This thesis presents an investigation into the high value of structured text (or form) in the context of genre within Information Retrieval. In particular, how are these structured texts perceived and why are they not more heavily used within Information Retrieval & Search communities? The main motivation is to show the features in which people can exploit genre within Information Search & Retrieval, in particular, categorisation and search tasks. To do this, it was vital to record and analyse how and why this was done during typical tasks. The literature review highlighted two previous studies (Toms & Campbell 1999a; Watt 2009) which have reported pilot studies consisting of genre categorisation and information searching. Both studies and other findings within the literature review inspired the work contained within this thesis. Genre is notoriously hard to define, but a very useful framework of ‘Purpose and Form’, developed by Yates & Orlikowski (1992), was utilised to design two user studies for the research reported within the thesis. The two studies consisted of, first, a categorisation task (e-­‐mails), and second, a set of six ‘simulated situations’ in Wikipedia, both of which collected quantitative data from eye tracking experiments as well as qualitative user data. The results of both studies showed the extent to which the participants utilised the form features of the stimuli presented, in particular, how these were used, which ocular behaviours (skimming or scanning) and actual features were used, and which were the most important. The main contributions to research made by this thesis were, first of all, that the task-­‐based user evaluations employing simulated search scenarios revealed ‘how’ and ‘why’ users make decisions while interacting with the textual features of structure and layout within a discourse community, and, secondly, an extensive evaluation of the quantitative data revealed the features that were used by the participants in the user studies and the effects of the interpretation of genre in the search and categorisation process as well as the perceptual processes used in the various communities. This will be of benefit for the re-­‐development of information systems. As far as is known, this is the first detailed and systematic investigation into the types of features, value of form, perception of features, and layout of genre using eye tracking in online communities, such as Wikipedia.

This research examines the role of electronic messaging in business firms. The study presents a taxonomy of electronic mail uses, develops a theoretical framework for analyzing electronic mail impact, and investigates risks and advantages of electronic messaging. The research focus is intermediate-size firms.

Aujourd'hui, La Poste se trouve dans une situation particulièrement délicate au regard des mutations de son environnement économique. Pour répondre à ses nouveaux enjeux, elle doit développer sa planification stratégique, dans laquelle la prévision de son chiffre d'affaires joue un rôle particulièrement crucial. Or, à l'heure actuelle, les méthodes utilisées par la Direction Stratégique, notamment pour traiter la question de l'effet jours ouvrables, ne sont pas optimales et l'entreprise cherche à les améliorer. Notre thèse, réalisée en convention CIFRE avec la Direction Marketing Stratégique de La Poste, s'inscrit dans ce questionnement. Notre recherche vise plus spécifiquement à déterminer quels sont les meilleurs modèles économétriques pour la prévision du chiffre d'affaires du courrier. On se penche dans un premier temps sur la question de l'effet jours ouvrables que l'on traite à l'aide de méthodes de prévision, afin d'en obtenir une analyse approfondie. Puis on cherche à déterminer des modèles de prévisions adaptés à chaque type de clientèle et, enfin, au chiffre d'affaires totales. Pour l'entreprise, cette recherche vise à élaborer un outil fiable de prévision et d'aide à la décision. Au point de vue théorique, le principal apport de notre travail réside dans l'utilisation de modèles de prévision pour analyser l'effet jours ouvrables, à la place de l'utilisation d'outils de détection automatique. / Nowadays, La Poste is facing a particularly complex situation, related to the many changes of its economic environment. In order to respond to the new issues, it must develop strategic planning, in which income prediction plays a crucial part. Yet, to this day, the methods used by the Strategy Department are not optimal and the company is working at their improvement. Our research,conducted in the framework of a CIFRE partnership with the Strategic Marketing Department in La Poste, is anchored in this questioning. Our work is specifically aimed at determining the best econometric models to predict income of the Mail activity. We first focus on the issue of the "Trading days effect", that we examine using prediction methods, in order to get an in-depth view of it. Then we engage in determining prediction models adapted to each type of customers and, finally, a model for total income. For the company, this research is aimed at elaborating a reliable prediction and decision-making tool. From the theoretical point of view, the main contribution of our work lies in our using prediction models to analyze "Trading days effect", instead of automatic detection tools.

