TPP-SOD-like, mainly composed of tea polyphenol, is one of the best nature antioxidant known so far. However, it is cline to lose its functionality during production, storage, and transportation. It is, however, cline to be oxidized, thus lose its functionality during production, storage and transportation. In addition, its production cost is too high to make it widely available to the publics. This study utilized the company, Canlea International Co., as an example to confirm the usage of TPP SOD-like in the field of preventive medicine through expert interviews and consumer behavior analysis. From which we can know the trend of marketing strategy, acceptable pricing, and the way to publicize this product. The goals of this study are: (1) understanding the current marketing strategy of Canlea International Co. to meet the needs of consumers; (2) competitive advantage and disadvantage of SOS-like products in functional food market in order to find the niches; (3) understanding the characteristics of both consumers and potential consumers for the marketing of SOD-like products; and (4) investigating the beneficial relationship between marketing strategy of Canlea Co. and the sales of SOD-like products. The results indicate that Canlea SOD-like products have competitive advantages in terms of raw materials, production technology, and packaging. Nevertheless, it is quite a challenge to develop due to their high price and public acceptance to the trade brand. Furthermore, the contribution channel and market segmentation of these products need to be improved, especially in product promotion and the fortification of public relations. As to the general attribute of consuming behaviors, consumers tend to take two or more health-care products at the same time with an averaging expense of NTD 2000 per month. The study also shows that users of SOD-like products usually localized in central and southern Taiwan and the best way to promote these products is through the introduction among users. Furthermore, the longer consumers use SOD-like products the better the effect is. Key Words¡Gmarketing strategy, mass marketing, consumer characteristics, competitor analysis

<p><strong>Abstract</strong></p><p> </p><p><strong>Introduction</strong></p><p>The way banks compete has changed dramatically during recent years, mostly because of international trends such as advances in information technology, globalisation and deregulations. This has made competition harsher meaning that survival and success requires knowledge about the competitors and understanding about the way they act and react. Within marketing there is a need to identify suitable strategies to acquire knowledge about competitor’s marketing and methods to how to react to it.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Purpose </strong></p><p>The purpose of our research study is to analyse how companies in the bank industry are aware and react to their competitor’s marketing activities.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Method</strong></p><p>We have conducted a qualitative study and used a mix of the inductive and deductive research approaches. We chose to do semi-structured case studies, gathering descriptive data from large Swedish banks with offices located in Jönköping. The banks that were included were Handelsbanken, Nordea, SEB, and Swedbank.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Conclusions</strong></p><p>Our analysis concludes that staying aware of competitors marketing is important for companies to be able to react and counter on a promotion attack. We found that there are certain methods that can be used to stay alert: competitor marketing analysis, customer focus and probing. We also concluded that standardisation, differentiation and presence are required to react to competitors marketing.</p>

The diploma thesis deals with the analysis of the group Société Générale between 2005-2011. The analysis concentrates on assesment of economic development and efficiency of Société Générale between 2005-2011 as a response to the development in the global economy, including the analysis of the main reasons for its development and analysis of potential risks in future development of the group. The thesis also deals with the development of the French banking market between 2005-2011, its specifics and main players with impact on comparison of these player to Société Générale and on finding the market position for Société Générale.

