Made available in DSpace on 2010-04-20T20:14:43Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 61080100031.PDF: 7443816 bytes, checksum: a82ca7f98a374b3f75cdb221b7fb942b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-02-22T00:00:00Z / O impacto do boca a boca na Imagem da Marca e no julgamento de produtos (bens e serviços) tem sido estudado há tempos na disciplina de comportamento do consumidor. Com o crescimento da internet como mídia social e meio de comunicação entre consumidores e empresas, o boca a boca ganhou força junto a profissionais e pesquisadores de Marketing. Uma revisão da literatura permitiu traçar um paralelo entre o boca a boca tradicional e o eletrônico. É preciso compreender cientificamente a influência do boca a boca eletrônico no comportamento do consumidor. Para isto, foram realizados dois estudos nesta dissertação, sendo o primeiro um estudo exploratório a partir da realização de entrevistas e aplicação de questionários a consumidores, profissionais de Marketing e especialistas do assunto com o intuito de levantar percepções gerais sobre o tema. Para avaliar estatisticamente as hipóteses propostas nesta dissertação, o segundo estudo foi a realização de um experimento com 168 estudantes, contando com cinco cenários e três tipos de produtos (Vestuário, Cosméticos e Lojas Online). A variável independente foi o Comentário Postado pelo consumidor. Duas foram as variáveis dependentes: Imagem da Marca e Intenção de Compra dela. Para a mensuração da Imagem da Marca se utilizou a escala de Personalidade de Marca de Aaker (1997). No tocante à Intenção de Compra, um concurso foi elaborado para os sujeitos. No início e no final da coleta de dados, os participantes escolhiam as empresas das quais ganhariam um prêmio (vale compra), caso fossem os vencedores. Mediu-se a Intenção de Compra em função da escolha dos consumidores antes e depois do estímulo, sendo comparados, ainda, os resultados dos diferentes cenários. Constatou-se que os comentários negativos e positivos que os consumidores postam na internet têm um impacto significante na Imagem da Marca para outros consumidores nos produtos Vestuário e Loja Online. Mas não foram percebidos impactos destes comentários na Imagem da Marca no produto Cosmético e na Intenção de Compra dos outros consumidores nos três tipos de produtos testados. O Gerenciamento dos Comentários negativos (resposta da empresa a comentário postado pelo consumidor) apresentou uma redução no impacto do comentário na Imagem da Marca para os outros consumidores no produto Loja Online. Contudo, os tons alinhados com Foco Regulatório do consumidor nas respostas das empresas não provocaram diferenças significativas, contra indicando essa concepção teórica como meio de aprimorar os resultados do Gerenciamento dos Comentários. Várias implicações científicas e profissionais interessantes decorrem da pesquisa. Para o praticante, se viu que a internet 2.0 é uma mídia a ser considerada no esforço de comunicação da empresa e que ela deve ser considerada como um canal de comunicação bidirecional. / The impact of Word of Mouth Communication on Brand Image and the evaluation of products (goods and services) has been studied for some time in the discipline of consumer behavior. With the growth of the Internet as a social media and as a means of communication between consumers and enterprises, Word of Mouth has gained strength with Marketing professionals and researchers. A review of the literature draws a parallel between traditional Word of Mouth and its electronic version. It is essential to understand scientifically the influence of Electronic Word of Mouth on consumer behavior. In order to do this, two main studies were made: the first one was an exploratory stage conducted with interviews and questionnaires applied to consumers, marketers, and experts on the subject in order to raise general perceptions on the issue. The second study aims to evaluate statistically the hypotheses proposed in this work and involves an experiment applied to 168 students, considering five scenarios and three types of products (clothing, cosmetics and Online Stores). The independent variable was the Comment Posted by the consumer on the internet. Two were the dependent variables: Brand Image and Purchase Intention. To measure Brand Image, the scale "The Brand Personality" by Aaker (1997) was used. To measure Purchase Intention subjects participated in a contest where they chose, at the beginning and end of data collection, the companies from which they would gain a gift certificate, if they won the contest. Purchase Intention was measured depending on the choice of consumers before and after the stimulus, and compared also the results of different scenarios. It was found that the positive and negative comments that consumers posted on the internet have a significant impact on Brand Image for other consumers of products in Clothing and Online stores. However, there was no perceived impact based on these comments regarding Cosmetic products. No impact was found on other consumers' Purchase Intention. Management of Negative Comments (company's response to comments posted by the consumer on the internet) decreased the negative impact of comments on other consumer's Brand Image on product Online Store and the use of Regulatory Focus Theory on companies' responses did not cause significant differences, counter indicating this theoretical concept as a mean to improve the results of managing the comments posted by the consumer on the internet. Several implications of scientific and professional interest arise from this research. For a Marketing professional, it is evident that internet 2.0 should be considered in the media plan of a company and that it should be treated as a two-way communication channel with consumers.

