This research investigated the use of language in the texts of the promotional brochures created for the tourist industry. The selected printed materials for the study were used in advertising the five countries most severely affected by the Asian Tsunami in 2004 (Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and the Maldives). The focus of the analysis was on the two sets of brochures of the five selected countries published by the UK’s leading travel agencies – Thomas Cook, Thomson and Kuoni before and after the disaster. The contrastive discourse analysis was applied in order to investigate the similarities and differences of linguistic features within the texts both between the two sets for each country as well as between the five selected countries. The overall results of the text analysis from the five selected countries have shown significant changes in language use. The investigation revealed that in the post-disaster set of brochures the number of destinations was broadened and their descriptions were made more vivid. The post-disaster texts represented more efforts in developing a wider range of tourism attractions and activities in order to expand the markets and increase the number as well as type of potential future tourists. The information derived from the questionnaire has revealed the potential tourists’ sensitivity to language used in promotional brochures. The results demonstrated that most respondents were aware of the change of language used before and after the Tsunami. The findings validated the hypothesis that the role of language within tourism advertising is as significant as the role of images. This has a major impact on individuals’ choosing their next holiday destination since many potential tourists still base their holiday decision-making on holiday brochures. The research has found that the role of language plays a significant role in tourism advertising representations and also has a major part as one of the marketing tools in tourism promotional strategy.

In the context of current fears about ‘toxic childhood', and a marketing industry's celebration of children as empowered by consumerism, this thesis asks where does this leave children themselves? Theoretically the thesis adopts a Foucauldian approach, with its understanding of the relations between power, knowledge and subjectivity and methodologically deploys a discourse analysis. The latter is used to scrutinise ‘the child' and consumption as understood by ‘experts' on the one hand and ‘marketing' on the other. For the ‘experts' the corpus for research is made up of a disparate set of populist and academic articles and books from the UK in 2007/2008, engaging with the ill effects of consumerism on children. Also included here is a transcript of the UK parliamentary debate on ‘junk food advertising' from 25th April 2008. For ‘marketing', materials were collected from one emblematic event: the annual British Toy and Hobby Association Toy Fair 2014, where marketing professionals promote their wares by ‘selling' the benefits of (toy) consumption for children. What emerges as a commonality from these two very different discourses is the child as ‘subject' (and ‘object'), placed in a homogeneous childhood. To investigate the authenticity of this construct, the third strand of research is focused on some children talking about consumption. Children from a local school, aged between nine and ten, were divided into focus groups of boys and girls, facilitated by a teacher but with the children able to discuss ideas relatively freely. This provides the final corpus of research for analysis. What the children's talk reveals is a distinctiveness in their interactions with each other and their teacher, in which they utilise their own ‘methods' – what I refer to as ‘dynamic bricolage' and ‘collaboration'. Through these they perform an ‘identity work' to resist or evade certain knowledges about them and create others to integrate into an individual and group ‘childhood' identity, which is relished by them as not-adult. I argue that these childhood practices complicate contemporary understandings of childhood: the child is neither innocent victim nor savvy consumer.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-04-22T22:10:11Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Armando.pdf: 1186614 bytes, checksum: 973e53495ff1fde59e3b83ca719dc6a3 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005-11-18 / The present work has as objective to present a proposal for monitoring of the service level to systems of physical distribution of products that seeks to bring improvements to the delivery process of the companies that act in the beverages segment. By means of an extensive literature review and of the case study accomplished in a company of beverage segment, it became possible to map all distribution process and identify the variables that affect it s performance, concentrating the monitor on the indicators of costs, productivity, use of resources, efficiency and route come back. Regarding that physical distribution of products absorbs significant portion of