The Market orientation (MO) phenomena have been meticulously studied in the marketing literature for more than three decades. While in the beginning MO had been investigated from a focal form perspective, it has evolved to account for the role it plays in distribution channels or supply chains. However, the perspective taken has consistently been from a focal firm perspective, either about its own or its partners market orientation. This study seeks to extend the theory on market orientation to account for the role that it plays within business relationships (i.e. inter-firm market orientation). IMO was initially conceptualized as the joint activities between the focal firm and its channel partner in joint intelligence generation, joint intelligence dissemination and joint customer responsiveness. This study develops the theory that a business relationship can be either market oriented or not and attempts to explain the effect of this inter-firm market orientation on relationship performance as well as focal firm performance. Specifically, this study asks the question, does inter-firm market orientation mediate the focal firm market orientation – performance relationship?This study was investigated using a two-stage approach. In the first stage, a measurement scale was developed and empirically tested to measure inter-firm market orientation. It was from the scale development efforts that the conceptualization of IMO was refined to include the joint intelligence cooperation and joint customer responsiveness efforts between the focal firm and its channel partners. It appears that the focal firm and their channel partner do not differentiate or separate the activities of intelligence generation and intelligence dissemination. They view it more as a cooperative effort. Additionally, the focus of the intelligence cooperation efforts appears to be more about intelligence collected through market research about end-user customers rather than by speaking with customers directly. Finally, the customer responsiveness efforts appear to be reactively focused rather than both reactively and proactively. The scale development was followed by the second stage where the revised IMO construct was included in a model in which it mediated the often-studied market orientation – performance relationship. A number of hypotheses were developed using various relationship theories such as transaction cost economics, resource-based view, and interaction approach. The model was tested with a sample of 130 informants using a variance-based structural equation modeling technique called partial least squares. The final analysis indicated that all paths were significant and that the IMO and relationship performance constructs partially mediated the MO – performance relationship. These findings suggest that it is important to understand both intra and inter-firm market orientation activities to truly understand their impact on business performance.

The aim of this thesis is to estimate market value of company PODA a.s. as at 31. 12. 2014. In the process of valuation I apply common valuation methods consisting of financial and strategic analysis, prognosis of value drivers and financial plan. Taking into account the good prospects of the company I choose the DCF APV method to determine its value. The comparable transactions method is used as a supplemental valuation method.

Investigating internal employee behaviors that influence firm results is an area of on-going interest to both academics and practitioners. This study combined the two recently developed constructs of internal market orientation and industrial service quality to investigate their relationship. The integration of the business outcomes of overall service quality, customer satisfaction, and commitment to the relationship were included to add practical application to study. Additionally, the moderator length of relationship between service provider and customer was included to examine its influence in the model. Internal marketing and market orientation influenced the development of the internal market orientation. Decades of studies into service quality lead to the development of the business-to-business service quality scales applied to this study. Studying these constructs in real world settings, including the moderator, and measuring subjective business outcomes was conducted to confirm scale use, broaden the settings, and offer depth to the field of study. Two surveys to employees and one survey to matching customers created 107 dyad records for structural equation model analysis. Results showed no significant relationship between internal market orientation and industrial service quality. There was a significant relationship between industrial service quality and overall service quality perception, confirming past studies. However, counter to past research industrial service quality did not influence customer satisfaction and commitment to the relationship. A surprising result was the significant relationship reported between employee perceived service quality and the two business outcomes of customer satisfaction and commitment. This research did not support the theoretical premise that internal market orientation is an antecedent to industrial service quality. This study reported mixed results for the connections between perceived service quality and the business outcomes included. Some of the limitations from previous research were addressed while a more integrated model was investigated to add to the understanding of the marketing concept.

The master's thesis deals with the design of the proposed automatic trading system especially for daily trading on the currency markets. The aim of the thesis is to create a complex theoretical basis, in the practical part of the work to use the knowledge to create a suitable automatic trading system. The thesis focuses on the technical analysis of the currency markets. The proposed system will be optimally optimized to maximize profitability and stability with application to the most liquid currency pairs.

This thesis deals with the topic of rent. The level of rent in Karviná and the factors which influence it are investigated. Mainly apartment layout, type of building, ownership, whether a balcony or loggia belongs to the flat, or if there is a lift in the house. The diploma thesis also deals with the so-called mining flats, which are specific to the town of Karviná.

