The primary aim of this thesis was to undertake research in a Higher Education and Training Institution in a Provincial Government Department in the Western Cape to determine which variables affect the services that are being delivered and the quality of the services and how these services could be improved. The population selected for the purpose of the research was a large number of students at a Higher Education and Training Institution in a Provincial Government Department in the Western Cape. A research sample represented by a subset of participants from this organisation was selected. A biographical questionnaire and the SERVQUAL questionnaire were administered to a sample of 130 students enrolled at a Higher Education Institution in the Western Cape. The results indicate that there are significant relationships between selected biographical variables and perceptions of service quality. Moreover, there were also statistically significant differences in perceptions on the variables Reliability, Responsiveness, Assurance, Tangibles and Empathy. Tentative conclusions can be drawn from the results and recommendations regarding future research are highlighted.

This thesis comprises three papers examining the impact of competitive pricing or competition on participants in energy markets. The scope of each paper is narrow but focused, dealing with one particular aspect of competition in each market under study. It is hoped that results from these three studies could provide valuable policy lessons to public policy makers in their task to create or maintain competition in different energy markets, so as to improve efficiencies in these markets. The first and second papers examine the load shifting behavior of industrial customers in Ontario under real time pricing (RTP). Using Hourly Ontario Energy Price (HOEP) data from 2005 to 2008 and industry-level consumption data from all industrial customers directly connected to the transmission grid, the first paper adopts a Generalized Leontief specification to obtain elasticities of substitution estimates for various industry groups, while the second paper adopts a specification derived from standard consumer theory to obtain price elasticity estimates. The findings of both papers confirm that in some industries, industrial customers who are direct participants of the wholesale market tend to shift consumption from peak to off-peak periods in order to take advantage of lower off-peak prices. Furthermore, in the first paper, a demand model is estimated and there is evidence that the marginal effect of hourly load on hourly price during peak periods is larger than the marginal effect during off-peak periods. An important policy implication from the results of these papers is that while RTP is currently limited to industrial customers, it does have positive spillover effects on all consumers. The third paper uses a unique panel dataset of all retail gasoline stations across five Canadian cities from late-2006 to mid-2007 to examine the effect of local competition on market shares and sales of individual stations. The base empirical specification includes explanatory variables representing the number of same brand stations and the number of different brand stations within a 3km radius to identify brand affiliation effect. It is found that the number of local competitors is negatively correlated with market share and sales. More interestingly, a same brand competitor has a larger marginal impact on market share and sales than a competitor of a different brand. These findings suggest that additional local competition leads to cannibalization of market share among existing stations, rather than create new demand. Another implication is that relying only on the number of different brands operating within a geographic market could understate the competition intensity in the local market.

The purpose of our study is to examine the bloggers‟ influence on the brand‟s image to see whether and if so in what way the blogging trend affects the brands. We also want to analyze how companies use bloggers in their marketing. This is a subject that has attracted our interest and that experience has not been touched in a higher extent. Our purpose has led us to the following research questions; Which relationships occur in collaborations between businesses and bloggers from a marketing perspective? In what way in terms of reciprocity can relations be described? To what extent can the credibility through blogs be affected in terms of how brands are presented in the blog? In this study we have used a qualitative method with an abductive nature to create a deeper understanding of our chosen subject. We have conducted an empirical study consisting of sixteen interviews with bloggers, PR agencies and companies. These are the three perspectives that have contributed to a deeper understanding of our analysis and the fulfillment of our purpose. From this study we found that popular bloggers have an influence on the brand's image, which can have both positive and negative effects. Based on our empirical study, we can see that bloggers have a strong impact on the brands as they are seen as opinion leaders who influence readers. Relationships occur mainly between companies and bloggers, but companies can collaborate with PR agencies, which act as an intermediary in the relationship between businesses and bloggers. It is important to establish and maintain good relations in order for all parties to benefit and preserve reciprocity in the relationship. We have come to the conclusion that bloggers can affect the credibility by how they choose to present the brand in their blogs.

