Magister Commercii - MCom / The transition of South Africa's political system from an apartheid administration to a democratic rule in 1994 resulted in the end of years of international sanctions imposed on the country. This move placed the country back on the global trading market. In addition, improvements in living conditions, education attainment, and labour market outcomes of societal groups who were previously disadvantaged by the apartheid administration were expected. Looking at the labour market in greater detail, government devised policies aimed at addressing, amongst others, the racial and gender inequalities in job access and remuneration as well as improving the employment conditions. Despite these attempts, women have been known to be subjected to different kinds of discrimination. As a result, they have been segregated, and in most case were over-represented in low income, less secure employment as well as over-represented in the unemployed pool of the labour force. Numerous South African studies in the past only derived the “trends” labour market activities by gender since the transition by comparing the 1995 October Household Survey (OHS) with the latest available Labour Force Survey (LFS), without taking into consideration the comparability issues of the datasets. Hence, this thesis uses all the South African labour survey data in 1995-2009 to investigate the trends in the performance of each gender in the labour market since the transition, specifically looking at the following: labour force participation likelihood, employment likelihood, remuneration and working conditions of the employed, characteristics of the unemployed, as well as whether gender discrimination in the labour market (with specific focus on employment probability gap and wage gap) still exists since the advent of democracy.

Magister Economicae - MEcon / The South African economy faces a challenging socio-economic problem of high and persistent unemployment since the transition. Looking at the unemployment problem in greater perspective, numerous studies found that it is most serious amongst the youth. Since the beginning of the 2000s, a few studies focused particularly on youth and graduate unemployment, but there has been a lack of research in this area in recent years. Hence, this dissertation aims to fill some gap in the available research by investigating the extent, nature and causes of graduate unemployment in South Africa. This study firstly defined the relevant concepts and discussed some theories relevant to graduate unemployment, before reviewing the results of the past studies on the nature and extent of graduate unemployment. Thereafter, the possible causes were investigated, such as lack of experience, lack of soft skills, skills mismatch, poor quality of education of the graduates, discrimination by employers, etc. Graduate unemployment in India, China and Europe were also considered, and it was found that graduate unemployment was not in a unique problem in South Africa. The study proceeded with an analysis the Statistics South Africa 1995-2010 labour survey data and conducted more up-to-date statistical analyses of the profile of graduate unemployed. The results showed that the characteristics of unemployed graduates were, in general, the same as what was found by the previous studies, as graduate unemployed were more likely to be female and black, aged 15-34 years at the time of the survey, residing in Gauteng, with only post-Matric certificates or diplomas, and graduating from the fields of Business /Commerce / Management, and Education / Training / Development. The Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition was also applied, and the results indicated that employment discrimination against black graduates was very likely, after controlling for differences in demographic and educational attainment blacks and whites. Hence, the results of the empirical analysis showed that graduate unemployment persists. Finally, graduate employment elasticity coefficients and employment absorption rates were derived by educational attainment category, and the results showed that although graduate unemployment is clearly less serious than unemployment in other educational categories, the labour demand for graduates is not rapid enough to absorb all the graduates.

The study of consumer behaviour is a dynamic and longstanding challenge to continuously understand the factors which influence consumers’ buying behaviour. Though internal (for example attitude, motivation and learning) and external factors (marketing stimuli) are equally important, the focus of this study is on external influences and market trends. Consumer markets around the world have recently seen the increase of ethical products. Those products that are differentiated by their moral or sustainable values and attributes, for example environmentally friendly products or body lotions not tested on animals. The provision of these products is a result of organisations’ realisation that in order to increase their customer base, their values must be centred on doing good for the community as well as the environment and should be visible to consumers. For a number of organisations this means marketing the ethical values and attributes of the products they provide so that consumers will ultimately choose their products. However, in order to understand consumers’ willingness to pay for these products, marketers need to understand the price perceptions consumers have towards these products. The purpose of this study relates to this and aims to determine the influence that the marketing of ethically framed personal care products, as an external influence, has on consumers’ willingness to pay for these products. More specifically, this study aims to determine whether South African females are willing to pay more for ethically framed personal care products than for ordinary personal care products. This will be done by specifically assessing their reference, fair and reservation price perceptions. / Dissertation (MCom)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / gm2014 / Marketing Management / unrestricted

