Dans cette thèse, nous proposons une approche méthodologique et algorithmique pour la reconnaissance visuelle d'intentions, basée sur la rotation et le mouvement vertical de la tête et de la main. Le contexte dans lequel cette solution s'inscrit est celui d'une personne handicapée, dont la mobilité est assurée par un fauteuil roulant. Le système proposé constitue une alternative intéressante aux interfaces classiques de type manette, boutons pneumatiques, etc. La séquence vidéo, composée de 10 images, est traitée en utilisant différentes méthodes pour construire ce qui dans cette thèse est désigné par " courbe d'intention ". Une base de règles est également proposée pour classifier chaque courbe d'intention. Pour la reconnaissance basée sur les mouvements de la tête, une approche utilisant la symétrie du visage est proposée pour estimer la direction désirée à partir de la rotation de la tête. Une Analyse en Composantes Principales (ACP) est utilisée pour détecter l'intention de varier la vitesse de déplacement du fauteuil roulant, à partir du mouvement vertical de la tête. Pour la reconnaissance de la direction basée sur la rotation de la main, une approche utilisant à la fois la symétrie verticale de la main et un algorithme d'apprentissage (réseaux neuronaux, machines à vecteurs supports ou k-means), permet d'obtenir les courbes d'intentions exploitées par la suite pour la détection de la direction désirée. Une autre approche, s'appuyant sur l'appariement de gabarits de la région contenant les doigts, est également proposée. Pour la reconnaissance de la vitesse variable basée sur le mouvement vertical de la main, deux approches sont proposées. La première utilise également l'appariement de gabarits de la région contenant les doigts, et la deuxième se base sur un masque en forme d'ellipse, pour déterminer la position verticale de la main. Les résultats obtenus montrent de bonnes performances en termes de classification aussi bien des positions individuelles dans chaque image, que des courbes d'intentions. L'approche de reconnaissance visuelle d'intentions proposée produit dans la très grande majorité des cas un meilleur taux de reconnaissance que la plupart des méthodes proposées dans la littérature. Par ailleurs, cette étude montre également que la tête et la main en rotation et en mouvement vertical constituent des indicateurs d'intention appropriés

This study examines the personalization of shown travel destination visual images using professional photography upon travel motivations, feelings, and purchase intentions of consumers in the online environment. The research design was experimental and used data from a questionnaire via Qualtrics. A pilot test of the instrument was conducted. The final questionnaire contained 25 items. A total of 194 questionnaires were collected and participants were randomly assigned to one of four groups. Each group of 50 participants was exposed to a specific set of travel destination visual images. Further, several hypotheses related to the effects of personalization, professional photography toward travel motivation, emotion, and purchase intention were tested. The results indicated that: (1) travel motivation was affected by both personalization, and professional photography of travel destination visual image; (2) personalization had an influence on positive emotion, but professional photography did not; (3) it was expected that personalization would act as a “push” factor on travel motivation, and professional photography would influence the “pull” factor on travel motivation, but these two hypotheses were not supported; (4) travel motivation and emotion positively affected purchase intention, however this was only partially supported. Furthermore, the results of the present study implied that the “push – pull” travel motivation theory was considered not entirely separate. Practical recommendations are presented for online tourism marketers to enhance their service.

Cette thèse s'inscrit dans l'axe des travaux sur l'engagement. Son objectif est d'explorer le paradigme de la communication engageante. Il s'agit d'effectuer un rapprochement entre les théories de la Persuasion et celle de l'Engagement (Joule, Girandola & Bernard, 2007). L'intérêt de cette démarche est d'allier deux champs théoriques traditionnellement disjoints dans le processus lié au changement d'attitude et de comportement. Les théories de la Persuasion ont considérablement contribué à la compréhension des mécanismes du traitement de l'information, mais également à ceux touchant le changement d'attitude. Selon ces théories, il est nécessaire de peser sur les idées pour atteindre les comportements. A l'inverse, l'engagement préconise d'agir à partir du comportement pour atteindre l'activité cognitive. Cette activité entraîne à sa suite un changement d'attitude et ce jusqu'à la production de nouveaux comportements. Notre réflexion peut-être posée en ces termes : dans quelle(s) mesure(s) l'engagement dans un acte suivi de la lecture d'un message persuasif, influe-t-il sur l'aspect cognitif et sur l'intention comportementale des individus ?

