¡§Brand¡¨ is not only the most valuable asset, but also a powerful marketing tool for the enterprises. As progressing of marketing management, co-branding strategy which combines two brand partners can bring profits and sustainable competitive advantages to the corporate enterprises. Between-partner congruity (BPC) has been identified as an influential factor in the success of a co-branding strategy, and there are two mainstreams of research in co-branding strategy exist: (1) linear relationship between BPC and co-brand evaluation or (2) reverse-U curve relationship between BPC and co-brand evaluation. Based on such inconsistent findings, this study explores how hedonic shopping motivation and ad focus affect consumers¡¦ evaluation toward the co-branded product through different levels of BPC. The present study employs an experimental design to investigate the effects of BPC (high vs. moderate vs. low), ad focus(product vs. brand), and hedonic shopping motivation (high vs. low) on consumers¡¦ evaluation of co-branded product. A 3x2x2 factorial design is conducted. Six different scenarios are established through virtual co-branded cell phone advertisement. Median split is used to distinguish consumers into high and low hedonic shopping motivation. Consumers¡¦ evaluation is measured by purchase intention, attitude toward the co-branded product, and perceived quality. The results indicated that when the ad focus is product, there is a linear relationship between BPC and consumers¡¦ evaluation. However, when the ad focus is brand, the aforementioned relationship becomes weaker. The linear relationship is robust for those consumers with low hedonic shopping motivation. On the other hand, when the ad focus is brand, moderate BPC would lead to higher purchase intention and quality perception for consumers with high hedonic shopping motivation. Based on the above findings, influences of ad focus should be considered when different levels of BPC are determined. Marketers should choose the right focus for higher evaluation toward co-branded products.

Recent consumer surveys and demographic analyses indicate a growing demand for pedestrian and transit designed development. This thesis presents an analysis of office rents in the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area of Ontario, Canada. The effects of building quality, accessibility, and location are explored with a specific focus on the influences of walkability, public transit and private transit accessibility. The theoretical background of this research is related to the hedonic methodology, which is extensively used for explaining transaction price or rental price variations of real property. Cross sectional data of the Toronto CMA office market from the year 2010 is utilized for the hedonic price estimation. The hedonic price function is specified in the log linear form and is estimated with linear regression in SPSS. The analysis of over 2,000 asking rental rates reveals that buildings with high Walkscores and excellent accessibility to public transit and transportation infrastructure command significantly higher rents as compared to buildings with fewer nearby amenities and accessibility. The walkability findings are the first of their kind for Toronto and Canadian office markets and in line with results documented for the US office market and European office market.

The development of internet is creating intense competition in social network sites nowadays. How to conduct users¡¦ loyalty to social network sites gradually becomes an important issue to operate long-term social network sites. The study attempts to examine how consumers¡¦ utilitarian value, hedonic value and social value affect their loyalty. Furthermore, this study examines whether the relationship is mediated by gender difference. The model and relationship are tested and validated by using PLS and data collected from 200 people having facebook accounts in Taiwan. The results shows that loyalty is strongly affected by utilitarian value, hedonic value and social value. We also find that the difference of gender has positive influence on hedonic value and loyalty and negative influence on social value and loyalty. The implication for research and practice are also discussed.

The concept of quality of life (QOL) has been addressed for decades. It was not until recent times when geographical information systems (GIS) have become available that a locale-specific approach could be enabled. Even then, analysis to date has been conducted mostly at the resolution of city or county level. The study presented describes an innovative methodology that may appraise QOL at finer resolutions, i.e. more localespecific. The new approach is called Spatial Appraisal and Valuation of Environment and Ecosystems, or SAVEE. This thesis research is a proof-of-concept study as the first account of the SAVEE methodology. It is to set the stage for future studies toward a more comprehensive framework. In this preliminary study of locale-specific QOL, the SAVEE methodology was used to illustrate the possibility of handling QOL factors in a dynamic manner. The assessment includes three major steps: 1) data preparation, 2) data conversion and normalization, and 3) combining contributions of factors being considered. In the first step, the geospatial data layer of a factor in consideration was input into GIS to plot a proximity map of the feature, e.g. parks or fire stations. In Step Two, each factor was first assigned a range of weight according to the location of a site on a proximity map in terms of the factor’s favorability-unfavorability. In the third step, weights from each factor were combined in a pair-wise manner, e.g. park and fire station proximities, or two factors at a time. The weight combining is done by deploying map algebra formula derived from the expert system algorithm EMYCIN. The computation was done iteratively until all factors were exhausted. The final results were coded as a gradient map of an integrated and locale-specific QOL index in the range of (-1, 1). In this preliminary study, the City of College Station, Texas was used as the study site. A set of factors and their respective ranges of weight were used in the study. By adjusting the incorporation of various factors and their ranges, a series of QOL maps for the city was generated. The resulting QOL maps indicate what factors and ranges may or may not have contributions toward a holistic overall picture of the QOL of a city in the locale-specific context. The SAVEE methodology proved to be successful in handling qualitative hedonic factors in a locale-specific quantitative manner through the GIS interface.

