį lemiantys veiksniai. Apibendrinus surinktus duomenis kuriama strategija, pateikiamos baigiamojo darbo išvados ir siūlymai. Darbą sudaro 7 dalys: įvadas, probleminė, teorinė, empirinių tyrimų, projektinė dalys, išvados bei literatūros sąrašas. Darbo apimtis – 89 p. teksto be priedų, 55 iliustr., 8 lent., 95 bibliografiniai šaltiniai. Atskirai pridedami darbo priedai. / This final paper involves issues concerned with product conception’s creation process in international automobile production and trading business. Strategic solutions for improving product conception are stated. These solutions were developed while analysing statistical data, scientific literature and empirical researches. New headlines of scientific researches are proposed in order to gain market share that had been lost during global economic crisis. After reviewing scientific works concerning similar issues we learned that three fields that needs to be improved the most are technologies, price and environmental issues. Key factors influencing customer’s decision to purchase an automobile are identified during research. By summing up all final paper the strategy of sales improvement is proposed. At the end of paper conclusions and further development solutions are stated. Structure: introduction, theoretic part, analytical part, empirical research, conclusions and suggestions, references. Hesis consists of: 89 p. text without appendixes, 55 pictures, 8 tables, 95 bibliographical entries. Appendixes included.

The goal of this thesis is to propose strategies that profitably stimulate repeat purchase behaviour of Solosso's customers, Solosso being an e-commerce start-up producing custom made dress shirts. In order to accomplish the stated goal, research has been conducted into the existing body of literature about the subject, models for managing customers for value have been presented and applied on Solosso's customer database. Additionally, customer survey has been conducted to better understand customers' behaviour. Based on the applied models and the findings from the survey, the thesis delivers a set of recommendations on how to improve the product, what customers to acquire and, finally, what strategies to employ in order to profitably stimulate repeat purchase behaviour of the four main groups of Solosso's customers. The methods and strategies are expected to generate substantial incremental profits and may be implemented in other businesses as well.

The goal of this thesis is to make a research of shopping behaviour of mothers on internet and find common pattern of this behaviour. Due to this common patterns, recommendations for online businesses will be determined. The research will be made as anonymous observation of visitors of baby food and diapers e-shop www.Feedo.cz. Author of the thesis is owner of www.Feedo.cz. Before the research is started, hypotheses for the research will be determined. Based on this hypotheses, software tools, used for collection of visitors behaviour data, will be set up. The goal of the thesis will be reached by analyzing collected data a confirming or disproving determined hypotheses. Based on analysis results, specific recommendation of online business will be defined. Own contribution of the thesis will consist in determination of hypotheses based on real business problems, collections of behaviour data of www.Feedo.cz visitors, setting up software tools, analyzing collected data and defining specific recommendations fo online businesses. Keywords: online business, customer behaviour research, Google Analytics, mother, anonymous observation

The thesis is associated with designing a business plan for a start-up named FairList Ltd.. The business plan is developed on the basis of the originally designed economic model which does not generate the needed profit. Attention is especially given to the analysis of the market and the identification of the specific needs of language educators and potential students who play an essential role in the success of the entire project.

Digitaliseringen har påverkat samhället på många olika sätt, företag och konsumenter är inget undantag. E-handeln är i en stark tillväxtfas och man ser även hur olika branscher tar plats på den nya digitala marknaden. Skönhetsindustrin är en av dessa branscher som vuxit de senaste åren inom e-handeln. I takt med detta är det av intresse att undersöka varför konsumenter väljer att handla skönhetsprodukter online. Denna kvalitativa undersökning har studerat hur kvinnor i åldern 25-40 år väljer att handla skönhetsprodukter och hur faktorer som bekvämlighet, pris och information är avgörande vid köp. Studien undersöker det traditionella konsumentbeteendet jämfört med den nya digitala konsumenten och hur digitalisering påverkar hur konsumenter handlar skönhetsprodukter. Genom digitala verktyg som mobiltelefon har digitalisering bidragit till ett förändrat konsumtionsmönster där digitala verktyg som sociala medier och influenser börjat ta plats. Studiens syfte är att både kartlägga och förstå faktorerna som är av vikt vid inköp av skönhetsprodukter online, i syfte att bidra till kunskap för företag på den konkurrerande nya digitala marknaden. / Digitalisation has affected society in many ways, companies and consumers are no exception. E-commerce is in a strong growth phase and one can also see how different industries are taking their place in the new digital market. The beauty industry is one of those industries that has grown in the recent years in the field of e-commerce. In line with this, it is of interest to examine why consumers choose to shop for beauty products online. This qualitative study has studied how women between 25-40 years of age choose to buy beauty products and how factors such as convenience, price and information are crucial when buying. The study examines traditional consumer behaviour compared to the new digital consumer and how digitalisation affects how consumers buy beauty products. Through digital tools such as mobile phones, digitalisation has contributed to a changed consumption pattern where digital tools such as social media and influences have begun to take place. The aim of the study is to understand the factors that are important when purchasing beauty products online to contribute to knowledge for companies in the competing new digital market.

