<p>Abstract</p><p>Title: Brand communication – An analyze of Borka and BayIcons communicative labor in relations with WJOS. (Varumärkeskommunikation – En analys av Borka och BayIcons kommunikativa arbete i relation till WJOS)</p><p>Number of pages: 53 (55 including enclosures)</p><p>Author: Johan Larsson</p><p>Tutor: Göran Svensson</p><p>Course: Media and Communications Studies C</p><p>Period: Second term / autumn 2007</p><p>University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala University</p><p>Purpose/aim: The purpose of this essay is to study how two small Swedish clothing companies, Borka and BayIcon, manage their brand communication. Brand communication includes work with target groups, brands, media and finally communication in a bigger perspective. The clothing companies are compared and analyzed thru a perspective of an advertising agency.</p><p>Material/method: This essay uses two case studies with qualitative research interviews as methods. The material is combined by three interviews, one with Borka, one with BayIcon and one with WJOS.</p><p>Main result: Borka uses newspaper adverts, fairs and sponsoring as their mixture of mediums. BayIcon uses web pages, events and sponsoring. The events, fairs and sponsoring are arranged under the definition arrangements and it is the richest form of communication because it gives the opportunity of a dialog. The dialog is a good way to get in touch with the customers. Both Borka and BayIcon use a strategic way of working with communication, which emphasizes that communication is created in a dialog between the customer and the company. The biggest difference between WJOS and Borka and BayIcon is that the clothing companies work more with what they think is right and less with strategies.</p><p>Keywords: brand, communication, target groups, events, strategic communication, dialog, advertising.</p>

<p>The main purpose of this thesis is to explore and investigate how an online company can utilize social media. Another purpose is to, though an extensive literature review, explain why a web-based company should exploit social communication channels. Another purpose is to analyze and explain the impact of implementing a channel extension strategy using social communication channels through an empirical study.</p>

The Remote Distractor Effect (RDE) is a robust phenomenon where a saccade to a lateralised target is delayed by the appearance of a distractor in the contralateral hemifield (Walker, Kentridge, & Findlay, 1995). The main aim of this thesis was to test whether the RDE generalises to response modalities other then the eyes. In Chapter 2, the RDE was tested on saccadic and simple manual keypress responses, and on a choice discrimination task requiring a covert shift of attention. The RDE was observed for saccades, but not simple manual responses, suggesting that spatially oriented responses may be necessary for the phenomenon. However, it was unclear whether distractor interference occurred in the covert task. Chapter 4 compared the effects of distractors between spatially equivalent tasks requiring saccadic and manual aiming responses respectively. Again, the RDE was observed for the eyes but not for the hands. This dissociation was also replicated in a more naturalistic task in which participants were free to move their eyes during manual aiming. In order to examine the time-course of distractor effects for the eyes and the hands, a third experiment investigated distractor effects across a wider range of target-distractor delays, finding no RDE for manual aiming responses at distractor delays of 0, 100, or 150 ms. The failure of the RDE to generalise to manual aiming suggests that target selection mechanisms are not shared between hand and eye movements. Chapter 5 further investigated the role of distractors during covert discrimination. The first experiment showed that distractor appearance did not interfere with discrimination performance. A second experiment, in which participants were also asked to saccade toward the target, confirmed the lack of RDE for covert discrimination while saccades were slower in distractor trials. The dissociation between covert and overt orienting suggests important differences between shifts of covert attention and preparation of eye movements. Finally, Chapter 6 investigated the mechanism driving the RDE. In particular it was assessed whether saccadic inhibition (Reingold & Stampe, 2002) is responsible for the increase in saccadic latency induced by remote distractors. Examination of the distributions of saccadic latencies at different distractor delays showed that each distractor produced a discrete dip in saccadic frequency, time-locked to distractor onset, conforming closely to the character of saccadic inhibition. It is concluded that saccadic inhibition underlies the remote distractor effect.

This thesis studies different aspects of firm decisions by using a dynamic model. I estimate a dynamic model of the firm based on the trade-off theory of capital structure that endogenizes investment, leverage, and payout decisions. For the estimation of the model I use Efficient Method of Moments (EMM), which allows me to recover the structural parameters that best replicate the characteristics of the data. I start analyzing the question of whether target leverage varies over time. While this is a central issue in finance, there is no consensus in the literature on this point. I propose an explanation that reconciles some of the seemingly contradictory empirical evidence. The dynamic model generates a target leverage that changes over time and consistently reproduces the results of Lemmon, Roberts, and Zender (2008). These findings suggest that the time-varying target leverage assumption of the big bulk of the previous literature is not incompatible with the evidence presented by Lemmon, Roberts, and Zender (2008). Then I study how corporate income tax payments vary with the corporate income tax rate. The dynamic model produces a bell-shaped relationship between tax revenue and the tax rate that is consistent with the notion of the Laffer curve. The dynamic model generates the maximum tax revenue for a tax rate between 36% and 41%. Finally, I investigate the impact of financial constraints on investment decisions by firms. Model results show that investment-cash flow sensitivity is higher for less financially constrained firms. This result is consistent with Kaplan and Zingales (1997). The dynamic model also rationalizes why large and mature firms have a positive and significant investment-cash flow sensitivity.

