There has been significant research done on the impact of branding on consumer buying behaviour over the years, however, consumers at the bottom of the pyramid (BoP) have been ignored and very little research has been done in the South African market. This study examines the impact of brand equity on purchase intention of Parmalat yoghurt in the South African BoP market using socio-economic status, price sensitivity and sales promotion as mediating variables. Data was collected from 289 South African BoP consumers residing in Soweto. The study tested six hypotheses using PLS- SEM. Data was analysed using SmartPLS software. The results show that of the six hypotheses tested, only three are supported, namely, the relationship between brand equity and socio-economic status, socio-economic status and purchase intention and price sensitivity and purchase intention. Socio-economic status as a mediator has the most significant impact on the relationship between brand equity and purchase intention. The findings of this study give some implications for managers and marketers of yoghurt brands. Brand equity influences on purchase intention of yoghurt products and socio-economic status has the strongest mediating influence suggesting that companies must build and maintain strong brand equity in order to create a positive influence on purchase intention for their brands. Managers need to understand the underlying reasons as to why consumers would choose a competitor’s brand. Based on this study, socio-economic status and price sensitivity are the two most influencing mediators in the purchase intention of yoghurt, thus it is imperative for managers to take this into consideration when devising and implementing branding strategies.

This thesis focuses on fisheries managers’ efforts to restore native cutthroats to northern Nevada’s Pyramid Lake for recreation, and the Paiutes’ battle to preserve them as a means of livelihood. Their efforts to reconstruct the fishery revealed the implausibility of environmental restoration, but more importantly underlined the motivations necessary to attempt it. Chapter 2 describes how the Pyramid Lake Lahontan cutthroat— historically an important subsistence resource for Northern Paiutes— were initially exploited for profit in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and gradually destroyed as agricultural interests diverted the Truckee River’s water and industrial pollution contaminated the trout’s aquatic habitat. Fisheries managers in Nevada turned to artificial propagation to meet the demands of fishermen and replace the native fish industrialization destroyed. The Nevada Fish and Game Commission experimented with non-native introductions and like most of the West became proponents of rainbow trout and their recreational potential. Chapter 3 narrates a history of the Nevada Fish and Game Commission’s project to restore trout to Pyramid Lake in the 1950s and 1960s after its native cutthroat became extinct in the early 1940s. For the Commission, restoring Pyramid Lake meant establishing trout and salmon populations— native or not— to feed the growing outdoor tourism industry. While the Commission made plans to restore natural spawning runs, these were unsuccessful, and the Commission relied on stocking the lake to maintain the fishery. However, these experiments failed and eventually cutthroats from other lakes in Nevada proved better occupants of the lake. Chapter 4 describes the native cutthroat’s role in the water debate carried out in government agencies and in the courts in the 1970s and 1980s to decide whether or not water diverted from the Truckee for agriculture should be returned to the Paiutes to support their shrinking lake and dwindling fishery. Environmentalist groups like the Sierra Club joined the Paiutes in their effort to gain water that would allow for the native fishery’s restoration. Their vision clashed with that of agriculturists who feared losing water they depended on for their crops. However, after a lengthy struggle, the Paiutes won an important victory toward preserving their lake.

Through a myriad of practices, anthropogenic land and water use has caused the localized extirpation or complete elimination of many native fishes throughout North America. Specifically, native salmonids have seen substantial declines in population sizes and geographic distributions due to a number of factors, including habitat loss or degradation, overharvest, or the introduction of non-native competitors and predators. Among those affected, the 14 subspecies of cutthroat trout found across western North America have been subject to two extinctions and five listings as Threatened as per the Endangered Species Act. Lahontan cutthroat trout Oncorhynchus clarkii henshawi have experienced marked reductions throughout their native range in the western Great Basin, U.S. In Pyramid Lake, Nevada, where they were once locally extirpated due to overfishing, water loss, and degraded spawning habitat, Lahontan cutthroat trout have been successfully stocked and managed, though they do not routinely reach their pre-extirpation sizes. With little research to determine the factors influencing Lahontan cutthroat trout in Pyramid Lake, I used a suite of modeling tools and empirical data to elucidate the influence of the current surrounding environment on Lahontan cutthroat trout in Pyramid Lake. To identify important food web interactions that may affect the availability of food to Lahontan cutthroat trout, I used diet composition and stable isotope analyses of carbon and nitrogen to understand dietary trends. Large Lahontan cutthroat trout (>400 mm TL), along with non-native Sacramento perch Ambloplites interruptus, relied most heavily on fish prey, yet neither species showed signs of cannibalism or preying on the other species. Diet composition and stable isotope analyses also indicated that Lahontan cutthroat trout rely mostly on tui chub Gila bicolor and other fish for food. I also used results from bioenergetic and hydroacoustic analyses to compare the number of tui chub consumed by trout to the number of tui chub in the lake, during the time of this study. Results from these analyses suggest that trout consume well below the number of tui chub available in the lake, indicating that trout are not limited by the availability of tui chub. Lastly, I used a number of biotic and abiotic predictors to determine which factors influence the distribution, and subsequently abundance, of trout in Pyramid Lake and found that biotic factors were very weak predictors of trout distribution, further indicating that trout are not limited by food resources in Pyramid Lake.