By 2006, the U.S. government has spent $15 billion to address the degradation of urban streams, including erosion of stream banks, disconnection of rivers from the floodplain, and disturbance of surface runoff pathways. Bank stabilization is one of the most prevalent restoration activities in urban stream restoration. Unfortunately, most stream restoration projects have been undertaken without a pre- or post-evaluation of the impact of stream restoration on real value in the area. All restoration projects beg the question: Did the money spent on the project result in greater benefits to stream stability as well as to adjacent properties? The Walnut Creek watershed, located in Austin, Texas, has experienced varying stages of urbanization since the 1990s. One of the streams, the Walnut Creek tributary, was restored in 2003. The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of stream restoration on housing values. We applied the hedonic pricing method to evaluate the changes in housing value associated with housing and environmental characteristics. Repeat ground photography was utilized to assess stream restoration activities at spatial and temporal scales. Our results suggest that the stream restoration project resulted in significant positive impacts on housing values in the periods of restoration (8.3%) and restoration adjustment (10.7%). However, the project did not enhance the values of houses on the floodplain. In addition, results show that erosion had continuous negative impacts on housing values. Overall, the restoration project contributed to the greater benefits during the restoration adjustment period right after restoration by an increase of 1% of the average housing value for each property on the restoration site. In this study, the benefits of stream restoration project were minimal since bank stabilization was the main activity considered in this stream restoration project. Nevertheless, restoration enhances the stability of the stream banks, minimizes erosion problems, and presents an enhanced aesthetic beauty of the stream in Austin, Texas.

Loyalty program, which is to encourage frequent purchasing and to maintain customer long-term relationships, has become a key marketing tool in various industries. The framework of the program is to provide reward incentives based on the cumulative purchases for certain products or services. Researches show that the cost of customer retention is approximately six times lower than that of customer acquisition. Although the importance of such program rises, few researches are made related to the topic. Thus, this study is aimed at exploring the relationships between loyalty effort requirement and reward incentives in order to provide better and more efficient loyalty programs for enterprises. The effects of effort requirement on consumer preferences towards loyalty program rewards are evaluated. In addition, monetary cost acts as moderator is added in to examine the moderating effect. A 2x2 between-subject experimental design with approximately 259 sampling subjects is adopted in the study and the results are analyzed by One-Way ANOVA aided by SPSS software. The results of this study are as follows: (1) Increasing the effort requirement of loyalty programs will increase consumer preference for hedonic rewards rather than utilitarian rewards. The reason for this is that long streams of effort required for loyalty programs may serve as reasons to justify and reduce the guilt for hedonic rewards selections and consumptions. (2) When monetary costs are added to loyalty programs, no matter at low or high effort requirements, consumer preferences for hedonic rewards will decrease and in contract, preferences for utilitarian rewards will increase. (3) When monetary costs are added to loyalty programs, increasing the effort requirement of loyalty programs will not increase consumer preference for hedonic rewards. This may due to the strong monetary costs effect on the sampling subjects that ends up easing the effect of result one. Four marketing implementations for this study could be drawn. First, utilitarian rewards are more appropriate as loyalty program incentives than hedonic rewards. Marketers could provide more utilitarian rewards in loyalty programs as incentives to attract more participants. Second, as loyalty program effort requirement increases, hedonic rewards could be added in the reward mix to attract consumers. Third, loyalty program, which provide rewards by accumulative effort rather than money expenditure, may serve as a justification for hedonic rewards consumption. Thus, hedonic rewards could serve as promotion tool for high effort requirement loyalty programs. Finally, when monetary costs are added to loyalty programs, marketers could weight more utilitarian rewards in reward mix regardless effort requirement levels.

In this day and age, information technology to daily life is now universal. The Internet is a global system that provides innovative services. This study focused on treating the feelings and intentions of new users that has not been used at the hedonic website. As well as expectations and intentions during and after a month of usage. Through this study, the self-developed innovative website has created called iMemory. During the first survey, the subjects were on display for users. After measuring the hearts of users show the expected feelings and intentions.A month later, the same measure by measuring the extent of use, the use of feelings and intentions. In this study, based on technology acceptance model, by adding perceived enjoyment that the period of one month longitudinal study. To compare the differences between two results. The results showed that the second measurement of the use of feelings and intentions are will be the first to use measurements of the feelings and intentions significant impact on the use of the past month and the remarkable degree of influence. The second measure of perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness of intent with the impact is not significant, but perceived enjoyment of intent are still significantly affected. Finally, this study based on data analysis for discussion.

