Due to the important role of advertising in marketing practice, its effects have been the research focus since 1920. Among relevant research fields, the issue that has been paid close attention in the economic field is its impact on consumer welfare. Issues focused in the marketing field are its impacts on consumer perception, feelings, attitudes, behaviors, and competitive interaction among firms. However, in these two fields the integrated channel is the focused scenario where the advertising works in vast majority of literatures. Only very few of them investigate effects of advertising in other channel structure context. However, in practice indirect channels are very common. There may be interactions between advertising and channel structure due to the existence of the independent retailer and the specific degree of competition. Since advertising is an important strategic instrument, it deserves to pay more efforts to relate the advertising and channel structure. This dissertation use game-theoretical approach to target three issues relating the advertising and channel structure. The first issue focuses on discussing the differential of choices between informative and persuasive advertising across three channel structure contexts for two competing manufacturers. This dissertation argues that the use of advertising strategy crucially depends on the channel structure. Specifically, it shows that when manufacturers delegate the sales responsibility to dedicated retailers, informative advertising may yield a higher profit for the manufacturers due to its pro-competitive nature. On the contrary, persuasive advertising should be used more extensively when either the manufacturers sell directly to the end consumers or sell through a common retailer. This therefore provides a theoretical foundation for why both advertising strategies can emerge as optimal responses from the manufacturers' viewpoints and subsequently provides handy guidelines for when these advertising strategies should be used in various scenarios. The second issue is about the choice between direct and indirect channels. The introduction of independent retailers has long been recognized as a buffer that alleviates the price competition between channels. If the sales responsibility is delegated to the retailers, the retail prices are driven upwards, thereby allowing the manufacturers to avoid the head-to-head competition. In this dissertation, we argue that this effect may be counter-balanced if the manufacturers are privileged with sufficiently large loyal segments. It shows that, selling directly to the consumers (through the direct channel) may be more beneficial for the manufacturers than delegation with the presence of competition, because the low prices due to the intense competition may help the manufacturers to extract more revenue from loyal consumers. Furthermore, if the manufacturers compete along dimensions that differ from prices, they may be further in favor of the direct channel and less concerned about price competition. In particular, this dissertation shows that if the manufacturers also compete on their advertising strategies, delegating to the retailers may force them to invest on the wasteful advertising, which could be prevented had the manufacturers sold the products themselves. The third issue discusses the combativeness of the persuasive advertising in the common retailer channel. The existing marketing literature suggests that persuasive advertising elicits counteractions from competing manufacturers and consequently leads to wasteful cancellation of the advertising effects. However, recent empirical studies document a surprisingly negative result against this conventional wisdom. To provide a theoretical ground for this empirical puzzle, we propose a novel way to model the advertising effect on the consumers' preference that incorporates two critical driving forces: on one hand, advertising shifts the consumers' preferences towards the advertised product (the "absolute effect"); on the other hand, it also makes the rival product a less desirable substitute from the consumers' viewpoints (the "relative effect"). Through our alternative interpretation of persuasive advertising, we show that channel conflict can be alleviated if a manufacturer adopts persuasive advertising that wisely "targets" appropriate consumers. In stark contrast with the established work, this advertising strategy may give rise to profit increases for every channel member, including the rival manufacturer and the retailer that were previously believed to always counteract/ resist to such persuasive advertising. We further identify the detailed operating regimes within which such a manufacturer-initiated persuasive advertising strategy is no more harmful for other channel members.

Generalized estimating equations (GEEs) are commonly used in the modelling of correlated data. However, in the presence of informative cluster sizes, estimates obtained using GEEs may be biased. In order to correct for this bias a weighted GEE may be used. Previous research has extended the use of weighted GEEs to a longitudinal setting but requires that cluster sizes remain constant over time. In this thesis, two new weighting schemes are investigated to allow for valid parameter estimation in a longitudinal setting where cluster sizes are informative and may change over time. Specifically, this thesis considers weighting by the inverse of the time-dependent cluster size, and by the total number of observations for a given cluster. Through Monte Carlo simulation, the performance of traditional GEEs, GEEs under previously proposed weighting schemes, and these two new models are compared. Results of these studies show that weighting by the total number of observations results in unbiased parameter estimates with excellent coverage.

