acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

Date: June 3rd, 2011 Course: Master Thesis EFO 705, International Marketing Tutor: Johan Grinbergs Authors: Sasawan Heingraj (851007) and Varin Luenglertkul (840622) Title: The Important Factors influencing Brand Loyalty in Small E-Commerce Business: A Case Study of Thai Small E-Commerce Companies Problem: As the competitions in Thai e-commerce market are intense, price war is used as one strategy to compete competitors. To gain higher profit margins, brand loyalty is a key factor relating to companies’ success. However, there is a lack of knowledge regarding the important factors to build or enhance the level of brand loyalty among customers through entrepreneurs’ perspective. Therefore, the research question in this paper is "What are the important factors of brand loyalty connecting to Thai small e-commerce business success through an entrepreneur’s perspective?" Purpose: This paper aims to describe and analyze the brand loyalty strategy in Thai small e-commerce businesses, followed by a study of the important factors of brand loyalty that impact company’s competitive advantage. Method: The study is primarily based on qualitative research using entrepreneurs’ perspective approach. The five competitive forces model and the concept of brand loyalty strategy are applied. Data collected from literature review and five interviews. The interview questions are validated by using IOC approach. Conclusion: Brand loyalty can create competitive advantages and success for e-commerce businesses. Through entrepreneurs’ perspective, there are eight important factors which have a positive impact on brand loyalty. There is a connection among expectations, attitudes, trust, satisfaction and brand loyalty. By focusing on increasing customers’ expectations, high-quality, unique and creative products should be addressed. While contact interactivity and character play important roles in building trust, community and care are key factors to enhance customers’ attitudes. Along with customization, cultivation and choice in terms of the variety of designs, customer satisfaction can be generated. With all of the eight factors considered, brand loyalty can be potentially built among customers. Key word: Small E-commerce business, Brand loyalty, E-loyalty

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 160-166). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 160-166). Also available on the Internet.

<p> Continuous changes within the health care industry and continuing medical education regulations within the United States (US) provide opportunities for Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) accredited providers to enhance the continuing medical education provided to the physicians. Blended CME, Inc.&rsquo;s sole purpose is to allow accredited providers an opportunity to enhance physician knowledge, competence, and performance in order to narrow professional practice gaps and to produce measurable improvement in patient outcomes. This business plan shows how Blended CME intends to provide quality consulting services to accredited providers, while at the same time being a profitable organization. Blended CME utilizes a rigorous educational planning process that draws on the experience of multi-disciplinary experts in physician education, practice-based learning, and system-based practice.</p>

<p> This research was an attempt to replicate, yet expand previous empirically supported, qualitative gray literature research conducted by NEXA (2010). The primary difference between this study and the NEXA study is adding significance testing in a quantitative study, to substantiate previously reported positive organizational financial performance associated with business aircraft investment. The outcome contradicted the previous study by providing evidence there were no significant differences in financial performance between those companies that own business aircraft and those companies that do not. The sampling populations were collected from publicly available data through a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) aircraft registry and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) / Edgar database for the Standard and Poor&rsquo;s (S&amp;P) 600 Small Capitalization (SmallCap) Index funds. </p><p> The research utilized the Andersen (2001) Utilization strategies, Benefits, and shareholder Value (UBV) conceptual framework. The dependent variables of Earnings Before Income Tax, Depreciation and Ammoritization (EBITDA), Revenue Growth, Return on Equity (ROE), and Return on Assets (ROA) financial indicators and ratios were applied to test the significant differences between the independent variables of companies that own business aircraft versus companies that do not own business aircraft. The breadth of associated costs when contemplating investment in business aircraft goes well beynd the initial cost of the aircraft itself and was not covered in this study. Depending on the strategic objective and intended use of a business aircraft, ownership involves an additional and significant investment in infrastructure and back office support, segregated by direct and indirect costs. </p><p> In order to help define the future roles of business aircraft, the industry as a whole must create a synchronous and performance based public face that emphasizes the broad collection of the multi-dimensional and positive, technological, economic, and regulatory, political, and social dynamic contributions. Moreover, with financial indicators demonstrating positive value, productivity, and performance separation between business aircraft ownership from non-ownership, coupled with the internal as well as external drivers influencing financial results, the public face of business aviation and its aircraft should be one of the top investment decisions for future sustainability and competitive advantage.</p>

