This thesis is an exploratory, quantitative study, concerned with investigating shoplifting as a form of consumer behaviour. The theory of planned behaviour (Ajzen, 1991), a theory used in consumer research, is applied to situational crime prevention theory, in order to investigate the factors which facilitate or inhibit customer theft. The data were collected by means of two questionnaires. The first questionnaire was completed by 417 shoppers using the shopping centre of Northampton, 32% of whom admitted to shoplifting behaviour, with 7% having shoplifted in the previous 12 months. The second questionnaire was completed by 444 Northampton school students, 51% of whom admitted to shoplifting, with 18% having shoplifted in the previous 12 months. Analysis of the findings indicates that for the shoplifters in this study, shoplifting is a rational crime in that the financial benefits from shoplifting are perceived to outweigh the risks and costs of being caught. Their shoplifting behaviour is facilitated by their lack of moral concerns about shoplifting, their positive attitudes to the behaviour, and peer influence. In comparison, the non-shoplifters were inhibited by their anti-shoplifting attitudes, their strong moral views about shoplifting, social pressure not to engage in the behaviour, and the shoplifting prevention strategies of retailers.

Background: Branding in the B2B sector can be conducted in a phenomenon called ingredient branding. Ingredient branding is an alliance between two brands where the ingredient brand is applied on a host brand and works as an ingredient on the product. An ingredient brand works as a guarantor for the host brand. Ingredient brand will be used to enhance and build associations to a host brand. Purpose: The purpose of the thesis is to investigate how consumer’s attitudes are affected by ingredient branding on products in the segment of low price host brands. Research Questions: How does an ingredient brand affect consumer’s attitudes on a low price host brand in a positive or a negative way? How does an ingredient brand affect consumer’s attitudes on high or low involvement products? Method: The thesis was conducted as a qualitative research with an abductive approach and focus groups as data collection method. Conclusion: Ingredient branding can change consumer’s attitudes both in a positive and negative way on products in the segment of low price brands. This research shows that when an ingredient brand is added the consumer are expecting that the price and quality increase on the end product.  An ingredient brand has low effect on consumer’s attitudes on high involvement products and high effect on low involvement products.

The problem examined in this study was the nature of compulsive purchasing behavior. Three proposed models depicting this behavior as a learned adaptive response to anxiety and/or depression, an addiction, and a personality disorder were introduced and discussed in Chapter I. Background information concerning the areas examined in the models was presented in Chapter II. The research methodology was discussed in Chapter III and the findings of the research presented in Chapter IV. A summary, conclusions, implications, and recommendations were presented in Chapter V.

Online shopping has rapidly expanded in the last decade. Online shopping necessarily imposes delays on all transactions. Behavior analysis has long studied the effects of delay on choice. Additionally, a number of researchers are beginning to study consumer behavior using a behavior-analytic approach. The current study attempted to extend research focusing on consumer behavior in online contexts. The experimenters attempted to evaluate whether goods acquire functional properties and whether these properties influence consumer choice. The researchers were specifically interested in studying acquisition costs and durability and in simulating a natural online shopping environment. Results from the current study extend the findings showing that delay and price influence choice. The data from the current study provide mixed evidence for control by item durability.

M.Com. (Business Management) / Mobile marketing has rapidly grown during the past years, and will continue to grow with advancements in technology, enabling mobile phones to be used for much more than simple calls and personal text messaging. This study investigates how a mobile marketing company, Mobitainment, can successfully communicate, through mobile marketing initiatives, with the lower income segments. The various characteristics of the lower income segment are understood, and the possible strategies that Mobitainment can implement, are established. Strategy is a crucial element in every business unit of an organisation. The marketing department is no exception. Porter’s Five Forces model provides the basis from which companies can get to understand their operating environment prior to developing the appropriate marketing strategy. It is through the marketer’s understanding of the consumer behaviour as well as the various message appeal factors, that the appropriate mobile marketing message can be designed. The study used a mixed research approach in that both qualitative and quantitative research methods were used to address the objectives. The qualitative part of the study entailed the use of semistructured interviews in order to collect information from marketing managers working in different mobile marketing organisations. The quantitative part involved the administration of a questionnaire on consumers in the LSM 4 to 6 segments. Five semi-structured interviews were conducted and a hundred and forty questionnaires were distributed. The questionnaires were distributed to individuals in Tsakane, Daveyton, Springs and Johannesburg. The quantitative data was analysed using two main tools, descriptive statistical analysis and correlation analysis, whilst the qualitative data was analysed using thematic analysis. The findings of the quantitative study found that many of the individuals in the LSM 4-6 segments own mobile phones which are able to perform the functions found in smartphones such as send and receive emails as well as access the Internet; the LSM 4-6 segments do not have a strong attitude for or against mobile marketing; mobile marketing communication has an influence on the buying behaviour of the LSM 4-6 segments; the message appeal factors are a crucial part of driving consumers to make a purchase, and ‘relevance’ has the strongest influence on the LSM 4-6 segment’s buying behaviour. The results of the qualitative study show that there are several challenges that Mobitainment can face when targeting the lower income segment such as the literacy levels of the lower income segment and survey fraud. SMS, USSD, MMS, IVR and Mobile Applications were identified to be suitable strategies to implement when targeting the lower income segment. The above strategies ‘fit’ with the preferences and buyer behaviour of the LSM 4-6, and the recommended strategies can be used with discounts, vouchers and other incentives to drive the buying behaviour of the LSM 4-6.

