The Smartphone is a technological innovation that has transformed for the better how billions of people live by enabling them to transcend time and space to remain socially connected to potentially millions of others despite being thousands of miles apart. Although smartphones help people connect from a distance, there has been much concern about how they affect face-to-face interactions. This study explored, drawing on Goffmanian concepts, how and why smartphones affect face-to-face encounters. The findings show there are three types of smartphone cross-talk: exclusive, semi-exclusive, and collaborative. With the addition of smartphone play and solo smartphone activity, interactants can engage in five different types of smartphone use during a social encounter. Smartphones can both disrupt and facilitate face-to-face encounters at any given time. A theory of cross-talk was created as an extension of Goffman’s work to help explain the phenomenon.

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Management in the field of Strategic Marketing / Menstrual Hygiene Management is a process of keeping clean by girls and women through washing, changing and disposal of sanitary protection during their monthly periods. When schools provide a conducive environment for girls to manage their menses, girls become empowered and confident to participate in education without fear and embarrassment. Lasi High school in Mpolonjeni constituency is a rural school in low income settings whose girls like many girls in the area have to manage their monthly menstruation. The purpose of this study is to explore the experiences and practices of rural school girls in Mpolonjeni community in managing their menses. A qualitative exploratory and descriptive study was undertaken through focus group discussions. The researcher managed to purposively select a sample of two focus groups with ten participants, each, three teachers and the Deputy Head Teacher. The study finding reveals that girls experience a number of challenges when managing their menses in the school setting which the school administration is not entirely aware of. Some of the issues raised by the girls can be addressed without unreasonable costs implications but through empathy and general support. The study recommends a further investigation for Education and school policies that will enhance enabling school environments to support girls in managing menstruation at school. / GR2018

Thesis (Ph.D. (Marketing))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, School of Economic & Business Sciences, 2017 / Keywords: brand equity, Samsung mobile phones, Generation Y, brand awareness, brand image, perceived quality, brand loyalty, brand satisfaction, brand love and consumption values. Samsung is the leading brand in the mobile phone industry, and is dominant over fierce competitors, such as Apple, Nokia, Huawei and Blackberry. This is evident from the 2016 global market share figures, where Samsung occupies the top position with 21.6%. The Samsung brand is also dominant in South Africa, having captured 46% of the market share. Consumers are also willing to pay a price premium for Samsung mobile phones. For example, as at June 2017, the Samsung S8 smartphone retailed for up to R14,799, with consumers still willing to pay this price. While from an organisation’s perspective the success of Samsung in the mobile phone industry is accredited to the global establishment of production bases, overhaul of quality standards, paradigm shift in management philosophies and substantial investment in marketing and product design, there is a need to understand what drives Samsung’s brand equity from consumers’ perspective. The understanding of Samsung’s brand equity is even more important among Generation Y, due to the fact that they constitute 25% of South Africa’s population, have a high purchasing power for luxury and technological products, and 95% of them own a mobile phone in South Africa. They use their phones to communicate with family and friends, listen to music and watch YouTube videos. For the measurement of brand equity, so that marketers are informed of the performance of their marketing and brand strategies, researchers recommend the examination of its sources. Models devised by Aaker (1996) and Keller (1998) provide various sources of brand equity, but how and which of these sources best influence brand equity has not been determined. Esch, Langner, Schmitt and Geus (2006) recommend that in order to measure brand equity holistically, sources of brand equity, including brand awareness, brand image, perceived quality, brand associations and brand loyalty should be measured in conjunction with other important brand relationship factors such as brand trust, brand satisfaction and brand attachment or love. This is particularly so, because consumers who have a strong relationship with a brand are likely to demonstrate positive attitude towards it. Despite this view, most researchers who have adopted the Aaker (1996) and Keller (1998) models to measure CBBE have not considered the explanatory roles of the brand relationship variables. iv Another important factor ignored in the measurement of sources CBBE are the various values (such as functional, monetary, emotional, customisation, and relational), as proposed by Chuah, Marimuthu and Ramayah (2014), consumers enjoy from the consumption of a brand. Recognising the importance of uncovering the value inferences that consumers hold of a brand, Keller (2003) suggests three types of values or benefits (functional, experiential, and symbolic benefits) consumers may enjoy from a brand. The monetary value, according to other authors, can also be important. How these values lead to brand equity, if at all, were, however, not further explored. This study therefore integrated the Aaker and Keller’s brand equity models, Esch et al. and Chuah et al. brand relationship and consumer value models, respectively, to propose an integrated conceptual model with eighteen hypotheses to measure the sources of Samsung’s mobile phones brand equity among Generation Y. Quantitative methodologies were used to collect data from 651 undergraduate and postgraduate students studying at the University of Johannesburg and University of the Witwatersrand to empirically test the proposed model. The hypothesised relationships in the model were empirically tested using structural equation modeling. The results revealed that out of the eighteen hypotheses tested, twelve were accepted. Specifically, brand awareness, brand image, perceived quality, monetary value and functional value had a positive effect on brand satisfaction. Brand satisfaction positively drives brand love. Consumers who expressed love for the Samsung mobile phone brand were found to be loyal. Brand loyalty, which was found to have a positive impact on brand equity, was influenced positively by monetary value. In addition to brand loyalty, brand equity was influenced positively by perceived quality, monetary value and symbolic value. Overall, 56% of Samsung mobile phone brand equity was explained by brand awareness, brand image, perceived quality, monetary value, functional value, symbolic value, brand satisfaction, brand love and brand loyalty. While it will be important for future studies to identify other factors, which may increase the explanatory power of Samsung’s brand equity among Generation Y in South Africa, this study’s theoretical contribution suggests an integrated conceptual model to holistically measure customer-based brand equity not only in the telecommunication sector, but for other products and sectors. Practically, Samsung and other marketers responsible for managing competing v brands such as iPhone, Nokia, Huawei can use these findings to develop relevant marketing strategies that resonate with this large and lucrative Generation Y market segment. / GR2018

