Purpose - The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate the possibilities to extend or change the base of IKEA’s SL classification and give recommendations concerning potential improvements.  Method - This thesis has an inductive research strategy since data has been collected to build theory rather than the other way around (Bryman and Bell, 2007). The data has been collected by qualitative research, mainly through interviews with employees at the different IKEA organisations. Empirics - The empirical data gathered describes the service level in practice at IKEA. In order to get an overview of the conflicting interests in the different functions, the chapter is divided into four themes; how IKEA works with SL, the purpose of SL, customer service and suggestion to the design of the SL classification. Theory - The theory has been based on our empirical findings in order to find the best solution for IKEA. The theory includes different classification models, the relationship between customer service and SL and is finished with a section on how to measure availability. Conclusions - The conclusion that could be drawn was that the purpose of the classification was not perceived in the same way within the company and that both internal and external information is needed. A new model is presented that takes into account the different products, buying situations, and customer reactions on OOS, which are important parameters for consumer perception of availability and customer service. By using this model IKEA will be able to fulfil the two, sometimes conflicting purposes; to secure the sales and increase customer satisfaction.

Groupon is a popular group-buying website where they act as an intermediary between buyers and sellers. The company has grown rapidly and was established in Sweden in the year of 2010. The aim of this study is to investigate if businesses that have been marketed in Stockholm and that have been co-operating with Groupon have been affected in terms of customer loyalty and profitability. Furthermore the study also examines consumer’s opinions, purchase behavior and loyalty against Groupons business partners. The results showed that salon/spa in comparison with other industries received very high added sales (67 %) and had a large number of loyal customers (42 %). For the retail industry, 33 % did not receive additional sales and 67 % have not received customer loyalty. Tourism/travel and other industries believe the campaigns to be very successful and they have received good customer loyalty and sales. The companies who did not consider their campaigns successful had problems with the communication between themselves and Groupon. Finally, 49 % of the consumers turned out to be loyal to the businesses of which they had used daily deals.

Background: Today, advertising is a multi-billion industry, employing hundreds of thousands of people and affecting billions of people’s lives worldwide. Yet, seeing as advertising clutter has increased tremendously and is more intense than ever, it is vital that companies differentiate themselves from competitors by creating even more powerful, entertaining and innovative advertisement messages, as well as sponsoring different events. Examples of such companies that spend billion of dollars on marketing strategies in order to stay key players in their industry are The Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo. Purpose: The overall purpose of this paper is to gain a deeper understanding of different international and local factors affecting consumer preferences on a local market. Method: A quantitative method was applied, and thus a questionnaire with 150 respondents on the local market was conducted. The respondents were divided into three different age groups: ≤ 18, 19-34, and ≥ 35, and represent a diverse set of people who are at different stages in their lives. Conclusions: International advertising and international sponsorship respectively influence the local target group in different ways, but they also affect international brand in that they have an impact on brand image and brand equity. Moreover, depending on a person’s age, consumers view brands differently, and thus have an effect on international brand alone, but also in combination with international advertisement and international sponsorship. Together, these factors influence the way in which a brand is perceived, and consequently influence consumer preferences.

Information search and acquisition is one of the important tasks in industrial procurement. The main issues of the present study are whether the needs of information and their patterns of importance would be affected by the following variables: product type, position of the supply chain, factors of individual participant (position, current unit, experiences of departments), organization structural factors, innovational resources commitments. The empirical study contexts are six machinery related sub-industries, including: vehicle, casting, die and mold, fastener, hand-tool, and machinery industry. From the 345 valid survey samples, the current research tested several hypotheses, of which significant findings include: (1) Different positions at a supply chain would cause difference of information needs. (2) Factors of individual participant also bring about different buying information needs: the current unit and experiences in different departments would significantly affect importance of the finance-cost, technique, salesperson information. (3) Organizational factors, including authority, horizontal interaction, vertical division, would give rise to more positive effect on buying experiences, country-of-origin, salesperson information. On the other hand, solicit negative effect on finance-cost information. (4) The product type would significantly moderate the causal relation between organizational factors and buying experiences, country-of-origin, or salesperson information. (5) Finance-cost information is less important for the higher innovational commitment companies than the lower ones