企業面對全球競爭，所壓縮利潤必需降低更多成本。目標成本制重視源流管理，從新產品設計階段開始掌控成本，為有效成本管理工具。擬採用企業除期待目標成本制帶來成效外，對於可能遭遇問題亦是關注。但相關文獻十分缺乏，值得深入研究。 本研究希冀探討實施目標成本制企業所遭遇及需急迫解決問題，做為企業提早規劃防範之用。研究結果如下： 一、個案公司對問卷所列問題皆有遭遇，經因素分析後可分為七個構面。 二、共同遭遇需急迫解決問題為「目標成本的訂定及達成」及「資訊的取得及衡量」。 三、不同遭遇需急迫解決問題及其原因如下： 「內部衝突及時間管理」：導入時間較晚，組織架構仍需調整。 「上下游廠商及產品創新」：協同開發模式發展較晚，對供應商能力品質較不確定。 「技術母廠的溝通及許可」：技術母廠掌控設計造成諸多限制。 / In competitive environment, enterprises need to decrease cost to prohibit profit keeping diminish. Target Costing advances the time of cost-down evaluation to the product design and development stage. It’s an effective cost management system. Enterprises not only expect the effect after adopting but also beware of difficulties during implementation. But there are few relative researches in the world. It is worthy of closer study. The purpose of study is to explore the urgency difficulties during implementation. It can be an advice to enterprises to avoid incurring same difficulties. The conclusions of this study are: 1.Case companies suffered all the difficulties. By factor analysis, all the difficulties can be divided into seven aspects. 2.The same urgent difficulties are “setting and achieving target costs” and “acquiring and measuring information”. 3.The different urgent difficulties and the causes are: “Internal conflict and time management”: The implementation-time was not long enough; organization structure needs to be adjusted. “Value chain and produce innovation”: It was too late to make collaborative development. The qualities and capacities of supplies were uncertainty. “Communication and permission from parent manufacturing companies”: Enterprise was been constrained by lack of design right from parent manufacturing company.

本文旨在探討當央行的目標函數中對通膨和產出的權重有相關時，並且將央行的偏好納入模型之中，對央行其目標通膨機制下之通膨偏誤(inflationary bias)有何影響，最後再比較在不同的目標通膨機制下之通膨偏誤以及預期社會福利。相較於Walsh (1999)的結果，我們得到部份相同、部分不同的結論。以下為三點相異之發現：（1）當央行愈在乎通膨，對通膨有較高的權重，不論在何種目標通膨機制下，其通膨偏誤皆會變小。（2）相較於沒有考慮央行偏好下的政策結果，我們發現考慮央行的偏好後，對通膨偏誤和預期社會福利會有很大的影響。影響的結果則是決定於央行偏好的大小。（3）相較於權衡性政策(discretionary policy)下的通膨偏誤，在非任意政策和宣示政策的模型中加入央行的偏好後，未必有助於降低的通膨偏誤。同樣地，政策比較的結果也是決定於央行偏好的大小。 / In this paper, we extend the model of inflation targeting with a penalty borne by the central bank in Walsh (1999) and add the specification of the central bank’s preference in Muscatelli (1998) to study how the weight on inflation, the central bank’s preference affect the inflationary bias under a non-state-contingent policy and an announcement policy. Moreover, we investigate how the expected social welfare varies under a discretionary policy, a non-state-contingent policy, and an announcement policy. We obtain the following findings in contrast with those in Walsh (1999): First, for a non-state-contingent policy and an announcement policy, when the central bank more cares about inflation, the inflationary bias becomes smaller. Second, compared with the inflationary bias under a non-state-contingent policy and an announcement policy without the central bank’s preference, it has a substantial effect on the inflationary bias and the expected social welfare after considering the preference of the central bank into the models. The monetary policy effect depends on the magnitude of the central bank’s preference. Third, adding the preference of the central bank is not definitely beneficial to reduce the inflationary bias and enhance the expected social welfare compared with under a discretionary policy. Similarly, the outcome is dependent on the degree of the central bank’s preference.

When using visual and proprioceptive information to plan a reach, it has been proposed that the brain combines these cues to estimate the object and/or limb’s location. Specifically, according to the maximum-likelihood estimation (MLE) model, more reliable sensory inputs are assigned a greater weight (Ernst & Banks, 2002). In this research we examined if the brain is able to adjust which sensory cue it weights the most. Specifically, we asked if the brain changes how it weights sensory information when the availability of a visual cue is manipulated. Twenty-four healthy subjects reached to visual (V), proprioceptive (P), or visual + proprioceptive (VP) targets under different visual delay conditions (e.g. on V and VP trials, the visual target was available for the entire reach, it was removed with the go-signal or it was removed 1, 2 or 5 seconds before the go-signal). Subjects completed 5 blocks of trials, with 90 trials per block. For 12 subjects, the visual delay was kept consistent within a block of trials, while for the other 12 subjects, different visual delays were intermixed within a block of trials. To establish which sensory cue subjects weighted the most, we compared endpoint positions achieved on V and P reaches to VP reaches. Results indicated that all subjects weighted sensory cues in accordance with the MLE model across all delay conditions and that these weights were similar regardless of the visual delay. Moreover, while errors increased with longer visual delays, there was no change in reaching variance. Thus, manipulating the visual environment was not enough to change subjects’ weighting strategy, further i