<p>Many types of services are provided using some equipment or machines, e.g. transportation systems using vehicles. Designs of these systems require capacity decisions, e.g., the number of vehicles. In my dissertation, I use many-server and conventional heavy-traffic limit theory to derive asymptotically optimal capacity decisions, giving the desired level of delay and availability performance with minimum investment. The results provide near-optimal solutions and insights to otherwise analytically intractable problems.</p> <p>The dissertation will comprise two essays. In the first essay, &ldquoAsymptotic Analysis of Delay-based Performance Metrics and Optimal Capacity Decisions for the Machine Repair Problem with Spares,&rdquo I study the M/M/R machine repair problem with spares. This system can be represented by a closed queuing network. Applications include fleet vehicles' repair and backup capacity, warranty services' staffing and spare items investment decisions. For these types of systems, customer satisfaction is essential; thus, the delays until replacements of broken units are even more important than delays until the repair initiations of the units. Moreover, the service contract may include conditions on not only the fill rate but also the probability of acceptable delay (delay being less than a specified threshold value).</p> <p>I address these concerns by expressing delays in terms of the broken-machines process; scaling this process by the number of required operating machines (or the number of customers in the system); and using many-server limit theorems (limits taken as the number of customers goes to infinity) to obtain the limiting expected delay and probability of acceptable delay for both delay until replacement and repair initiation. These results lead to an approximate optimization problem to decide on the repair and backup-capacity investment giving the minimum expected cost rate, subject to a constraint on the acceptable delay probability. Using the characteristics of the scaled broken-machines process, we obtain insights about the relationship between quality of service and capacity decisions. Inspired by the call-center literature, we categorize capacity level choice as efficiency-driven, quality-driven, or quality- and efficiency-driven. Hence, our study extends the conventional call center staffing problem to joint staffing and backup provisioning. Moreover, to our knowledge, the machine-repair problem literature has focused mainly on mean and fill rate measures of performance for steady-state cost analysis. This approach provides complex, nonlinear expressions not possible to solve analytically. The contribution of this essay to the machine-repair literature is the construction of delay-distribution approximations and a near-optimal analytical solution. Among the interesting results, we find that for capacity levels leading to very high utilization of both spares and repair capacity, the limiting distribution of delay until replacement depends on one type of resource only, the repair capacity investment.</p> <p>In the second essay, &ldquoDiffusion Approximations and Near-Optimal Design of a Make-to-Stock Queue with Perishable Goods and Impatient Customers,&rdquo I study a make-to-stock system with perishable inventory and impatient customers as a two-sided queue with abandonment from both sides. This model describes many consumer goods, where not only spoilage but also theft and damage can occur. We will refer to positive jobs as individual products on the shelf and negative jobs as backlogged customers. In this sense, an arriving negative job provides the service to a waiting positive job, and vice versa. Jobs that must wait in queue before potential matching are subject to abandonment. Under certain assumptions on the magnitude of the abandonment rates and the scaled difference between the two arrival rates (products and customers), we suggest approximations to the system dynamics such as average inventory, backorders, and fill rate via conventional heavy traffic limit theory.</p> <p>We find that the approximate limiting queue length distribution is a normalized weighted average of two truncated normal distributions and then extend our results to analyze make-to-stock queues with/without perishability and limiting inventory space by inducing thresholds on the production (positive) side of the queue. Finally, we develop conjectures for the queue-length distribution for a non-Markovian system with general arrival streams. We take production rate as the decision variable and suggest near-optimal solutions.</p> / Dissertation