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Management in Strategic Marketing 2016 / The African hair-care business has become a multibillion-dollar industry, stretching from India to china attracting global retailers such as Unilever and L’Oréal. The African hair-care market will continue to grow, especially in the informal sector where it is said to employ about 1.5 people per business on permanent basis. In order for small businesses’ performance to improve in emerging markets, especially in the informal sector, improving their marketing skills is quite essential. Mobile marketing is cost effective and can be utilised to benefit both marketing practitioners and consumers. This is imperative in the informal hair-care industry, where businesses generally lack financial resources and therefore do not have a budget to spend on marketing and advertising. The mobile phone therefore becomes an important marketing channel to reach customers and increase profitability in informal hair-care businesses, yet there has not been much academic research conducted on this and little is known about the factors that might influence mobile marketing acceptance. The purpose of this study is therefore to bridge the gap by investigating perceived mobile interactivity influence on usability and mobile marketing acceptance in the informal hair-care industry in South Africa. A quantitative study was conducted using a sample of 312 informal hair-care business operators in the Johannesburg area. Given the nature of the informal sector, a nonprobability sampling method, known as convenience sampling, was used for data collection. For analysing and interpreting data, Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) approach was utilised. The study findings indicate that perceived interactivity dimensions (control, responsiveness and nonverbal information) have a positive effect on mobile phone usability and lead to mobile marketing acceptance. However, the findings showed a negative relation between perceived personalisation and mobile phone usability. This study aims to contribute to mobile marketing literature, be of benefit to Small, Medium and Micro-sized Enterprises (SMMEs) policy makers and add value to the field of marketing. Key words: perceived control, perceived responsiveness, nonverbal information, perceived personalisation, mobile phone usability, mobile marketing acceptance / GR2018

