This thesis examines the effect of various factors on the sale of vouchers of group buying deals. The data for the analysis were collected from the website Slevomat for four weeks. The observation was performed daily at 8 a.m., 4 p.m., 12 a.m. Based on the existing literature and theoretical considerations, six hypotheses were formulated, three of which turned out to be consistent with the data. It was confirmed, that the decrease in time remaining till the end of the offer induces bigger amount of vouchers sold per time period. Positive reviews and the fact that the offer is displayed on the main page of Slevomat also positively influence the number of sold vouchers. The influence of the amount of earlier sold vouchers on the present purchases ("bandwagon effect") and of the size of the relative or absolute discount was not found. The "Monday effect", according to which sales should be lower at the beginning of the week, was also disproved.

Ingeniero Civil Industrial / El presente trabajo de título corresponde al desarrollo de un plan de negocios para la línea retail de la empresa Cuponatic, la cual se desenvuelve en la industria de los Daily Deals , dedicada a vender productos y servicios con grandes descuentos a través de su sitio web. La finalidad de este trabajo consiste en posicionar a la empresa dentro de la venta de productos a través de internet, logrando una ventaja competitiva con respecto a sus competidores. Con respecto al modelo de negocios desarrollado, se concluye que la propuesta de valor debe ir centrada en los consumidores, ofreciendo dos oportunidades de consumo, productos menores a $30.000 pesos con más de 50% de descuento, los cuales incentivan la oportunidad de consumo por su bajo precio y productos de mayores a $30.000 pesos con descuentos menores al 50%, los cuales incentivan el consumo por el gran ahorro que se genera por su alto valor. En el análisis del medio externo se destaca el gran crecimiento que ha tenido la industria de retail por internet, proyectando para este año una tasa de 20%. El año 2010 se valoró este mercado en US$500 MM, el cual el año 2006 era de solo US$250 MM, junto con esto se destaca a las empresas de Daily Deals en su ayuda a potenciar esta industria. Del análisis interno se destacan las capacidades que posee la empresa, al tener casi dos años de funcionamiento, una organización de alrededor de 70 personas entre Chile, Perú y Colombia y ser una de las empresas más grandes del sector nacional. De la investigación de mercado se puede concluir que hasta el momento un tercio de las ventas de la empresa han sido de la categoría de productos, por lo que al desarrollar esta línea implica grandes oportunidades de hacer crecer esta participación, generando un mayor margen de ventas. Además según la encuesta, se puede concluir que del total de encuestados que ha comprado un cupón de descuento, un 93% volvería a hacerlo, mostrándose favorables a la hora de comprar productos por este sistema, prefiriendo las categorías de Electrónica, Comida y vestuario. Del plan de marketing se concluye que la estrategia genérica se basará en Recursos Humanos, teniendo estos un claro enfoque hacia los consumidores; Marketing y Ventas, teniendo una sección especial en la página web, una campaña de e-mails diarios, y presencia en redes sociales; Servicio de post venta, de tal manera de poder atender a los consumidores en todas las etapas del proceso. El plan de operaciones se divide en 3 procesos fundamentales, el primero corresponde a aquellos orientados a los clientes, donde se personaliza la atención a ellos a través del equipo de ventas, para ofrecer oportunidades que tengan un beneficio mutuo; aquellos procesos orientados a los consumidores, los que implican todo lo que tiene que ven con la entrega de los productos comprados por ellos y los procesos internos que tienen que ver con el manejo de inventario. La estructura organizacional está formada por un Jefe de Ventas Retail y un equipo de 3 vendedores encargados de buscar clientes y deals día a día, más un bodeguero y una recepcionista encargados del despacho y entrega de producto de forma personal en la oficina de la empresa. Finalmente, con una inversión de $7,5MM pesos, el análisis financiero dió para el escenario normal sin deuda un VAN de $101,6MM pesos y una TIR de 48,7%, el cual aumenta para el caso del escenario normal con deuda con un VAN de $106,5MM y una TIR de 60,5%. Es por esto que se recomienda la realización del proyecto, debido a su rentabilidad y las buenas proyecciones que presenta esta industria.