Cette étude sur la compréhension des jeunes face aux messages médiatiques vise : - à mettre en évidence les apports des études de réception et plus précisément les capacités et les besoins des récepteurs médiatiques, le cadre de réception, la nature du public et les médiations socioculturelles ; - reconstituer la capacité, la compétence et l’intention communicationnelles du récepteur médiatique et la rhétorique de la réception ; - poser le cadrage pratique de notre étude par la nature scientifique et le type des messages proposés. Nous nous intéressons à la construction du sens par des jeunes de cultures diverses lors de la réception de messages scripturaux, audiovisuels et audio scriptovisuels. Nous traitons les données collectées par l’observation et le questionnement à la fois quantitativement et qualitativement. Les techniques de recueil de données retenues sont le questionnaire et l’observation. Problématiser notre objet de recherche revient à se poser la question suivante : quelle est la compréhension des jeunes face à la réception des messages médiatiques ? Nous organisons notre recherche autour de deux axes : - le jeune construit sa compréhension du message médiatique ; - le culturel et le social ont un impact sur la compréhension du message médiatique par le jeune. / This study on the understanding of young people facing media messages aims: -to highlight the contributions of reception studies and specifically capabilities and the needs of media receivers, the approval framework, the nature of the public andsociocultural mediations; -restore the capacity, competence and the communicative intention of the media receiverand rhetoric of reception; -ask the practical framing of our study by the scientific nature and type of the proposedposts. We are interested in the construction of meaning by young people from various cultures during the reception of messages scriptural, audio-visual and audio disposed. We treat data collected through observation and questioning both quantitatively and qualitatively. Selected data collection techniques are the questionnaire and observation.Problematize our object of research is to ask the following question: what is the understanding of young people in receipt of media messages? We organize our research around two axes: -the young built his understanding of the media message.-the cultural and social impact on the understanding of the media message by the young.

The scientific development of innovative molecular techniques has transformed the approach towards human identification. In forensic casework, the emergence of molecular phenotyping, or phenotypic prediction from DNA, has mitigated some challenges involving the unavailability of references samples for traditional forensic DNA analysis. Molecular phenotyping via SNP analysis can be used as a tool in a forensic setting to predict physical traits, such as hair, skin and eye colour, and provide investigative leads. Several ancestry informative markers (AIMs) have previously been associated with human skin colour in mainly the European and North American population groups, while admixed populations are hardly studied. The present study aims to contribute towards this gap by investigating the relationship between two AIMs (SLC45A2, rs16891982 and SLC24A5, rs1426654) that are typically involved in molecular phenotyping, and melanin index (MI) in the South African (SA) metapopulation (n = 389). The self-reported ancestry, ethnicity and relevant biographic information for each participant was documented and MI was recorded using a dermaspectrophotometer. DNA was extracted from saliva samples and PCR amplification of target regions was performed. Thereafter, SNaPshot® PCR was used to genotype the variants. Significant differences (p < 0.0001) were observed between MI readings and ancestral as well as population census groups. A generalised linear model (GLM) was developed which could accurately predicted the MI readings for each genotype combination within the 95 % confidence interval of the recorded MI readings. Our results suggest that these two markers were consistently associated with MI in the admixed SA population and are thus informative to predict MI in a forensic setting. Finally, this was the first study in a SA context to use SNP analysis for objective MI prediction.

