The main objective of the thesis is to study the forces that built up the morphology of the old city of Sulaimaniyah and the reasons of its existence. It focuses on the morphological elements of property (ownership elements of streets, blocks and parcels) and their existence in spite of the impacts of modernism in the transformation of these elements. Modernity in Sulaimaniyah city affected the city in terms of the transformation of traditional life pattern and traditional structure into modern function. Modern function covers a new administrative system and new commercial functions. The city adapted itself to these new institutions. As a consequence, the power of state displayed itself in the form of building roads, and then the new larger and regular parcels were created to adapt new functions. Furthermore, the study aims to establish the historical evolution of the city starting from its foundation and the periods, which are signified by the introduction of modernism concepts. This study is analyzed through a morphological research depending on the physical elements as quantitative characteristics. It starts with an evolutionary plan analysis, which is a tool of morphological study and covers the old part of the city in macro scale, mezzo scale, and consequently, micro scale. The old fabric of Sulaimaniyah city as organic fabric faced the modernism&#039 / s impact gradually due to the construction of streets. In spite of this fact, preserving old fabric&#039 / s morphology behind the power of ownership pattern is still surviving. In this thesis, typology is another research method, which is used to analyze the evolution of the building fabric of the city in both functional and formal configuration. In addition, a comparison of traditional and modern building types in the old city shows that there are similarities between these types, which suggest that these types are part of the old fabric of the city and they define the morphology of the old city. The study concluded that the morphology of the old city is the product of property in two dimensions (ownership parcels), and the building types on them.

Consumer decision behavior has been an interesting research topic for researchers and marketing people. While E-Commerce websites and online self-service are becoming more and more popular, it is important to understand how to support consumer in their online shopping decision process. The purpose of this research is to understand how consumer¡¦s decision behavior would be influenced in online shopping environment, when facing different product price and complexity, and discover the personal factors that might influence it¡¦s decision behavior. The result of our research showed that product complexity has significant influence on consumer¡¦s decision behavior. When product complexity become higher, the effort and time for a consumer to complete a purchase decision will also become higher. When consumer is more familiar with the product, more involve with the product, or have higher computer self-efficacy, consumer will use much harder decision tools then usual. But our result also showed that product price has no influence on consumer¡¦s decision behavior, this might be that in our experiment, consumers don¡¦t really have to pay for the product, so the influence of product price has no effect on consumer. From our result we can know that for different product complexity and consumer will result in different decision behavior. In the future, online shopping store can provide different decision tools for different consumer when facing different products, to help consumer make better decision.

Product line extension is considered a low-cost, low-risk strategy of introducing products under the same category. Under product line extension strategy, however, manufactures and retailers usually advertise merely one product during a certain period, rather than advertising all products within the product line at the same time. Taking example of Coke Cola, it keeps extending its product line horizontally in the past years. There are Classic, Diet and Zero Coke belonging to the main product line. As we observed, Coke Cola seldom advertised for three products simultaneously. On the contrary, to highly impress consumers, only one product would be strongly promoted in a certain period. What is interesting is whether the advertisement of Zero Coke lowers the price that Classic Coke buyers are prepared to pay toward Classic Coke while zero calorie is highly emphasized in ads. It would be interesting to investigate the impact of product line advertisement on consumers to see whether the product line advertisement always brings positive influence on reference price toward consumers with different purchase purposes. This research addressed the question of how product-line advertisement influences consumer¡¦s reference price within vertical and horizontal product line. It combined the research of product line extension and the concept of reference price to give advice for marketing. The category of product used in experiment is durable that was suggested in prior study. To examine the relationship between product-line advertisement and reference price, experimental method was performed here to test different kind of product line advertisement toward consumers with different purpose purposes, buying high-end product, low-end product or one certain product belonging to the horizontal product line. The results indicated that within the vertical product line, the brand advertisement with low-end product decreases the reference price toward high-end product buyers whereas the informational advertisement with low-end product increases the reference price toward high-end product buyers. Besides, within the horizontal product line, both of the brand and informational advertisement with one certain product in horizontal product line decreases the reference price toward the buyer who would like to buy another product belonging to the same product line.