The evolution of nonreproductive castes is a defining characteristic of eusociality. The function and developmental regulation of the altruistic worker and soldier caste is the central element contributing to major advantages of eusociality over solitary animals. The soldier caste is the first evolved sterile caste in termites. Their primary function is believed to be colony defense. However, the function and development of termite soldiers remains largely unknown. Because of their apparent morphological adaptation for fighting and their limited behavior repertoire, our understanding of colony defense by termite soldiers is limited to their physical defense. In addition, we know little about the molecular mechanisms mediating soldier development. In Chapters 2 and 3 I discuss the role of the soldier caste under competition risk. By exposing the Eastern subterranean termite Reticulitermes flavipes to cues of a competitor termite species, I found that exposure to competitor cues reduced feeding, compromised growth and survival of R. flavipes workers. The presence of R. flavipes soldiers largely ameliorated these negative impacts. At the transcriptional level, R. flavipes soldiers can counteract the effects of competitor cues on worker head gene expression. This counteracting effect seems to be associated with genes in metabolism and immunity. These studies demonstrate that competition can affect a termite colony’s fitness by either competitors physically invading the colony and causing damage or cues from competitors inducing a stress response in termite colony members. More importantly, soldiers can contribute to colony fitness by physically engaging in combat, but also by enhancing colony members’ survival under competitor-cue exposure. In Chapter 4, I describe the molecular mechanism mediating soldier-caste differentiation. I cloned the full length cDNA sequence of the R. flavipes Methoprene-tolerance (Met) gene, a gene encoding a putative receptor for juvenile hormones. Using RNA interference, I studied the function of Met and found that this gene essentially mediates the JH-dependent soldier-caste differentiation in termites.

Title: Study of selected sports facilities specialized in gymnastic sports in the Czech Republic, Denmark and Norway Objectives: The purpose of this diploma thesis is to compare selected sports facilities specialized in gymnastic sports in the Czech Republic with similar facilities in Denmark and Norway, gain new knowledge about this specific area of providing sport service and from the results of this study compile an improved model for establishing and running of a new sports facility specialized in gymnastic sports in the area of the Czech Republic's capital city. Methods: In this thesis were primarily used qualitative methods of research in the form of an interview, which was done with the representatives of selected sports facilities providing similar services. The information gathered from the interview and from the method of analysis of texts and documents were further processed by the comparison method (case study comparison). The final model for establishing and running of a new sports facility specialized in gymnastic sports was compiled using the methods of observing, analogy and SWOT analysis. Results: The result is a general model for establishing and running of a new sports facility specialized in gymnastic sports in the area of the Czech Republic's capital city. This model describes...

This thesis analyzes the products of Toyota Motor Czech spol. s.r.o. which is a company operating on the Slovak and Czech car market. The work is based on the theoretical knowledge described in the first part. The first part is then followed by a practical section, in which I first describe the current market situation in the automotive industry in Czech and Slovak Republic. Further I characterize the company Toyota Motor Czech spol. s.r.o. itself, then I describe the most important car models and related market segments. Later in the practical part I analyze the models of Toyota in terms of price and marketability over the competition. The final section summarizes the information obtained and gives some recommendations that the company could use in the future to improve the position of individual models.