Pallets are abundant throughout the supply chain with 2.6 billion pallets in circulation in the United States (Freedonia, 2015). More than 93% of goods are transported in the form of a palletized unit load (White and Hamner, 2005). Plastics are the second most commonly used material to manufacture these shipping platforms (Bond, 2018), yet there is a lack of information to be found about the plastic pallet industry's characteristics. Therefore, the main objective of this research was to investigate the status of the plastic pallet industry in the United States in 2018. To gather information, an online survey was conducted. It was sent out electronically to twenty-six plastic pallet manufacturers with response rate of 54%. The results have shown that almost 16 million plastic pallets were manufactured in the United States by the survey respondents in 2018. Of these, over 80% were multiple use pallets and about 80% were standard size. Most plastic pallets that were manufactured by the respondents were made with high pressure injection molding (63%) using high density polyethylene (HDPE) resin (68%). Close to 50% of the pallets had reinforcement beams and 12% had fiberglass reinforcement. Although most plastic pallets were manufactured using virgin resin, 34% were manufactured from recycled resin which reduces the cost and increases the sustainability of the plastic pallet. In addition, this study has shown that most of the plastic pallets manufactured in 2018 had no flame-retardant additives since only 20% from the respondents indicated that their pallets were Underwriter Laboratories (UL) or Factory Mutual (FM) certified. Based on these results, a new survey format and framework is designed with a recommendation to conduct it in every five years in order to further explore the state and market trends of the plastic pallet industry. / Master of Science / Pallets are abundant throughout the supply chain with 2.6 billion pallets in circulation in the United States (Freedonia, 2015). In 2005 it is estimated that more than 93% of goods are transported in the form of a palletized unit load (White and Hamner, 2005). Plastics are the second most commonly used material to manufacture these shipping platforms (Bond, 2018), yet there is a lack of information to be found about the plastic pallet industry's characteristics. Therefore, the main objective of this research was to investigate the status of the plastic pallet industry in the United States in 2018. To gather information, an online survey was conducted. It was sent out electronically to twenty-six plastic pallet manufacturers with response rate of 54%. The results have shown that almost 16 million plastic pallets were manufactured in the United States by respondents in 2018. Of these, over 80% were multiple use pallets and about 80% were standard size (48 in. x 40 in., 45 in. x48 in.). Most plastic pallets manufactured by the respondents were made with high pressure injection molding (63%) using high density polyethylene (HDPE) resin (68%). Close to 50% of the pallets had reinforcement beams and 12% had fiberglass reinforcement. Although most plastic pallets were manufactured using virgin resin, 34% were manufactured from recycled resin which reduces the cost and increases the sustainability of the plastic pallet. In addition, this study has shown that most of the plastic pallets manufactured in 2018 had no flame-retardant additives since only 20% from the respondents indicated that their pallets were Underwriter Laboratories (UL) or Factory Mutual (FM) certified. Based on these results, a new survey format and framework is designed with a recommendation to conduct it in every five years in order to further explore the state and market trends of the plastic pallet industry.

The aim of my master thesis is an overall analysis of the window market in the Czech Republic and determining the main characteristics of this market. In the description of the Czech window market I focus on the analysis of market players, who are forming the microenvironment. I describe the effects of macro environment and it's expected developments. SWOT analysis reflects the individual strengths and weaknesses of the Czech doors manufactures, and also the opportunities and threats which can concerns to the market of hole fillings. Market potential, market capacity, market saturation and market share of the Company Window Holding a.s.. are the main market characteristics that we find (přehodit slovosled). The forecast of the future development of the market potential is of the medium-term: until 2013. In my master thesis I'm using the marketing research and market research. Primary data are obtained by observation and questioning. The future development of disability have used educated guesses. To sum up, the aim of my master thesis was fullfiled. The conclusion of my work is the stagnation of the window market.

