Ces dernières années, le développement continu des marques de distributeurs (MDD) a abouti à un marché composés de trois grands segments de consommateurs : (i) ceux qui sont fidèles aux marques nationales, (ii) aux marques de distributeurs et (iii) ceux qui combinent les deux. Pourquoi ce dernier groupe de consommateurs migrent-t-il d'une marque nationale vers une marque de distributeurs et inversement ? A notre connaissance, aucune étude n'a été menée sur cet aspect de la concurrence entre marque nationale et MDD. Les travaux de recherche en marketing ont surtout étudié les changements entre marques nationales ou le choix des MDD. Or, le comportement migratoire entre les deux types de marques peut représenter jusqu'à 20% des comportements d'achat (source : Panel MarketingScan). L'objet de cette thèse est donc de proposer un cadre théorique permettant de comprendre la migration entre les deux types de marques. Nous analysons l'influence des variables relatives à la marque (ou des références) et à la catégorie de produits tout en tenant compte des différences individuelles (observées et non observées) entre les ménages et les enseignes. Nous utilisons comme cadre empirique le panel Angevin de la Société MarketingScan. Nous élaborons pour cela un modèle de choix avec coefficients aléatoires et facteurs latents (Latent Factor Random coefficients Multinomial Logit Model) permettant de contrôler l'hétérogénéité entre les ménages. Les résultats montrent que le type de MDD (marque enseigne ou marque propre) a une influence à la fois sur la migration vers et le rachat des MDD. Le prix reste toujours important dans la concurrence entre les deux types de marques. Une plus grande disponibilité des références au niveau de la marque de distributeurs permet d'attirer plus de consommateurs. Toutefois, une forte présence de MDD réduit la satisfaction des consommateurs à l'égard de l'assortiment et les pousser à migrer vers les marques nationales.

No description available.

Thèse (Ph. D.)--Université Laval, 2005. / Titre de l'écran-titre (visionné le 23 février 2006). Bibliogr.

No description available.

Magister Scientiae (Physiotherapy) - MSc(Physio) / Stroke is a worldwide medical emergency, and the trend in its incidence is rising. Stroke leads to activity limitation and participation restriction among stroke clients. However rehabilitation of stroke disability has been found as lacking emphasis on reintegration issues, resulting into stroke clients facing different barriers to reintegration in the community after discharge. There is limited information about experiences of stroke clients in the communities after discharge from rehabilitation centers in Malawi. The current study was conducted to explore the barriers to reintegration experienced by the clients post discharge from a rehabilitation center in Malawi. A qualitative research was adopted to explore the perceived barriers to reintegration at Malawi Against Physical Disabilities (MAP) Kachere rehabilitation centre in Blantyre. In-depth interviews were utilized to capture data from perspectives of eight stroke clients, eight caregivers and seven service providers. The data was analyzed by means of content analysis. The findings of this study show key barriers that challenge community reintegration at two levels: individual and environmental. At individual level the barriers include impairments mainly depression and anxiety and physical weakness; and personal characteristics such as denial, gender and comorbidity. At the environmental level stroke clients experience attitudinal barriers by people in different settings of the community, poor terrain, long distance to places of interest, inaccessible structures and poverty. From the findings, therefore, stroke client experience wide range of barriers in both the activity and participation domains of community reintegration.Based on the key findings, recommendations have been made along three broad lines. To decrease barriers to reintegration, service providers could use the findings to consider equally addressing the potential negative contextual factors to reintegration when managing stroke clients, a shift from purely medical model approach to management of stroke. To increase rehabilitation services the government of Malawi could address the problem of limited funding to rehabilitation organizations and put measures to increase number of rehabilitation personnel at community, district and national levels. Further research in the area of community reintegration and development of a model of stroke care and rehabilitation in the country has also been recommended with view to improving stroke care and enhanced community reintegration post stroke in the country.

Cette thèse améliore la notation des clients. L’évaluation des clients est importante pour les entreprises dans leurs processus de prise de décision parce qu'elle aide à résoudre des problèmes de gestion clés tels que le choix des clients à cibler pour une campagne de marketing ou l'analyse des clients qui sont susceptibles de quitter l'entreprise. La recherche effectuée dans le cadre de cette thèse apporte plusieurs contributions dans trois domaines de la littérature sur la notation des clients. Premièrement, de nouvelles sources de données sont utilisées pour évaluer les clients. Deuxièmement, la méthodologie pour passer des données aux décisions est améliorée. Troisièmement, la prédiction des événements courants du client est proposée comme une nouvelle application de la notation des clients. Tous les résultats présentés dans cette thèse sont issus de données réelles et sont non seulement d'une grande valeur académique, mais aussi d'une grande pertinence commerciale. / This dissertation improves customer scoring. Customer scoring is important for companies in their decision making processes because it helps to solve key managerial issues such as the decision of which customers to target for a marketing campaign or the assessment of customer that are likely to leave the company. The research in this dissertation makes several contributions in three areas of the customer scoring literature. First, new sources of data are used to score customers. Second, methodology to go from data to decisions is improved. Third, customer life event prediction is proposed as a new application of customer scoring.