Este trabalho foca os grupos estratégicos, que são, de certa forma, o resultado de uma análise estrutural realizada dentro de um setor. Até o começo dos anos 1970, era comum aceitar que as empresas de um setor de atividades eram afetadas pelas mesmas demandas e restrições ambientais e tinham de superar as mesmas barreiras de entrada. Era de se esperar que as empresas se assemelhassem. Naquela década, Hunt fez o primeiro estudo sobre grupos estratégicos e descobriu que as empresas de um setor eram impactadas em níveis diferentes pelas condições externas, tinham de superar barreiras de entrada diferentes e podiam seguir estratégias próprias. De acordo com essas descobertas, as empresas de um setor poderiam ser agrupadas com base em conjuntos de características distintivas. Para classificar as empresas de um setor em grupos, é exigida dos analistas uma boa compreensão do setor e dos concorrentes, o que nos leva às análises setorial e da concorrência, ambas intrinsecamente conectadas, mas sem uma ordem de precedência estabelecida entre elas. A análise da concorrência exige dos analistas a difícil tarefa de obter e interpretar uma grande variedade de informações sobre os concorrentes, como seus objetivos, seus pressupostos sobre si mesmos, sobre as outras empresas e o setor, suas estratégias, seus recursos e competências, e seus mercados-alvo. Em setores oligopolizados, como poucas empresas estão envolvidas, a análise pode ser um pouco mais fácil, mas em setores com concorrência perfeita ou concorrência monopolista o grande número de empresas pode tornar o processo muito complexo, difícil, caro e demorado. O conceito de grupos estratégicos oferece uma forma alternativa para simplificar o processo de análise, uma vez que permite agrupar empresas por conjuntos de características de forma a manter empresas relativamente semelhantes em um mesmo grupo. Ao fazer isso, a empresa que realiza a análise pode decidir quais grupos estão próximos o suficiente para merecer uma análise mais profunda, como grupo, ou pela seleção de empresas específicas, individualmente. Em muitos trabalhos acadêmicos, os grupos estratégicos foram obtidos utilizando-se procedimentos estatísticos, geralmente a análise de clusters. Optamos por uma abordagem distinta. Sem diminuir a importância das ferramentas estatísticas, incorporamos informações extraídas das análises setorial e da concorrência, utilizadas para confirmar ou contestar a precisão dos grupos definidos estatisticamente. Da mesma forma que não existe ordem de precedência entre as análises do setor e da concorrência, não há ordem de precedência entre o uso dessas análises e das ferramentas estatísticas. É possível classificar primeiramente as empresas estatisticamente, para facilitar a análise posterior da concorrência e do setor, ou analisar o setor e a concorrência para definição dos grupos, confrontando os resultados com dados estatísticos. Nessas análises, estão envolvidos elementos estatísticos e cognitivos, ambos sujeitos a vieses. Nos procedimentos estatísticos, há a arbitrariedade intrínseca na definição das variáveis, enquanto nos processos cognitivos há a influência de modelos mentais específicos na percepção dos analistas. A adoção de uma abordagem combinada, como fizemos neste trabalho, permite confirmar ou contestar os grupos obtidos por uma forma ou outra. Os fundamentos teóricos do trabalho estão baseados, principalmente, em uma revisão bibliográfica abrangente das análises da concorrência e setorial. As referências de campo foram antecedidas por um estudo abrangente do setor farmacêutico brasileiro e consistiram de um estudo de caso múltiplo das empresas brasileiras Aché e Eurofarma e da multinacional francesa Sanofi-Aventis, o qual forneceu subsídios para uma análise de aglomerados (K-médias). Ao confrontar os resultados estatísticos e as informações extraídas das análises do setor e da concorrência, foi possível detectar questões importantes para o ajuste dos agrupamentos e defender que a complementaridade entre os processos estatístico e cognitivo (incorporados nas análises da concorrência e do setor) é essencial para obtenção de grupos consistentes. / This work focuses on strategic groups, which are, to some extent, the result of a structure analysis within an industry. Until the early 1970s, common belief was that firms from an industry were affected by the same environmental demands and constraints and had to overcome the same entry barriers. Based on these considerations, firms operating in a same industry would resemble each other. In that decade, Hunt pioneered the research of strategic groups and found out that firms of an industry were impacted in different levels by external conditions, had to overcome different entry barriers and could, therefore, adopt different strategies. According to these findings, firms could be grouped based on sets of distinguishing characteristics. To classify the firms of an industry in groups, a good understanding of the industry and the competitors is required, which leads us to industry and competitor analyses, intrinsically connected, but with no precedence order established between them. A competitor analysis imposes on the analysts the difficult task of obtaining and interpreting a great variety of information regarding competitors, such as their goals, their assumptions about themselves, the other companies and the industry, their strategies, resources and competences, and target markets. In oligopolies, the analysis may be somewhat easier since few companies are involved, but in industries with perfect competition or monopolistic competition the large number of companies can make the process very complex, difficult, expensive and time consuming. The strategic groups\" concept offers an alternative way to simplify the analysis process, since it allows to group companies by sets of characteristics so that relatively similar companies are kept in a same group. By doing so, the company running the analysis can decide which groups are close enough to deserve a deeper analysis as a group or to sort out firms for an individual analysis. In many academic works, the strategic groups were obtained by using statistical procedures, cluster analysis mostly. In this work, we chose a distinct approach. Not diminishing the relevance of statistical tools, we incorporated information extracted from industry and competitor analyses and used them to confirm or contest the correctness of statistically defined groups. Similarly to the lack of precedence order established between industry and competitor analyses, there is no precedence order among these analyses and statistical tools. It is possible to first classify the companies statistically in order to facilitate a following competitor or industry analysis, or to make the industry and competitor analyses in order to define the groups, confronting the result with statistical data. In these analyses, cognitive and statistical elements are involved, both subject to biases. In statistical procedures, there is the intrinsic arbitrariness in the definition of the variables, while in cognitive processes there is the influence of specific mental models on the analysts\" perceptions. The adoption of a combined approach, which we chose in this work, allows confirming or contesting the groups obtained in one way or another. The theoretical underpinnings are mostly grounded in a comprehensive bibliographic review on competitor analysis, industry analysis and strategic groups. The field activities were introduced by a comprehensive survey of the Brazilian pharmaceutical industry, which consisted of a multiple case study of the Brazilian companies Aché and Eurofarma and the French multinational company Sanofi-Aventis and provided subsidies for a cluster analysis (K-means). By confronting statistical results and information extracted from the industry and competitor analyses, we were able to detect important issues to a fine-tune of groupings and defend that the complementarity between statistical and cognitive processes (embedded in competitor and industry analyses) is essential to obtain consistent groups.