Online transactions have been growing exponentially in the last decade, contributing to up to 11% of total retail sales. One of the parameters of success in online transactions are online reviews where customers have the chance to assign level of satisfaction regarding their purchase. This review system acts as a bargaining power for customers so that their suppliers pay more attention to their satisfaction, as well as benchmark for future prospective customers. This research digs into what actually causes customers to assign high level of satisfaction in their online purchase experience: Whether it is packaging, delivery time or else. This research also tries to dig into customer behaviour related to online reviews from three different perspectives: gender, culture and economic structure. Data mining methodology is used to collect and analyse the data, thus providing a reliable quantitative study. The end result of this study is expected to assist in marketing decisions to capture certain types of consumers who significantly place or purchasing decision based on online reviews. / Entrepreneurship & Innovation Management

Deformation of materials due to heat exposure can be a challenge in vehicle design. Sun exposure and heat build up in the vehicle cabin contribute to accelerated aging of the materials used. To understand how this process affects the durability, numerical simulation is an important tool. This thesis work investigates whether it is possible to, with weather data and knowledge of how a car is used, simulate the deformation process of the trim parts due to heat exposure from the sun. To answer this question, two simulation methods have been compared: The first method is to only look at the aging of the material over time. This method is used today at Volvo Cars, but has been found to be insufficient from a number of aspects. The second method includes the effects of the reversible deformations. This method has not previously been tested in a similar context but was considered interesting as it models more true to life. In addition, the effects of modeling the car according to a virtual customer behavior, rather than stationary, were investigated. The main simulation tools used are TAITherm and Abaqus. The results show that modeling the vehicle with an imagined user routine yields a lower mean temperature as the car is cooled down when driven. The result of the comparison between the two methods shows that inclusion of the effects of the reversible deformations contribute to a better model of the aging of the trim parts due to heat exposure from the sun. / Deformation av material till följd av hög värmelast är ofta en utmaning inom fordonsdesign. Materialet i kupén exponeras både för direkt solljus och den värme som ackumuleras i det stängda utrymmet. För att få förståelse för hur denna process påverkar hållbarheten är numerisk analys ett viktigt verktyg. Föreliggande examensarbete undersöker om det är möjligt att, med väderdata och kunskap om hur en bil används, simulera deformationsprocessen i trim- delarna som uppkommer av värmexponering från solen. För att besvara denna fråga har två simuleringsmetoder jämförts: Den första metoden är att endast titta på materialets åldrande över tiden. Den används idag på Volvo Cars, men har befunnits vara otillräcklig utifrån ett antal aspekter. Den andra metoden inkluderar effekterna av de elastiska deformationerna av materialet. Denna metod har inte tidigare prövats i ett liknande sammanhang men bedömdes intressant då den modellerar mer verklighetstroget. Dessutom undersöktes effekterna av att modellera bilen enligt ett virtuellt kundbeteen- de snarare än som stillastående. De huvudsakliga simuleringsverktygen som använts här är TAITherm och Abaqus. Resultaten visar att modellering av fordonet med en tänkt användarrutin ger en lägre medeltemperatur eftersom bilen kyls ner när den körs. Resultatet av jämförelsen mellan de två metoderna visar att inkludering av effekterna av de elastiska deformationerna bidrar till en bättre modellering av åldrandet av trimdelarna till följd av värmexponering från solen.

M. Tech. (Marketing, Faculty of Management Sciences), Vaal University of Technology / One important motivating force that influences a wide range of consumer behaviour is the desire to gain status or social prestige from the acquisition and consumption of goods. More often than not, individuals purchase expensive and luxury goods to display their social standing. In addition, individuals purchase status products to fulfil their material desires and reinforce their group identity. This is often a case with regards to youth consumers who often purchase expensive, luxury fashionable clothing brands to portray status and impress their peers. This behaviour seems to be trending among township consumers. The township market is a major contributor to the South African economy with an annual spending power of approximately R307-R308 billion. This study sought to investigate the influence of fashion clothing involvement, materialism and group identity on fashion brand status consumption amongst the youth. The research concentrates specifically on township youth consumers aged between 18 to 24 years, located in the Sedibeng district. This study made use of a non-probability convenience sample. A self-administered questionnaire was designed based on the scales used in previous studies. Five fieldworkers were selected and received training from the researcher on the purpose of the research as well as the critical elements of fieldwork. Once the training was completed, the questionnaires were distributed by fieldworkers. The questionnaire requested respondents to indicate on a five-point Likert scale the extent of their agreement or disagreement with items designed to measure their status consumption, fashion clothing involvement, materialism and group identity. In addition, the participants were requested to provide certain demographic data. For this study, a sample of 400 township youth individuals, residing within the Sedibeng district, was drawn. From this sample, only 345 questionnaires were usable leading to a response rate of 83 percent. The captured data were analysed using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics comprising of correlation and regression analysis. The findings indicate that fashion clothing involvement significantly and positively predicted status consumption of township youth consumers. Therefore, the results show that fashion-involved consumers are more likely to engage in status consumption. There was a direct relationship between materialism and status consumption. Group identity had a significant positive influence on status consumption. Owing to the high demand for status brands or products by township youth consumers, it is recommended that marketers should tap the market potential of this consumer segment while considering the influence of their reference groups. In addition, their advertisements should emphasise the brand or product’s ability to indicate status. Furthermore, marketers should make use of social media to effectively reach youth consumers. Insights gained from this study will help marketers to better understand township youth consumers, their engagement in status consumption, and their involvement in fashion clothing, which, in turn, should help them tailor their marketing efforts in such a way as to appeal to this segment in an appropriate manner.