Although many counselors consider themselves to be culturally aware, research has shown that deliberately and respectfully addressing race, culture, and ethnicity—particularly with clients of color—does not occur as consistently as it should, despite empirical evidence which documents that discussions about how racial and cultural factors shape the client's presenting problem contribute to favorable counseling outcomes. This exploratory study used a qualitative method to examine professional African American counselors' experiences of discussing racial, ethnic, and cultural issues with their culturally diverse clients. Critical race theory functioned as the research paradigm that guided this study. As a result, this study produced seven categories and four subcategories that explored the influences, thoughts, and understandings that came to bear on their efforts to discuss race, ethnicity, and culture with clients of color. Participants found that candid discussions about racial and cultural matters, in combination with a willingness to explore counselor-client differences, greatly enhanced the therapeutic rapport with clients. Furthermore, participants provided suggestions for graduate counseling programs to improve their multicultural curriculum, and they discussed the importance of counselors exercising multicultural competency both within and outside of clinical sessions. Essentially, this study examined the strategies that African American counselors use to explore cultural dynamics with clients of color. Implications for the counseling field are also recommended based on the findings. / Ph. D.

In the current South African context there is a strong likelihood of the occurrence of trauma incidents that involve people of different races. Anecdotal evidence suggests that this has contributed to the increased expression of negative racial sentiments by victims of trauma, especially in crime related trauma, when the perpetrator/s are of a different race group to the victim. This research study locates itself within the small number of studies that have sought to engage with the problem of negative racial sentiments as a response to trauma. This study focused particularly on the observations, explanations and interventions of volunteer counsellors in having to engage with this content in traumatized clients. The study sought to understand the impact that the expression of negative racial sentiments had on the process of trauma counselling and debriefing and on counsellors personally. The research was operationalized within a hermeneutically oriented qualitative research framework. The participant group was comprised of 11 volunteer counsellors from different parts of Johannesburg and from different organizations. Participants were chosen through purposive sampling and face to face semi-structured interviews were used as the method of data collection. Thematic content analysis was employed to analyze the interview texts. The findings suggest that negative racial sentiments are a commonly occurring response following a trauma. Counsellors predominantly understand negative racial sentiments to be part of the trauma symptom pattern, in that they explain such responses as ‘trigger’ reactions. Counsellors also understood the sentiments to represent pre-existing prejudice, exaggerated and re-evoked by the trauma. The findings indicate that counsellors were developing and utilizing skills and interventions mainly of their own design in engaging with negative racial sentiments, as they are generally not trained on how to engage with this content in trauma counselling. Counsellors use interventions such as normalizing, psychoeducation and CBT based interventions when they do intervene, but in some cases make a choice not to intervene. Counsellors reported considerable discomfort and suggested that although case by case intervention was important, some guidance as to how to work in this area would be useful. The contextual nature of the problem and related interventions was also highlighted.

In this thesis closed-loop control strategies over a communication network with multiple clients are developed. To accomplish this objective, a steel-ball magnetic-levitation system, a DC motor speed-control system, and an autonomous wheelchair robot referred to as Clients 1, 2, and 3, respectively were used as Networked-Based-control (NCS) test beds to validate the proposed strategies. For real-time operation, Linux with Real-Time Application Interface (RTAI) and Control and Measurement Interface (Comedi) were used as the operating system for Clients 1 and 2. Client 3's software was written in Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 on the Windows XP operating system (OS). User datagram protocol (UDP) was used as the communication network protocol in this research due to its better real-time performance instead of transmission control protocol (TCP). Although UDP has no guarantee for transferring data, it has smaller overheads and less time delay than TCP. Since the robotic wheelchair and the server are run on different OSs, Samba was used to put both systems into the same LAN with a fast data-transmission speed. Using Samba, the round-trip communication time between the robotic wheelchair and the server is only 11.2 ms whereas 30.8 ms is taken without using Samba. When the server receives the sensor data from multiple clients at the same time, the NCS stability may be deteriorated due to the limitation of the system bandwidth. The NCS stability is affected by the sampling period of the system, and the reduction of the sampling period improves the control loop's performance. However, a shorter sampling period requires more network bandwidth to transmit more sensor data or control data, which increases the network traffic load. Using the PING test, the transmission time for each control loop was measured. The processing time for each system was also measured by a time-stamp function, and the operation time for each control loop was obtained. In order to maintain the NCS stable, several combinations of the sampling periods for each client are suggested and verified. The bandwidth utilization of Client 1 is set to be 43.5% and the range of the bandwidth utilization of Client 2 with guaranteed stability was found to be between 9.1% and 45.3%. Thus, the bandwidth utilization of Client 3 is from 11.8% to 46.8%. The multiple-client NCS test bed could maintain its stability within these ranges of the bandwidth utilizations of all clients.

Proefschrift--Universiteit van Amsterdam, 2007. / Bibliogr. p. 151-166.