Problem formulation: ”What significance does the real estate agents communicative skills, to gain the confidence of home sellers during the sales process?   Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to create a theoretical framework on the importance of real estate agents communication skills for home sellers confidence. The theoretical framework is expected to explain the interaction between real estate agents and home sellers to create an understanding of the real estate agents communicative skills but also home seller trust and the link between them.   Theoretical  framework: The theoretical framework aims to describe the sales process seven steps according to Moncrief &amp; Marshall (2005). It also describes the parties that are relevant to the sales process based on our issue. Then the communicative skills and confidence sets of meaning and significance is explained. This culminates in an analysis which we assumed when we made the analysis.   Methodology: To examine our issue, we have chosen to do a qualitative study in the form of interviews. We interviewed two home sellers and two real estate agents about communication skills and confidence. We also examine these concepts using secondary data in the form of scientific articles and books.   Analysis: The analysis in this paper is divided into two sections. One part is focusing om house sellers and the other part is focusing om the real estate agents we interviewed. In this analysis the sales process and its seven steps is the starting point. We have also tried to include our key words in this analysis, especially communication skills and confidence.   Conclutions: Based on previous research, empirical data and the analysis. This study show that the real estate agents communicative skills are important for the confidence of home sellers during the sales process. The communicative skill that proved to be most significant to confidence building was the communicative ability the ability to listen. / Frågeställning: ”Vilken betydelse har fastighetsmäklarens kommunikativa färdigheter, för att skapa förtroende hos bostadssäljare under säljprocessen?   Syfte: Syftet med denna uppsats är att skapa ett teoretiskt ramverk kring betydelsen av mäklares kommunikativa färdigheter för säljarnas förtroende. Det teoretiska ramverket förväntas förklara interaktionen mellan fastighetsmäklare och bostadssäljare för att skapa förståelse för mäklarens kommunikativa färdighet men också bostadssäljarens förtroende och kopplingen däremellan.   Teoretisk referensram: Den teoretiska referensramen syftat till att beskriva säljprocessens sju steg enligt Moncrief &amp; Marshall (2005). Vidare beskrivs de parter som är aktuella för säljprocessen utifrån vår frågeställning. Därefter förklaras de kommunikativa färdigheterna och förtroendesets innebörd och betydelse. Detta mynnar ut i en analysmodell vilken vi utgått från när vi gjort analysen.    Metod: För att undersöka vår frågeställning har vi valt att göra en kvalitativ undersökning i form av intervjuer. Vi har intervjuat två bostadssäljare och två fastighetsmäklare där vi ställt frågor kring kommunikativa färdigheter och förtroende. Vi har även undersökt dessa begrepp med hjälp av sekundärdata i form av vetenskapliga artiklar och böcker.    Analys: Analysen i denna uppsats är indelad i två avsnitt. Ett om bostadssäljarna och ett om fastighetsmäklarna vi intervjuat. Vi har i denna analys utgått från säljprocessens sju steg och försökt koppla an till våra nyckelord, framförallt kommunikativa färdigheter och förtroende.    Slutsatser: Utifrån tidigare forskning och empirisk datainsamling samt analysen av detta visar denna studie att fastighetsmäklarens kommunikativa färdigheter har betydelse för förtroendet hos bostadssäljarna under säljprocessen. Den kommunikativa färdighet som visade sig ha störst betydelse för förtroendeskapandet utifrån de genomförda intervjuerna var den kommunikativa färdigheten konsten att lyssna.

The fact that household customers are central in the discussion of future sustainable energy systems compels the Swedish electricity retail companies to provide strategies in order to successfully follow the trends on the electricity market. The purpose of this thesis is to complement the electricity retail companies’ understanding of how they are able to enter a sustainable and close business relationship with these customers. The purpose is fulfilled by the analysis of how relationship concepts impact the development of demand response specifically. The information has been collected through a case study of Smart Customer Gotland, via interviews with people who have great experience from the field and via a survey directed towards the customers. The results indicate that there is a major difference in both of the actors’ visions regarding the relationship. The company desires to enter a position where less support and high customization is available. Customers instead want more personal support because of their lack of knowledge and uncertainty of new systems. To succeed, the companies have to consider the fundamental influencing incentives, economy and comfort, while also maintaining the customers’ trust. The most essential parts of the context specific relationship exchange are product exchange, information exchange, and social exchange. These should be directed towards maintaining and increasing the trust from customers. Focusing the resources earlier used for marketing, on these exchanges to make the current customers more satisfied will open up for using word-of mouth primarily from early adopters. Continued work with these early adopters will also increase companies’ knowledge, which is important for the companies to strategically develop its business towards the market of smart energy solutions.

