Many companies from around the world enter the global market. The firms have to specialize in order to sustain their competitiveness. Many Taiwanese companies are export-oriented. The major export markets are Japan, the US and Europe for those Taiwan companies. But these markets are mature and the growth rate is low unlike Russian market. That is why many Taiwan companies entered or plan to enter Russian market. Due to the fact that Russia is a potentially big market and geographically far from Taiwan-ROC, and a fast developing economy, establishing business in Russia is certainly interesting. According to the Bureau of Foreign Trade, Ministry of Economic Affairs Taiwan- ROC, mutual trade in 2009 posted US$2,9 billion, Bureau of Foreign Trade (2010). While many companies show great interest in entering the Russian market, there still seems to be some kind of hesitation due to the special nature of the Russian market. In this thesis I will focus on an emerging Russian market and its appeal to foreign companies, namely Taiwanese company such as Asus which made its path into Russian market. Target is to describe Asus initial entry strategies. Problem Statement There are many external factors affecting entry strategies picked up by firms around the world. Legal, political, cultural and institutional factors are just some of the many factors that should be dealt with when operating business on a foreign turf. Many people want to know more on Russian market business experiences, it is hard to find any particular works/papers which can describe a current situation and lead them to commercial success. Russian Federation is a very complex region with its own traditions and business culture. What particular Foreign Operation Methods should a company choose? Indeed choosing right FOM represents a critical component of international business activity. Once described as a ”frontier issue” in international business, researchers as well as practitioners now regard it as fundamental to any discussions about international business strategies and the performance by companies in the international arena. Purpose Despite the fact that in Russian Federation the cost of opening a business is higher than in most other countries and many other destabilizing factors, Asus has found its path to success. How was it possible? What are the lessons one can learn from that experience? The purpose of the thesis is to find out the success factors of Asus as well as study its entry strategy. The research purposes of this paper are as follows: 1. To review the related literature of Entry Strategies 2. To study Russian market 3. To analyze Asus initial entry strategies and analyze its Russian business

Nos anos recentes tem-se percebido o interesse pela contribuição do design na inovação e nos negócios, mas esta visão com foco no design, por outro lado, ainda não está plenamente inserida na estratégia da indústria. Esta tese tem por objetivo analisar não só a cultura de design na micro e pequena indústria, tomando como exemplo o setor moveleiro no estado de São Paulo, como também, dentro do contexto estratégico, quais são os fatores que interferem e decidem o sucesso ou não da inserção da ferramenta de design e sua gestão. Neste sentido,são estudados os aspectos relativos ao design como diferencial do negócio, a estrutura organizacional das micro e pequenas indústrias, a Gestão de Design como sistema integrador de competências, seu consumidor, e como toda esta estrutura desenvolve as características do design na organização, para finalmente propor um modelo teórico que possa indicar soluções estratégicas para a inserção do design dentro da Micro e Pequena Indústria. A tese inicia-se na proposta de que o design e sua gestão podem alavancar a indústria pela sua visão estratégica, trazendo não só inovação nos conceitos desenvolvidos, própria da cultura do design, bem como sendo um fator integrador de estratégias no âmbito do design e do marketing. O estudo mostra que a Gestão de Design e o Modelo teórico aqui proposto podem ser um componente importante para implementar soluções competitivas e integradoras com outras ferramentas estratégicas da organização. / In recent years, there has been great interest in design innovation and contribution to the business; however, this business vision, focusing on design, is not yet fully in line with the industry strategy. This thesis aims to examine not only the design culture in the Micro and Small Industry, taking as an example the furniture sector in the State of São Paulo, but also within the strategic context and business. These factors interfere with and help decide the success or failure of an integration design tool and its management. In this sense, the aspects studied are design as a differential business, the organizational structure of Micro and Small Industries, Design Management as a system integrator skill, customers, and how all this structure develops the design features in the organization to finally propose a theoretical model that can indicate strategic solutions for integrating design within the business vision. The thesis begins by proposing that design and management can leverage the industry towards its strategic vision, not only innovating developed concepts, its own design culture, but integrating factor strategies in design and marketing as well. The study shows that Design Management and the Theoretical Model proposed herein can be an important component to implement competitive solutions and integrated with other strategic organizational tools.

Methodologies designed to support new product development are receiving increasing interest in recent literature. A significant percentage of new product failure is attributed to a mismatch between designed product features and consumer liking. A variety of methodologies have been proposed and tested for consumer liking or preference prediction, ranging from statistical methodologies e.g. multiple linear regression (MLR) to non-statistical approaches e.g. artificial neural networks (ANN), support vector machines (SVM), and belief rule-based (BRB) systems. BRB has been previously tested for consumer preference prediction and target setting in case studies from the beverages industry. Results have indicated a number of technical and conceptual advantages which BRB holds over the aforementioned alternative approaches. This thesis focuses on presenting further advantages and applications of the BRB methodology for consumer liking prediction. The features and advantages are selected in response to challenges raised by three addressed case studies. The first case study addresses a novel industry for BRB application: the fast moving consumer goods industry, the personal care sector. A series of challenges are tackled. Firstly, stepwise linear regression, principal component analysis and AutoEncoder are tested for predictors’ selection and data reduction. Secondly, an investigation is carried out to analyse the impact of employing complete distributions, instead of averages, for sensory attributes. Moreover, the effect of modelling instrumental measurement error is assessed. The second case study addresses a different product from the personal care sector. A bi-objective prescriptive approach for BRB model structure selection and validation is proposed and tested. Genetic Algorithms and Simulated Annealing are benchmarked against complete enumeration for searching the model structures. A novel criterion based on an adjusted Akaike Information Criterion is designed for identifying the optimal model structure from the Pareto frontier based on two objectives: model complexity and model fit. The third case study introduces yet another novel industry for BRB application: the pastry and confectionary specialties industry. A new prescriptive framework, for rule validation and random training set allocation, is designed and tested. In all case studies, the BRB methodology is compared with the most popular alternative approaches: MLR, ANN, and SVM. The results indicate that BRB outperforms these methodologies both conceptually and in terms of prediction accuracy.

Thesis ?Value generation and management in retail/whole chains? was started with intention to offer enhanced theoretical basis for research in this area, that is still represented insufficiently in comparison to importance of retail/whole chains in whole economy. Additionally the practical inconsistency between trading rules demostrated to customers and trading partners of chains (including visible behaviour of chains) and value driving variables bears interest. The thesis targets following: search and indication of potential value drivers (value affecting variables) of retail/wholesale chains description of such value affecting variables, testing of relevance of such value affecting variables synthesis of description and relevance (importance) gives recommendations and measures for value creation in these chains Based on analysis of external conditions and internal sources were identified following value generating areas: strategy of retail/wholesale chain growing from internal source of competitive advantage ? strategical differentiation, issue of expansion (understood both as strategical variable - potential competitive advantage, and external threat of concentration value creating variables of core business of retail/wholesale chain: price strategy managing of liquidity stabilization of operating profit in condition of fluctuation sales