This research is to probe the impacts of motives, time spent, and product knowledge on the brand evaluations from the perspective of Internet portal users. A comprehensive model is proposed to depict the multiple linkages among the constructs of interest. As students are the main market segment for the Internet business, undergraduate and graduate students from various faculties at Taiwan's universities were recruited as the research subjects. The survey was presented in a questionnaire format. The research results indicate that each type of motives has different effects on product knowledge and time spent on the Internet. Both general and self-training motives have positive influences on product knowledge. However, recreation motive has a negative impact on the product knowledge. For the time spent on the Internet, general and recreation motives have similar results. The stronger the general or recreation motive, the longer the time spent on the Internet. In contrast, the stronger the self-training motive, the less the time spent on the Internet. The tested model also shows that self-training motive has positive relationships with service quality and brand attitude. In addition, longer time spent will lead to increases in product knowledge and satisfaction level. Moreover, the findings indicate that product knowledge has a positive impact on service quality. High product knowledge people have a better idea how to compare the products by using functional attributes. Since service quality is considered one offactors for evaluating satisfaction level, there is a linkage between service quality and satisfaction. The relationship between these two variables is positive because consumers must be able to perceive positive service quality first in order to have high satisfaction level. Moreover, The relationship between satisfaction and brand attitude is positive. Consumers build their brand attitude through observation and experience. Overall satisfaction is definitely one of influential factors on brand attitude. To obtain trust from customers is one of the hardest thing for firms. Customers must be able to perceive good service quality before long-term commitment. The final construct of the conceptual framework is brand attitude, which is contingent on trust and satisfaction. Internet portal business in Taiwan may not be a new industry for many people. However, the recent collapses on the e-Commerce industry prove that people still have a lot to learn, especially the consumer behaviors of Internet users. The research concludes that brand evaluations from consumers are in a network of causal relationships with constructs such as motives, time spent, and product knowledge.

Abstract  Linnaeus University – Campus Kalmar School of Business and Economics Leadership and Management in International Contexts (60 credits)  Title: Transformational Leadership in the Chinese Culture – A Quantitative Study on the Impact of Transformational Leadership on Chinese Internet Companies’ Performance.  This research aims to study how transformational leadership affects organizational performance and the mediation effect of employee voice behaviour. A quantitative research method and a deductive research approach were used for this research study, where theoretical concepts were developed. Several hypotheses were derived as means to test the existing theories regarding research variables. The data in this research was collected through a 384 completed online survey questionnaire from employees of the top ten listed Chinese internet companies. Various statistical techniques, including Pearson correlation analysis, linear regression analysis, and mediation effect testing, were implemented to provide evidence for hypothesis testing. The statistical analysis results indicate that a particular dimension of transformational leadership positively impacts Chinese internet companies’ performance, and employee voice behaviour has a partial mediation effect in this relationship.

Nous proposons de concevoir et développer un outil permettant d’analyser la diffusion d’information sur les services de réseaux sociaux en ligne grâce au traitement et à la visualisation de données. Fruit d’une réflexion méthodologique, ce dispositif permet d’observer les relations entre les dimensions conversationnelles, sémantiques, temporelles et géographiques des actes de communication en ligne. Courts messages se propageant rapidement sur la Toile selon des modèles encore mal connus, les mèmes Internet comptent parmi les contenus les plus prisés sur les plate-formes web. Les mèmes Internet circulant sur le service de microblog chinois Sina Weibo articulent notamment discussions personnelles, débats sociétaux et vastes campagnes médiatiques. Mobilisant des méthodes issues de l’analyse des réseaux et du traitement automatisé de la langue chinoise, nous procédons à l’analyse d’un vaste corpus de 200 millions de messages représentant l’activité sur Sina Weibo durant l’année 2012. Notre première tâche consiste à identifier des mèmes dans ce large ensemble de données. L’identification de mèmes dans un ensemble de messages est notamment possible grâce à un algorithme de détection non supervisé. Néanmoins, le volume de calculs nécessaires pour obtenir des résultats fiables sur un large corpus nous amène à abandonner cette approche, montrant par là-même la complexité d’une définition intéressante de l’objet numérique composite mème. Notre seconde série d’analyses porte sur le volume de conversations entourant les hashtags du corpus. Les résultats montrent que les usages majoritaires de Sina Weibo sont similaires à ceux des médias traditionnels (publicité, divertissement, loisirs...). Néanmoins, nous écartons les hashtags comme représentants des mèmes Internet, artefacts d’usages commerciaux et stratégiques à la diffusion cadrée et planifiée. L’approche finalement retenue utilise la recherche par mots-clés pour constituer les corpus de messages décrivant une dizaine de mèmes sélectionnés dans la littérature académique et secondaire pour leurs intentions diverses : humour, actualité, scandale politique, faits divers et marketing promotionnel. S’inspirant de la critique des schémas théoriques de communication, une analyse des mots et des réseaux d’échanges entre utilisateurs met à jour les dynamiques discursives de chaque mème. L’organisation de ces informations selon un axe temporel dans un espace de visualisation interactif autorise une lecture détaillée de leur diffusion. La projection de ces réseaux conversationnels et lexicaux sur des cartes géographiques montre également les relations entre leurs aspects textuels et actuels. Les figures obtenues permettent d’ébaucher une typologie structurelle de la diffusion de ces contenus, montrant comment différents régimes d’expression cohabitent sur les réseaux sociaux. La tension entre énonciation et discours qui régit les plateformes Web se manifeste dans des motifs particuliers de circulation des contenus en ligne. Nous pouvons ainsi formuler des recommandations pour l’analyse et la conception de stratégies de communication en ligne d’organismes tant privés que publics. Néanmoins, le caractère exploratoire de cette étude et la difficulté de comprendre les actions humaines par une simple analyse de données nous invite à refuser une généralisation a priori des résultats, préférant considérer ce travail comme la première validation d’une méthodologie pouvant être étendue à d’autres formes de conversations en ligne. / We develop a data mining and visualisation toolkit to study how the information is shared on online social network services. This software allows to observe relationships between conversational, semantical, temporal and geographical dimensions of online communication acts. Internet memes are short messages that spread quickly through the Web. Following models that remain largely unknown, they articulate personal discussions, societal debates and large communication campaign. We analyse a set of Internet memes by using methods from social network analysis and Chinese natural language processing on a large corpus of 200 million tweets which represents/reflects the overall activity on the Chinese social network Sina Weibo in 2012. An interactive visualisation interface showing networks of words, user exchanges and their projections on geographical maps provides a detailed understanding of actual and textual aspects of each meme spread. An analysis of hashtags in the corpus shows that the main content from Sina Weibo is largely similar to the ones in traditional media (advertisement, entertainment, etc.). Therefore, we decided to not consider hashtags as memes representatives, being mostly byproducts of wellplanned strategic or marketingcampaigns. Our final approach studies a dozen of memes selected for the diversity of their topic: humor, political scandal, breaking news and marketing.