O propósito do presente estudo foi investigar como se articula o anúncio publicitário impresso, uma das mais importantes formas de enunciação do discurso persuasivo do marketing, e sua evolução ao longo do tempo. O período de análise correspondeu às últimas quatro décadas, período de grande relevância para se entender a constituição do ambiente contemporâneo do marketing brasileiro. O foco principal do estudo foi dado à imagem como elemento composicional dos anúncios, mas também foi analisada sua relação com elementos verbais, como o título e o texto das peças. Integrando fundamentos teóricos de diversas vertentes, como a semiótica (com destaque para a linguística estruturalista), a psicologia cognitiva (e os estudos aplicados ao comportamento do consumidor) e trabalhos específicos relacionados com a comunicação de marketing, foi elaborado um instrumento de codificação para classificar as diversas dimensões em uma amostra probabilística de 800 anúncios publicados na Veja, a principal revista de interesse geral do mercado brasileiro, abarcando edições entre os anos de 1968 e 2008. As dimensões consideradas foram tanto quantitativas (como o número de palavras no título e texto e o espaço alocado a estes elementos; o número de elementos visuais e o espaço alocado a fotografias, ilustrações e técnicas mistas), quanto de características qualitativas, com a classificação dos anúncios quanto a rotas de elaboração presumidas (centrais ou periféricas), temas utilizados (informativos, comportamentais ou simbólicos), estratégias de manipulação dos enunciatários (tentação, sedução, intimidação ou provocação) e também quanto às valorizações fundamentais implícitas na enunciação do discurso (valorizações prática, crítica, utópica ou lúdica). Trata-se, portanto, de uma pesquisa descritiva conclusiva, com utilização combinada da análise de conteúdo com estratégias semióticas para a abordagem dos fenômenos analisados. O pressuposto do trabalho - confirmado pelo teste das várias hipóteses propostas - foi de que no período ocorreu um aumento do uso de imagens em anúncios impressos, com correspondente redução do número de palavras no texto. Além disso, o uso de técnicas estatísticas bivariadas e multivariadas forneceu evidências para se concluir que as imagens vêm ganhando novas funções retóricas, passando de apoio aos elementos verbais para uma função predominante, de sustentação do discurso persuasivo. Como achados adicionais, mas relevantes para a compreensão dos fenômenos da comunicação de marketing, estão o aumento do uso de técnicas mistas e indícios da transferência das funções comunicacionais do corpo do texto para o título dos anúncios. Além do instrumento de análise de características objetivas para a investigação de enunciações persuasivas, as contribuições oferecidas pelo estudo também são de interesse gerencial, pois fornecem um quadro de referência da evolução dos discursos utilizados pelos anunciantes na elaboração de suas campanhas e, desta forma, proporcionam comparação das estratégias utilizadas. / The aim of this study was to investigate the articulation of print advertisement, one of the most important forms of persuasive discourse enunciation in marketing, and its evolution through time. The period of analysis defined were the last four decades, which are extremely important to understand the establishment of the contemporary Brazilian marketing environment. The main focus of the investigation was imagery as an advertisement composition element, but also its relationship to verbal elements such as the title and text of the print ad. Integrating theoretical foundations from diverse sources, such as semiotics (especially structural linguistics), cognitive psychology (and consumer behavior studies) and specific works on marketing communications, a coding instrument was developed to classify the various dimensions found in print ads. The probabilistic sample included 800 ads published in Veja, the main general interest magazine in the Brazilian market, from issues between 1968 and 2008. The dimensions considered were both quantitative (like the number of words in the title and text and the space given to them; and the number of visual elements and the space allocated to photographs, illustrations and mixed techniques) and of a qualitative nature, i.e., a classification of the ads according to presumed elaboration routes (central or peripheral), themes used (informative, behavioral or symbolic), enunciatee manipulation strategies (temptation, seduction, intimidation or provocation) and fundamental valorizations implicit in the discourse enunciation (practical, critical, utopian or ludic). It is, therefore, a descriptiveconclusive research using a combination of content analysis with semiotic strategies to address the phenomena under scrutiny. The core assumption of the study confirmed by the testing of the various proposed hypotheses was the occurrence of an increase in imagery use in print advertisement during the period, with a corresponding decrease in the number of text words. Besides, the use of bivariate and multivariate statistical techniques supplied evidence to conclude that images have been gaining new rhetorical functions, going from support to verbal elements to a more predominant function of sustaining persuasive discourse. As additional findings, also relevant to understand marketing communications phenomena, are the increase in the use of mixed techniques and the transfer of communicative functions from the body text to the ad title. Besides supplying an objective analytical tool to investigate persuasive statements, the study also offers contributions for management as it provides a framework of the evolution of discourses used by advertisers in their campaigns, thus allowing for comparison of the strategies utilized.