Made available in DSpace on 2016-10-13T14:10:36Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DenioDiasArrais.pdf: 1497650 bytes, checksum: cb959a754346de781749413d2af933c2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-03-30 / The relations that involve communication and consumption with culture impact what is currently known by contemporary society. These relations influence people in their way of communicating and consuming. Through this paper we seek to understand the processes of communication and the building of the identity of the young university student, being understood here as an actor for modern consumption. The theoretical basis for this research lies in working out the concepts of communication and consumption, culture and identity. We analyzed the movements of communication and consumption from the use by the young university student of mobile telephony and cell phones. Consumption and citizenship are dealt with using the concepts of Garcia Canclini, who sees consumption as one of the dimensions of the communication process and social belonging. In Featherstone we notice reflections over the culture and consumption in the late modern times, context in which the young people make their presence. In order to write about technology and convergence culture present in practices and ways of communication of the young people, we used the ideas of Jenkins. Hall provides understanding of the building of the identity of the young university student as a complex and cultural process characterized by the ways of using, consuming and communicating, typical of mobile telephony. The adopted methodology for this paper uses, besides the bibliographic research, a quantitative mapping with the goal of obtaining data on the cultural consumption of the young university student. The tools used for this mapping were structured questionnaires, which were run in colleges of the capital and countryside areas of the state of São Paulo. The mapping was useful to obtain elements dealt with in the interviews that were carried out to identify the attribution of meaning given by young people to consumption of cell phones, taking into consideration the theoretical reflections discussed in the bibliographic research. It was possible, then, to identify the presence of cell phones in the common relations of the young people and we have identified the processes of the building of identity. In the general aspect of this paper, we had as a result the fact that the young people have in their cell phones a tool that goes beyond the material and functional usage. The cell phone is a person s telephone. In it we can find parts of the identity of its users in the personalization of content. / As relações que envolvem a comunicação e o consumo com a cultura impactam no que é entendido na atualidade por sociedade contemporânea. Estas relações influenciam os indivíduos em sua maneira de comunicar e consumir. Procuramos com este trabalho entender os processos de comunicação e a formação de identidade do jovem universitário, entendido aqui como ator do consumo moderno. A fundamentação teórica dessa pesquisa reside em trabalhar os conceitos de comunicação e consumo, cultura e identidade. Foram analisados os movimentos da comunicação e do consumo a partir do uso que o jovem universitário faz da telefonia móvel e dos aparelhos celulares. Consumo e cidadania são abordados a partir de Garcia Canclini, que entende o consumo como uma das dimensões do processo comunicacional e de pertencimento social. Em Featherstone verificamos reflexões sobre a cultura e consumo na modernidade tardia, contexto no qual o jovem faz suas mediações. Para falar da tecnologia e da cultura da convergência presente nas práticas e modos de comunicar do jovem, partimos das ideias de Jenkins. Hall colabora para o entendimento da formação da identidade do jovem universitário como processo complexo e cultural caracterizado pelos modos de uso, consumo e comunicação, próprios da telefonia móvel. A metodologia adotada para realização do trabalho contempla, além da pesquisa bibliográfica, um mapeamento quantitativo com o objetivo de levantar dados sobre o consumo cultural do jovem universitário. Os instrumentos utilizados para este mapeamento foram questionários estruturados, aplicados em faculdades da capital e do interior do estado de São Paulo. O mapeamento foi válido para extrair elementos trabalhados nas entrevistas que foram realizadas para a identificação da atribuição de sentido dada pelos jovens ao consumo de celulares, levando em consideração as reflexões teóricas discutidas na pesquisa bibliográfica. Assim foi possível identificar a presença do celular nas relações cotidianas dos jovens e identificamos os processos de formação de identidade. No aspecto geral deste estudo tivemos como resultado que o jovem tem no celular um instrumento que vai alem do uso material e funcional, o celular é o telefone da pessoa, nele estão presentes partes da identidade de seus usuários na personalização de conteúdos.