I syfte att bereda ett förlängt arbetsliv, har Sverige i flera steg höjt den nedre åldern för uttag av ålderspension. Höjningen är politikernas svar på den åldrande befolkningen, samtidigt som den nationella pensionsåldern fortsätter gäller för alla yrkesgrupper. Eftersom yrkesgrupperna skiljer sig åt avseende arbetsbörda, varierar förutsättningarna till att hantera en höjd pensionsålder. Bland yrkesgrupper med hög fysisk arbetsbelastning har en del svårt att arbeta till dagens pensionsålder vilket ger dem sämre förutsättningar till höjd pensionsålder. Byggnadsarbetare är en sådan yrkesgrupp, dock är forskningen kring byggnadsarbetare och ett förlängt arbetsliv bristande. För att bidra till forskningsområdet ämnar föreliggande studie att undersöka synen på höjd pensionsålder och ett förlängt arbetsliv inom byggnadsbranschen samt undersöka branschens arbete kring ett förlängt arbetsliv, med frågeställningarna Hur ser byggnadsarbetare inom byggnadsindustrin på pensionsålder och på ett förlängt arbetsliv? samt Hur arbetar arbetsgivare inom byggnadsindustrin för att möjliggöra ett förlängt arbetsliv åt äldre byggnadsarbetare? Undersökningen utfördes genom semistrukturerade intervjuer med fyra byggnadsarbetare och två arbetschefer. Det teoretiska ramverket består av push-pull-teorin som belyser anledningar till varför byggnadsarbetare slutar arbeta. Resultatet visar att byggnadsarbetare anser ett förlängt arbetsliv vara ohållbart under rådande omständigheter. De anser att en hållbar höjning av pensionsåldern kräver ett förbättringsarbete avseende arbetsmiljön, vilket innebär minskad stress, flexibla arbetsförhållanden och mer hjälpmedel. Medan arbetschefer uppger att höjd pensionsålder kan vara problematiskt för byggnadsarbetare men att det är nödvändigt. De är nöjda med det arbete som utförs för ett förlängt arbetsliv och påstår att ett förlängt arbetsliv som inte går att bereda tenderar att bero på faktorer som arbetschefen inte kan påverka, likt marknad, ekonomi och företagets kapacitet.

Tourism plays a crucial role in driving economic growth and regional development for countries worldwide as well as spurring economic growth in counties within regions. This thesis delves into the unexplored potential of two Swedish counties, Halland and Kalmar, as tourist destinations. Focusing on their degree of digitalization and digitization, we conduct a comprehensive comparative analysis to understand the current state of tourism and identify opportunities for sustainable growth within digitalization. All hotels in both of the counties were studied and compared to see how present they were online on third party booking sites.  The thesis has used secondary data from official tourism statistics sites simultaneously as well as combining them with gathered data from all of the different hotels own websites as well as third party sites used for booking. By examining the two key factors of presence online and package deals we evaluate potential room for improvement for the respective county.  Our findings show that there are several similarities between Halland and Kalmar when it comes to the degree of digitalization and how the regions offer package deals on a broad spectrum. There seems however to be room for improvement for both counties when analyzed to what the literature states. Hotels in Halland have a larger presence online than the hotels in Kalmar, when looking at how many guest nights per hotel the county has, Hallad comes out on top by a large margin. We argue that because of the larger online presence of hotels in Halland they achieve to attract more tourists than Kalmar, despite having fewer hotels in total.  To increase growth in the hospitality industry this thesis proposes a few actionable recommendations for both counties. Implementing more package deals and diversifying the contents of these package deals and focusing more on the digital marketing platforms that are readily available for every business in the hospitality business.  This thesis contributes to a deeper insight into how business owners should act to increase their odds of success as well as how policymakers might help business in their region to develop further. This thesis also gives stakeholders a way of measuring the online presence of hotels and by extension then a way of comparing presence online.

No description available.