Background: Cervical cancer is second most common cancer in women. The 15% incidence of cervical cancer in women worldwide can potentially be reduced by the vaccine against human papillomavirus (HPV). It is therefore important for all healthcare professionals including registered nurses to understand what affects women’s intentions and willingness to receive HPV vaccination so that they can overcome any inappropriate barriers and promote public health. Aim: The aim of this article was to describe factors influencing women’s intentions to obtain the HPV vaccine. Method: The following databases Cinahl, Medline, PsycINFO, Summon @ HKR and Pubmed were searched for articles that studied factors influencing women’s intention to obtain the HPV vaccine. Ten studies met the inclusion criteria, five qualitative and five quantitative. Results:  Four main categories were identified that influenced women’s intention to obtain the HPV vaccine: knowledge, attitudes, the influence of other people and the safety of the vaccine. Discussion: Better access for women to accurate information is the key to increase women’s intention to obtain the HPV vaccine and improving public health. Conclusion: Correct information about HPV and HPV virus is needed to increase women’s intention to obtain the vaccine. / Bakgrund: Cervixcancer är den näst vanligaste cancern hos kvinnor med en global incidens på15 %. Cervixcancer leder till hög mortalitet. Genom Humant Papillomvirus (HPV)-vaccinering kan incidensen minskas kraftigt. Vaccintäckningen är suboptimal på många plaster i världen. Det är viktigt att vårdpersonal, inklusive sjuksköterskor, förstår vilka faktorer som påverkar viljan och beslutet att vaccinera sig. På så sätt kan sjukvårdspersonal påverka dessa beslut och faktorer och därigenom öka vaccinationstäckningen i befolkningen. Syfte: Syftet var att beskriva faktorer som påverkar kvinnors avsikt till att vaccinera sig mot HPV. Metod: I denna allmänna litteraturstudie användes databaserna Cinahl, Medline, PsycINFO, Summon @ HKR and Pubmed för att söka efter artiklar som studerade faktorer som påverkar kvinnor att vaccinera sig mot HPV. Totalt tio artiklar inkluderades, fem kvalitativa och fem kvantitativa studier. Resultat: Fyra huvudkategorier identifierades som påverkade kvinnor att vaccinera sig mot HPV: Kunskap, attityder, andras inflytande och vaccinets säkerhet. Diskussion: Bättre tillgång till korrekt information för kvinnor om HPV-vaccinet är nyckeln till att öka kvinnors avsikt att vaccinera sig och på så sätt förbättra folkhälsan. Slutsats: Det krävs korrekt information om HPV virus och vaccin för att öka kvinnors avsikt till att vaccinera sig.

Aim: The aim of this study is to examine and compare the importance of services and products in grocery store and to study the effects of services and products on customer retention. Method: This study is quantitative and data is collected by conducting a survey. Primary data is collected through questionnaires by visiting the stores in two cities of Sweden, namely Bollnäs and Gävle. In order to study the importance of service and products, importance scale is used in the questionnaire. Comparative analysis is used to analyze the data. Results & Conclusions: The results show that customers are more concerned about the quality of products rather than quality of services. Further, it is found that among all service elements, personal interaction is considered more important whereas, among products elements, quality of products has most influence on customer decisions. After the comparison of services and products, we found out that product quality influences customer retention to a greater extent. Suggestions for future research: Research always continues and could be followed up with more perception dimensions either from customers’ perspectives or from managerial perspectives. Future research can be conducted to study managerial perception of service and product quality. Furthermore, future research can be conducted to find out other factors that determine customer retention. Customers from multiple stores and larger cities can also be the theme for future researches. Contribution of the study: This study helps retail business to build strong customer base by focusing first on quality of products and then services. Further this helps firms to know how customer’s decision making is affected. Firms with limited resources can first focus on product improvement then on services.

En este estudio se contrasta un modelo para el estudio de la intención emprendedora entre académicos y académicas, particularmente, se pretende investigar la configuración de la intención emprendedora y sus antecedentes cognitivos más próximos, así como analizar el papel del género en la formación de tales intenciones. La muestra de estudio ha sido 500 de académicos responsables de proyectos de investigación en universidades españolas. Los resultados obtenidos señalan que el modelo de estudio explica un buen grado de variabilidad en la intención emprendedora. Además, la existencia de una actitud favorable hacia el emprendimiento es un componente esencial para que estos desarrollen en algún punto una intención para comprometerse en actividades emprendedoras. Por otra parte, dadas las diferencias encontradas en la configuración de la intención emprendedora entre académicos y académicas sugieren que las mujeres enfrentan un panorama que difiere al de los hombres. / This study tests a model for the study of entrepreneurial intention among academics, in particular, the aim of the study is to investigate entrepreneurial intention and its closest cognitive antecedents, also to analyze the role of gender in the formation of such intentions. The sample was formed by 500 academics in Spanish universities in who had been research projects leaders. Results show that the study model explains a high degree of variability in entrepreneurial intention. Moreover, the existence of a favorable attitude toward entrepreneurship was found to be an essential component for an academic to develop at some point an intention to engage in entrepreneurial activities. Moreover, given the differences in the configuration of entrepreneurial intention among scholars and academics, results suggest that women face a scenario that differs from men.

The multiple authorship view for film is the claim that multiple authors exist for almost any given film. This view is a recent development in opposition to the longstanding single authorship view which holds that there is only one author for every film, usually the director. One of the most often-cited reasons in support of the multiple authorship claim is that multiple authorship views more successfully explain the following fact about filmmaking better than single authorship views: filmmakers’ intentions sometimes conflict with each other during the production of a film. However, since multiple authorship views cannot adequately explain how a single filmic utterance can result from conflicting intentions, I want to argue that the single authorship view should be reinstated in those special cases where two or more agents are involved in the production of a filmic utterance and where the intentions of those agents are incompatible.