1 LOYALTY REBATES AS AN EXCLUSIONARY PRACTISE IN THE EUROPEAN COMPETITION LAW ABSTRACT This master thesis treats loyalty rebates in the light of European competition law when applied by dominant undertakings and analyses its consequences. It describes when such practise might be considered by European Union authorities as an abuse of a dominant position as it has negative impact on the competitors by inducing customer's loyalty to the dominant undertaking. It depicts its position in the European competition law system and compares it to other practises that influence the market in a similar way. Also, it classifies different types of loyalty and other types of rebates and explains how such rebates can force a customer to acquire increasing portions of his demand from the dominant undertaking and how they can damage its competitors. The thesis also offers a critical view on a very strict treatment of this practise by European institutions in the past and it arguments by several positive effects that loyalty and other types of rebates may have. Simultaneously it takes into consideration the newest decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union in the Intel case from September 2017 which will hopefully affect EU institutions' approach to this practise as it broke well-established per se interdiction of...

Problembakgrund: Marknaden för profilkläder består idag av många aktörer, företag medfokus på enbart profilkläder och företag som huvudsakligen fokuserar på yrkeskläder. Detskapas en viss problematik inom profilbranschen som ligger i hur företag väljer att profilerasitt företag. Kläder som skulle kunna fungera som profilplagg finns tillgängligt i helakonfektionsbranschen och detta leder till en stor och splittrad profilklädesmarknad. Dåaktörerna är många och därmed också företagens val av profilering blir det alltmer viktigt förföretag att hitta nya idéer och lösningar för att följa med i konkurrensen. Uppdraget ochutgångspunkten i studien har varit att redogöra hur en framtida utveckling avkonfektionsföretaget Blåkläders profilsortiment skulle kunna se ut.Syfte: Vårt övergripande syfte med studien är att undersöka och kartlägga Blåklädersprofilsortiment. Syftet med uppsatsen är även att undersöka hur man kan användadifferentiering som ett verktyg vid sortimentsutveckling samt att ge förslag till hur Blåklädersprofilsortiment kan utvecklas.Metod: Studien har utförts genom en kvalitativ undersökning. Vårt empiriska material bestårav intervjuer med konkurrenter för att granska hur företaget Blåkläder står sig gentemot dessa.Vidare har vi gjort en undersökning med slutkunder där slumpvis utvalda företag tillfrågats.Teoretisk referensram: Vi har valt att använda oss av olika modeller och teorier för attkunna uppnå studiens syfte; Porters femkraftsmodell, konkurrentanalys,produktkonceptmodellen samt Swot-analys.Analys och slutsats: Studiens slutsatser visar att de belysta företagens profilsortimentinnehåller liknande produkter, men skiljer sig åt vad det gäller design, bredd och paketering avsortimentet. Företaget Fristads har valt att benämna sortimentet med ett eget varumärkesnamnoch skapat en tydlig differentiering på marknaden. Björnkläder har också valt att namnge delarav sortimentet, men de har inte gjort en tydlig paketering av sortimentet. Utifrån studiensresultat presenterades möjligheter för Blåkläder att utveckla sitt profilsortiment. Möjlighetersåsom att göra en tydligare produktdifferentiering, att skapa ett unikt koncept som skiljer sigfrån konkurrenter, hitta kärnan och en röd tråd i sortimentet, och skapa plagg med bättrepassform då detta efterfrågas av slutkunderna. Företag kan, oavsett i vilken bransch manverkar, tillämpa differentiering som ett verktyg vid sortimentsutveckling.Sammanfattning på engelska: Background and problem discussion: The market of profile clothing consists of differentactors; companies that only produce profile clothing and companies that produce bothprofile clothing and work wear. A common issue in the profile market is how companieschoose to profile their