Spam messages in the form of e-mail is a growing problem in today's businesses. It is a problem that costs time and resources to counteract. Research into this has been done to produce techniques and tools aimed at addressing the growing number on incoming spam e-mails. The research on different algorithms and their ability to classify e-mail messages needs an update since both tools and spam e-mails have become more advanced. In this study, three different machine learning algorithms have been evaluated based on their ability to correctly classify e-mails as legitimate or spam. These algorithms are naive Bayes, support vector machine and decision tree. The algorithms are tested in an experiment with the Enron spam dataset and are then compared against each other in their performance. The result of the experiment was that support vector machine is the algorithm that correctly classified most of the data points. Even though support vector machine has the largest percentage of correctly classified data points, other algorithms can be useful from a business perspective depending on the task and context.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T19:33:33Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Simeia de Mello Araujo.pdf: 413319 bytes, checksum: 475dcf96c002bcd02155fb3fe74b20ca (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-11-16 / This dissertation aims to analyze characteristics of institutional genres, which are constructed by e-mail in the academic context. Investigation are found both studies about genre carry out by Bakthin (1979/2003) and in the idea of life goes into the language by means of real and unique propositions, that are named discourse genres and its inherent relationship with the scope of human activity. In this study, e-mail has been understood like a support that makes possible the genre to spread through discursive community to which it was linked, according to Levy s studies (2000). In order to obtain this objective it was pick and choose a corpus make up by eight communicates utilized in the university. We can observe, grounded in study, that, in the face of particularities of this support, institutional genres transmitted by it obtain new characteristics allowed by e-mail s environment / Esta dissertação tem por objetivo analisar as características de gêneros institucionais, que são produzidas via e-mail no contexto de universidade. A análise encontra-se respaldada nos estudos sobre gêneros realizados por Bakhtin (1979/2003) e no conceito de que a vida entra na língua por meio de enunciados concretos e únicos que são chamados de gêneros do discurso e a sua relação intrínseca com as esferas de atividade humana. O e-mail nessa pesquisa é entendido como um suporte que permite o gênero circular pela comunidade discursiva a qual está vinculada, respaldados nos estudos de Levy (2000). Para se atingir o objetivo proposto, foi selecionado um corpus composto por oito comunicados constituídos no contexto de universidade. Com os resultados obtidos, pudemos observar que, em virtude das particularidades desse suporte, os gêneros institucionais veiculados por meio dele ganham novas características permitidas pelo ambiente do e-mail

Email provides the average person with the ability to instantaneously communicate with people across the planet. However, the ease of this communication not only allows people to exchange information, but can also generate a large volume of messages. The methods of interacting with this repository currently in use are far from adequate. This thesis focuses on the development of a new interface for managing one's inbox and mail folders. The approach provides the user with a data visualization of an overview of the entire mailbox, or a chosen subset, at once. The tool includes interactions that allow a user to focus his or her attention on specific email and delve deeper into it in a simple intuitive fashion. A user study confirmed the usefulness of the resulting system.

The survey Distanshandeln idag 2005, made by the Swedish postal service, tells us that web shops started to pop up in the 1990´s and began competing with the catalogue sells in the end of the decade. Ten years ago, it was said that the web shops would take over the distance trade market. Today we know that did not happen. Internet shopping accounted for 4, 2 % of all distance shopping in Sweden last year. Our inquiry is guided by the observation that the catalogue is still in use and moreover, it seems to have changed very little from when we were kids. It might be that the catalogue has potentials that the Internet lacks. Hence, this study aims to identify and describe differences between mail-order catalogues and web shops in the presentation of fashion products. The theoretical frame of reference for this study consists of literature on marketing, brands, and fashion marketing by catalogue and Internet. This is primary an empirical study and the literature's function is that of inspiration and support for us in our analysis and our conclusions. The empirical material consists of a survey on the mail-order company Ellos’s spring and summer catalogue of 2009, and their web shop for the same time period. First we constructed a set of mutually exclusive criteria to apply in our analysis (e.g., colour, perspective and information). A number of standard garments were then chosen, and for each of these garments, we applied our model and performed a comparative analysis. To give the reader a better understanding of the survey's result, we included images to show specific phenomena along with our findings. The main differences between catalogues and web shops could be summarized as follows: Web shops provides immediate information about stock status and campaign prices, this cannot be done in the catalogue. The catalogues on their hand provides the customer with a lot of ideas on how to wear, and how to combine the different garments. This could easily be achieved in the web shop too, and we find it a bit surprising that it is not. / Program: Textilekonomutbildningen