abstract: This thesis develops a low-investment marketing strategy that allows low-to-mid level farmers extend their commercialization reach by strategically sending containers of fresh produce items to secondary markets that present temporary arbitrage opportunities. The methodology aims at identifying time windows of opportunity in which the price differential between two markets create an arbitrage opportunity for a transaction; a transaction involves buying a fresh produce item at a base market, and then shipping and selling it at secondary market price. A decision-making tool is developed that gauges the individual arbitrage opportunities and determines the specific price differential (or threshold level) that is most beneficial to the farmer under particular market conditions. For this purpose, two approaches are developed; a pragmatic approach that uses historic price information of the products in order to find the optimal price differential that maximizes earnings, and a theoretical one, which optimizes an expected profit model of the shipments to identify this optimal threshold. This thesis also develops risk management strategies that further reduce profit variability during a particular two-market transaction. In this case, financial engineering concepts are used to determine a shipment configuration strategy that minimizes the overall variability of the profits. For this, a Markowitz model is developed to determine the weight assignation of each component for a particular shipment. Based on the results of the analysis, it is deemed possible to formulate a shipment policy that not only increases the farmer's commercialization reach, but also produces profitable operations. In general, the observed rates of return under a pragmatic and theoretical approach hovered between 0.072 and 0.616 within important two-market structures. Secondly, it is demonstrated that the level of return and risk can be manipulated by varying the strictness of the shipping policy to meet the overall objectives of the decision-maker. Finally, it was found that one can minimize the risk of a particular two-market transaction by strategically grouping the product shipments. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Industrial Engineering 2011

Background: Predicting stock prices in today’s complex financial landscape is asignificant challenge. An innovative approach to address this challenge is integrating sentiment analysis techniques with the well-established Autoregressive IntegratedMoving Average (ARIMA) model. Modern financial markets are influenced by various factors, including real-time news and social media trends, which demand accuratepredictions. This research recognizes the growing importance of market sentiment derived from news and aims to improve stock price prediction by combining ARIMA’sanalytical capabilities with sentiment analysis. This endeavor seeks to provide aclearer understanding of the intricate dynamics of stock price movements in an eramarked by abundant information and rapidly changing market conditions. The integration of these methods has the potential to enhance the accuracy of stock priceforecasts, offering benefits to investors and financial analysts alike. Objectives: The project involves three key components. It begins by gatheringhistorical stock data for a specific stock ticker and conducting essential data preprocessing. Next, it focuses on extracting news headlines from a prominent financial website and conducting a thorough sentiment analysis of these headlines. Thissentiment analysis provides valuable insights into public sentiment surrounding thechosen stocks, with visualizations representing positive, negative, and neutral trends.Finally, the project aims to combine the findings from both components using an Ensemble Method, resulting in a comprehensive suggestion to user whether to buy,holdor sell the stock. These components collectively aim to improve stock price predictions and assess the adaptability of the ARIMA model to changing market conditionsalong the time and significant events. Methods: This project explores an innovative approach to improve stock pricepredictions, combining the ARIMA model with sentiment analysis methods usingfinancial news data. The study involved collecting historical stock data from YahooFinance, employing moving averages like 5-day, 30-day and 90-day windows, andusing advanced models such as ARIMA for predictions. Our analysis also includestime series plots at various intervals, providing valuable perspectives. Through theEnsemble Method, which integrates quantitative predictions and sentiment analysis,we generated practical recommendations for a five-day forecast. Our work addressedgaps in integrating sentiment analysis into stock prediction models and adapting tochanging market conditions, contributing to the advancement of stock forecastingmethodologies. Results: The ensembled predictive model for stock prices demonstrates favorableoutcomes. The Mean Absolute Error (MAE) is 0.8659, indicating accuracy, and theRoot Mean Squared Error (RMSE) is 0.1732, showing the overall prediction error.The Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) is 1.8541, suggesting precision in comparison to actual stock prices. The R-squared value is 0.9804, indicating the model’sability to explain variation in stock price data. These findings highlight the model’seffectiveness in providing reliable insights for investors in the dynamic stock market. Conclusions: The analysis with the ARIMA model to enhance stock price predictions. It revealed that sentiment analysis complements traditional methods, providing valuable insights for decision-making. Evaluating ARIMA’s long-term performance suggests adaptable forecasting techniques. This work contributes to advancingfinancial analysis and improving stock price predictions.

