This thesis analyzes the marketing activities of the companies in the consumer society of today and their social impacts on the consumption habits of individuals. The creation of a social environment with the mass oriented marketing activities of the producers and the association of individuals with the products that they or others consume are studied. The perception of the products as symbols of social status or their utilization to have distinction from others are analyzed. Throughout this thesis, the question of how brands are socially accepted and appreciated were addressed within the frame of the analysis of the mass oriented marketing activities of producers. Under these activities how the new consumer stereotypes are artificially created are criticized. This thesis also seeks to answer the question of how the social image of the brands and logos reach beyond the product sphere and used as a medium for creating social, cultural and individual identifications.

User satisfaction information provides a supporting base for the industrial design processes. Satisfaction is measured via several methods in the industrial design practice. These measurements are not only helpful to direct the design, i.e. formative purposes, but they are also very beneficial to validate the final output of the design process, i.e. summative purposes. Due to its prominent role for shaping and validating the design, it is essential to define and measure satisfaction with household consumer products properly. However, the literature lacks a clear definition of the concept in the context of household consumer products. This remains to be the main obstacle on the way to propose sensitive measurement techniques. This study mainly aims to clarify user satisfaction with consumer products by identifying its product-related dimensions. Firstly, the psychological background of satisfaction and the models of consumer satisfaction are reviewed to explain the processes underlying satisfaction response. Afterwards, the focus is shifted to the product design and ergonomics domains to come up with the aspects of products that influence user satisfaction. The literature survey provided product-related dimensions such as functionality, usability, product aesthetics, and emotional aspects of the interaction. The main hypothesis of the study is that the importance of these dimensions for the overall satisfaction response varies in different product groups. In the field study that is conducted in order to question the validity of this hypothesis, the importance of different product related dimensions for user satisfaction in ten different product groups is investigated via semi-structured interviews. The study revealed different prevailing dimensions for different product groups.

Regression analysis constitutes a large portion of the statistical repertoire in applications. In case where such analysis is used for exploratory purposes with no previous knowledge of the structure one would not wish to impose any constraints on the problem. But in many applications we are interested in a simple parametric model to describe the structure of a system with some prior knowledge of the structure. An important example of this occurs when the experimenter has the strong belief that the regression function changes monotonically in some or all of the predictor variables in a region of interest. The analyses needed for statistical inference under such constraints are nonstandard. The specific aim of this study is to introduce a technique which can be used for statistical inferences of a multivariate simple regression with some non-standard constraints.

CMOS is well known for its ability to scale. This fact is reflected in the aggressive scaling on a continual basis from the invention of CMOS up to date. As devices are scaled, device performance improves due to shorter channel lengths and more densely packed functions for the same amount of area. In recent years, however, the performance gain obtained through scaling has begun to suffer under the degradation of the associate interconnect performance. As devices become smaller, interconnects need to follow. Unlike transistors, the scaling of interconnects results in higher capacitances and resistances, thereby limiting overall system performance. Trying to alleviate the delay effects results in increased power consumption, especially in global structures such as clock distribution networks. A possible solution to this problem is the use of optical interconnects, which are fast and much less lossy than the electrical equivalents. This dissertation describes an investigation on what future technology nodes will entail in terms of power consumption of clock networks, and what is required for an optical alternative to become feasible. A common clock configuration is used as a basis for comparison, where both electrical and optical networks are designed to component level. Optimisation is done on both to ensure a reasonable comparison, and the results of the respective power consumption components are then compared in order to find the criteria for a feasible optical clock distribution scheme. Copyright / Dissertation (MEng)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering / unrestricted

MPM / Oliver Tambo Institute of Governance and Policy Studies

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