A credit card as a banking product has a dual nature both as a convenient loan and a payment tool. Credit card profitability prediction is a complex problem because of the variety of the card holders' behaviour patterns, a fluctuating balance, and different sources of interest and transactional income. The state of a credit card account depends on the type of card usage and payments delinquency, and can be defined as inactive, transactor, revolver, delinquent, and default. The proposed credit cards profit prediction model consists of four stages: i) utilisation rate and interest rate income prediction, ii) non-interest rate income prediction, iii) account state prediction with conditional transition probabilities, and iv) the aggregation of the partial models into total income estimation. This thesis describes an approach to credit card account-level profitability prediction based on multistate and multistage conditional probabilities models with different types of income and compares methods for the most accurate predictions. We use application, behavioural, card state, and macroeconomic characteristics as predictors. This thesis contains nine chapters: Introduction, Literature Review, six chapters giving descriptions of the data, methodologies and discussions of the results of the empirical investigation, and Conclusion. Introduction gives the key points and main aims of the current research and describes the general schema of the total income prediction model. Literature Review proposes a systematic analysis of academic work on loan profit modelling and highlights the gaps in the application of profit scoring to credit cards income prediction. Chapter 3 describes the data sample and gives the overview of characteristics. Chapter 4 is dedicated to the prediction of the credit limit utilisation and contains the comparative analysis of the predictive accuracy of different regression models. We apply five methods such as i) linear regression, ii) fractional regression, iii) beta-regression, iv) beta-transformation, and v) weighted logistic regression with data binary transformation for utilisation rate prediction for one- and two-stage models. Chapters 5 and 6 are dedicated to modelling the transition probabilities between credit card states. Chapter 5 describes the general model setups, model building methodology such as transition probability prediction with conditional binary logistic, ordinal, and multinomial regressions, the data sample description, the univariate analysis of predictors. Chapter 6 discusses regression estimation results for all types of regression and a comparative analysis of the models. Chapter 7 describes an approach to the non-interest rate income prediction and contains a comparative analysis of panel data regression techniques such as pooled and four random effect methods. We consider two sources of non-interest income generation: i) interchange fees and foreign exchange fees from transactions via pointof- sales (POS) and ii) ATM fees from cash withdrawals. We compare the predictive accuracy of a one-stage approach, which means the usage of a single linear model for the income amount estimation, and a two-stage approach, which means that the income amount conditional on the probability of POS and ATM transaction. Chapter 8 aggregates the results from the partial models into a single model for total income estimation. We assume that a credit card account does not have a single particular state and a single behavioural type in the future, but has a chance to move to any of possible states. The income prediction model is selected according to these states, and the transition probabilities are used as weights for the particular interest rate and non-interest rate income prediction models. Conclusion highlights the contributions of this research. We propose an innovative methodological approach for credit card income prediction as a system of models, which considers the estimation of the income from different sources and then aggregates the income estimations weighted by the states transition probabilities. The results of comparative analysis of regression methods for: i) utilization rate of credit limit and ii) non-interest income prediction, iii) the use of panel data with pooled and random effect for profit scoring, and iv) account level non-binary target transition probabilities estimation for credit cards can be used as benchmarks for further research and fill the gaps of empirical investigations in the literature. The estimation of the transition probability between states at the account level helps to avoid the memorylessness property of the Markov Chains approach. We have investigated the significance of predictors for models of this type. The proposed modelling approach can be applied for the development of business strategies such as credit limit management, customer segmentation by the profitability and behavioural type.

The theme of my graduation thesis was "Attitudes and buying behaviour of customers of a shopping center". The object that I have explore was the shopping center Tesco Pisek. Marketers must be able to survive on the market competition, so they must know their own consumers. It is important to know the consumer behaviour, to know what is importent for consumers and it is also important to know the consumer knowledge of diferent products. This topic has me interested because of the most important timeliness. To get all those information I must do marketing research, these results was evaluated in this graduation thesis.