Contemporary scholars have been studying audiovisual translation for the past twenty years. However, health communication has never yet been included as a part of the audiovisual material under discussion. The goal of this thesis is to create Russian subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing from the original English version of The Three Amigos, a series of PSAs (Public service announcements) regarding the prevention of HIV/AIDS, and to analyse and discuss the theoretical and practical aspects of this work. After analysing the current situation on HIV/AIDS in Russia and Belarus, I use this series entitled The Three Amigos as an example of health communication that works, and therefore, should be accessible to more viewers. The thesis is organised into three chapters. Following a general introduction, Chapter 1 discusses health communication, presents statistics on HIV/AIDS in Russia and Belarus, and provides an example of health communication that fulfills its functions – public service announcements on HIV/AIDS prevention in the form of The Three Amigos. Chapter 2 discusses the necessity of subtitling for the target audience, and emphasises the fact that people with hearing impairment need special subtitles that differ from the ones that are suitable for viewers without hearing impairment. Chapter 3 contains the analysis of the subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing that I created for this project. Finally, the conclusion summarises the findings of this research, and addresses possible directions for future projects on this topic.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has moved to the forefront of many firms' concerns and is defined as a firm taking into consideration the interests of society by taking responsibility for the impact of the firm's actions on all stakeholders: customers, employees, shareholders, communities at large, and the environment. This dissertation will look at several public announcements and examine not only the level of corporate social responsibility a firm has but also the effects these announcements have on not only firm value but also customers' reactions to them. The three samples examined in the paper are boycotts announcements, recall announcements, and negative social responsibility announcements. The announcements were separated into the three groups to allow me to better analyze the effects of individual announcements and distinguish between types of announcements. The first part of the study focused on market response, measured by stock reactions and shows that the three samples of event announcements produced inconsistent results. Each of the three events produced the negative short term effects expected, either for Day 0 or for the post event period (+1, +30). However, the significance varied and the control sample for both recalls and boycotts produced positive post announcement results, implying that competitors are positively affected by these announcements. With regards to the control samples, only the general announcements control sample produced negative post announcement implying market wide affects. These test also showed that recalls may be subject more often to leakage. The general findings of this test are as expected though the significance was not. The second part of the study focused on customer's reactions, measured by change in market shares, to the three announcements. I found that no significant effect existed due to any of the three types of announcements, negative CSR announcements, boycotts, and recalls. This can be interpreted as the lack of public response to the announcements studied. These results were then followed up with a regression analysis that put the market share as the dependent variable and `Sample" as one of the independent variables. The purpose was to see if the firms that were subject to an announcement affected market share significantly. With regards to the tests establishing the effects of variables on market share, it was found that the results in all three samples were similar. The Size variable was always among the most significant followed by whether the firm is in its growth stages or mature stages. The Sample variable is the most important variable in the regression and shows that the subject firms did not have the expected effect on market share. For all three samples the Sample variable was not consistently significant but was, in fact, positive. This implies that a negative announcement positively contributes to market share. The implication of these regressions is not necessarily contrary to the event study first completed since the stock market study is observing owners' responses while the market share analysis is studying the customers' response to the same announcements. The final portion of the study shows that KLD is relatively effective at ranking firms, both at the product and firm level. Effective ranking is determined as the firm's lack of need to reassess a firm after an announcement. I find that there is no significant or economic difference in the ranking provided by KLD in the years surrounding the event. However, the regression results in all samples tested did produce the negative reaction in the KLD ranking that was as expected. However, it was only significant in the boycott sample. I conclude that the market reacts minimally to poor CSR and that customer's barks' are worse than their bite.

This study examines the market reactions to share repurchase announcements made by companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange from 2003 to 2012. We use an event study methodology and the Capital Asset Pricing Model to determine if there is an announcement effect when a share repurchase announcement is made. Our analysis show that consistent with signalling theory and the announcement effect, share repurchase announcements are associated with positive abnormal returns. The average abnormal return and cumulative average abnormal return noted was 0.46% and 3.81% respectively for the event period (t -20, t +20). There was an observable trend of declining share prices before the share repurchase announcement however the decline in the shares prices was not significant. We found some evidence of market timing ability in 2005 and 2010 however as a collective, we found no significant difference in timing a share repurchase announcement. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

In this thesis we will deal with the logic of public announcement which is a dynamic extension of epistemic logic. First we will explain the logic of truthful public announcement for the multiagent S5 system. Then we will examine what the public announcement can look like in systems weaker than S5. We will focus namely on systems in which the T axiom is invalid and the epistemic modality is interpreted not as a "knowledge" but as a "belief". We will create new semantics of public announcement which is not necessarily truthful but it is believed to be true. We will also try to axiomatize systems that have arisen in this way. Keywords: public announcement logic, logic for belief

