Thesis (M.Tech.: Marketing)-Dept. of Marketing, Durban University of Technology, 2007 xvi, 156 leaves / The aim of this research is to evaluate students’ perceptions toward the market orientation of Proudly South Africa companies at Durban University of Technology. The Proudly South African campaign is currently very topical, having become a visible brand in its own right within the period of ten years, with the primary objective of creating job opportunities, supporting local companies by buying products that are produced within the boundaries of South Africa and to initiate nationalism among South Africans.

The purpose of this thesis was to investigate the psychometric properties of three global user subjective measures of the ”The Quality Star” clinical review model: Consumer Satisfaction Scale, Global Quality of Life scale, and Perceived Global Distress scale. The mental health implementation context of this review model emphasizes the client as an agent of change, taking part in shared decision making in an empowered role as collaborative partner to the professional clinicians. In Paper I study the patient self-rating Consumer Satisfaction Scale gave results comparable to those obtained by independent interviewer assessors. Out of cost-effective perspective professional time is saved and logistics simplified. In Paper II the visual analogue self-rating Global Quality of Life scale was shown to have satisfactory test-retest reliability, and concurrent validity with the “Life as a whole” item of Manchester Short Assessment of Quality of Life (MANSA). The patients’ conceptualizations of the scale based on associative findings with a number of validating instruments were consistent with expected areas of concern for Serious Mentally Ill persons. Similarly, in Paper III the visual analogue scale the Perceived Global Distress scale, showed acceptable clinical test-retest reliability, and concurrent validity with the MANSA item, “How satisfied are you with your mental health”. In associative analyses it was found that depressive, anxiety, interpersonal and existential elements contributed to the patient´s conceptualization of the construct. In Paper IV, a previous finding suggesting that women were more satisfied with the health care and had better social functioning compared to men was further elaborated investigating the discriminative properties of the subjective instruments. In the multi-centre cohort of 2552 patients it was possible to detect differences between genders and functional levels professionally assessed with the split version of Global Assessment of Functioning rating scale. The General discussion underlines that although subjective measures tend to have strong interrelations, supporting earlier findings, one has to use multiple measures for an optimal management of mental illness as the subjective outcome ratings have to be individually interpreted in a feed-back dialogue with the patient and be compared to observational assessments.

[Truncated abstract] Against a contextual backdrop of slowing growth in developed mobile service markets, the importance of youth as a growth segment, and youth's tendencies to consume mobile services hedonically, two research streams drove this dissertation. The first stream concerned extending the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) to predict youth's behavioural intentions to stay loyal to mobile service providers. Drawing on selfcategorisation theory, a conceptual model extended TPB by replacing subjective norm with group norm, a social influence from behaviourally relevant peers. With the extended TPB as the theoretical framework, the second stream investigated determinants of mobile loyalty intentions. Common to both streams, a key contribution of this dissertation was how hedonic consumption moderated the relationships among mobile loyalty intentions and their determinants. The dissertation addressed five questions in the two research streams, which to the author's knowledge no published studies have explored. Using a triangulation approach to address the research questions, a qualitative survey and literature review yielded six determinants of mobile loyalty intentions. Next, a pretest led to an improved questionnaire before a large-scale survey gathered data for empirical testing. The survey took place with Singaporean youth and yielded a cleaned sample of n = 415. ... For both low and high hedonic consumptions, customer value was insignificant. This might be due to Singapore's competitive mobile service market; youth perceived little differences in value for money among competing mobile service providers. Testing alternative models offered further insights into youth's mobile loyalty intentions. Youth's mobile loyalty behaviour, operationalised as past switching, was not stochastic, suggesting that mobile loyalty intentions contained underlying determinants. Brand trust, salient in other contexts, did not apply to mobile loyalty intentions perhaps because youth perceived little risk in switching mobile service providers in developed markets. An attitude-group norm interaction also did not relate to mobile loyalty intentions, supporting TPB's construct independence and parsimony. Finally, attitude and customer satisfaction were operationally similar in that they related to mobile loyalty intentions similarly. The dissertation concluded by offering academic and managerial implications and contributions, limitations, and future research areas.

