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Purpose: This study aims to identify the most influential aspects that affect the consumer’s behavior regarding purchasing online, also why consumers choose not to complete their purchase or actually do complete it. 
 Research questions: How do an online retail store companies create a consumer experience resulting in a purchase or cancellation, and how do consumers perceive online experience? Methodology: A qualitative research approach was conducted, utilizing semi-structured interviews with two online retailing stores and five online consumers. Conclusion: The wants and needs in order to fulfill a purchase is the same for the companies and the consumers. However, the companies are clearly lacking on some aspects since they both confirmed that they have plenty of cancellations and items left in the basket.  Consumers base their knowledge on previous experience, and companies base their knowledge on their own investigations. The connection is lost sometimes, and then i results in cancellations and left items.

In this thesis, we study three applications of dynamic resource allocation: the first two consider dynamic lead-time quotation in make-to-order (MTO) systems with substitutable products and order cancellations, respectively; and the third application is a manpower allocation problem with job-teaming constraints. Matching supply and demand for manufacturing and service industries has been a fundamental focus of operations management literature, which concentrated on optimizing or improving supply-side decisions since demand has generally been assumed to be exogenously determined. However, recent business trends and advances in consumer behavior modeling have shown that demand for goods and services can clearly be shaped by various decisions that a firm makes, such as price and lead-time. In fact, competition between companies is no longer mainly based on price or product features; lead-time is one of the strategic measures to evaluate suppliers. In MTO manufacturing or service environments that aim to satisfy the customers' unique needs, lead-time quotation impacts the actual demand of the products and the overall profitability of the firm. In the first two parts of the thesis, we study the dynamic lead-time quotation problem in pure MTO (or service) systems characterized by lead-time sensitive Poisson demand and exponentially distributed service times. We formulate the problem as an infinite horizon Markov decision process (MDP) with the objective of maximizing the long-run expected average profit per unit time, where profits are defined to specifically account for delays in delivery of the customer orders. We study dynamic lead-time quotation problem in two particular settings; one setting with the possibility of demand substitution and another setting with order cancellations. The fundamental trade-off in lead-time quotation is between quoting short lead-times and attaining them. In case of demand substitution, i.e., in presence of substitutable products and multiple customer classes with different requirements and margins, this trade-off also includes capacity allocation and order acceptance decisions. In particular, one needs to decide whether to allocate capacity to a low-margin order now, or whether to reserve capacity for potential future arrivals of high-margin orders by considering customer preferences, the current workload in the system, and the future arrivals. In the case of order cancellations, one needs to take into account the probability of cancellation of orders currently in the system and quote lead-times accordingly; otherwise quotation of a longer lead-time may result in the loss of customer order, lower utilization of resources, and, in turn, reduced in profits. In Chapter 2, we study a dynamic lead-time quotation problem in a MTO system with two (partially) substitutable products and two classes of customers. Customers decide to place an order on one of the products or not to place an order, based on the quoted lead-times. We analyze the optimal profit and the structure of the optimal lead-time policy. We also compare the lead-time quotes and profits for different quotation strategies (static vs. dynamic) with or without substitution. Numerical results show that substitution and dynamic quotation have synergetic effects, and higher benefits can be obtained by dynamic quotation and/or substitution when difference in product revenues or arrival rates, or total traffic intensity are higher. In Chapter 3, we study a dynamic lead-time quotation problem in a MTO system with single product considering the order cancellations. The order cancellations can take place during the period that the order is being processed (either waiting or undergoing processing), or after the processing is completed, at the delivery to the customer. We analyze the behavior of optimal profit in terms of cancellation parameters. We show that the optimal profit does not necessarily decrease as cancellation rate increases through a numerical study. When the profit from a cancelled order, arrival rate of customers, or lead-time sensitivity of customers are high, there is a higher probability that optimal profit increases as cancellation rate increases. We also compare the cancellation scenarios with the corresponding no-cancellation scenarios, and show that there exists a cancellation scenario that is at least as good in terms of profit than a no-cancellation scenario for most of the parameter settings. In Chapter 4, we study the Manpower Allocation Problem with Job-Teaming Constraints with the objective of minimizing the total completion time of all tasks. The problem arises in various contexts where tasks require cooperation between workers: a team of individuals with varied expertise required in different locations in a business environment, surgeries requiring different composition of doctors and nurses in a hospital, a combination of technicians with individual skills needed in a service company. A set of tasks at random locations require a set of capabilities to be accomplished, and workers have unique capabilities that are required by several tasks. Tasks require synchronization of workers to be accomplished, hence workers arriving early at a task have to wait for other required workers to arrive in order to start processing. We present a mixed integer programming formulation, strengthen it by adding cuts and propose heuristic approaches. Experimental results are reported for low and high coordination levels, i.e., number of workers that are required to work simultaneously on a given task.