This study uses a field method to examine the effects of a group compensation plan on labor productivity, product quality, and organizational performance, in three independent subunits of the same manufacturing plant. More specifically, the study investigates whether the use of two budget-based incentives, a group output-target based scheme and a gain-sharing scheme offered in combination, motivates production teams to improve economic performance in this manufacturing setting. The output-target based scheme is a linear budget-based incentive that rewards individual team performance, providing a cash bonus when quantity meets or exceeds a target and a low (penalty) wage when quantity or product quality falls short of a target. The gain-sharing scheme (also a budget-based scheme) rewards production teams for achieving plant-level quarterly targets for labor productivity and product quality. After controlling for numerous factors that influence labor productivity and product quality in a multivariate regression model, I find that the combination of incentives schemes is associated with improvements in performance. Labor productivity increases by sixty eight percent and the defects rate decreases by ninety five percent following implementation of the incentive scheme. I also found a reduction in absenteeism and turnover, as well as improvements in the percentage of work orders completed on schedule. Although I cannot attribute the observed performance improvements to a specific scheme, nor discern whether the improvements are causally linked in some proportion to greater worker effort, improved peer monitoring, improved team cooperation, or better strategy development (i.e., worker learning); the empirical results of the study suggest that team (and group) performance is enhanced through the use of standard-based incentives contracts. Moreover, the results suggest that both schemes offered jointly with mechanisms to prevent free-riding and promote worker learning (timely performance feedback) create synergies in this particular setting that motivate production teams to improve performance. These findings suggest that this combination is effective in motivating group effort, promoting cooperation, and encouraging peer monitoring within and across production teams. All these factors leading to improvements of the firm's economic performance.

This dissertation offers an investigation of the current issues in economics of the international airline industry. The two broad issues considered are deregulation of and consolidation on the international airline markets. The process of deregulation has been and will probably remain gradual. Moreover, restrictions are often removed in such a way that players are forced to play by different rules. In this context, I measure price effects of asymmetric entry barriers at London's Heathrow airport. I find that such entry restriction decreases the fares of the affected carriers. Concurrently, I find that the airport dominance effect, shown to exist for the US domestic market, applies to the international routes as well. On the basis of my results, I suggest the following danger in the process of the gradual deregulation of international aviation. Given the strong political influences and the current industry structure, we may end up getting locked into situations, where a carrier that dominates an airport may obtain preferential treatment on the respective international routes. This can prevent entry by the more efficient carriers and/or keep the less efficient airlines in operation. As far as airline consolidation is concerned, I develop a new model of price competition between international airline alliances and test its predictions. The primary focus is on the price effects of codesharing (connecting the partner airlines' networks) and antitrust immunity (allowing the partner airlines to jointly set fares across the unified network). I show theoretically that antitrust immunity may not have negative price effects in addition to that of codesharing. This finding is contrary to what has been suggested previously. Empirical analysis confirms the theoretical predictions.

The thesis shows two possible ways in which intergenerational redistributions associated with a reform from a comprehensive income tax to a direct consumption tax are affected when the standard models studying this phenomenon are extended. The usual models studying the welfare impact of a direct consumption tax reform on transitional generations use numerically simulated overlapping generation general equilibrium models with strict life-cycle savers and a single production sector. The models examine the welfare impact of moving from a comprehensive income tax to either an expenditure tax or a wage tax; business taxes are ignored and assumed to "pass through" to individuals. One important result of these studies is that the expenditure tax reform results in large steady state welfare gains at the cost of imposing substantial welfare losses on the initial elderly generations. In marked contrast, a wage tax reform creates welfare gains to the elderly generations but results in lower steady state welfare gains (or even losses). This thesis tests the robustness of these conclusions under two important conditions ignored by these models. First, the thesis incorporates an explicit business sector in these models and studies the impact of implementing the two above described consumption taxes with an additional reform of replacing the business income tax with a business cash flow tax. Intergenerational redistributions are altered and difference in steady state welfare gains are much smaller under such consumption tax reforms. Second, the thesis shows how practically feasible transition rules can lower intergenerational redistributions without affecting the final steady state values. A variety of transition rules, both in business and individual sectors, are studied in this context.