Language is the most common and crucial element newspapers apply to express meaning. Language is a system of linguistic signs combined by rules to create meaning. Newspapers use language, among other or sign systems (e.g. photographs, graphics, content and layout) to communicate. These systems support each other and perform as a unit to reflect a newspaper's character and function. South Africa has a diversity in language, culture, background and literacy levels and the media's target audiences differ significantly. The ways in which these systems are thus applied, diverge to satisfy the various needs of audiences. These needs include being informed, entertained, aesthetically pleased, emotionally involved and mobilized (persuaded). Audiences also seek a reflection of their values, views and cultures in the media. / Thesis (M.A. (Communication Studies))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of MetS among different African populations using the new Joint Statement Criteria. Hereafter we aimed to determine whether waist or neck circumference is the best predictor of MetS risk after ethnic, gender and age-specific cut-points were developed. Lastly, we aimed to determine whether afore-mentioned cut-point can predict albumin:creatinine ratio as a marker of target organ damage. Methods: The study sample (N=409) comprised of urban African (men, N=101; women, N=99) and Caucasian (men, N=101; women, N=108) teachers from the Dr. Kenneth Kaunda Education district in the North-West Province, South Africa. Participants were aged between 25 and 65 years. Anthropometric measurements, albumin:creatinine ratio and other markers of the metabolic syndrome (MetS) (systolic and diastolic blood pressure [SBP and DBP], glucose, triglycerides [TG] and high density lipoprotein [HDL]) were determined. Results: Africans (65 and 63 % for men and women) and Caucasian men (73%) showed high prevalence of MetS; ROC analysis determined neck circumference (NC) cut-points of 39 and 35 cm for young and older African men, 32 and 35 cm for young and older African women, 40 and 41 cm for Caucasian men and 34 and 33 cm for Caucasian women. This NC cut-point can be used to determine metabolic syndrome risk in all groups, except in African women; ROC developed waist circumference (WC) cut-points were 91 cm for all African male groups, 84, 81 and 84 cm for young, older and total group of African women. Suggested WC cut-points for Caucasian men were 93 cm for the young group and 97 cm for older as well as total Caucasian male groups, while cut-points for Caucasian women were 87 cm, 79 cm and 84 cm for young, older and total Caucasian women. These WC cut-points were good measures of metabolic syndrome risk in all groups; neither cut-point of WC nor NC could increase the risk of albumin:creatinine ratio. Conclusion: African women as a group present with few MetS risk factors and glucose is associated with renal function risk in Africans; NC cut-points may be used as an additional anthropometric marker to predict the metabolic syndrome in a South African cohort, but not in African women; WC cutpoints demonstrated to be good predictors of the metabolic syndrome in the same South African cohort, especially among men; WC would seem to be the best measure of MetS risk in all African populations, although NC can also be used for this purpose in all African populations, except in African women. / Thesis (PhD (Human Movement Science))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012

The study was aimed at discovering the extent to which the education system of Venda satisfies the human resource needs of that area. Chapter one not only outlines the aim of the study but also defines certain terminology used in the text. It also gives an outline of the research methodology. Chapter two identifies the theoretical guidelines with regard to how the education system is related to human resource needs. In defining the education system the chapter indicates that education cannot be divorced from the society in which it exists and therefore must be seen as a social, cultural and economic phenomenon. Chapter three examines the manner in which human resources function as a determinant of the education system. In examining the meaning of human resources it indicates the importance of developing the skills of the people as well as indicating the importance of attitudes towards work of the people, thus showing that skills and attitudes together help create good human resources for the growth and development of society. Chapter four indicates general educational needs as well as the criteria to be used for the purposes of this research. It indicates that basic skills should be developed in all people so that they can be able to adjust properly to the workplace. It emphasises the importance of reading, writing, computation and speaking abilities as the basis for education which intends to develop good human resources. Chapter five is the empirical study. It therefore indicates how the postal questionnaire was used. It also contains the results of the empirical study, and explains them. Chapter six gives the conclusions as well as the recommendations that are a result of this research. It concludes that the education system and society are bound together and should not be separated, that human resource development is an important aim of education systems and therefore development should not be one-sided but should be complete, that is, it should include social and cultural skills and economic development. Thus education in Venda should not ignore this, and should be of a good quality as from the lowest standards, so that whether a person has an education of up to Standard 5, 8 or 10 it should not be an insurmountable handicap to adjustment to the work situation. / Thesis (MEd (Vergelykende Opvoedkunde))--PU vir CHO, 1996