The survey Distanshandeln idag 2005, made by the Swedish postal service, tells us that web shops started to pop up in the 1990´s and began competing with the catalogue sells in the end of the decade. Ten years ago, it was said that the web shops would take over the distance trade market. Today we know that did not happen. Internet shopping accounted for 4, 2 % of all distance shopping in Sweden last year. Our inquiry is guided by the observation that the catalogue is still in use and moreover, it seems to have changed very little from when we were kids. It might be that the catalogue has potentials that the Internet lacks. Hence, this study aims to identify and describe differences between mail-order catalogues and web shops in the presentation of fashion products. The theoretical frame of reference for this study consists of literature on marketing, brands, and fashion marketing by catalogue and Internet. This is primary an empirical study and the literature's function is that of inspiration and support for us in our analysis and our conclusions. The empirical material consists of a survey on the mail-order company Ellos’s spring and summer catalogue of 2009, and their web shop for the same time period. First we constructed a set of mutually exclusive criteria to apply in our analysis (e.g., colour, perspective and information). A number of standard garments were then chosen, and for each of these garments, we applied our model and performed a comparative analysis. To give the reader a better understanding of the survey's result, we included images to show specific phenomena along with our findings. The main differences between catalogues and web shops could be summarized as follows: Web shops provides immediate information about stock status and campaign prices, this cannot be done in the catalogue. The catalogues on their hand provides the customer with a lot of ideas on how to wear, and how to combine the different garments. This could easily be achieved in the web shop too, and we find it a bit surprising that it is not. / Program: Textilekonomutbildningen

This thesis has been carried out during second semester 2010 at University College of Borås in Collaboration with Halens AB. Halens Holding AB is one of Sweden’s leading e-commerce companies. The company contains of four subsidiaries which together create Halens Holding AB. The concern includes Halens AB, Cellbes AB, Time Finans AB and New Bubbleroom Sweden AB. The main office of Halens Holding AB is located in Borås, the company has a turnover of 1.1 billion SEK and employs 300 people. Halens Holding AB has a wide range of products; fashion, home textile, furniture’s, home electronics and beauty- and health products. Halens has recently expanded their market, and now have Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Danish, Estonian, Latvian, Czech, Polish, Slovakian, Russian, Swiss, Slovenian and Turkish customers.The purpose of this thesis was to investigate customer requirements and demands on e-commerce. Furthermore, the intention was also to compare customers from the different subsidiaries. The purpose could be concluded with following three bullets;Identify customer demand on; product, lead-time, service and cost. Investigate differences in customer demand at two of the subsidiaries; Halens and Cellbes. Determine different consequences to the identified customer demand; purchase, non-purchase, purchase followed by return, uncollected package. A survey was made in order to find real time information about customer behavior. The objective of the survey was to understand customers’ demands of e-commerce in general. The next step was to investigate if Halens and Cellbes fulfilled those requirements. Moreover, observations were made in order to capture the customers’ use of the web-pages. These observations provided a deeper insight of the customer requirements and demands. With survey answers and observations as a base, different customer segments could be spotted. Furthermore, the task was to find problem areas or errors from the customers’ point of view in order to improve the system. Suggested areas for improvement were presented in order to get a better match between customer demand and customer experience. During this project, a clear view of the demand and requirements of Halens and Cellbes customers has been obtained. There were not major difference between the two subsidiaries, to the contrary; the results showed that there were very similar. It can be concluded that Halens and Cellbes can improve their businesses with smaller changes. Several proposals for improvement have been developed in order to better fulfill customer demand.

One big issue for the mail order business is how to avoid and manage returns. Oneapproach being taken is that consumer insight can result in better customer satisfaction andfewer returns. The fashion industry delivers more than just a function within the clothes;fashion, excitement, and customer service for example.It is believed that a part of demand chain management, consumer insight, can help toreduce the amount of returns. This thesis approaches this issue from a company point ofview. It is investigated how mail order businesses utilizes opportunities given byeCommerce, how the companies perceives their customers, and how well they are able totailor their services to different consumer groups.Online sales channels were reviewed in order to investigate how the company is perceivedand what kinds of efforts the companies go through in order to add value to the customers.These results were combined with interviews of three companies in the mail order businessand one company selling clothes in retail stores.The complexity of the customer and the silo mentality in many companies was the firsthurdle to emerge. It was hard to get in contact with the right person. The interviewsshowed both focus on products and focus of really understanding the customer. Thisshowed both in the rigid layout of the homepages and the lack of understanding thatcustomers might have different needs when it comes to value adding services. However,the interviewed companies had varying ways of defining their customer’s needs.It is evident after this thesis that a lot of work can be done in order to better understand thecustomers, for example investigating causes to returns and how differentiated servicesmight improve how the customers perceive the service. In order to succeed in a holisticapproach, cooperation between mail order companies might be required.