The purpose of this study was to explore the meaning of physical activity experiences to older women. A qualitative hermeneutic phenomenological design was used. A purposeful sample of 9 women, age 67 to 83 years old, enrolled in a group physical activity program participated in the study. Data was collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews, artifact documentation, and descriptive and reflective fieldnotes. The transcripts and significance of the artifacts were analyzed using thematic line-by-line analysis. Three themes emerged from the thematic analysis, trading roles, a happier me, and pride and delight. <p>Trading roles refers to the womens perceptions of a new era of their lives given the transition experienced in their life roles. Many of the things they considered stable in their lives changed. Friends dropped away, family moved, they no longer fulfilled the role of wife, and their active grandmothering period was ending. <p>The theme, a happier me, speaks of the impact their involvement in a physical activity program had on their social lives. Living as widowed or single women, they recognized that they could become isolated within their own homes. Engaging in a physical activity program provided a context where they could expand their social network. The interaction with others in a physical activity program brought a sense of happiness and well-being to their days.<p>The theme, pride and delight, captures the deep understanding of their own sense of well-being and took pride in planning and developing the physical activity program. The assumption that more knowledgeable others must plan, implement, and evaluate programs to meet the needs of older adults was challenged by these participants. <p>The meanings of the experiences were interpreted with the support of Weiss (1973) theoretical framework on loneliness. The results of the study highlighted the importance of the contacts made in the physical activity program to the social network of the women, including provisions of attachment, nurturance, and social integration. Physical activity programs for older adults have the potential to expand the social network of older adults and with further research may prove to be an effective intervention for social isolation and ultimately loneliness.

UNIVERSITY Mälardalen University (Mälardalens högskola) School of Sustainable Development of Society and Technology COURSE Master Thesis in Business Studies with Specialization in International Marketing COURSE CODE EFO705 TITLE Cultural influences on the social network marketing effectiveness: A case study in Thailand. RESEARCH QUESTIONS How does collectivism influence the effectiveness of social network marketing? PURPOSE OF THE STUDY The purpose of this thesis is to investigate and analyze whether the cultural dimension of collectivism among Thais has an influential impact on the effectiveness of social network marketing implementation on clothing retailing companies toward online customers or not. METHODOLOGY This thesis has employed both primary and secondary data to operationalize the conceptual framework. A questionnaire given to 160 respondents and the interview of 2 Thai expert marketers has been carried out to operationalize this research question. CONCLUSION The collectivistic behaviors among Thais show a slightly positive relationship which supports the effectiveness of social network marketing implementation. The other influential factors, apart from collectivism, are detergency in educational levels, knowledge of using social network, smart phone trends, and internet facility readiness.

The aim writing this thesis was to get an understanding about how Erasmus exchange students find their way in their new environment. Furthermore, to see what kind of resources are available for them and which they eventually use if they have a problem or just to make themselves feel more comfortable. The students' ages are between 20 and 23. The thesis analyzes the strategies the exchange students are using. In detail, where they meet people and what is supporting them. It also analyzes resources the students are relying on and the satisfaction with the students' life at Växjö University. The data were collected with eleven interviews. With the interviews was also handed out a questionnaire to the interviewed student. The result shows that the living situation is a coefficient when it comes to socializing, in this case living in a corridor. Also, going out to the students' pub and attending Växjö International Students (VIS) activities. Erasmus exchange students tend to rely on resources in the home country which are the family or friends or they are likely to rely on other students from the same country or foreign students as well. The overall satisfaction of the students' life is on the upper third of the certailnly measurement.

Our purpose was to research the new reform amendment" Lag om etableringsinsatser för vissa nyanlända invandrare", and whether the establishment of the reform is good and if it was a necessary amendment. For that reason, we have chosen to answer our purpose in these issues with this question formulation; how can the change of the law establishing operations influence the newcomers in the labour market, the problems the law intends to address, how the new change in the law is different from when the municipality "kommun" was responsible, and how the law can be discussed based on theories of social capital and weak ties. The method used in this study is from a adductive approach where the research is based on both empirical evidence and existing theory that interact between these two. The results that emerged in our work was that the newcomers within the labour market has been remote, the way the municipality’s addressed the problem did not work and the result of this was a new reform amendment, where a new participant established. The previous research has shown that there was a variation to how different the municipality managed the establishment of the new arrivals. According to the government the municipality failed in the matter of establishing new arrivals. Further investigation has also shown that the social network has been central point in the establishment of the arrivals.

The object of this master’s dissertation has been to investigate one-person enterprisers’ (OPE) experiences of conducting both personal identity and brand at social network sites (SNS). The purposes of this research have been to elaborate on sociological theories of brand and identity in a network society context and to present hypotheses on how SNS can be developed to empower all OPEs. Since this field is rather unexplored in sociological research, and because it is the experiences of the OPEs that are the focus of the research, ethnographic methods, i.e. qualitative interviews, were chosen. These interviews were then analysed, primarily through Erving Goffman’s theory of self-presentation, Manuel Castells’s theory of identity, and the sociological concept of life-conduct deriving from Max Weber. The findings provoked both theoretical and empirical conclusions. The theoretical hypothesis is that Castells’s and Goffman’s respective theories should be used as back and front end interpretations of everyday life conduct. The empiric hypothesis provoked is that some OPEs have a strategic (as opposed to a sincere) approach to SNS. These OPEs are experiencing alienation and anomie. To manage this, SNS need to focus more on tools for social communication and less on methods for making SNS ends in and of themselves.