Condition-based maintenance is an important aspect in various industries to ensure reliable operation of machinery. To successfully execute maintenance responsibilities, it is required to know which components are healthy and which are in a damaged state. Thus, the need for effective incipient fault detection requires a method that can separate fault signatures from operating condition information. Conventional gearbox monitoring techniques assume that a change in the vibration signal is caused by the presence of a fault. Under constant operating conditions this assumption may be valid, but under fluctuating conditions the assumption does not hold. Fluctuating operating conditions are inevitable for gearboxes in mining and wind turbine industries due to fluctuating ground and wind properties. The fluctuating conditions cause smearing of the signal frequency spectrum and valuable diagnostic information is lost when using classical condition monitoring techniques. More sophisticated signal processing techniques are therefore needed to effectively diagnose incipient faults to make informed asset management decisions. In this dissertation, envelope analysis, which has long been recognized as one of the best methods for bearing fault diagnosis, is used as the primary diagnostic tool. A common precursor to envelope analysis is bandpass filtering which is aimed at emphasising bearing faults and removing background noise and deterministic components. Identification and optimal selection of the informative frequency band which contains damage related information is the focus area for research in this dissertation. Many automatic band selection techniques exist and have proven effective under constant speed conditions. However, it has been shown that these techniques occasionally identify frequency bands that contain non-damage related information, especially under fluctuating speeds and low damage levels. With this research, a new methodology is proposed which makes use of popular informative frequency band selection techniques, such as the Fast Kurtogram amongst others, to effectively identify damage under constant and fluctuating speed conditions. The proposed methodology uses both healthy and damaged vibration signals to identify novelty information. In doing so, the method can also identify damage earlier than existing methods. The technique is designed to ignore potentially dominant deterministic components which would lead to incorrect band selection for envelope analysis. Furthermore, pre-whitening of vibration signals is a common technique to enhance the bearing signal-to-noise ratio. Without pre-whitening, random noise and deterministic components often dominate the bearing fault signatures and render existing diagnostic techniques ineffective. The proposed methodology is shown to be more robust than existing automatic band selection methods because it requires no pre-whitening. By using both healthy and damaged signals, the proposed methodology favours frequency bands that contain damage related information. The findings in this dissertation are validated on a range of synthetic signals as well as on actual experimental data. The synthetic signals are constructed from a phenomenological gearbox model where the exact operating and bearing condition can be controlled. The experimental results are statistically compared for a wide range of signals and damage levels such that the robustness of the proposed method can be critically evaluated. It was found that the new method is capable of outperforming existing methods in terms of percentage classification of bearing signals with outer race damage and can detect damage with smaller fault severity. / Dissertation (MEng)--University of Pretoria, 2019. / Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering / MEng / Unrestricted

En el presente trabajo se investiga sobre el empaque, qué se compone por sus siete elementos: color, tipografía, logos, etiqueta, material, tamaño y señales informativas; y su relación con el posicionamiento de marca en la categoría de snacks y bebidas azucaradas. Este problema surge debido a una nueva ley que entró en vigencia el 17 de junio de 2019, la cual obliga a las marcas a colocar un octógono de advertencia en la parte superior derecha de la portada del empaque. Para determinar la relación entre estas variables la metodología de investigación tuvo un enfoque mixto. Primero, para este estudio se realizó una investigación cualitativa la cual constó de entrevistas al público objetivo primario y entrevistas a profundidad al público objetivo secundario. Esto tuvo como objetivo conocer más sobre el comportamiento del consumidor y sus insights. Luego, se realizó una investigación cuantitativa a través de 263 encuestas. Posteriormente, esta información fue procesada y se correlacionaron las variables para comprender la relación entre ellas. Finalmente, tanto los consumidores como los expertos en marketing confirmaron lo que indicaban los autores, que el packaging tiene gran influencia en ellos en esta categoría de productos donde hay poco involucramiento. Por otro lado, se confirmó la relación entre los siete elementos del packaging y el posicionamiento del producto. Donde el color y el material tienen una baja relación, mientras que, la tipografía, los logos, la etiqueta, el tamaño y las señales informativas tiene una relación moderada con el posicionamiento de marca. / This paper investigates packaging, which is made up of its seven elements: color, typography, logos, label, material, size and informative signs; and its relationship with product positioning in the category of snacks and sugary drinks. This problem arises due to a new law that went into effect on June 17, 2019, which requires brands to place a warning octagon on the top right of the packaging cover. To determine the relationship between these variables, the research methodology had a mixed approach. First, for this study a qualitative investigation was carried out which consisted of interviews with the primary target audience and in-depth interviews with the secondary target audience. This aimed to learn more about consumer behavior and insights. Then, a quantitative investigation was carried out through 263 surveys. Later, this information was processed and the variables were correlated to understand the relationship between them. Finally, both consumers and marketing experts confirmed what the authors indicated, that packaging has a great influence on them in this product category where there is little involvement. On the other hand, the relationship between the seven elements of the packaging and the positioning of the product was confirmed. Where color and material have a low relationship, while typography, logos, label, size and information signs have a moderate relationship with product positioning. / Tesis