This study examines the post-earnings announcement drift (PEAD) anomaly on the Swedish stock market. By constructing a corporate governance index based on share structure, board independence and board gender diversity, we test how the quality of firms’ corporate governance affects the drift – a link which is previously unexplored. We find no evidence of PEAD for firms with good corporate governance, while firms with bad corporate governance do experience a drift. Furthermore, a PEAD trading strategy based on bad governance firms yields significantly larger abnormal returns compared to the corresponding trading strategy for good governance firms. Our results are robust to controlling for the risk factors of the Fama-French 3-factor model. The findings support that investors tend to underreact to extreme earnings surprises reported by bad governance firms due to a higher degree of information uncertainty, while the stock price reactions are more complete for good governance firms.

Background: Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are two types of corporate takeover strategy, that is widely used for strengthening and maintaining a firm competitive advantage in both domestic and global markets. Where the common motives behind M&A, is to achieve business expansion through synergy, or to acquire an existing external technology/product outside of a firm's own operational territory. As the world has entered an era of information and globalization, where innovation seems to prosper and different industry markets have become ever more integrated on a global scale, not least in the software industry. Hence, more firms have resorted to M&A in order to survive in a modern competitive market. For example, to capture more market shares, boost productivity, cut development costs, improve investment returns, etc. Nevertheless, the integration process of M&A carries lots of risks, where there is lots of different factors that needs to be considered and discussed before adopting M&A strategies. Such as, what industry are the involving firm operating in, which country are the involving firm located in, and what economic impacts can be triggered by M&A announcements. However, there are currently lack of literatures investigating the economic impacts of M&A announcements across different industries. That is, depending on if the firms are operating within or outside of the same industry, the economic impacts of the M&A announcement might differ. Objectives: The objective of this thesis is to analyze the market reactions generated from M&A announcements, and determine if the economic impacts will be greater if a software target firm is merged/acquired by a software or non-software acquiring firm. Methods: A quantitative statistical event study has been used as the main methodology in this thesis. Which is a standard method to analyze market reaction, that is in this case represented by financial stock market data. Following the event study, a multiple regression analysis was conducted in order to explain the event study, by examine the economic impact on the abnormal return derived from M&A announcements. Results: The result from the event study disclosed that target firms tends to experience more positive abnormal returns, while acquiring firms will experience negative abnormal returns during M&A announcements. The results of the multiple regression analysis, revealed various significant variables that has high explanatory power to the abnormal return. Conclusions: Based on the empirical results, the greatest economic impact could be identified during an M&A announcement that involves a cooperative partnerships deals between software target firms and non-software acquiring firms. Furthermore, acquiring firms tends to offer a higher premium to target firms during M&A transactions. This in turn indicates that acquiring firms will statistically receive less abnormal returns compared to target firms. Delimitations: Due to the wide-ranging scope of an event study that has many diverse adoptions areas to explore, the author decided to make some demarcations in this thesis. In particular, this thesis will be focusing on analyzing stock price movements prior and during M&A announcements. In addition, certain factors/variables that can potentially generate a significant economic impact during M&A announcements will be investigated. Hence, other aspects that are related or may affect M&A transactions itself, will scarcely be discussed or even excluded from this study.

Public announcement systems have since long been a key communication method for airports. Visualcommunication, in the form of display systems, in conjunction with vocal announcements reach a broadaudience. Automating the process of generating announcements can increase effectiveness and profitability ofairports. Additionally modern text to speech technologies present airports with the possibility of announcing information in numerous languages, independent of employee language knowledge. This thesis includes the development process and result of a web-based announcement system for use in airport environments. The system utilizes modern text to speech technologies to achieve intelligibleannouncements created through an intuitive and user friendly interface.

This study examines the determinants of private placement discounts and announcement effects on the Stockholm Stock Exchange between 2014 and 2022. The results show that private placement announcement effects are significantly positive, reinforcing the empirical support for the monitoring hypothesis and information hypotheses. Positive announcement effects reflect signals of certification from private equity investors that the firm is undervalued. Regression analysis suggests that information costs and some firm characteristics are important determinants for discounts on private placements. Private equity investors will demand larger discounts when information asymmetry is high, and cash flow restraints are more severe. Foreign investors require significantly smaller discounts on private placements, possibly implying that they commonly assume a passive rather than active role as shareholders. Firms’ stated motivations for private placements and the agreed discounts are significantly related to stock market reactions. Specifically, motivations relating to an investment in a new project or an acquisition are associated with significantly more positive announcement effects.

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