As the number and diversity of applications available to mobile users increases, there is an increasing need for developers, network service providers, and users to understand how users perceive the network performance of these applications. MySpeedTest is a measurement tool that actively probes the network to determine not only TCP throughput and round trip time, but also the proximity to popular content providers, IP packet delay variation, and loss. It also records other metadata that could affect user experience, such as signal strength, service provider, connection type, battery state, device type, manufacturer, time of day, and location. The tool also takes passive measurements of the applications installed on the device and the network usage of these applications. My SpeedTest is available on the Google Play Store and currently has 1300+ active users. This thesis presents the design and implementation of MySpeedTest as well as effect of metrics like latency and IP packet delay variation on performance.

The increasing ubiquity of networked mobile devices such as cell phones and PDAs has created new opportunities for the transmission and display of multimedia content. However, any mobile device has inherent resource constraints: low network bandwidth, small screen sizes, limited input methods, and low commitment viewing. Mobile systems that provide information display and access thus need to mitigate these various constraints. Despite progress in information retrieval and content recommendation, there has been less focus on issues arising from a network-oriented and mobile perspective. This dissertation investigates a coordinated design approach to networked multimedia on mobile devices, and considers the abovementioned system perspectives. Within the context of accessing news video on mobile devices, the goal is to provide a cognitively palatable stream of videos and a seamless, low-latency user experience. Mixed-initiative---a method whereby intelligent services and users collaborate efficiently to achieve the user's goals, is the cornerstone of the system design and integrates user relevance feedback with a content recommendation engine and a content- and network-aware video buffer prefetching technique. These various components have otherwise been considered independently in other prior system designs. To overcome limited interactivity, a mixed-initiative user interface was used to present a sequence of news video clips to the user, along with operations to vote-up or vote-down a video to indicate its relevance. On-screen gesture equivalents of these operations were also implemented to reduce user interface elements occupying the screen. Semantic relevancy was then improved by extracting and indexing the content of each video clip as text features, and using a Na"ive Bayesian content recommendation strategy that harnessed the user relevance feedback to tailor the subsequent video recommendations. With the system's knowledge of relevant videos, a content-aware video buffer prefetching scheme was then integrated, using the abovementioned feedback to lower the user perceived latency on the client-end. As an information retrieval system consists of many interacting components, a client-server video streaming model is first developed for clarity and simplicity. Using a CNN news video clip database, experiments were then conducted using this model to simulate user scenarios. As the aim of improving semantic relevancy sometimes opposes user interface tools for interactivity and user perceived latency, a quantitative evaluation was done to observe the tradeoffs between bandwidth, semantic relevance, and user perceived latency. Performance tradeoffs involving semantic relevancy and user perceived latency were then predicted. In addition, complementary human user subjective tests are conducted with actual mobile phone hardware running on the Google Android platform. These experiments suggest that a mixed-initiative approach is helpful for recommending news video content on a mobile device for overcoming the mobile limitations of user interface tools for interactivity and client-end perceived latency. Users desired interactivity and responsiveness while viewing videos, and were willing to sacrifice some content relevancy in order gain lower perceived latency. Recommended future work includes expanding the content recommendation to incorporate viewing data from a large population, and the creation of a global hybrid content-based and collaborative filtering algorithm for better results. Also, based on existing user behaviour, users were reluctant to provide more input than necessary. Additional user experiments can be designed to quantify user attention and interest during video watching on a mobile device, and for better definition and incorporation of implicit user feedback.

The explosive adoption rate of cell phones over the past few years has increased the desire for advertising agencies to explore mobile as an advertising channel. Over 90% of Americans own a cell phone, which opens a new channel for advertising agencies to reach consumers. The traditional advertising channels include print, television, radio, and most recently, the Internet. This professional report explores the importance and utilization of mobile as an advertising channel in advertising agencies media plans for their clients. / text

Tez (Tıpta Uzmanlık) - Süleyman Demirel Üniversitesi, Tıp Fakültesi, Ortopedi ve Travmatoloji Anabilim Dalı, 2006. / Kaynakça var.

Zugl.: Zürich, Universiẗat, Diss., 2008.