Trovärdigheten för traditionella medier har minskat vilket har lett till att det blivit svårare att kommunicera med kunder och lett till en ökad konkurrens bland företag. I takt med utvecklingen av internet och Web 2.0 blev digitala dagböcker populära som kommunikationsverktyg för företag. Digitala dagböcker har, utifrån problemdiskussionen, identifierats som företagsbloggar bland företag och har inom ramen för Public relations ansetts en lösning på problemet med att kommunicera med kunder. Detta då företagsbloggar präglas av faktorer i form av bland annat förmågan att föra god kommunikation med publiken, skapa relationer, bygga varumärket, differentiera företag från konkurrenter samt som ett bra verktyg för sökmotoroptimering. Vad som dock inte framgår är vilka faktorer som är viktiga för företag att upprätthålla en skapad företagsblogg. Syftet med denna studie är att ur ett företagsperspektiv undersöka och få förståelse för vilka faktorer som är viktiga för att företag ska upprätthålla sin företagsblogg som ett kommunikationsverktyg och syftet leder till frågeställningen: “Vilka faktorer är viktiga för att företag ska upprätthålla sin företagsblogg som ett kommunikationsverktyg?” Studiens urval grundar sig på företag som driver en företagsblogg och är verksamma inom tjänstebranschen och där inom marknadsstrategin business-to-business. Studien består av en kvalitativ undersökningsmetod som har genomförts via semistrukturerade intervjuer med fem företag inom ramen för urvalet. Intervjufrågorna formades efter studiens teoretiska ramverk som stod som grund för forskningen och hade huvudspår inom företagsblogg som kommunikationsverktyg, Public relations, relationsmarknadsföring och varumärkesbyggande. Slutligen analyserades empirin och kopplingar gjordes med relevanta teorier. Resultatet visar att kommunicera ut kunskap och information samt att skapa relationer är viktiga faktorer för att företag ska upprätthålla sin företagsblogg som ett kommunikationsverktyg. Resterande faktorer kan variera och beror på företagets storlek och affärsinriktning. / The credibility of traditional media has diminished over the years which has made it harder for companies to communicate with customers as well as it has increased the competition among companies. In line with the development of the internet and Web 2.0, digital diaries became popular as a communication tool for companies to use. Digital diaries have been identified as corporate blogs among companies and has been identified, within the frame of Public relations, as a solution to the communication problem with consumers that companies can deal with. Corporate blogs are characterized by factors such as the ability to communicate with the audience, create relationships, branding, differentiation as well as a good search engine optimization tool. What is not evident, however, is which are the factors that are important to maintain a corporate blog.  The purpose of the study is to, from a business perspective, examine and understand which factors that are important for companies to maintain their corporate blog as a communication tool and the purpose leads to the question at issue: “Which factors are important for companies to maintain their corporate blog as a communication tool?" The selection of the study is based on companies that are running an corporate blog and that are active in the service business industry within the business-to-business marketing strategy. The study consists of a qualitative study and the used method is semi-structured interviews with five companies within the selection of the study. The interview questions were formed in accordance with the theoretical framework of the study, which formed the basis for the research and had headlines in corporate blog as a communication tool, Public relations, relationship marketing and brand building. Finally, the results were analyzed and connections were made with relevant theories of the study. The results show that to communicate knowledge and information, as well as building relationships, are important factors for companies to maintain their corporate blog as a communication tool. The remaining factors may vary and depend on the size of the company and what business orientation the company has.

