Within the competitive marketing environment, companies are faced with many challenges to stay competitive. Companies are consistently trying to establish the longterm relationship with customers by satisfying them as much as possible. Since relationship marketing has highly-discussed concerns building the long-term relationship and improve customer satisfaction, the study aims to describe how different relationship marketing tactics affect customer satisfaction. According to previous scholars, four different major relationship marketing tactics were selected to investigate and described in the study, which are the quality of service, price perception, brand perception and value proposition. The authors developed a theoretical framework by reviewing previous works of literature to see how companies use relationship marketing tactics as a business strategy to develop customer satisfaction. The method of quantitative research was applied to this study and a online questionnaire was used to collect data. In results chapter, the authors tested descriptive analysis, reliability, validity, regression analysis by analyzing the empirical findings. There are three hypotheses accepted and one rejected. In the end of this paper, the authors analyzed and described the data in detail and revealed the effect of each relationship marketing tactics on customer satisfaction. Limitation of this study and further research are also presented.

This research investigated the relationship between several firm-controlled, marketing and management factors and firm performance. Hypotheses describing the relationship between the strategic, geographic, tactical, technological and organizational factors and firm performance of hardwood lumber manufacturers were tested. These factors were operationalized, measured in a mail survey and used in statistical analysis to identify relationships among the variables. An adjusted response rate of 19.8% was obtained from the mail survey. Non-response bias was not found to be a significant problem in the data. A twelve measure performance indicator was developed and utilized to evaluate the performance of hardwood lumber manufacturers who were predominantly privately-held companies. The averages for the profit and costs performance measures were the lowest of all twelve performance measures and this suggested that firms should focus improvement on these measures. The current marketing tactics, including species mix, product mix, customer mix, and promotion mix was determined. The utilization of advanced production technology has increased in the industry since it was last measured in 1999. The majority of respondents (60%) had dry kiln operations and 49% had a surfacing mill. Thirty five percent of respondents indicated that their company was certified by either forest, chain-of-custody, or both. Of the five firm-controlled factors investigated in this research, four of them were found to be related to firm performance. Geographic location was not found to be related to the performance of hardwood sawmills. Firms who were backward integrated and firms who were both backward integrated and forward integrated performed significantly better than firms who were not vertically integrated or forward integrated. Higher performance scores were associated with larger firms, firms who had multiple sawmills and firms who were members of the NHLA. There was no relationship found between diversification of the product mix, species mix, customer mix variables and performance. The diversification of a firm's promotion expenditures was positively correlated to performance. Firms that used optimized headrigs, optimized edgers and optimized trimmers performed significantly better than did firms not using all three of these technologies. Firms that used computer based log tallying, lumber tallying or inventory control performed significantly better than firms utilizing none of these technologies. An increase in the use of business strategy from previous studies along with a shift towards the use of a differentiation strategy was discovered. Firms interpreted to be following a hybrid differentiation/cost leadership strategy performed better than firms following a cost leadership, focus, or differentiation strategy. The implication of these results is that larger, vertically integrated firms are likely to perform better than smaller, non-integrated hardwood lumber manufacturers. It is recommended that firms diversify their use of promotion media and venues in order to attract new customers. Adoption of production and information technology will help some hardwood lumber manufacturers improve their performance. It is recommended that hardwood lumber manufacturers control costs and differentiate their products in order to gain competitive advantage. / Ph. D.

Acculturation is the process in which individuals modify themselves to a new, dominant culture and how individuals acquire knowledge, skills, and behaviors appropriate to the consumer culture of the dominant culture. This study seeks to determine how the acculturation influence variables mentioned in past studies, the situational variable of companionship during consumption, and the marketing tactics employed by Taiwanese firms influence consumer acculturation of Latin American student visitors in Taiwan, i.e. attitude toward Taiwanese brands, consumption intention, and consumption behavior. Two product categories are studied: food and clothing. Data from Latin American student visitors were collected via web-based English and Spanish questionnaires as well as two in-depth interviews. Regression analysis and cluster analysis results indicate the following main findings: (1) marketing tactics employing English, Spanish, or Latin elements result in less preference consumption of Taiwanese food products and brands; (2) Taiwanese companionship during consumption is positively associated with more preference and consumption of Taiwanese food and clothing brands and products; (3) permanent residence intent and Taiwanese clothing preference and consumption are positively associated; (4) Taiwan media exposure is positively associated with Taiwan clothing consumption; (5) cosmopolitanism is negatively associated with Taiwan clothing consumption; (6) food product consumer acculturation is higher than clothing products in terms of consumption intention and consumption behavior whereas preference of Taiwanese brands in both product categories do not vary; (7) four acculturation patterns that coincide with past studies were identified among the Latin American student visitors in Taiwan, namely integrationists, assimilationists, separatists, and marginalizationists. These findings not only identify Berry’s acculturation patterns among visitors, but they also provide a different insight into consumer acculturation by studying visitors who by nature are different from the commonly studied immigrants: they do not travel in family units, hence the food habits are not as change resistant, and they do not intend to stay in the host culture for long, hence they supply of clothing they bring along with them allows them to refrain from consuming host culture clothing. Findings also contribute to both academia and management by discovering the negatively relationship between marketing tactics employing English and Spanish elements (e.g. English/Spanish communication content, salesperson, and brand names) and visitors’ consumer acculturation.