Bakalauro baigiamajame darbe analizuojamas įmonės APB „Apranga“ darbuotojų požiūris į klientų aptarnavimo kokybę kaip į paslaugos kokybės įvertinimo būdą. Teorinėje darbo dalyje pateikiama paslaugos samprata bei paslaugų kokybės vertinimo modeliai, paremti Ch.Gronroos (1990) požiūriu, kad paslaugų kokybė gali būti vertinama dviem aspektais - techniniu bei funkciniu kokybės patyrimu. Pateikiama klientų aptarnavimo samprata bei trumpai pristatomas klientų aptarnavimo standartas kaip priemonė aptarnavimo kokybei valdyti ir darbuotojų profesionalumui vertinti. Empirinėje darbo dalyje remiantis įmonės APB „Apranga“ Šiauliuose darbuotojų įsivertinimu atlikta požiūrio į klientų aptarnavimo kokybę analizė, leidžianti identifikuoti klientų aptarnavimo problemas ir pateikti rekomendacijas įmonei klientų aptarnavimui gerinti. / The final bachelor thesis covers the analysis of APB „Apranga“employees‘opinion towards the quality of customer service as an evaluation method of service quality. The theoretical part presents the conception of service and available methods for service quality evaluation based on Ch.Gronroos (1990) position, which states that service quality might be evaluated in terms of two aspects – technical and functional quality experience. The work introduces the conception of customer service as well as a customer service standard as a tool to manage the service quality and evaluate the employees’ competence. The analysis regarding the opinion towards the quality of customer service was performed in the empirical part of thesis in accordance to the employees’ self-evaluation in APB „Apranga”, city of Šiauliai. This analysis enables to identify the problems of customer service and provide the recommendations on purpose to increase the quality of customer service in APB „Apranga”, city of Šiauliai.

This thesis comprises three papers examining the impact of competitive pricing or competition on participants in energy markets. The scope of each paper is narrow but focused, dealing with one particular aspect of competition in each market under study. It is hoped that results from these three studies could provide valuable policy lessons to public policy makers in their task to create or maintain competition in different energy markets, so as to improve efficiencies in these markets. The first and second papers examine the load shifting behavior of industrial customers in Ontario under real time pricing (RTP). Using Hourly Ontario Energy Price (HOEP) data from 2005 to 2008 and industry-level consumption data from all industrial customers directly connected to the transmission grid, the first paper adopts a Generalized Leontief specification to obtain elasticities of substitution estimates for various industry groups, while the second paper adopts a specification derived from standard consumer theory to obtain price elasticity estimates. The findings of both papers confirm that in some industries, industrial customers who are direct participants of the wholesale market tend to shift consumption from peak to off-peak periods in order to take advantage of lower off-peak prices. Furthermore, in the first paper, a demand model is estimated and there is evidence that the marginal effect of hourly load on hourly price during peak periods is larger than the marginal effect during off-peak periods. An important policy implication from the results of these papers is that while RTP is currently limited to industrial customers, it does have positive spillover effects on all consumers. The third paper uses a unique panel dataset of all retail gasoline stations across five Canadian cities from late-2006 to mid-2007 to examine the effect of local competition on market shares and sales of individual stations. The base empirical specification includes explanatory variables representing the number of same brand stations and the number of different brand stations within a 3km radius to identify brand affiliation effect. It is found that the number of local competitors is negatively correlated with market share and sales. More interestingly, a same brand competitor has a larger marginal impact on market share and sales than a competitor of a different brand. These findings suggest that additional local competition leads to cannibalization of market share among existing stations, rather than create new demand. Another implication is that relying only on the number of different brands operating within a geographic market could understate the competition intensity in the local market.

