Thesis (M.A.)--Wayne State University. / Includes bibliographical references.

Originally presented as the author's thesis, University of Michigan, 1977. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 47-50).

Thesis (M.Phil.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2005. / "Submitted to Department of Information Systems in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy" Includes bibliographical references (leaves 84-103)

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Washington State University, August 2005. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Oregon State University, 2007. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 70-84). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.S.)--Brigham Young University. School of Technology, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 53-56).

In today's business world, the role of children in the family buying decision-making process is continuously getting the importance and attention of researchers, academics, and business organizations. The depth of children‟s influence on the family is still untapped in the contemporary research process. Changes in socioeconomic and demographic structures considerably increase the involvement of children in their family decision making. This has created an analysis gap in this field of study. No prior research was conducted in this field of study with particular reference to Bangladesh Bangladeshi and the British Bangladeshi children. The main area of interest of the thesis is to explore the role of children in the family buying process. The review of the literature proposes a conceptual framework/model which considers different socioeconomic and demographic factors. The literature does not only describe the influence of children in the family buying decision stages, but it also discusses the degree and influence of other factors. A detailed comparison is made of the roles between children in Bangladesh Bangladeshi and the British Bangladeshi families. The pedagogical conceptual framework works as a precursor to form the research hypotheses used to analyze the data more critically. A cluster random sampling was used to collect the data from the United Kingdom and Bangladesh. Data was collected directly from 200 respondents through the structured questionnaire system. Secondary data was used to analyze the research gap. A structured questionnaire was pre-tested in order to measure the validity, reliability and proper justification of the conduct of the study. Statistical tools were used to analyze the descriptive and multivariate analysis for the quantitative data. Analysis of the data assisted in testing the hypotheses guiding the study and explored new research phenomena in which the role of children in the family buying decision-making process was identified. Any research gap will form the recommendations of the study.

The object of the thesis was to develop a field instrument for the determination of aesthetic tastes and preferences among various social groups. The instrument has been developed for use in research on attitudes and preferences involved in the purchase of homes. The instrument was constructed as a visual attitude scale, consisting of three house photographs graduated along a social class continuum to represent the lower, middle, and upper scale categories; and will be developed on the assumption that people can consistently discriminate among house photographs on the basis of perceived social class of occupant families. The three house photographs were derived from a rating process in the field which used 60 respondents to rate a set of 30 carefully selected house photographs among three social class categories. The house photographs associated most with each of the three categories were selected to represent each social stratum in the visual attitude scale. Use of the visual attitude scale in conjunction with the Semantic Differential and open-end questions was proposed as a means to determine differences in aesthetic tastes and preferences and, also, other attitudes involved in the decision making process to buy a home. The actual utility and validity of the field instrument cannot be established here, but must be the object of further research. The study did reveal, however, a high degree of consistency of ratings by respondents from different social class backgrounds and, therefore, provided face validation for the assumptions underlying the construction of the field instrument. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

This exploratory study investigated the nature of interaction between husband and wife in the search/decision process leading to the purchase of a home. Interaction was examined in terms of convergence and divergence between the partners. It was suggested that divergence is most likely to occur over decision situations in which one or other partner dominates. A conceptual framework was constructed to examine some of the determinants of dominance. Using this scheme and several intervening variables; a number of possible interaction patterns were then suggested. A questionnaire was formulated and a field survey undertaken to verify the validity of these suggestions. The results indicated that the concepts of convergence and divergence are useful in examining this aspect of house buying behavior. The survey was, however, only partially successful in validating the conceptual framework and the suggested interaction patterns. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

This study is to discuss the correlation between artificial buying desire and some of its influential variables, different price promotion on nth good and different buying motivation. For the purpose of study, 360 students of college degree and master degree in Taiwan are categories into five groups based on their buying motivation. They are (1) pursuit convenience group ;(2) pursuit fashion and convenience group; (3) pursuit fashion group; (4) pursuit relationship group and (5) unknowing motivation group. The conclusions of this study are presented as follows: 1. Consumers who face different price promotion on nth good in the convenience store have significant difference. 2. Consumers who have different buying motivation in the convenience store probably have significant difference. 3. Consumers of different buying motivation who have same promotion situation in the convenience store probably have significant difference. The conclusions above are significant to the management in the following aspects. 1. For students of college degree and master degree in Taiwan, nearly 20% still can be developed. 2. Convenience store which uses different price promotion on nth good should seriously consider its effect. 3. Convenience store should design different promotion activities for different consumer of different buying motivation, and try to separate them.