Much has been written about the discipline of market segmentation as both a marketing competency and ultimately a valuable component of overarching business strategy. Organisations have demonstrated the practical benefits of harnessing segmentation in various market contexts and shown the theoretical constructs of the discipline to be sustainably sound in their capacity to guide businesses towards strategic portfolio optimisation. Despite this rich history however, recent academic investigation has highlighted that deep complexity plagues the effectiveness with which segmentation is harnessed with significant impact on business outcomes.This study was developed from a curiosity to explore some of the identified gaps with specific reference to how these manifest within the South African operating environment. Detailed review of literary perspective on the matter highlighted topical aspects that were deemed meaningful to use as a roadmap to guide the study investigations. Research data was collated from seasoned South African marketing practitioners and used to evaluate their practical experiences of defining and implementing market segmentation against established academic perspective. The study was purely qualitative with data being collected through 10 in-depth interviews that were conducted with target respondents from 10 different organisations across six industry sectors.The findings were analysed using a recently released version of leading qualitative data analysis software enabling the identification of key themes and the construction of resulting association maps. The ensuing network maps ultimately enabled the construction of a consolidated organisational interaction map that typifies the stated experiences of South African marketers in their attempts to leverage and optimize strategic value from market segmentation for their organisations.<p/> / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Thesis advisor: Michael Grubb / This dissertation consists of two chapters on the industrial organization of mortgage markets in the United States.In the first chapter, titled “Consumer Search Costs in U.S. Mortgage Markets”, I focus on estimating the distribution of consumer search costs in the market for government-backed mortgages in the US during the period from September 2013 to March 2015. I adapt the Hortaçsu and Syverson (2004) search model to mortgage markets. I estimate the distribution of consumer search costs in each U.S. state using recent data on government-insured mortgages. I find that estimated search costs are large; a median borrower would face a search cost equivalent to about $40 in monthly repayment. At the state-level, search cost magnitude is related positively to household income and age and negatively to years of education. I solve counterfactual scenarios in order to study the relationship between search costs and welfare. Compared to the full information scenario, the presence of costly consumer search decreases social welfare by about $600 in monthly repayment per borrower. This decrease in welfare occurs because under costly search borrowers are matched with lower quality lenders and spend resources on searching. At the national level, this decrease corresponds to approximately $35 million per-month. Reductions in search costs would raise social welfare monotonically. A 10% reduction in search cost may raise social welfare by as much as $130 per borrower per month. These findings support recent policies that aim to reduce search costs of mortgage borrowers. In the second chapter, titled “Price Discrimination in U.S. Mortgage Markets”, I examine the existence of price discrimination generated by costly consumer search in the market for mortgages. I develop a stylized model of consumer search in mortgage markets where firms charge optimal prices that depend on borrowers' search cost level. The model produces testable restrictions on the conditional quantile function of observed transacted rates. Using the data on insured Federal Housing Agency loans where price variation is not driven by default risk, I run a quantile regression of transacted interest rates on a set of loan observables, including borrower's credit score, original principal balance, and loan-to-value ratio, among others. I find that predictions of the theoretical model are satisfied for all loan observables under consideration, and price discrimination created by costly consumer search is likely to exist in U.S. mortgage markets. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

In this thesis, we study the return and volatility spillovers between forex and stock markets in Scandinavian countries employing recently developed method- ology of spillover indices. Those measures are based on forecast error variance decomposition of generalized vector autoregressive (GVAR) model. This allows us to estimate both total and directional spillovers. Moreover, frequency connect- edness analysis is conducted by decomposing the spillover indices into frequency bands, corresponding to short-, medium- and long-run connectedness. We used daily data for major stock market indices and exchange rates of domestic cur- rency towards US dollar for Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. Our data spans from February 2002 till July 2018 that covers turmoil periods of global fi- nancial crisis in 2007-2009, European sovereign debt crisis 2010-2013 and Brexit referendum in mid 2016. Our empirical analysis reveals that Norwegian financial markets do not contribute much to both return and volatility spillovers. On the other hand, euro and Danish FX market perform very similarly, by exhibiting the highest spillover contributions for both returns and volatility. Furthermore, distinct increasing trends in spillovers are revealed during the turmoil periods for most of the markets. From frequency...

This analyses the impact of unexpected changes in monetary policy on the South African equity market over the period 2005 -2018. In an attempt to understand this relationship, two main views have emerged. The wealth effect suggests that monetary policy changes have an indirect effect on the stock market, via changes in the value of private portfolios. On the other hand, it has been argued that the stock market is an independent source of macroeconomic volatility to which policy makers may wish to consider. This paper applies an event study approach to examine the stock market reaction to monetary policy. Furthermore, to understand the economic sources underpinning that reaction a Vector autoregressive model is estimated. The results suggest that on average, a surprise rate hike of 100 basis points causes short term JSE All Share index total returns to decline by 2.71%. We also find that the stock market reacts positively (negatively) to expansionary (contractionary) unexpected monetary policy actions due to revised market expectations about future dividends, excess premiums and the discount rate. The findings are crucial for central bank policy makers and JSE stock market investors.

This study profiles demographic and sociographic characteristics as well as media habits of heavy, moderate, light, and nondonors to volunteer dependent organizations. Insights gained will help administrators design appropriate courses of action. This becomes very important at a time when volunteer organizations face stiff challenges in attracting donors.