The purpose of this thesis is: (i) to produce an in-depth data analysis and computer-based simulations of the market environment to investigate whether financial stability is affected by the presence of High-Frequency investors; (ii) to verify how High-Frequency Trading and financial stability interact with each other under non-linear conditions; (iii) whether non-illicit behaviours can still lead to potentially destabilising effects; (iv) to provide quantitative support to the theses, either from the audit trail data or resulting from simulations. Simulations are provided to test whether High-Frequency Trading: (a) has an impact on market volatility, (b) leads to market splitting into two tiers; (c) takes the lion's share of arbitrage opportunities. Audit trail data is analysed to verify some hypotheses on the dynamics of the Flash Crash. The simulation on the impact of High-Frequency Trading on market volatility confirms that when markets are under stress, High-Frequency Trading may cause volatility to significantly increase. However, as the number of ultra-fast participants increases, this phenomenon tends to disappear and volatility realigns to its standard values. The market tiering simulation suggests that High-Frequency traders have some tendency to deal with each other, and that causes Low-Frequency traders also to deal with other slow traders, albeit at a lesser extent. This is also a kind of market instability. High-Frequency Trading potentially allows a few fast traders to grab all the arbitrage-led profits, so falsifying the Efficient Market Hypothesis. This phenomenon may disappear as more High-Frequency traders enter the competition, leading to declining profits. Yet, the whole matter seems a dispute for abnormal gains only between few sub-second traders. All simulations have been carefully designed to provide robust results: the behaviours simulated have been drawn from existing literature and the simplifying assumptions have been kept to a minimum. This maximises the reliability of the results and minimizes the potential of bias. Finally, from the data analysis, the impact of High-Frequency Trading on the Flash Crash seems significant; other sudden crashes occurred since, and more can be expected over the next future. Overall, it can be concluded that High-Frequency Trading shows some controversial aspects impacting on financial stability. The results are at a certain extent confirmed by the audit trail data analysis, although only indirectly, since the details allowing the match between High-Frequency traders and their behaviour are confidential and not publicly available Nevertheless, the findings about HFT-induced volatility, market segmentation and sub-optimal market efficiency, albeit not definitive, suggest that careful monitoring by regulators and policy-makers might be required.

The thesis aims to analyze customer satisfaction in the airlines Travel Service in claiming damages. The theoretical part provides the basic concepts of air transport, legislation on civil aviation, the importance of the position of airlines in Czech and foreign aviation market and the introduction of airline Travel Service. The practical part deals with the definition of fundamental rights of air passengers in claiming damages, especially when claiming baggage and delayed or canceled flights. The practical part has been prepared based on the survey of customers Airlines Travel Service In the final part of this thesis compares Travel Service with selected airlines. This thesis uses descriptive method especially in its theoretical part, analysis and comparison method in the practical part.

In recent years European airspace has become increasingly congested and airlines can now observe that en-route capacity constraints are the fastest growing source of flight delays. In 2010 this source of delay accounted for 19% of all flight delays in Europe and has been increasing with an average yearly rate of 17% from 2005 to 2010. This paper suggests and evaluates an approach to how disruption management can be combined with flight planning in order to create more proactive handling of the kind of disruptions, which are caused by congested airspace. The approach is evaluated using data from a medium size European carrier and estimates a lower bound saving of several million USD.

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No / Using data for every elective procedure in 2007 in the English National Health Service, we found evidence of socioeconomic inequality in the probability of having a procedure cancelled after admission while controlling for a range of patient and provider characteristics. Whether this disparity is inequitable is inconclusive.; Using data for every elective procedure in 2007 in the English National Health Service, we found evidence of socioeconomic inequality in the probability of having a procedure cancelled after admission while controlling for a range of patient and provider characteristics. Whether this disparity is inequitable is inconclusive. Copyright A[c] 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.; � Using data for every elective procedure in 2007 in the English National Health Service, we found evidence of socioeconomic inequality in the probability of having a procedure cancelled after admission while controlling for a range of patient and provider characteristics. Whether this disparity is inequitable is inconclusive.