The top endorsed athletes in the world are most likely the ones who have the biggest impact on their sport. These athletes are usually among the best in their sport or they might have something special that creates a strong relationship between the athlete and his or her fans. It is possible to say that this relationship combined with their skills on and off of the fields, courts, or arenas is what makes these athletes special. Big companies all over the world feel attracted to these athletes and, as a result, they spend millions of dollars every year in order to make these athletes the face of their companies. This research investigates the relationship between the monetary values of the top 50 most endorsed athletes in the world and their behaviors. Companies spend millions of dollars every year on endorsement deals, so it is important that they pick the right athlete to represent them. Furthermore, the athletes that are being endorsed need to know if there is a possibility of gaining or losing endorsements based upon their behaviors. The methodology in this research utilizes Analysis of Variance to investigate this relationship.

Deal Organizer is a web-based application that scans multiple websites for online bargains. It allows users to specify their preferences in order for them to receive notifications based on personalized content. The application obtains deals from other websites through data extraction techniques that include reading RSS feeds and web scraping. In order to better facilitate content personalization, the application tracks the user's activity by recording clicks on both links to deals and rating buttons, e.g., the Facebook like button. Due to the dynamic nature of the source websites offering these deals and the ever-evolving web technologies available to software developers, the Deal Organizer application was designed to implement an interface-based design using the Spring Framework. This yielded to an extensible, pluggable and flexible system that accommodates maintenance and future work gracefully. The application's performance was evaluated by executing resource-intensive tests on a constrained environment. Results show the application responded positively. / text

Employee share options and Black Economic Empowerment deals are financial instruments found in the South African market. Employee share options (ESOs) are issued as a form of non-cash compensation to the employees of the company in addition to their salaries or bonuses. Its value is linked to the share price and since there is no downside risk for the employee his share option is similar to owning a call option on the stock of his employer. Black economic empowerment (BEE) deals in this report refer to those types of transactions structured by listed South African companies to facilitate the transfer of a portion of their ordinary issued share capital to South African individuals or groups who qualify under the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act of 2003 (“the Act”). This Act requires a minimum percentage of the company to be black-owned in order to address the disproportionate distribution of wealth amongst racial groups in South Africa due to the legacy of Apartheid. These transactions are usually structured in such a way to allow the BEE partner to participate in the upside of the share price beyond a certain level but not in the downside which replicates a call option on the share price of the issuing company. The cost of both ESOs and BEE deals has to be accounted for on the balance sheet of the issuing company at its fair-value. Neither of these instruments can be traded and their extended option lifetimes are features that distinguish these deals significantly from regular traded options for which liquid markets exist. This makes pricing them a non-trivial exercise. A number of types of mathematical models have been developed to take the unique structure features into account to price them as accurately as possible. Research by Huddart&Lang (1995&1996) has shown that option holders often exercise their vested options long before the maturity of the transactions but are unable to quantify a measure that can be used. The wide variety of factors influencing option holders (recent stock price movements, market-to-strike ratio, proximity of vesting dates, time to maturity, share price volatility and wealth of option holder) as well as little exercise data publicly available prevents the options from being priced in a consistent manner. Various assumptions regarding the exercise behaviour of option holders are used that are not based on empirical observations even though the option prices are sensitive to this input. This dissertation provides an overview of the models, inputs and exercise behaviour assumptions that are recognized in pricing both ESOs and BEE deals under IFRS 2 in South Africa. This puts the reader in a position to evaluate all pricing aspects of these deals. Furthermore, their structuring are also analysed in order to identify the general issues related to them. A number of methods to manage the pricing issue surrounding exercise behaviour on ESOs have been considered for the South African market. The ESO Upper Bound-methodology showed that for each strike there is a threshold at which exercise will occur and the employee can invest the after-tax proceeds in a diversified portfolio with a higher expected return than that of the single equity option. This approach reduces the standard Black-Scholes option value without relying on assumptions about the employee’s exercise behaviour and is a viable alternative for the South African market. The derived option value represents the cost of the option. Seven large listed companies’ BEE transactions are dissected and compared against one another using the fair-value of the transaction as a percentage of the market capitalization of the company. The author shows how this measure is a more equitable way of assigning BEE credits to companies than the current practice which is shareholding-based. The current approach does not reward the effort (read cost) that a company has undertaken to transfer shares to black South Africans but only focuses on the amount that is finally owned by the BEE participants. This leaves the transaction vulnerable to a volatile share price and leads to transactions with extended lock-in periods that do not provide much economic benefit to the BEE participants for many years. Other inefficiencies in the type of BEE transactions that have emerged in reaction to the BEE codes that have been published by the South African government are also considered. Finally the funding model that is often used to facilitate these deals is assessed and the risks involved for the funder (bank) is reflected on. / Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Mathematics and Applied Mathematics / unrestricted