In recent years, many virtual communities have thrived with the rapid development of Internet. In the environment of virtual community, through the information exchange, members realize that they often have similar demands. In the case of online group-buying, buyers who have a common interest in a certain product group together to collect their collective power and thus get price discounts from suppliers. Hence online group-buying comprehends the need of interest, relationship, and transaction of virtual community. We are questioning whether the group-buying have invisible community relationships embedded in members¡¦ transaction activities. The purpose of this study is by the use of social network analysis to investigate the relationships of the network between initiators and participants and between co-participants. In particular we propose some measures based on social network analysis to help us understand the meanings of relationships of online group-buying network. According to the result of this study, we find the initiators have more power or resources to influence other members of the network between initiators and participants. And some active participants also have more power or resources to influence other participants of the network between co-participants. We also find the active initiators and participants would have more probability to occupy key positions of information flow.

Social network site (SNS) has been very popular with global Internet users since 2008, the amount of social network users grew very much. Based on some reasons, users enjoyed using social network site. However, whether the current users or new users will continue to use social network site or not is an issue today. To assure social network site¡¦s company could develop and run well in the future, we must realize the factors that can increase and retain the user to use. This study based on expectation confirmation theory (ECT) and through literature review to explore the factors that can influence the user¡¦s satisfaction. Successfully, we integrated perceived utilitarian benefit and perceived hedonic benefit into original ECT model. In this study, an empirical survey methodology with eight hypotheses was applied to verify this model. Covariance-based structural equation model (SEM) was used to analyze data and evaluate the model. The results pointed out that past ECT model with only one aspect can be extended from utilitarian and hedonic dimensions. It indicated that confirmation of utilitarian benefit, perceived utilitarian and hedonic benefits have significant influence on user¡¦s satisfaction. Lastly, user¡¦s satisfaction will positively influence the continuance intention. In sum, this study integrated utilitarian and hedonic dimensions into original ECT model, and proposed a more comprehensive framework to explain the continuance usage of social network site. This study also provided a reference model for future continuance intention research and some suggestions for social network site practitioners.

As the number of users grows, more and more companies and brands use Facebook to shape their own images. What they want is ¡§Word of Mouth (WOM). However, each user has his/her own characteristics, and it might affect the WOM activities on Facebook. This research try to (1) explore the traits of WOM on Facebook, (2) find users¡¦ motivations of WOM behaviors on Facebook, (3) figure out what kind of characteristics might influence the WOM activities on Facebook, and (4) find some situational factors that have impacts on WOM activities on Facebook. The results show that (1) users who have high needs of uniqueness likes to share WOM to out-group members, (2) users prefer to share non-business messages and the messages which are related to their own benefits, (3) users with different characteristics have different motivations of WOM activities on Facebook. Keywords: Word of Mouth, Facebook, Characteristics, Situational Factors, Focus-group Interview, On-line Survey, social network site.

Enterprises spread messages usingcomputer networks has become a trend due to popularity of the Internet. It is important for enterprises to select appropriate network media to achieve high effectiveness. It¡¦s even more important for Internet marketing companies to deploy marketing strategies given all possible media selections. The network media is progressing with new technical applications, such as email, blog, micro-blog and social network, etc. Each has its own development background and can achieve different effectiveness. The study of this thesis is to explore the differences of spread rates, diffusion time distribution etc. by spreading the same network messages with different network media (such as Email, social network, Facebook etc.). It will help enterprises to understandthe characteristics and effectiveness of each network medium. As a result, enterprisescan learn how to choose the right media to get the best message diffusion result. The study shows that various message carriers willexhibit different effectivenessdue to the nature of message contents. For example, commercial messages can be best delivered with Facebook while messages of special interests can be effectively delivered by email. Regardless what medium is chosen, two common phenomena can be observed: high click rate within the first 24 hours, and the low click rate in midnight.Enterprises will do a good spread messages plan using computer networks in known the two common phenomena.

This dissertation considers graph theoretic generalizations of the maximum clique problem. Models that were originally proposed in social network analysis literature, are investigated from a mathematical programming perspective for the first time. A social network is usually represented by a graph, and cliques were the first models of "tightly knit groups" in social networks, referred to as cohesive subgroups. Cliques are idealized models and their overly restrictive nature motivated the development of clique relaxations that relax different aspects of a clique. Identifying large cohesive subgroups in social networks has traditionally been used in criminal network analysis to study organized crimes such as terrorism, narcotics and money laundering. More recent applications are in clustering and data mining wireless networks, biological networks as well as graph models of databases and the internet. This research has the potential to impact homeland security, bioinformatics, internet research and telecommunication industry among others. The focus of this dissertation is a degree-based relaxation called k-plex. A distance-based relaxation called k-clique and a diameter-based relaxation called k-club are also investigated in this dissertation. We present the first systematic study of the complexity aspects of these problems and application of mathematical programming techniques in solving them. Graph theoretic properties of the models are identified and used in the development of theory and algorithms. Optimization problems associated with the three models are formulated as binary integer programs and the properties of the associated polytopes are investigated. Facets and valid inequalities are identified based on combinatorial arguments. A branch-and-cut framework is designed and implemented to solve the optimization problems exactly. Specialized preprocessing techniques are developed that, in conjunction with the branch-and-cut algorithm, optimally solve the problems on real-life power law graphs, which is a general class of graphs that include social and biological networks. Computational experiments are performed to study the effectiveness of the proposed solution procedures on benchmark instances and real-life instances. The relationship of these models to the classical maximum clique problem is studied, leading to several interesting observations including a new compact integer programming formulation. We also prove new continuous non-linear formulations for the classical maximum independent set problem which maximize continuous functions over the unit hypercube, and characterize its local and global maxima. Finally, clustering and network design extensions of the clique relaxation models are explored.