The business of market research has been expanding since the local enterprises make more and more efforts trying to understand consumers¡¦ needs with the assistances from market research firms offering new research methods and know-how supports. Given the overwhelming popularity of Internet and the fast-growing population of Internet users, online survey has become a popular research method that both academic and research communities widely employed with great potential opporutnities in the coming future. Since established in 1997, Focus Survey Research has been expanding its business scope with election research as its core business, and successfully covered its business to polls and market research since 2004. In order to provide clients with more comprehensive research services, FSR set up its online panel database since 2008 and started its strategy alliance with Easy Travel in 2011 launching E-Survey with a online panel database of 300,000 members, and started its online surevey business. This thesis would like to provide related industries or other new buiness units a reference by deep diving on different development stages of FSR, and evaluate how FSR could use its competitiveness to expand its online survey business and further define its marketing strategy planning. The thesis concludes that the three objectives of the online survey development strategy of FSR as follows: 1) Deploys more comprehensive research techniques to meet the clients¡¦ needs, and provide the clients with value-added services, which can help to expand the business scope of FSR accordingly; 2) Strategy alliances with partners from advertising, marketing, media buying and PR field to better increase the awareness of FSR among the market research industry; 3) FSR¡¦s expertise and experiences of conventional research can help to make up for the weakness of the online survey sampling. The combination of online survey with the expertise from offline survey could develop a better online study platform which could even provide clients with better deliverables. The thesis also aims to provide guidelines for FSR¡¦s online survey further strategy development. Given the marketing strategy of ¡§customized services¡¨, the further online business will cover either research studies among its panel database on social issues / consumer trends or customer satisfaction study among the name list provided by clients. Based on the two major business segments, FSR would be suggested to be positioned as ¡§a proactive and aggressive online survey information provider with good cost performance¡¨. Based on its business function, FSR is recommended to be positioned as ¡§clients¡¦ in-house research consultant and partner, which can provide consultations on research projects, handle research requests and assist coordinations.¡¨

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The field of strategic marketing has long been identified as fruitful ground for gaining competitive advantage. Ever since the market segmentation concept was introduced in the late sixties, research interest steadily increased, covering issues as e.g. which fundamental segmentation strategy is most appropriate, in which ways can segments be identified or constructed, which algorithm provides optimal data-driven segmentation solutions, which number of segments should be constructed etc.. Interestingly, the issue of segment evaluation and choice has not been emphasised very strongly in the past, although this is of primary interest as soon as it comes to practical implementation. This article tries to fill this gap in an experimental manner: the consequences of different corporate segment choice strategies based on different segment evaluation criteria are investigated under different environmental conditions formalised in a complex artificial consumer market. The results indicate that complex decision models for segment choice do not turn out to be superior in general. Both mass marketers and firms concentrating on particular segments based on an a priori logic can be just as successful under "favourable" market conditions, the most influential condition being the available advertising budget. (author's abstract) / Series: Working Papers SFB "Adaptive Information Systems and Modelling in Economics and Management Science"

Thesis (PhD) - Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University of Technology, 2005. / Thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University of Technology, 2005. Typescript. Bibliography: p. 188-207.

Abstract: The present Master thesis broaches the issue of market segmentation and its importance for the Industry and Transportation department of 3M Česko. Market segmentation has been recognized to be a very important tool for strategic marketing planning but currently, its implementation at 3M in the Czech Republic is in an early stage and therefore rather unorganized and not yet framed by precise guidelines. The hypothesis is that linking together need-based and descriptive customer behavior characteristics would lead to more effective market segmentation within the 3M Industry and Transportation department. Therefore, the goal of this paper is to first of all test if the hypothesis is right and if so develop a segmentation method that combines descriptive as well as need-based segmentation criteria. It is to be shown that such an approach could improve segmentation efforts at 3M Česko and lead to more reliable results. The question that arises is whether 3M has understood the benefits market segmentation can bring for the company. And what has to be done in order to improve clustering of customers and to increase 3M's sales volume? Can segmentation take place on one level or is a multi-layer approach the better option? The present study tries to answer these questions by comparing theoretical findings from an extensive literature review with results obtained from semistructured interviews with 3M sales and marketing managers. Above all, one of the main points for improvement in the future is the collection of more market data and the combination of primary data with secondary information already available. The interviews have shown that even though managers are aware of the difficulty to understand 3M's complex and broad market, the feeling predominates that not enough effort is put into gathering additional information. Furthermore, it is recommended to perform descriptive segmentation through the usage of industry coding on a division-wide level, whereas need-based segmentation will be subject of each division individually. Moreover, keeping track of customer data in a standardized database is the key to success. The given recommendations are divided into actions that can be undertaken in the short, medium and long run in order to reach a department-wide effective and efficient use of the multi-layer segmentation in an organized and timely manner.

This thesis comprises, firstly, a careful and detailed description of the institutional workings of the Chinese stock market; secondly, a literature review of the Chinese segmented markets and dual-listed shares price premium; and thirdly, three evidence-based contributions designed to cast new light on the Chinese A-shares premium puzzle. Publicly-listed firms in China, under certain criteria, can issue two different types of shares, namely A-shares and B-shares, to local and foreign investors respectively. These shares carry the same rights and obligations, but are however priced differently due to market segmentation. After a review of the literature on determinants of the premium, the first contribution offers a complementary explanation. I propose that the premium reflects the difference in valuation preferences between the local and foreign investors, i.e., local investors pay more attention to stock liquidity, while foreign investors pay more attention to firm’s intrinsic value, and so firms having more favorable fundamentals tend to have lower premia. The second contribution involves the examination of a controversial question that which investor group is better informed about local assets, by testing the direction of information flows between the A- and B-shares markets. Both time series methods, and panel data techniques which are used for the first time in this context, are employed, in order to get a distinct and more insightful picture against the current literature. The third contribution compares and contrasts institutional settings of China, Singapore and Thailand which have similar market segmentation and dual-listing systems; examines whether or not the premia in the three countries are caused by same factors; and tries to answer why foreign investors in China pay less, rather than more, as commonly observed in other segmented markets, for identical assets. It provides the first cross-country comparison evidence after 1999 with updated data.

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

published_or_final_version / Economics and Finance / Master / Master of Economics