Five year old children starting their formal education in primary schools bring with them a range of informal mathematical understandings. Transitioning from an early childhood setting to the reception class at school can have a profound impact on their developing mathematical concepts. Traditionally their first teachers (parents, caregivers and whanau) gradually remove the support and encouragement and some of the familiar surroundings of their early childhood centres are no longer there. As children from 5 – 13 years of age spend approximately 85% of their time out of school it is important that their first teachers are encouraged to continue that support. This paper outlines a New Zealand project ‘Home School Partnership: Numeracy’ that gives one approach to enhancing children’s mathematical learning through shared understandings between home and school.

The North-West University (NWU) is an example of an organization that has a social responsibity towards the community and the environment within which it finds itself (Van Schalkwyk, 2013). One of the social responsibility programmes of the NWU-Pukke is known as the Students’ Rag Community Service (SRCS). The SRCS is a registered NPO (non-profit organization) which is run by the students of the NWU Potchefstroom Campus and which has been in existence since 1992 in its present form. In this study it is argued that the SRCS developmental projects could be offered in a more effective and sustainable manner by implementing the basic principles of the participatory approach, viz. Participation, dialogue, empowerment and cultural identity in order to support the local communities in their developmental processes. For the present study the focus was solely on one of the SRCS projects, the Pick a leader-leadership development project. This project has the aim of providing in the developmental needs of ten to fifteen Grade 11 learners in three schools in the North West Province (Potchefstrom and the surrounding communities in Ikageng). Thus project participants (learners) are instructed in basic skills about starting their own businesses (entrepreneurship); how to develop their leadership skills and to apply these skills, and how to be able to use basic life skills in their everyday lives. Various theoreticians have explained how NPO’s without participatory communication are seldom successful in terms of developmental initiatives. The learners can only develop if the relevant roleplayers of the project take ownership of the project by also being able to communicate in a participatory manner about their specific needs with both the NPO and the project volunteers. The NWU-Pukke volunteers, who manage this particular project, therefore have the responsibility to communicate in a participatory manner with the relevant learners, their teachers and then also the different principals to make the project succeed and to contribute to the realization of the developmental needs of the learners. The general research aim of the study had been to determine the nature of the communication among interest groups in the Pick a leader-leadership development programme of the SRCS. Qualitiative research methods, viz. Semi-structured interviews, focus group interviews and participant observation, were used in this study for purposes of making making a thorough investigation into the nature of the communication among those involved in the Pick a leader leadership development programme. The purpose of this was to determine perspectives about the project held by the persons involved (but especially those of the learners) and to interpret these in line with the normative theoretical principles of the participatory approach to developmental communication. It was ultimately found that the communication in the Pick a leader-leadership development programme was mostly one-way. / MA (Communication Studies), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