Chinese economic expansion in Africa is a widely discussed topic, but less academic attention is being paid to the role China plays in African security. Since the late 1990s Chinese activity in Africa had been growing rapidly. Beijing's interests are predominantly economic, mostly represented by market seeking and foreign direct investments, and political, generally perceived as a mutual support in international organizations. The thesis focuses on the traditional principle of non-interference in how Chinese policy towards African security has been evolving together with growing Chinese interests on the continent. The People's Republic of China influences African security matters in four areas: diplomatic involvement, arms deals, support and financing, and military cooperation. By analyzing those areas with a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, concrete cases have been identified, when China interfered in internal affairs of particular states, thus altering its policy of non- interference towards more pragmatic and case by case based approach.

The work with sustainability has mostly focused on the environmental and economic aspects, while the social dimension has been neglected. There is no definitive definition of what social sustainability work entails and there is a lack of financial measurement tools to assess social investments. The purpose of the essay is to report on the measurement challenge when investing in social sustainability. To achieve this, real estate actors have been interviewed, the people have shared the organization's social sustainability work and its view on measurement challenges. In total, seven operators have been interviewed who have a very varied property portfolio and ownership structure. A recurring measurement tool that the majority of the interviewed real estate operators use is survey measuring tool. These measurement tools can only measure the customer's individual experience and cannot directly demonstrate financial profitability of the investment. The essay has found a variation in terms of existing measurement tools but has also managed to identify challenges in these, such as the lack of comparability, subjective assessments, and misleading values. Financial profitability can arise in many ways from an investment in social sustainability. A common way is through cost savings or an increased willingness to pay in the form of increased market value and attractiveness. The essay has shown that a well-thought-out management can in many ways create large cost savings but also function as preventive measures that contribute to social sustainability, which in turn can generate indirect financial profitability. / Hållbarhet har under de senaste decennierna fått en allt större inverkan på fastighetsbranschen. Arbetet med hållbarhet har till största del fokuserat på de miljömässiga och ekonomiska aspekterna medan den sociala dimensionen har försummats. Det finns ingen entydig definition av vad det sociala hållbarhetsarbetet innebär och det råder brist på ekonomiska mätverktyg för att bedöma sociala investeringar. Uppsatsens syfte är att redogöra för mätningsutmaning vid investering i social hållbarhet.För att uppnå detta har fastighetsaktörer intervjuats, personerna har delat med sig av organisationens sociala hållbarhetsarbete och dess syn på mätningsutmaningar. Sammanlagt har sju stycken aktörer intervjuats som har en väldigt varierande fastighetsportfölj och ägarstruktur. Ett återkommande mätverktyg som majoriteten av de intervjuade fastighetaktörerna nyttjar är enkätbaserat mätverktyg. Dessa mätverktyg kan endast mäta kundens individuella upplevelse och kan inte direkt påvisa ekonomisk lönsamhet i investeringen. Uppsatsen har funnit en variation vad gäller befintliga mätverktyg men har även lyckats identifiera utmaningar i dessa, såsom bristen på jämförelsebarhet, subjektiva bedömningar och missvisande värden. Ekonomisk lönsamhet kan uppkomma på många sätt ur en investering i social hållbarhet. Ett vanligt sätt är genom kostnadsbesparingar eller en ökad betalningsvilja i form av ökat marknadsvärde och attraktivitet. Uppsatsen har påvisat att en genomtänkt förvaltning kan i många led skapa stora kostnadsbesparingar men även fungera som förebyggande insatser som bidrar till den sociala hållbarheten, som i sin tur kan generera indirekt ekonomisk lönsamhet.