¡§Introductory Price¡¨ is a quality signal used in the service introductory period, implying consumers that introductory price brought the loss to service providers. Consumers will guess service providers wish them repurchase the service to recover their loss, so the service should be higher quality and higher value. Past researchers¡¦ empirical studies about signal theory mostly focused on products. Therefore, the objective of this study is to verify whether ¡§Introductory Price¡¨ is an effective quality signal in service industry, and find out other potential variables which have moderate effect with ¡§Introductory Price¡¨. This study use experimental design to examine consumers¡¦ perceived quality, perceived sacrifice, perceived value, and purchase intention when they hear about the introductory price information of new service. Besides, this study use ¡§Price estimate¡¨ to develop a new concept ¡§Relative Introductory Price¡¨. ¡§Introductory Price¡¨, ¡§Competitor¡¦s Price Information¡¨, and ¡§Cost Information¡¨ will influence ¡§Relative Introductory Price¡¨, which will influence the consumers¡¦ perceived quality. The result shows that even though consumers can¡¦t differentiate the introductory price and long-term price, and still think ¡§low price means low quality¡¨, but other price information still has the moderate effect with ¡§Introductory Price¡¨ to influence the ¡§Relative Introductory Price¡¨. Besides, the service providers in Taiwan used to make a high origin price. This kind of pricing style makes existence of other price information become more important.

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Modern people pursue skin beauty no longer stays at the stage of basic skin maintenance. Some of them turn to the assist of cosmetic surgery, but some choose to use low-risk and good-effect cosmeceuticals. Recently, the fast growth of beauty care market scale has attracted lots of leading cosmetics brands going to the segmentation of market. Especially, as consumers face many products to choose from, whether country-of-origin and consumers¡¦ product knowledge affect their purchase intention becomes the main point of this study. Furthermore, the study also seeks to explore the customer¡¦s satisfaction toward different Country-of-Origin(COO) and the effect of COO on customer¡¦s satisfaction through using demographics variables and channel types as mediating variables. On the other hand, the relationship between demographics variables and channel types is also worthwhile to examine. This study selects the consumers who have ever used cosmeceuticals from America, France, or Taiwan as the study objects. The results show as the following. First, this study discovers that self-selective and online shopping are the channels which consumers often have access to. Second, the finding also supports that both of COO and consumer¡¦s product knowledge have positive effect on consumer¡¦s purchase intention. Third, consumers using French products are more satisfied than ones using Taiwan¡¦s products. Last, the influence of COO on purchase intention for neither demographics variable nor channel types are not significant.

The purpose of this study was to understand the relationships among brand image, loyalty of fans, and purchase intention. It also discussed the influence of different ways of watching the baseball games on the relationship. This study was based on internet and on-site questionnaire investigation. The sample of this study consists of the CPBL (Chinese Professional Baseball League) fans. The valid sample was 631. The results were as follows: Team¡¦s brand image affected the loyalty of fans positively. Team¡¦s brand image had positive effects on purchase intention of fans. Fans¡¦ identification with a team had the strongest influence on purchase intention for accessory products. Besides, stadium environment also had the strongest influence on purchase intention for parent company¡¦s products. Loyalty of fans affected fans¡¦ purchase intention positively. Different ways of watching baseball games had effects on fans¡¦ purchase intentions. The purchase intention of the fans who watch the games on-the-scene more often was higher than of those who watch the games on TV or internet. According to the conclusion, this study gave some suggestions to the operators of the professional baseball teams.