The aim of this thesis is to compare specific parts of the value systems in Hungary and Taiwan. Although there have been many cultural comparisons between Asia and Europe these are often undertaken with a broad focus such as comparing ¡§east and west.¡¨ The decision to focus the current study on Hungary and Taiwan was made because these two countries have not been included in direct comparisons, meaning that an opportunity to contribute new knowledge is a real possibility. The two countries are different in that while Taiwan is only a third of the size of Hungary, it has nearly two and a half times the population of Hungary. This huge difference in population density contributes to differences in housing values, but the main focus of this study is value differences. This study investigates the Budapest and Kaohsiung housing market using hedonic price functions (HDF) in order to investigate whether hypothesized differences in consumer preferences are reflected in market price data. Suburbanization is a process that is occurring in Hungary, much as it is throughout the rest of Europe despite the fact that Hungary¡¦s earlier history as part of the communist east block makes the nation slightly different from Western Europe. While this process is based on doing what is necessary to find larger living quarters at an affordable price, similar consumer activity is not typical of Taiwan¡¦s housing market. One characteristic of Hungary that differentiates it from Western Europe is that it has one of the highest percentages of single-family housing in Europe. In contrast, this type of dwelling is very uncommon in Taiwan. Differences in data availability for the cities involved make precise comparisons difficult, but these difficulties can be partially redressed through the use of hedonic price estimation.

<p>This paper’s aim is to outline a general model of the indicators of box office revenue for the top performing movies in history. The experience industry is different from most other in that the consumer good consist to a large extent of an emotion arousal. It thus lacks many of the features of normal consumption goods and the consumption experience is entirely based on previous experiences of similar kind.</p><p>Demand for experiences has two important influencers: income and leisure time. An increase in any of the two will increase demand for movie tickets. Production of experiences is based on a combination of an available set of attributes that are combined into goods in a monopolistic competition setting. It is assumed that quality is a function of educated labour.</p><p>These attributes were measured using hedonic price theory. This allows pricing of every unique attribute of movies individually, based on what the willingness to pay was in previous movies. Fifteen possible variables were tested in two models and the most important were shown to be actor, length, sequel, visual effects, age of actor, MPAA-rating and category (animations and dramas). All variables carried expected signs except the actor variables.</p><p>It is concluded that production companies are not entirely meeting the quality demands of the audience. Consumers are trying to reduce risk in consumption by referring to previous consumption experiences, and consumers have, according to the results, particularly strong positive experiences of movies with the kind of features that are significant in the test.</p>

The online shopping industry has been growing over the past decade (Statista, 2014). Former researchers identified consumers’ utilitarian and hedonic online shopping motivations. A qualitative research was conducted to understand the utilitarian and hedonic online shopping motivations of students to shop fashion online. A phenomenological interviewing method was used to generate detailed and in-depth descriptions of the seven students’ experiences of the University of Borås. Respectively three utilitarian and four hedonic online shopping motivations emerged out of the data and could be linked the motivations identified by Vignali and Reid (2014). This paper analyses the utilitarian online shopping motivations respectively convenience, price and discounts and selections and hedonic online shopping motivations respectively enjoyment, sociability, trend discovery and exclusivity. Regarding the utilitarian online shopping motivation convenience several convenience dimensions emerged out of the collected data and matched the dimensions identified by Jiang, Yang and Jun (2013) respectively, respectively access, search, evaluation, transaction, possession and post-purchase convenience. Regarding the hedonic online shopping motivation enjoyment, several dimensions emerged out of the data and could be linked to dimensions identified by Monsuwé et al. (2004) respectively escapism, pleasure and arousal. Some of the linkages that could be found by comparing former research were also found in the data collected. Regarding the utilitarian online shopping motivations, information availability identified by Vignali and Reid (2014) could be linked to evaluation convenience and product availability identified by Vignali and Reid (2014) could be linked to access convenience. Regarding the hedonic online shopping motivations, relaxation shopping identified by (Ozen and Engizek, 2014) could be linked to escapism, social shopping (Ozen and Engizek, 2014) to sociability and idea shopping (Ozen and Engizek, 2014) to trend discovery. The analyses on the linkages further deepened the understanding of both utilitarian and hedonic motivations of students to shop fashion online.