This explorative study strives to  investigate the marketing strategies companies apply in the Duty-Free market and whether consumers perceive them accordingly. The theoretical concepts used for this research were: marketing strategies in the Duty Free market and consumer behavior to allow a comparative approach. In addition, three Variables have been considered and explored: the Offer, the Customer Service and the importance of the Atmosphere in consumers’ purchasing behavior. A model  was created to  connect  all the theoretical concepts and contributed to answering the research question. Perspectives of firms and consumers were investigated  through interviews and surveys. The  Atmosphere, the  Offer  and the  Customer  Service  were examined  as marketing strategy’s variables.  The  former is relevant in influencing customers’ behavior, the  offer  of exclusive products meets the needs and expectancies of customers, but the poor customer service degrades the purchasing experience. The marketing strategies of firms need to be shaped according to these conclusions.

abstract: The grand transition of electric grids from conventional fossil fuel resources to intermittent bulk renewable resources and distributed energy resources (DERs) has initiated a paradigm shift in power system operation. Distributed energy resources (i.e. rooftop solar photovoltaic, battery storage, electric vehicles, and demand response), communication infrastructures, and smart measurement devices provide the opportunity for electric utility customers to play an active role in power system operation and even benefit financially from this opportunity. However, new operational challenges have been introduced due to the intrinsic characteristics of DERs such as intermittency of renewable resources, distributed nature of these resources, variety of DERs technologies and human-in-the-loop effect. Demand response (DR) is one of DERs and is highly influenced by human-in-the-loop effect. A data-driven based analysis is implemented to analyze and reveal the customers price responsiveness, and human-in-the-loop effect. The results confirm the critical impact of demographic characteristics of customers on their interaction with smart grid and their quality of service (QoS). The proposed framework is also applicable to other types of DERs. A chance-constraint based second-order-cone programming AC optimal power flow (SOCP-ACOPF) is utilized to dispatch DERs in distribution grid with knowing customers price responsiveness and energy output distribution. The simulation shows that the reliability of distribution gird can be improved by using chance-constraint. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Electrical Engineering 2019