The North-West University (NWU) is an example of an organization that has a social responsibity towards the community and the environment within which it finds itself (Van Schalkwyk, 2013). One of the social responsibility programmes of the NWU-Pukke is known as the Students’ Rag Community Service (SRCS). The SRCS is a registered NPO (non-profit organization) which is run by the students of the NWU Potchefstroom Campus and which has been in existence since 1992 in its present form. In this study it is argued that the SRCS developmental projects could be offered in a more effective and sustainable manner by implementing the basic principles of the participatory approach, viz. Participation, dialogue, empowerment and cultural identity in order to support the local communities in their developmental processes. For the present study the focus was solely on one of the SRCS projects, the Pick a leader-leadership development project. This project has the aim of providing in the developmental needs of ten to fifteen Grade 11 learners in three schools in the North West Province (Potchefstrom and the surrounding communities in Ikageng). Thus project participants (learners) are instructed in basic skills about starting their own businesses (entrepreneurship); how to develop their leadership skills and to apply these skills, and how to be able to use basic life skills in their everyday lives. Various theoreticians have explained how NPO’s without participatory communication are seldom successful in terms of developmental initiatives. The learners can only develop if the relevant roleplayers of the project take ownership of the project by also being able to communicate in a participatory manner about their specific needs with both the NPO and the project volunteers. The NWU-Pukke volunteers, who manage this particular project, therefore have the responsibility to communicate in a participatory manner with the relevant learners, their teachers and then also the different principals to make the project succeed and to contribute to the realization of the developmental needs of the learners. The general research aim of the study had been to determine the nature of the communication among interest groups in the Pick a leader-leadership development programme of the SRCS. Qualitiative research methods, viz. Semi-structured interviews, focus group interviews and participant observation, were used in this study for purposes of making making a thorough investigation into the nature of the communication among those involved in the Pick a leader leadership development programme. The purpose of this was to determine perspectives about the project held by the persons involved (but especially those of the learners) and to interpret these in line with the normative theoretical principles of the participatory approach to developmental communication. It was ultimately found that the communication in the Pick a leader-leadership development programme was mostly one-way. / MA (Communication Studies), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

How do young adult students communicate through their smartphones today? Which applications and features do they choose? What motivates their choices for the various possible situations? In this paper we investigate which communication channels young adult students in Sweden use for private message communication in their smartphones, in what way they use the channels and why they choose specific channels for different types of communication. In Sweden today, there are numerous of different ways of communicate through smartphones. We have interviewed ten Swedish young adult students regarding their use. The results speaks for that SMS has proven to still be used very frequently, even though it has existed for many years and that there are plenty of other ways to communicate through private messages today. Social media, primarily Facebook, also attracts users to communicate through private messages with their smartphones. SMS isn’t any longer the obvious method for sending a message. By presenting the result of our study, we hope to provide for future design resolutions and to give the next generation of smartphones communication tools that are as optimal as possible.

This surveys hypothesis is based on the notion that all citizens have the right to access information of the municipality they live in. The aim of the study is to examine how residents of Vilhelmina municipality take note of the current information, and also how they would proceed to access information in the future. In order to conceptualise the results these following theories were used: digital divide, digital immigrants, digital native, uses and gratification theory, social capital, communications strategies and two-way communication. The survey is conducted with four focus group interviews and one separate interview with a person working at the municipal office. The focus groups were divided into age categories in order to see the similarities and differences between the groups' media habits and preferences of future communications. The study material consists of the transcribed texts from the abovementioned interviews. The results of this research demonstrate that there is significant difference between age groups. According to the early theory of digital divide the gap in information between groups exists only due to the individual’s ability to access the Internet, which not match this study’s results. More current updates of the theory of digital divide declare that motivation may be a cause to the gap.  During the course of this research the issue of motivation emerged and a few of the interview participants stated motivation to find information as a key point. With the help of the participants requests communications strategies were presented for future communication based on the target groups' media choices. / Undersökningens utgångspunkt är att alla medborgare har rätt att ta del av information av kommunen de bor i. Studiens syfte var att undersöka hur invånare i Vilhelmina kommun tar del av information nu och hur de skulle vilja gå tillväga i framtiden. För att synliggöra och begripliggöra resultatet användes teorierna digital divide, digital immigrant, digital natives, uses and gratification theory, socialt kapital, inifrån- och utifrånstrategier samt tvåvägskommunikation. Undersökningen genomfördes med fyra fokusgruppsintervjuer samt en informantintervju med en insatt person från Vilhelmina kommuns kommunkontor. Fokusgrupperna var indelade i ålderskategorier för att kunna se likheter och skillnader mellan gruppernas medievanor och önskemål på framtida kommunikation. Studiens material bestod av de transkriberade texterna från de tidigare nämnda intervjuerna. Resultatet påvisade att det finns stora skillnader mellan åldersgrupperna, dock inte så stora gap som den tidiga teorin om digital divide, utan att skillnaderna mellan åldersgrupperna låg i vilka medier de använde som huvudkälla. Samt var skillnaderna mellan grupperna hur motiverade de var att sätta sig in i kommunal information. Med hjälp av deltagarnas önskemål samt kommunikationsstrategier gavs förslag på framtida kommunikation baserat på målgruppernas medieval.