Thesis (M.Tech.: Marketing)-Dept. of Marketing, Durban University of Technology, 2007 xvi, 156 leaves / The aim of this research is to evaluate students’ perceptions toward the market orientation of Proudly South Africa companies at Durban University of Technology. The Proudly South African campaign is currently very topical, having become a visible brand in its own right within the period of ten years, with the primary objective of creating job opportunities, supporting local companies by buying products that are produced within the boundaries of South Africa and to initiate nationalism among South Africans.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-14T12:47:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 3269699 bytes, checksum: af9285a2857f32a228efc8a34c2c80c4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-12-09 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / In view of the Primary Health Care in Brazil has been strengthened, mainly, with the new National Primary Care Policy (PNAB), the Brazilian Ministry of Health has created the Program of Improving Access and Quality of Primary Care (PMAQ-AB) that aimed to improve healthcare public service quality and to enhance the Brazilian qualified health services within the SUS (Brazil's Unified Public Health System). By using the Module III of the external evaluation instrument from the 1º cycle of PMAQ-AB, which contains a lot of information on perception and satisfaction of public health services users regard to their access and usage, this present work aims to identify, considering statistical tools, the main factors that influence the user satisfaction of health services in Brazil and in its regions in order to develop decision models to help health public officers to define actions that increase health service quality and to make effective decisions. In this way, this work was carried out considering secondary data from the 1º cycle of PMAQ-AB, which takes place from 2012 to the first half of 2013. It was obtained a descriptive analysis, a cluster analysis to find the dependent variable of user satisfaction and logistic regression was applied in order to obtain decision models for Brazil and its regions. As a result, the main factors associated with user satisfaction on the provided health service for Brazil and its regions were obtained. Considering the results on Brazil as a whole, the achieved main factors were the following: the users perception on the health care unit staff on not solving their health needs (OR = 0.39) and the user does not (OR = 0.44) feel respected by health professionals in relation to their cultural habits, customs, religion or feel it only a few times (OR = 0.49). It was also noticed that the factors that influence the user satisfaction vary according to the considered region of Brazil due to mainly its diversity. Beyond the factors observed in Brazil, the following factors were also noted in its regions: the health unit time table does not meet the user needs, the users cannot be served when they are in the health care unit unless an previous appointment and the users have difficult to make complaints or suggestions in the health care unit. It was concluded that it is important that health care unit staff and managers try to improve health care unit access, to serve the user needs, to improve organization, and especially to strengthen the link of users and health professionals, in addition to home visits, considering socio-geographic and socioeconomic aspects. / Na perspectiva que a Atenção Básica à Saúde no Brasil vem se fortalecendo, principalmente com a Política Nacional de Atenção Básica (PNAB), o Ministério da Saúde criou o Programa Nacional de Melhoria do Acesso e da Qualidade da Atenção Básica (PMAQ-AB) visando a melhoria da qualidade do atendimento e a ampliação da oferta qualificada dos serviços de saúde no âmbito do SUS. Utilizando o Módulo III do instrumento de avaliação externa do 1° Ciclo do PMAQ-AB, que contém informações sobre a percepção e a satisfação dos usuários quanto aos serviços de saúde no que se refere ao seu acesso e utilização, este trabalho teve como objetivo analisar os principais fatores que influenciam na satisfação dos usuários dos serviços de saúde no Brasil e em suas regiões a fim de elaborar um modelo de suporte à decisão que auxilie o gestor em saúde na tarefa de definir ações promotoras que incrementem a qualidade dos serviços de saúde na percepção dos usuários e assim tomar decisões efetivas que fortaleçam essas ações. Para isso, foi realizado um estudo com dados secundários, produzidos pelo Ministério da Saúde, do 1º Ciclo de Avaliação Externa do PMAQ-AB realizado entre o ano de 2012 e o primeiro semestre de 2013. Dessa forma, realizou-se uma análise descritiva, uma análise de agrupamento para obter a variável dependente de satisfação do usuário e foi utilizada regressão logística para obtenção de modelos de decisão para o Brasil e suas regiões. Como resultado do estudo realizado, foram encontrados os principais fatores associados à satisfação do usuário com o serviço de saúde tanto para o Brasil quanto para cada um de suas regiões. Para o Brasil, os fatores em destaque foram: a percepção do usuário quanto a equipe não buscar resolver suas necessidades/problemas na própria unidade de saúde (OR = 0,39) e o usuário não (OR = 0,44) sentir-se respeitado pelos profissionais em relação aos seus hábitos culturais, costumes, religião ou sentir-se apenas algumas vezes (OR = 0,49). Devido à diversidade do país, observa-se também que os fatores influenciadores da satisfação do usuário variam de acordo com a região geográfica, destacando-se: o horário de funcionamento da unidade não atender às necessidades dos usuários; o usuário não conseguir ser escutado quando vem à unidade de saúde sem ter hora marcada para resolver qualquer problema; e a dificuldade de conseguir fazer uma reclamação ou sugestão na unidade de saúde. Conclui-se que é importante que equipes e gestores continuem empenhando seus esforços para melhorar a qualificação do acesso, atendam às necessidades dos usuários, melhorem os aspectos da organização e da dinâmica do processo de trabalho e, principalmente, fortaleçam o vínculo mediante o aprimoramento da relação entre usuários e profissionais de saúde, além das visitas domiciliares, considerando também a contribuição e a importância de análises de aspectos sócio geográficos e socioeconômicos.