Title: Purchasing Intentions of Young Thai Male towards Men's Skin Care Products Problem: Men concern more about their image than ever before. This behavior is becoming a new trend in cosmetic market. Moreover, Thailand is one of the fast growing cosmetics industry, particularly male skin care market within countries in Asia-Pacific region. However, most of the literatures have just studied on women cosmetic products. There are a few studies within male cosmetic market, despite the demands of cosmetic products are increasing among men as well as women. Purpose: This study aims to discuss the relationships between dimension of brand equity, overall brand equity, brand preference and purchase intention of men‟s skin care products among young Thai male in Bangkok. The study measures the equity of brand and identifies the impact of brand equity on brand preference and purchase intentions. Research Question: How does brand equity associate with purchasing intention of young Thai male towards skin care products? Method: Quantitative research method interpreted by the authors is applied in this research. A questionnaire-based survey is used as a tool to collect the data and the specific variables used in this paper: the dimension of brand equity, overall brand equity, brand preference, and purchase intention. Both primary and secondary types of data collection were used for this research. Conclusion: The results reveal that each dimension of brand equity, which consists of brand loyalty, brand awareness, brand association, and perceive quality have a significant impact on overall brand equity. However, brand loyalty and perceive quality have a bigger impact on brand equity than brand association and brand awareness. The impact of brand equity in itsIIconsequences supported the direct positive impact on brand preference and purchase intention. This predicate that brands with higher levels of brand equity would generate higher levels of customer brand preference. Moreover, the customers, who have high level of brand preference indicated that they have more willingness to continually purchase the specific men‟s skin care brand and this can build higher purchase intention. Last but not least, this current research also figure out that using celebrity may not be the most effective strategy to stimulate consumer purchasing intentions toward men‟s skin care product among young Thai males in Bangkok.

Due to the increased number of niched retail banks in Sweden, the competition for the customers has become severe. Bank customers in the Swedish bank market tend to stay with their bank. The challenge of how to manage to attract new customers is a central part of the retail banks’ management tasks. The research area on which we have been focusing on is the area of consumer behavior. We have been focusing on student switching behavior of financial services provided by retail banks in general and ICA banken in particular. To strengthen the practical connection, we choose to focus on the case of ICA banken. Our objective was to investigate which predictors that affect switching intention and investigate how these predictors affect students’ switching behavior, which in the extension will contribute to how retail banks can work towards manage these rising issues. We formulated the following research question: How do the predictors of switching intention affect switching behavior in the retail banking context? Our purpose was to investigate the predictors of switching intention and their effects on switching behavior in the retail banking context. The study was performed with a quantitative method and a deductive approach. By using a convenience sampling technique, we collected the data electronically. The population examined was the student segment at Umeå University. Our questionnaire was constructed with the theoretical chapter as framework, and the discussion, conclusion and practical implications are based on our empirical findings. Our study was geographically limited to Umeå University. The ability to generalize our findings was also limited, due to our chosen sampling technique. We reached a conclusion that the greatest predictor of switching intention was attitude towards switching. Additionally, the greatest predictors of switching behavior was a combination of attitude towards switching and customer satisfaction. Our practical implications consisted of the recommendation for retail banks to focus on developing marketing strategies that would bank customers more positive towards the act of switching bank in order to attract new customers. Our findings showed that bank customers in general were neither negative nor positive towards the act of switching bank. For ICA banken we gave three proposals; to attract new customers, to transform customers that only partly use the bank to customers that use ICA banken for the majority of their financial transactions and to maintain current customers. These actions are made by managing customer satisfaction, brand image, the relational investment between ICA banken and customers, and subjective norms since these should affect the attitude towards switching bank.

Researchers, companies and managers have for a long time accepted word-of-mouth as being a crucial marketing activity, since it is extremely effective in shaping consumers’ attitudes and behaviour. Nowadays, the Internet has become a major part of many peoples’ daily lives, and social networking sites attract millions of individuals from all around the world. Because of this, word-of-mouth has shifted to the digitalized world and a new term has been developed, namely electronic word-of-mouth. Electronic word-of-mouth has been recognized to generate the same benefits to companies as word-of-mouth. Due to the growth of the Internet and social networking sites, electronic word-of-mouth has the power to reach more people and is therefore perceived as more influential. This makes electronic word-of-mouth along with social networking sites, two concepts to acknowledge. Thus, for companies to make the most out of them, they need to gain the necessary knowledge.  The purpose of this research is to analyse how consumers are affected by electronic word-of-mouth through social networking sites.   In the specific area, a research gap was noticed, namely, how electronic word-of-mouth through social networking sites affects consumers’ product perceptions and purchase intentions. Based on this gap, six hypotheses and a research model were conducted. The empirical data was collected via questionnaire, where the majority of the respondents were within the target group, which was students, aged 18-24.   It was revealed through the results, that electronic word-of-mouth through social networking sites has a direct positive effect on both consumers’ product perceptions and purchase intentions. In addition, age and gender were found to have a moderating effect on the relation between electronic word-of-mouth through social networking sites and product perceptions, as well as purchase intentions. Finally, it is argued that managers should take electronic word-of-mouth through social networking sites into consideration, and adopt it in their marketing tactics.