The primary aim of this thesis was to undertake research in a Higher Education and Training Institution in a Provincial Government Department in the Western Cape to determine which variables affect the services that are being delivered and the quality of the services and how these services could be improved. The population selected for the purpose of the research was a large number of students at a Higher Education and Training Institution in a Provincial Government Department in the Western Cape. A research sample represented by a subset of participants from this organisation was selected. A biographical questionnaire and the SERVQUAL questionnaire were administered to a sample of 130 students enrolled at a Higher Education Institution in the Western Cape. The results indicate that there are significant relationships between selected biographical variables and perceptions of service quality. Moreover, there were also statistically significant differences in perceptions on the variables Reliability, Responsiveness, Assurance, Tangibles and Empathy. Tentative conclusions can be drawn from the results and recommendations regarding future research are highlighted.

Frågeställning: Hur kan DMOs arbeta för att förstå turisternas förväntningar inför en destinationsupplevelse? Syfte: Syftet med undersökningen är att skapa en förståelse för turisternas förväntningar, både hur de skapas och hur de kan påverka turistens uppfattade destinationsupplevelse. Vi vill även kunna förklara hur turister kan delas in i olika målgrupper baserat utifrån vad de efterfrågar av en destinationsupplevelse. Slutligen syftar undersökningen till att kunna förklara för DMOs hur de kan arbeta med hänsyn till turisternas förväntningar i framtida destinationsutveckling. Metod: Uppsatsen har haft en deduktiv ansats med både ett sambandsbaserat och beskrivande syfte. Undersökningen innefattar både kvantitativa och kvalitativa metoder. Datainsamlingen genomfördes via fokusgrupp, enkät och dagböcker. Resultat: För att förstå hur turistens förväntningar bildas bör en DMO dela in turisterna i målgrupper baserade på vilken destinationsupplevelse de söker. Olika segment bildar sina förväntningar på olika sätt vilket gör det viktigt att differentiera sin kommunikation till turisten för att kunna påverka förväntningarna. Begränsningar: Undersökningen av DMOs är på regional nivå, vilket begränsar undersökningen till att inte uttala sig om DMOs på nationell eller lokal nivå. Turisterna vi har undersökt är fritidsturister som är bosatta i Sverige, vilket gör att undersökningen inte är gällande för affärsresenärer eller turister som är bosatta utanför Sverige. Teoretiskt och praktiskt bidrag: Det teoretiska bidraget består av att vi har kunnat konstatera att Parasuramans et al. (1985) gapmodell är applicerbar på en destination, med vissa anpassningar till turismlitteraturen. I slutsatsen presenteras den teoretiska modell som illustrerar gapen för en destination. Det praktiska bidraget består av rekommendationer som en DMO kan följa för att steg för steg överbygga gapen. / Research question: How may a DMO be organized to enable an understanding of tourist expectations before the destination experience? Purpose: The purpose with this study is to create an understanding of tourist expectations, including how they are conducted and how the expectations may influence the perceived experience of the destination. The aim of this study is also to explain how tourists may be diverted into segments by what a tourist demands of a destination experience. This thesis will end in recommendations according to how a DMO could be organized to gain a greater knowledge of tourism expectations that will be useful for future innovation at the destination. Methods: The research approach of this thesis is deductive, with both quantitative and qualitative research methods. The data collection consisted of a focus group, a survey and personal notebooks. Results: To be able to understand how a tourist creates expectations of a destination a DMO must segment their tourists into different segments, depending on what kind of experience they are looking to find at the destination. Expectations are created in different ways by different segments. This increases the importance for DMOs to differentiate their marketing communications to the tourist and thereby influence their expectations. Limitations: The thesis is not applicable for national or local DMOs, since the data is collected from regional DMOs. It is neither applicable for business travellers nor tourists that live outside of Sweden, seeing that the population and sample of tourists lives in Sweden and are leisure travellers. Theoretical and practical contribution: The conclusion of this thesis makes us confident that Parasuraman et al. (1985) gap model may be applied at the complexity of a destination, with certain adjustments from the tourism literature. The conclusion made us able to create a theoretical model. The practical contribution of this thesis is the recommendations that will enable a DMO to step-by-step overcome the complexity of a destination.