From 2009¡AIndonesia has been Striving to Expand BRIC to BRIIC¡AFrom the growth of Indonesia these days, we can see that the demand of 3C product including Computer, Communications and Consumer-Electronics have been growing rapidly. According to Apkomindo in 21st of July 2010 stated that there has been a 167% of growth from past year of laptop demand in Indonesia, it because of the Indonesia¡¦s economy has been performing well in the many year. From the fascinating of Laptop demand growth, it has attracted many laptop companies to enter the Indonesia market. Asus, as the new entrant of Taiwanese Laptop company in Indonesia has to deal with the fierce competition among laptop companies, one of the tough competitor is Taiwanese laptop Company, Acer. If Asus wants to successfully expand into Indonesia Laptop market, Asus has to understand well on Indonesian Consumer behaviors, if Asus manage to understand well about what consumer need while consuming laptop, the Asus will manage to expand its market in Indonesia. Due to the situation above, The study research is about to understand the buying Intention of Indonesian people while purchasing Laptop. The Study research used the TPB(Theory of Planned Behavior) model of Ajzen as the research fundamental for studying the laptop buying intention of Indonesian people. The target of our study is the Indonesian consumer whether they currently in the region of Indonesia or in the foreign country. We manage to collect the effective- questionnaires of 126. In-order to test the adaptability of the construct models, we use regression analysis to analysis the collecting data and using Focus Group discussion both method as the study research analysis. The focus group discussion has involved six Indonesian students that currently studied in National of Sun-Yat-Sen University in Taiwan. According the result of this study, Consumer¡¦s Attitude, Social norm and Perceived behavior control, product characteristic and company marketing has a significant influence to Indonesian people on buying laptop. The research also figure it out that the different types of the purchased laptop of consumer has different influences effect on purchasing laptop.

Nowadays, most consumers prefer products with originality, fashion and innovation, and seek for quality and design. In addition, by the effects of the popularized knowledge of media products, the increasing educational level, the change of social concepts and the frequent interaction between human-beings, the demand of multimedia merchandises is raising and the expenditure is also increasing. The purpose of this study is to discuss the impact factors of purchase behavior by impulse buying and the relationship between the background knowledge to products and the purchase intention in multimedia expos in Kaohsiung area. After deleting invalid questionnaires, 501 of 550 research objects who were the consumers in the multimedia expo in Kaohsiung were taken into this study. The results which were made by research tools such as impulse buying scale, impulse buying behavior factors scale, product knowledge scale and purchase intention scale through statistic methods including reliability test, item analysis, factor analysis, descriptive statistics, independent samples t test, One-way ANOVA, Pearson's product-moment correlation and level regressions are as follows. (1) Significant differences can be seen in the catalogues of gender, marital status, age, educational level, occupation, average monthly wagers upon impose buying and the impact factors of behavior in the Multi Media Expo.(2) Consumers of various age or occupation have different knowledge level regarding the products. (3) Significant differences of purchase intentions between consumers in various educational levels in the multimedia expo. (4) Positive significant impacts of purchase intentions impacted by impulse buying especially in some promotion ways of advertisement, shopping situation and payment terms. (5) Significant influences of the impact between the consumers¡¦ shopping intentions and product knowledge. (6) Significant impacts in impulse buying personality to impulse shopping behavior and purchasing intention with positive interference between impulse shopping personality and purchasing intention. Negative impact occurs on shopping situation and purchasing intention regarding to impulse buying personality. (7) Significant interference impact on knowledge of products and shopping intention regarding to impulse buying personality. To conclude, except explaining and discussing the applications of the research result, the following suggestions were also mentioned to the exhibitors. (1) Combine marketing policies and product advertisement to raise the marketing performance. (2) Arrange better endorsements to attract the crowds. (3) Flexibly utilize quantitative promotions and main commodities to create a purchasing rush. (4) Properly plan the expo venue and improve the service quality to create situational stimuli. (5) Exercise various paying methods to improve the shopping intention of young people. (6) Make the best use of the consumers¡¦ product knowledge to improve shopping intention. (7) Utilize the interference impact of impulse shopping personality to raise the consumers¡¦ shopping intention. Moreover, some advices for future research were also mentioned.