The study examines the impact of communication on customer satisfaction at the Transvaal Museum. Customer satisfaction refers to customer's overall satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the organisation based on all encounters and experience with that particular organisation. Communication has an impact on both customer satisfaction and future behavioural actions of consumers. There are four sources of brand messages namely, planned, unplanned, product and service messages. In the quest for increased customer satisfaction, companies are moving away from the traditional 4Ps (product, price, place and promotion) of the marketing mix to the 8Ps. The other four Ps include physical assets, procedures, personnel and personalisation. Integration of all marketing communications to customers is seen as a key activity in companies' attempts to build long term-relationships. On the whole, the study has indicated that customers of the museum are satisfied with its products, services and messages. However, the research has also shown that customers are not happy with the way the museum handles its planned communication activities. / Communication Science / M.A. (Organisational Communication Research Practice)

The basic purpose of this study was to examine the influence of service quality on customer satisfaction, perceived customer value and behavioral intentions, in three, four and five star hotels in Ethiopia. Additionally, an attempt was made to assess the differences pertaining to these constructs across customer profile (e.g., gender, nationality etc.) and hotel characteristics (e.g., star ratings etc.). A quantitative survey approach was used to obtain primary data from the respondents (hotels’ guests/customers) by administering the structured questionnaire. The original SERVPERF dimensions and related items were modified to best fit with hotel sector, by using desk review and preliminary interviews with manager, consultants and corporate clients of the hotels. A pilot study was carried out with 35 hotel customers to test the initial reliability and validity of the instrument. The final questionnaire was distributed to 440 respondents from 44 hotels (under three, four and five star categories), by using stratified (proportionate) random sampling. Of the distributed questionnaires, 435 were collected back (over 98% return rate), as completely filled, and used for the purpose of analysis. Descriptive statistics (mean score and standard deviation) were used to examine the customers’ perceptions of service quality, customer value, satisfaction and behavioral intentions. To identify the key service quality dimensions in the Ethiopian hotel sector, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was employed. The results revealed six underlying factors, namely: Assurance, Reliability, Responsiveness, Empathy, Room Tangibles and Food & Beverage Tangibles. Regression analysis was carried out to examine the relationship between the study constructs, whereby perceived service quality was found to be maintaining significantly (p<0.05) positive influence on customer value, satisfaction and behavioral intentions (measured as customer revisits and word-of-mouth recommendations) in the Ethiopian hotel sector. Moreover, both customer value and satisfaction were observed to be partially mediating the influence of service quality on behavioral intentions, with higher contribution from satisfaction than perceived value. Finally, the respondents’ nationality, gender, visit purpose, length of stay, hotel location and star category were found to be determining their perceptions of overall service quality. However, further research is needed before generalizing these relationships to other sectors/contexts. / Business Management / D.B.L.