the budget expenses of the organizations, this activity has occupied a prominence paper in the logistics problems of the companies. That is due, on a side, to the growing cost of the capital (financial cost), that forces the companies to reduce the stocks and the handling activity, transports and distribution of your products beyond own competition. The model was applied and it presented satisfactory results that allowed the company to identify, measure, analyze, improve and control the level service of your distribution system. The proposal contemplates a systematic accompaniment of the indicators and its performance, along the year of 2004 and, with possibility of definitions or revision of the goals as well as the comparison with other periods. / O presente trabalho tem como objetivo apresentar uma proposta de monitoramento do nível de serviço para sistemas de distribuição física de produtos que vise trazer melhorias ao processo de entrega das empresas que atuam no segmento de bebidas. Mediante extensa revisão de literatura e do estudo de caso realizado em uma empresa do segmento de bebidas, tornou-se possível mapear todo o processo de distribuição e identificar as variáveis que afetam o seu desempenho, concentrando o monitoramento nos indicadores de custos, produtividade, utilização de recursos, eficiência e retorno de rota. Considerando que a distribuição física de produtos absorve parcela significativa do orçamento de despesas das organizações, essa atividade passou a ocupar um papel de destaque nos problemas logísticos das empresas. Isso se deve, de um lado, ao custo crescente do capital (custo financeiro), que força as empresas a reduzir os estoques e a agilizar o manuseio, transporte e distribuição de seus produtos além da própria concorrência. O modelo foi aplicado e apresentou resultados satisfatórios que permitiram a empresa identificar, medir, analisar, melhorar e controlar o nível de serviço de seu sistema de distribuição. A proposta contempla um acompanhamento sistemático dos indicadores e seus resultados, ao longo do ano de 2004 e, com possibilidade de definições ou revisão das metas bem como a comparação com outros períodos.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T15:47:52Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 ThatianaCNS_DISSERT.pdf: 1637234 bytes, checksum: 8b38ce4a7a358efe654d9bb1c23c15bc (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-03-02 / The distribution of petroleum products through pipeline networks is an important problem that arises in production planning of refineries. It consists in determining what will be done in each production stage given a time horizon, concerning the distribution of products from source nodes to demand nodes, passing through intermediate nodes. Constraints concerning storage limits, delivering time, sources availability, limits on sending or receiving, among others, have to be satisfied. This problem can be viewed as a biobjective problem that aims at minimizing the time needed to for transporting the set of packages through the network and the successive transmission of different products in the same pipe is called fragmentation. This work are developed three algorithms that are applied to this problem: the first algorithm is discrete and is based on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), with local search procedures and path-relinking proposed as velocity operators, the second and the third algorithms deal of two versions based on the Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA-II). The proposed algorithms are compared to other approaches for the same problem, in terms of the solution quality and computational time spent, so that the efficiency of the developed methods can be evaluated / A distribui??o de produtos de petr?leo atrav?s de redes de polidutos ? um importante problema que se coloca no planejamento de produ??o das refinarias. Consiste em determinar o que ser? feito em cada est?gio de produ??o dado um determinado horizonte de tempo, no que respeita ? distribui??o de produtos de n?s fonte ? procura de n?s, passando por n?s intermedi?rios. Restri??es relativas a limites de armazenamento, tempo de entrega, disponibilidade de fontes, limites de envio ou recebimento, entre outros, t?m de ser satisfeitas. Este problema pode ser visto como um problema biobjetivo, que visa minimizar o tempo necess?rio para transportar o conjunto de pacotes atrav?s da rede e o envio sucessivo de produtos diferentes no mesmo duto que ? chamado de fragmenta??o. Neste trabalho, s?o desenvolvidos tr?s algoritmos que s?o aplicados a esse problema: o primeiro algoritmo ? discreto e baseia-se na Otimiza??o por Nuvem de Part?culas (PSO), com procedimentos de busca local e path-relinking propostos como operadores de velocidade, o segundo e o terceiro algoritmos tratam de duas vers?es baseadas no Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA-II). Os algoritmos propostos s?o comparados a outras abordagens para o mesmo problema, em termos de qualidade de solu??o e tempo computacional despendido, a fim de se avaliar a efici?ncia dos m?todos desenvolvidos