A number of methods have been developed to analyze longitudinal data with dropout. However, there is no uniformly accepted approach. Model performance, in terms of the bias and accuracy of the estimator, depends on the underlying missing data mechanism and it is unclear how existing methods will perform when little is known about the missing data mechanism. Here we evaluate methods for estimating change over time in longitudinal studies with informative dropout in three settings: using a linear mixed effect (LME) estimator in the presence of multiple types of dropout; proposing an update to the pattern mixture modeling (PMM) approach in the presence of imprecision in identifying informative dropouts; and utilizing this new approach in the presence of prognostic factor by dropout interaction. We demonstrate that amount of dropout, the proportion of dropout that is informative, and the variability in outcome all affect the performance of an LME estimator in data with a mixture of informative and non-informative dropout. When the amount of dropout is moderate to large (>20% overall) the potential for relative bias greater than 10% increases, especially with large variability in outcome measure, even under scenarios where only a portion of the dropouts are informative. Under conditions where LME models do not perform well, it is necessary to take the missing data mechanism into account. We develop a method that extends the PMM approach to account for uncertainty in identifying informative dropouts. In scenarios with this uncertainty, the proposed method outperformed the traditional method in terms of bias and coverage. In the presence of interaction between dropout and a prognostic factor, the LME model performed poorly, in terms of bias and coverage, in estimating prognostic factor-specific slopes and the interaction between the prognostic factor and time. The update to the PMM approach, proposed here, outperformed both the LME and traditional PMM. Our work suggests that investigators must be cautious with any analysis of data with informative dropout. We found that particular attention must be paid to the model assumptions when the missing data mechanism is not well understood.

The Internet has become an essential tool for today’s’ society. With its growth over the years, it is important to ask about the influence of the internet browser on individuals and how it modifies the pace and behavior of people’s affairs. This study describes the design and development of l3-37, a custom browser whose purpose is to prompt the user to reflect on the browser’s hidden software processes and to gather valuable insights. To support this, l3-37 includes two informative art visualizations designed to encourage the user to explore the HTML Cookies and the DOM tree. The two high-fidelity prototypes were developed based on Research Through Design and Autobiographical Design methods. Additionally, to address the affordances and limits of this work, a Think Aloud study was conducted to examine how the participants reflected on the hidden data and the insights they obtained. The study discusses the insights and lessons learned from the entire process and proposes directions for designing an informative art visualization in browser-art to prompt user reflection. Informative art in the web browser proved to be able to support different levels of reflection and reveal valuable insights. / Internet har blivit ett viktigt verktyg för dagens samhälle. Med dess tillväxt genom åren är det viktigt att fråga sig om webbläsarens inflytande på individer och hur den ändrar takt och beteende hos människors angelägenheter. Denna studie beskriver design och utveckling av l3-37, en anpassad webbläsare vars syfte är att snabbt användaren vrider på webbläsarens dolda mjukvaruprocesser och samlar värdefull insikt. För att stödja detta inkluderar l3-37 två informativa konstvisualiseringar som är utformade för att uppmuntra oss att utforska HTML-kakorna och DOM-trädet. Prototyperna med tvåhög trohet utvecklades baserat på ResearchThrough Design och autobiografiska designmetoder. Dessutom genomfördes en Think Aloud-undersökning för att ta itu med råd och begränsningar för detta arbete för att undersöka hur deltagarna reflekterade över de dolda uppgifterna och insikten om vad som erhållits. Studien diskuterar insikt och lärdomar från hela processen och föreslår vägbeskrivningar för att utforma en informativ konstvisualisering i webbläsarkonst för att förbättra reflektion av användare. Informativ konst i webbläsaren har visat sig kunna stödja olika reflektionsnivåer och avslöja värdefull insikt.