company. There are many products in the clothing industry that couldact as profile clothes. That is why the market for profile clothing today is fragmented.Because of the large amount of actors it is important to find new ideas and solutions forcompanies to develop their assortment of profile clothing. The starting point of this paperwas to give suggestions and describe how a future range of products for Blåkläder wouldlook like.Purpose: The purpose of this paper was to study and analyze the profile assortment ofBlåkläder. Moreover the purpose was also to analyze how to use product differentiation todevelop the assortment. We also wanted to give Blåkläder suggestions regarding how todevelop their profile assortment.Method: This paper has been based on a qualitative research. The empirical researchconsists of interviews with competitors of Blåkläder. The paper also includes a researchwith final costumers.Theoretical frame of reference: To achieve the purpose of this paper we have usedseveral models and theories; the five forces (Porter), competitor analysis, product conceptmodel and a swot-analysis.Analysis and conclusions: The conclusion presents possibilities for Blåkläder regardinghow to develop their profile assortment. We believe that product differentiation is one ofthe most important steps in this process. It is critical for Blåkläder to find a unique conceptand to find a main thread through the assortment. The result from our survey shows thatthere is a demand for more fitted profile clothing. Furthermore, companies regardless ofwhat kind of industry they are in can apply differentiation in the work to develop anassortment. / Program: Textil produktutveckling med entreprenörs- och affärsinriktning

Applying data analytics for talent acquisition and retention has been identified as one of the most urgent challenges facing HR leaders around the world; however, it is also one of the challenges that firms are least prepared to tackle. Our research strives to narrow such a capability gap between the urgency and readiness of data-driven human resource management. First, we predict interfirm competitors for human capital in the labor market utilizing the rich information contained in over 89,000 LinkedIn users' profiles. Using employee migrations across firms, we derive and analyze a human capital flow network. We leverage this network to extract global cues about interfirm human capital overlap through structural equivalence and community classification. The online employee profiles also provide rich data on the explicit knowledge base of firms and allow us to measure the interfirm human capital overlap in terms of similarity in their employees' skills. We validate our proposed human capital overlap metrics in a predictive analytics framework using future employee migrations as an indicator of labor market competition. The results show that our proposed metrics have superior predictive power over conventional firm-level economic and human resource measures. Second, we estimate the effect of skilled immigrants on the native U.S. workers' turnover probability. We apply unsupervised machine learning to categorize employees' self-reported skills and find that skilled immigrants disproportionately specialize in IT. In contrast, the native workers predominantly focus on management and analyst skills. Utilizing the randomness in the H-1B visa lottery system and a 2SLS design, we find that a 1 percentage point increase in a firm's proportion of skilled immigrant employees leads to a decrease of 0.69 percentage points in a native employee's turnover risk. However, this beneficial crowding-in effect varies for native workers with different skills. Our methodology highlights the need to account for a multifaceted view of the skilled immigration's effect on native workers. Finally, we also propose a set of features and models that are able to effectively predict future employee turnover outcomes. Our predictive models can provide significant utility to managers by identifying individuals with the highest turnover risks.