In recent years, population inflow and population in Kaohsiung has constantly increased. Besides, every shopping mall and department store has discovered that the consumption in Kaohsiung has improved as well. As a result, density of shopping mall and department store in Kaohsiung appears to be high and competitive. This study indicates that it is important to analyze the consumers in order to find and understand consumer insight. Includes where are the consumers are located, how the consumers¡¦ demographic variables distributed , consumers¡¦ needs ,buying behavior of consumers and what factors influence the way they choose shopping mall and department store.This study aims at the consumers of shopping mall and department store. By using questionnaire to describe different living style and using living style variables to segment the market. Then to further depict demographic variables and consumer behavior features in every living style segment in order to further understanding the shopping mall and department store consumers. This questionnaire survey has analyzed 338 copies. It shows that the majority of the shopping mall and department store consumers in Kaohsiung are age around 20-29, single female, occupations as students or in service industry. And by using cluster analysis, living style as a fundamental factors, to divide the consumers of shopping mall and department store into four group, home-valued type, information-gathering, price-calculated type and impulse shopping. Finally, the study discussed the similarity and difference between these groups.

The research objects are Tickets Group Buying Websites, to explore the correlation between Perceived Risk and Purchase Intention, including website trust and perception of price. The main purpose is to investigate consumers' tickets group buying behavior, and to understand the consumers' perceived risk interactions with perceived price, trust in tickets group buying, and the impact of people¡¦s purchase intention. This research takes the questionnaire survey; we collect total 301 available samples. Use percentage, average, correlation analysis and regression analysis. The study result indicated that main consumer in ticket group buying are women; the major consumer age groups is 19-29 years old, their income per month is bellow fifty thousand; and most of consumer who lives in northern area in Taiwan. The main reasons that people who willing to use ticket group buying are cheapest price and easy to buy. The key reasons people who do not buy ticket group buying are using time limit and lower service quality. In this research, we found that when consumer has higher website trust, the perceived risk will be weaken; besides the purchase intention will be strengthen. The trust has significant effects on consumer¡¦s purchase decision in ticket group buying. This study also founds that consumer have lower perceived price having higher perceived risk and having lower purchase intention.

There is no denying that consumer electronics has a great influence on our daily life, and it now also even create and lead trend in modern society. Traditionally, we think of men as the major customer in consumer electronics, but with fashion and social trend are both been added in the concept of the product, many research has shown that women has gradually become the main customer in consumer electronics. Among all the consumer electronic product, smartphone has became the fastest growing product, and the marketshare has already exceeded cell phone since last year. As for the digital camera, there still are promising growing in DSLR-like¡BDSLR and EVIL, and the trend in market this year is to add Wi-Fi as the new function to against smartphone. From literature review, we can found that there are many research about product involvement on buying decision, but fashion involvement is seldom being considered in it. Therefore, we used product involvement and fashion involvement as moderating variable and the research outcome indicate that the intension of buying are easilier stimulated by product function when people has high product involvement in smart phone/digital camera, and they also value public praise of product more. As for people has high fashion involvement, they tends to buy smartphone/digital camera on the stimulation of fashion trend and social influence. To sum up, product involvement andfashion involvement will influence buying decision in different ways and also the pastexperiences of urban women in Taiwan.

The intension model of purchasing houses for Kaohsiung female consumers