This thesis examines the tendency of customers - men and women, whether and how their buying habits are changing. Next the approximation of gender roles and manifestations of this process in shopping behavior are examined.

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. Johannesburg, 2014. / This study, illustrates how various statistical classification models can be compared and utilised to resolve cross-selling problems encountered in a financial services environment. Various statistical classification algorithms were deployed to model for the appropriate product to sell to a financial services customer under a multi-classifier setting. Four models were used, namely: multinomial logistic regression, multinomial bagging with logistic regression, multinomial random forests with decision trees and error correcting output coding. The models were compared in terms of predictive accuracy, generalisation, interpretability, ability to handle rare instances and ease of use. A weighted score for each model was obtained based on the evaluation criteria stated above and an overall model ranking thereof. In terms of the data, banked customers who only had a transactional account at the start of the observation period were used for the modelling process. Varying samples of the customers were obtained from different time points with the preceding six to twelve months information being used to derive the predictor variables and the following six months used to monitor product take-up. Error correcting output coding performed the best in terms of predictive accuracy but did not perform as well on other metrics. Overall, multinomial bagging with logistic regression proved to be the best model. All the models struggled with modelling for the rare classes. Weighted classification was deployed to improve the rare-class prediction accuracy. Classification accuracy showed significant limitation under the multi-classifier setting as it tended to be biased towards the majority class. The measure of area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) as proposed by Hand and Till (2001) proved to be a powerful metric for model evaluation.

M. Com. (Marketing) in the School of Economic and Business Sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg / The government of Swaziland has labelled the tourism industry as one of the national priority sectors that has maximum potential to stimulate economic growth through the creation of employment opportunities, poverty alleviation, and foreign income generation. The industry has birthed several supporting business areas such as tour operators, travel agencies, a new airport, and hotels and restaurants. Tourism scholars and practitioners acknowledge the importance of the destination‘s image as an influence on tourist behaviour. However, existing studies on Swaziland‘s tourism industry have focused on the development of the tourism industry, community-based tourism, outdoor recreation activities in game reserves, and the economic impact of tourism in Swaziland. As a result, there is limited research focusing on the perceptions of both local and international tourists regarding Swaziland as a tourist destination and how the destination image has influenced tourists‘ intention to revisit or recommend the destination to others. This study aims to identify the antecedents of future behavioural intentions of tourists in Swaziland. Employing a quantitative approach, destination image was the predictor variable and was hypothesized to positively influence satisfaction, attitude toward destination, and trust in the destination as mediating variables, and behavioural intentions as the outcome variable. Non-probability was used to sample both local and international tourists that visited Swaziland between the months of August and October 2016. Tourists were interviewed at Mantenga Cultural Village, Swazi Candles, Ngwenya Glass, and departing tourists were interviewed at the Sikhuphe International Airport. A total of 431 respondents were used in study. The data analysis was performed using SPSS 22 and Amos 22 Software Package. The majority of tourists were positive regarding Swaziland as a tourist destination. Tourists further on indicated that they had satisfactory experiences in Swaziland, and most stated that they trusted the destination. A lot of the tourists had a favourable attitude towards Swaziland and indicated high revisit intentions and positive recommendations. Furthermore, the findings in this study show that there is a positive and significant relationship between the destination‘s image and satisfaction. Additionally, the study reveals that satisfaction positively influences tourists‘ trust in the destination and their attitude towards the destination. Between attitude towards destination and trust in the destination, tourists‘ attitudes toward the destination were found to have a stronger effect on their behavioural intentions. / MT2017

Thesis advisor: Frank Gollop / My doctoral dissertation consists of three essays on consumer behavior. The first chapter studies demand for experience goods. Consumers behave very differently when they do not have perfect information about all brands available on a shelf. This paper extends the benchmark discrete choice model of consumer demand to capture two distinct features of experience-goods markets: prior brand experience and shopping frequency. Although the current literature incorporates habit formation in consumer demand models, it has not considered a more fundamental question: how the first experience with a brand affects the consumer's choice. The model is estimated using data on purchases of ready-to-drink orange juice, which comes from a new consumer-level panel provided by a large supermarket chain in Brazil. The results show that for this product prior experience of a brand is more important for a consumer's choice than price. Furthermore, own- and cross-price elasticities change significantly when experience and shopping frequency are taken into account. The findings of this chapter have implications for both firms' strategies and for antitrust analysis related to experience-goods markets. The second chapter explores how umbrella branding can significantly decrease consumer's first-time experience cost. Multiproduct firms often market their products under the same brand name. When a firm launches a new product with the same brand name, consumers can pool their prior experience with the brand to infer a quality for the product. This strategy can be particularly useful when a firm decides to enter a market of experience goods, in which consumers face a cost for trying a new product. The main objective of this chapter is to study the process by which consumers' brand choices and first-time purchases for ready-to-drink orange juices are affected by their experience with the same brand in another category. The results are consistent with signaling theories of umbrella branding as they indicate that consumers' experience cost with a product decreases with experience of other products of the same brand. The third chapter is about a household's choice of retail formats. Thirty percent of households' food expenditure in the United States comes from clubstores, mass merchandisers, supercenters, drugstores and convenience stores. However, earlier work focused on consumers' shopping behavior mostly in grocery stores and has not examined consumers choice across different types of retail outlets. To address this gap a multinomial logit model is estimated on household-level scanner data for the United States to study how households' characteristics are related to their choice of retail outlets. The results show that income, household size and ethnicity significantly affect these choices. These findings are important for policies that target certain consumer groups. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

University of Macau / Faculty of Science and Technology. / Department of Computer and Information Science