Nous nous proposons, dans le cadre de cette thèse d'examiner des modèles économiques dans lesquels les firmes ont recours à différentes approches de publicité. Nous analysons les effets des investissements et des tarifs publicitaires sur les stratégies des annonceurs et des médias et nous étudions les différentes configurations de marché qui émergent à l'équilibre. Nous nous focalisons dans les Chapitres 2, 3 et 4 sur la publicité informative ciblée. Dans les chapitres suivants nous considérons que la publicité est persuasive et qu'elle peut créer des externalités aussi bien positives que négatives.Ces externalités peuvent être exogènes comme c'est le cas dans le Chapitre 5 ou endogènes (Chapitre 6).Plus précisément, nous examinons, dans le Chapitre 2, dans le cadre d'une différenciation horizontale, la concurrence en prix et en publicité informative ciblée. Dans le Chapitre 3, nous caractérisons l'équilibre d'un média qui a le choix entre éditer un seul journal général publié dans deux localisations géographiques ou bien éditer un journal local dans chaque localisation, donnant ainsi la possibilité aux annonceurs d'acheter des espaces publicitaires séparés dans chaque édition ou un package publicitaire pour les deux éditions. Nous posons dans le Chapitre 4 le problème du signal de la qualité d'une firme qui lance un nouveau produit, dont la qualité n'est pas connue par les consommateurs potentiels. La firme signale sa qualité à travers une publicité informative ciblée en choisissant la taille du marché niche. L'objectif du Chapitre 5 est de mettre en évidence les interactions directes qui existent entre le marché des médias et le marché des producteurs en considérant que le marché est caractérisé par des externalités de publicité aussi bien positives que négatives. Dans le dernier chapitre, nous étudions les incitations de deux firmes, différenciées par la qualité, à investir dans deux types de publicité : une publicité comparative et une publicité non-comparative. / In this thesis, we develop economic models in which firms invest in different types of advertising. We analyze the effects of the advertising investments and prices on the advertisers and media strategies. In addition, we study the various market configurations emerging at equilibrium. On this basis, we focus, in Chapters 2, 3 and 4, on the targeted informative advertising. In the following chapters, we consider persuasive advertising that create negative and positive externalities. These externalities may be exogenous (Chapter 5) or endogenous (Chapter 6).More precisely, we investigate in Chapter 2, through a horizontal differentiation framework, the price competition and targeted advertising investments when firms are able to perfectly target each type of consumer. In Chapter 3, we model a situation in which a printed media has the choice between editing a single national newspaper published in two cities, or editing two local newspapers allowing thus advertisers to buy separated or bundled ads. In Chapter 4, we investigate the best signalling strategy of a monopoly when introducing a new product with unobservable quality. The firm signals its quality to the potential consumers through informative targeted advertising i.e. by choosing the size of the reached consumer's market. The aim of chapter 5 is to highlight the strategic interaction between media and product markets when the market exhibits positive and negative advertising externalities. The last Chapter is interested in the optimal persuasive advertising and pricing decisions of two vertically differentiated firms given that each firm has the choice to advertise in comparative and/or non-comparative advertising.

Le commentaire d’enregistrement à l’écrit mobilise de nombreuses compétences liées à la perception et à la rédaction. Ce travail, conçu avec la volonté d’un rapprochement interdisciplinaire, tente de montrer l’influence de la révision autonome de l’écrit ainsi que celle des œuvres écoutées sur des textes d’élèves de troisième. Les bases théoriques sont celles de la psychologie de l’audition et de la linguistique. L’effet dominant de la maîtrise de la langue s’estompe à la faveur d’une description systématique et globale du vocabulaire recueilli. Cette thèse rassemble des outils d’analyse de contenu originaux élaborés en fonction du corpus. Les apports sont donc essentiellement d’ordre méthodologique. Les indicateurs retenus permettent d’évaluer les écarts de densité informative selon l’œuvre écoutée et selon le rang d’écriture du commentaire. La synthèse des résultats montre les possibilités de détermination d’une typologie des écrits et révèle certains aspects stylistiques et formels des œuvres supports par l’observation raisonnée des zones d’intensification lexicale. / Writing a commentary after a listening exercise mobilizes several skills linked to perception and drafting. This thesis, aiming at an interdisciplinary approach, attempts to describe the influence of autonomous revision and of the piece of music heard on commentaries written by pupils in the fourth form. Its theoretical foundations are found in audition psychology and linguistics. The primary role attributed to language skills gives way to a systematic and holistic description of the compiled vocabulary. For this thesis, original content analysis tools have been designed, based on the corpus. Its contribution is thus essentially methodological. The selected indicators enable us to assess the disparities in informative density according to the piece heard and the drafting register of the commentary. Based on a synthesis of the results obtained, it is thus possible to establish a typology of written commentaries and bring to light some stylistic and formal aspects of the selected pieces of music through a reasoned analysis of lexical intensification areas.