The intention of this work is to explore how Aboriginal learners are produced in the Saskatchewan Adult Basic Education (ABE) curriculum. In addition, this study examines the production of instructor identities in the curriculum. This thesis explores the social and historical contexts influencing the production of the ABE curriculum. Current prevailing discourses about Aboriginal people influence the curriculum documents. These discourses construct a grand narrative about Aboriginal people, producing Aboriginal people in particular ways that become acceptable and legitimate ways of thinking about and behaving toward Aboriginal people. This work examines how such a grand narrative functions to uphold dominance and structural inequalities rather than challenge them. The effect of reinforcing the current, particular grand narrative about Aboriginal people is that, rather than challenge dominant ideologies, the new curriculum re-inscribes them. This work employs the methodology of discourse analysis as a means of examining the production of particular identities for Aboriginal learners in ABE and uses deconstruction to explore the ways that the documents betray themselves in relation to their objectives. This thesis provides analysis of the ways that the curriculum documents produce and reproduce Aboriginal people as deficient and requiring change. This work provides analysis of the conflict within the documents between a desire to challenge dominance and the re-inscription of dominance through discursive practices. In addition, this work demonstrates how the ABE curriculum aids in the production of dominant instructor identities, and how such dominant identities assist instructors to define themselves as innocent and helpful. This analysis of the ABE curriculum reveals that while the curriculum aspires to be a proponent of social justice for Aboriginal learners it has many weaknesses in this regard. This work concludes with recommendations for changes to the curriculum and instructor practices, and for further critical analysis.

The intention of this work is to explore how Aboriginal learners are produced in the Saskatchewan Adult Basic Education (ABE) curriculum. In addition, this study examines the production of instructor identities in the curriculum. This thesis explores the social and historical contexts influencing the production of the ABE curriculum. Current prevailing discourses about Aboriginal people influence the curriculum documents. These discourses construct a grand narrative about Aboriginal people, producing Aboriginal people in particular ways that become acceptable and legitimate ways of thinking about and behaving toward Aboriginal people. This work examines how such a grand narrative functions to uphold dominance and structural inequalities rather than challenge them. The effect of reinforcing the current, particular grand narrative about Aboriginal people is that, rather than challenge dominant ideologies, the new curriculum re-inscribes them. This work employs the methodology of discourse analysis as a means of examining the production of particular identities for Aboriginal learners in ABE and uses deconstruction to explore the ways that the documents betray themselves in relation to their objectives. This thesis provides analysis of the ways that the curriculum documents produce and reproduce Aboriginal people as deficient and requiring change. This work provides analysis of the conflict within the documents between a desire to challenge dominance and the re-inscription of dominance through discursive practices. In addition, this work demonstrates how the ABE curriculum aids in the production of dominant instructor identities, and how such dominant identities assist instructors to define themselves as innocent and helpful. This analysis of the ABE curriculum reveals that while the curriculum aspires to be a proponent of social justice for Aboriginal learners it has many weaknesses in this regard. This work concludes with recommendations for changes to the curriculum and instructor practices, and for further critical analysis.

The thesis deals with life insurance market in Czech Republic, its trends and importance. In the first place it defines life insurance and its importance for individuals and whole community. It looks at possible ways how to sign an insurance contract and particularly it explores a work of insurance brokers and deals with the actual questions of the brokerage distribution of insurance. Furthermore, it examines the life insurance market trends since 1990s, it compares it with the trends in European union and sums up the sources of results. Finally, it shows the importance of life insurance for Czech citizens based on questionnaire and predicts future trends of life insurance market in Czech Republic.