Despite considerable research that has focused on the attributes associated with evaluating and selecting advertising agencies, and an emerging body of literature emphasizing customer loyalty and retention, advertising agency-client investigations have often analysed these attributes in isolation. This created the need for models that represent the interrelated effects that engender retention and loyalty, especially for services, whereby evaluative as well as relational factors can influence buyer responses. Addressing this gap, this research developed and described the construct of buyer consideration sets to gain a better understanding of business relationships. This is with specific reference to advertising agency replacement considerations in the South African environment. This research contributes to the body of knowledge by providing a more complete, integrated view of customer retention and its determinants. A heuristic model was developed with consideration of theories that originate from the transactional cost theory, social exchange theory and economic and relational contract theories. This model was empirically tested using a mixed method approach. Data obtained from 116 respondents were subjected to factor and correlation analysis to explore the dimensionality of the retention construct. An important contribution of this study is the use of multi-item scales to measure and test retention. This research supports that retention is multidimensional and highlights the limitations of research that measure single factors related to retention. What started as a complex set of relationships has been defensibly and systematically simplified into a parsimonious model. This model postulates that retention is the result of a good working relationship between an advertiser and agency; service satisfaction; respect and support; clear terms of engagement; and conflict resolution. This work also offers insight into the nuances of each of these antecedents and offer new reliable scales for measurement of the items. In management practice, this model will provide advertisers with insights with regards to procurement decisions and supplier management. It can also provide valuable insight to agencies with regard to customer retention management. Findings of this study may also be extended to other high value professional service industries. / Business Management and Entrepreneurship / D. Com. (Business Management)

The present study attempted to assess the effectiveness of the Zimbabwean secondary school guidance and counselling services from school counsellors' and students' perspective. Available literature shows that students worldwide, including Zimbabwe, experience problems which schools should solve through the provision of guidance and counselling. It was therefore, important to the researcher to assess the effectiveness of the school guidance and counselling services in meeting students' concerns. The research design consisted of a literature and an empirical study. The survey method was used in the empirical study. A self constructed questionnaire was used. Three hundred and fourteen school counsellors and 636 students participated in this study. The SAS/STAT version 9.1 was used to analyse the data. One way and combined two way frequency tables were calculated. Ratios were calculated to establish the relative rating of each item. Chi-square tests were also calculated. The study revealed that there were differences between the level of the school guidance and counselling services in Zimbabwean secondary schools and the international arena. For example, school guidance and counselling services policy in Zimbabwe was not mandatory as compared to the international policies. The Zimbabwean school guidance and counselling services were not always planned for at the beginning of each year, Students and parents were not frequently involved in needs assessment while the services were not frequently evaluated in comparison with those in the international arena. The study also revealed that some biographical variables significantly influenced the way the respondents responded to given items while others did not. The study revealed that the majority of both school counsellors and students viewed the school guidance and counselling services as beneficial and school counsellors as effectively playing their role. The study further revealed that the effectiveness of the Zimbabwean secondary school guidance and counselling services was negatively affected by lack of resources and training in guidance and counselling and non-counselling duties performed by school counsellors. Recommendations for future approaches and strategies in secondary school guidance and counselling services in Zimbabwe are made. Areas for further research are proposed. / Educational Studies / D.Ed. (Psychology of Education)

This study examines customer service in selected restaurants in the Tshwane area. It is aimed at establishing criteria for excellent customer service in restaurants, which can serve as the basis for building good relationships with customers. An extensive literature study was undertaken and aspects that were discussed in the secondary research include the various components of customer service, as well as the marketing environment of restaurants in South Africa and the Tshwane Area. An empirical study was conducted to namely to investigate customer service in selected restaurants in the Tshwane Area, with the aim to establish criteria for excellent customer service as a benchmark for establishing relationships with customers, by means of an exploratory study. A self-administered survey was conducted whereby questionnaires were handed to restaurant patrons with the restaurant bill folder. Based on the research results, criteria were developed for excellent customer service which can be used as a benchmark for establishing relationships with customers, by providing customer satisfaction, which leads to customer retention, loyalty and ultimately profitability for an organisation. / Business Management / M. Com. (Business Management)