For organisations to survive in an ever-changing milieu, as evident from the current business environment, sufficient crisis communication and management practices need to be in place to ensure organisational survival. Despite the latter, organisational crises are often inefficiently managed which could be ascribed to the lack of managing crises strategically (Kash & Darling 1998:180). This study explores the lack of strategic crisis communication processes within the financial industry specifically, to ensure effective crisis communication with the media as stakeholder group, through the proposition of an integrated crisis communication framework, which focuses on: · Combining integrated communication (IC) literature with Grunig’s theory of communication excellence to build sustainable media relationships through two-way communication; and · Implementing a crisis communication process that has proactive, reactive and post-evaluative crisis communication stages, thereby moving away from crisis communication as a predominant reactive function. / Communication Sciences / M.A. (Communication)

For organisations to survive in an ever-changing milieu, as evident from the current business environment, sufficient crisis communication and management practices need to be in place to ensure organisational survival. Despite the latter, organisational crises are often inefficiently managed which could be ascribed to the lack of managing crises strategically (Kash & Darling 1998:180). This study explores the lack of strategic crisis communication processes within the financial industry specifically, to ensure effective crisis communication with the media as stakeholder group, through the proposition of an integrated crisis communication framework, which focuses on: · Combining integrated communication (IC) literature with Grunig’s theory of communication excellence to build sustainable media relationships through two-way communication; and · Implementing a crisis communication process that has proactive, reactive and post-evaluative crisis communication stages, thereby moving away from crisis communication as a predominant reactive function. / Communication Sciences / M.A. (Communication)

This diploma thesis deals with the design of a hotel with a restaurant at the base the highest peak of the White Carpathians, Veľká Javorina. The area is located near the White Carpathians Protected Landscape Area and the Cetuna Natural Monument. The location has the possibility of using year-long and seasonal activities such as downhill and cross - country skiing or ice skating on frozen ponds, cycling in the new built-up cycle paths, hiking or walking on educational trails, horse riding, swimming in nature or visiting a family mini-zoo with the possibility of personal contact with animals. The potential of the concerned area is still used mainly by domestic, persons with the possibility of accommodation by acquaintances or owners of seasonal cottages and houses due to insufficient short-term accommodation. It was the main imulse for the design of accommodation. A piece of land on the border of the cadastral area of Dolné Bzince and Hrubá Strana of the village of Bzince pod Javorinou was selected for the building construction, due to its satisfactory position, orientation and also for the possibility of its evaluation. The building is designed as a separate-standing object onto an undeveloped territory of the municipality, which was used for agricultural purposes. It's been a long time it lies on ice, decays and its value decreases with expanding overgrown trees. The land is slightly sloping, oriented to southwest. The building has three main entrances and secondary entrances for smooth operation of the hotel. There is a day (leisure) part placed on the 1st floor, also a part for accommodation employees and immobile clients, parts for hotel management, cleaning zone and restaurant. On the 2nd floor there is an accommodation part with 19 rooms and a library. Into basement is a sport and relaxation part, which consist of fitness center and wellness center. Furthermore, in this floor is a bicycle shed and rooms of technical equipment of the hotel. On t