Nowadays, empirical researches on corporate post-performance of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) focusing on cost-down synergy and financial accounting phase have not been consistently identified. The lack knowledge of revenue-based marketing value and consumer insights of M&A indicates that other impacts may exist to influence corporate post-acquisition performance. Recent studies have pointed that acquiring company fails to take over all the customers of acquired company after the merge. The results probably provide an important issue about why most M&A activities failed. The study assesses that consumer perceptions of corporate association of acquiring/acquired company have diverse impacts on consumer attitudes and purchase intentions based on consumer-goods classification. Therefore, a 2x2 experimental design manipulated corporation associations and congruity was used for three types of products (i.e. laptops, casual shoes, and raw milk). In the study, one important finding is that diverse intensity of effects, in the relationship of consumer¡¦s attitude and consumer¡¦s repurchase intention after the merge, has showed up with empirical validation among three products. Based on the consumer-goods classification (i.e. specialty goods, shopping goods, and convenient goods), the results indicate that acquiring company fails to take over all the customers of acquired company after the merge, especially in convenient goods. In short, corporate selling different products in different industries should seriously consider about their objectives and focus, during and after the merge.

<p>The aim of this study is to investigate what factors are important when implementing cause-related marketing within the Swedish fashion retail market, in order to change the purchase intention of customers. Cause-related marketing (CRM) is a widely used marketing tool within the Swedish fashion industry. There has been an increasing trend of using cause-related marketing as part of corporate social responsibility strategy. Companies increasingly believe that associating their corporate identity with good causes can be an effective marketing tool. There is limited research about CRM with a bearing on the Swedish market and the fashion industry. This has given the authors an interesting field for research and analysis.</p><p>A quantitative method was used to collect primary data. A survey was conducted among customers of H&M, Lindex, Mango and Indiska. These companies were chosen after the observation of a large amount of Swedish based fashion retailers and their involvement within CRM. The results indicate that there is a link between cause-related marketing and customer purchase intentions. CRM campaigns have positive effects on customers by increasing their purchase intentions. Marketing communication, price, customer attitude and fit are important factors that affect the purchase of CRM products. A further investigation can be useful for companies and researchers in the field of marketing strategies.</p>