With the convergence of banking services and mobile technologies, users are able to conduct banking services at any place and at any time through mobile banking (Gu, Lee&Suh, 2009). This research examines the factors influencing the adoption of mobile banking by the Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) in South Africa, with a special focus on trust, perceived cost and perceived risk including the facets of perceived risks: performance risk, security/privacy risk, time risk, social risk and financial risk. The research model includes the original variables of extended technology acceptance model (TAM2) (Venkatesh&Davis, 2000). Data from this study was collected through a physical hardcopy survey in townships around Gauteng. The research has found that customers in the BOP will consider adopting mobile banking as long as it is perceived to be useful and perceived to be easy to use. But the most critical factor for the customer is cost; the service should be affordable. Furthermore, the mobile banking service providers, both the banks and mobile network providers, should be trusted. Trust was found to be significantly negatively correlated to perceived risk. Thus, trust plays a role in risk mitigation and in enhancing customer loyalty. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

The original study on which this study was based on was conducted by Jacob Goldenberg, Sangman Han, Donald R.Lehmann, and Jae Weon Hong and published in 2009. In a slight contrast to Goldenberg et al (2009), this study was conducted among a bottom of the pyramid (BOP) network in South Africa using one non discretionary product whilst the original study was conducted on multiple high tech products in Korea This study explores the role of hubs (people with an outstanding number of social ties) in diffusion and adoption of products. The study was conducted using data on a large network and its adoption of a product (electricity) to identify two types of hubs – innovative and follower hubs and their role in influencing adoption ala Goldenberg et al (2009). Even though hubs are not necessarily opinion leaders nor are they necessarily innovators (as described by Rogers, (1962)) they tend to adopt earlier in the diffusion process. Innovator hubs have a greater impact on speed of adoption whilst Follower hubs have greater impact on the size of the market or total number of adoptions. Interestingly and crucially this early adoption behaviour of hubs can be a useful predictor of future product success. Among BOP network nodes, relationships and trust are important in determining the amount or degree of influence one can exert on a fellow network member. Homogeneity increases trust which in turn impacts the role of a hub as a force of influence. The centrality of hubs to networks is also a factor behind their role as information to the rest of the network passes through them, to a degree giving them control over the dissemination of information. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

A large number of image registration techniques have been developed for various types of sensors and applications, with the aim to improve the accuracy, computational complexity, generality, and robustness. They can be broadly classified into two categories: intensity-based and feature-based methods. The primary drawback of the intensity-based approaches is that it may fail unless the two images are misaligned by a moderate difference in scale, rotation, and translation. In addition, intensity-based methods lack the robustness in the presence of non-spatial distortions due to different imaging conditions between images. In this dissertation, the image registration is formulated as a two-stage hybrid approach combining both an initial matching and a final matching in a coarse-to-fine manner. In the proposed hybrid framework, the initial matching algorithm is applied at the coarsest scale of images, where the approximate transformation parameters could be first estimated. Subsequently, the robust gradient-based estimation algorithm is incorporated into the proposed hybrid approach using a multi-resolution scheme. Several novel and effective initial matching algorithms have been proposed for the first stage. The variations of the intensity characteristics between images may be large and non-uniform because of non-spatial distortions. Therefore, in order to effectively incorporate the gradient-based robust estimation into our proposed framework, one of the fundamental questions should be addressed: what is a good image representation to work with using gradient-based robust estimation under non-spatial distortions. With the initial matching algorithms applied at the highest level of decomposition, the proposed hybrid approach exhibits superior range of convergence. The gradient-based algorithms in the second stage yield a robust solution that precisely registers images with sub-pixel accuracy. A hierarchical iterative searching further enhances the convergence range and rate. The simulation results demonstrated that the proposed techniques provide significant benefits to the performance of image registration.

In this thesis, analysis and comparison of different attitude control systems of a satelliteusing different reaction wheel configurations were investigated. Three different reactionwheel configurations (e.g. tetrahedron configuration, pyramid configuration, standardorthogonal 3-wheel configuration) and three control algorithms (Linear Quadratic Regulator,Sliding Mode, Integrator Backstepping) were analyzed and compared in terms of settlingtimes, power consumptions and actuator failure robustness. / <p>Validerat; 20121205 (global_studentproject_submitter)</p>

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.