<p>Organisations must change in order to be able to follow the expansion in the world and be competitive along with other organisations at the global market. To successfully efficient the organisations reduce their purchasing costs for material and products. One way to reduce the purchasing costs is to centralise all purchases in an organisation. When a big organisation does that, they use, among other things, the economies of scale. (Personal communication,Department Manager, 2005-06-17 and Senior adviser, IMS ITP, 2005-08-15)</p><p>While studying Information Logistics, 140 p, at the Centrum för Informationslogistik in Ljungby, has IKEA IT been our co-operating company. When we talked with our Department Manager during our internship, she describes co-operation problems between the units when they purchase IT-related indirect material. Indirect material is products that support the daily work within the organisation.</p><p>Since IKEA recently started a central purchasing function for indirect material our assignment was to see how IKEA could be more efficient when purchasing IT-related indirect material. Different units at IKEA are involved during central purchases of IT-related indirect material. The fact that many conflicts arise when different units are to co-operate is well known (Gadde & Håkansson, 1998). We found this very interesting and therefore our chose of subject.</p><p>The co-operation conflicts that have arose during our investigation shows clear signals in the theory about why they arise. According to Danermark (2000) it is more a rule than an exception that it anticipates a competition. Different occupational groups have different prestige and power, the bigger the difference is the bigger is the probability that a problem regarding co-operation arise.</p><p>One difficulty with centralized purchases is to get the different units at the organisation to co-operate. Co-operation problems could be caused by many factors for example did the different units use different terminologies and could therefore be misunderstood.(Gadde & Håkansson, 1998)</p><p>Unique for IKEA’s organisation is that all different units work against the same business concept, goal and vision (Personal communication, Senior adviser, 2005-08-15). As long as the involved units are independent and do not have identical purposes will there always be conflicts (Gadde & Håkansson, 1998). Heide, Johansson and Simonsson (2005) considers that the visions are build up on different goals. These goals are in its parts build up on a number of strategies.</p><p>All IKEA-units struggle towards the same vision and goal, but the different units use different strategies to reach the goals. This different strategy creates conflicts when the different IKEA-units should co-operate.</p><p>To make the most optimized purchase for IKEA should the purchasing department handle the contacts with the suppliers (Personal communication, Purchase Process Manager, 2005-08-27). That generates a conflict when the other involved units also want to make the first contact (Personal communication, Process Owner, 2005-09-07 and Project Manager 2005-09-23). One problem is that the purchasing department today have a lack of resources and do not have time to handle all purchases and delegate some purchases to the other involved units. This gives a double message about how IKEA want the purchasing process to work.</p> / <p>Organisationer har blivit tvingade att effektivisera sina verksamheter, för att vara konkurrenskraftiga på marknaden. För att lyckas med detta behöver organisationen sänka kostnaderna, på material och produkter som organisationen köper in. Ett sätt att effektivisera och sänka inköpskostnaden är att centralisera inköpen. När en stor organisation gör detta utnyttjar de bland annat skalfördelarna. (Personlig kommunikation, Department Manager, 2005-06-17 och Senior adviser, IMS ITP, 2005-08-15)</p><p>Vi har under våran utbildning, Informationslogistik 140p, haft IKEA IT som fadderföretag. Efter att vi genomfört en 20 veckors praktik på IKEA IT beslutade vi tillsammans med våran dåvarande chef att vi skulle skriva våran C-uppsats om hur IKEA kan genom bättre samverkan och kommunikation effektivisera sina inköp av indirekt material. IKEA: s centraliserade inköpsavdelning är nyuppstartad och det finns ännu ingen inarbetad arbetsrutin hur ett inköp skall gå till.</p><p>Då IKEA nyligen startat upp sin centrala inköpsenhet för indirekt material, blev vår uppgift att se till hur IKEA kan bli mer ffektiva när de skall köpa in IT-relaterat indirekt material. Olika enheter inom IKEA är involverade under inköpsprocessen. Att det uppstår konflikter när olika enheter skall samarbeta är väl känt sedan innan (Gadde & Håkansson, 1998). Vi fann detta intressant och därav vårt val av ämne.</p><p>Enligt Danermark (2000) är det snarare en regel än ett undan tag att det förekommer konkurrens inom en organisation. Olika yrkesgrupper har olika prestige och makt, ju större dessa skillnader är desto större är sannolikheten att problem med samverkan uppstår. Innan inköpsavdelningen för indirekt material startades hanterade de olika enheterna själva sina inköp. Detta medförde att det förekom flera leverantörsrelationer från flera olika enheter.</p><p>En av svårigheterna med centraliserade inköp, är att få organisationens olika enheter att samverka. Samverkningsproblem kan bero på många faktorer, exempelvis att de enheterna använder sig av olika terminologier och därför missuppfattar varandra. (Gadde & Håkansson,1998)</p><p>Unikt för IKEA organisationen är att alla dess enheter arbetar mot ett och samma mål (Personlig kommunikation, Senior adviser, 2005-08-15). Så länge de involverade parterna är självständiga och inte har identiska målsättningar, kommer det alltid att finnas konflikter (Gadde & Håkansson, 1998). Heide, Johansson och Simonsson (2005) anser att visionen byggs upp av olika mål. Dessa mål bygger i sin tur på ett antal strategier. Alla enheter inom IKEA strävar efter samma vision och mål, men de olika enheterna använder olika strategier för att uppnå dessa mål. Detta leder också till konflikter då de olika enheterna inte är ense om vilka inköp som skall prioriteras.</p><p>IKEA vill att den första leverantörskontakten skall tas av inköpsavdelningen, detta för att inköp och förhandlingsprocessen skall bli så optimal som möjligt för IKEA organisationen</p><p>(Personlig kommunikation, Purchase Process Manager, 2005-08-27). De andra involverade enheterna motsäger sig detta då de anser att de behöver kontakta leverantören av olika anledningar innan en inköpsförhandling påbörjas (Personlig kommunikation, Process Owner, 2005-09-07 och Project Manager 2005-09-23). Ett problem är att inköpsavdelningen idag har en resursbrist i form av tid, därav överlåter de vissa inköp till de andra enheterna. Detta leder till ett dubbelt budskap om hur inköpsprocessen skall gå till.</p>