The buying decision process describes how the consumer makes a purchase decision through a rational process (Markin, 1979) and an understanding for how consumers make a purchase decision can according to Sands et al. (2010) be obtained by increased knowledge for the information search process (the second part of the buying decision process) before a purchase. Today’s society offers great opportunity to obtain information (Rahim & Clemens, 2012; Bawden & Robinson, 2009) and by that there are in other words good opportunities for a rational acting by the consumers. However, there are factors working against that consumers act rationally and seek information prior to their purchases primarily in the form of the concept of information overload (Bawden & Robinson, 2009) which claims that consumers are limited in their information search because there is too much information but also other factors such as lack of time (Wood & Neal, 2009) and ability to find information (Slegers et al. 2012) are believed to affect the information search process. The purpose of this essay is to describe the information search behavior of consumers prior to a purchase considering irrational purchase decisions or the possibility of rational purchase decisions linked to product category and age because these variables are assumed to have an impact on the information search behavior prior to a purchase (Nelson, 1970; Phillips & Sternthal, 1977; Sledgers et al., 2012). The method applied in this essay is structured interviews conducted in a shopping center in the central parts of Örebro and the participating respondents are consumers who just made a purchase. The results of the study indicate that the majority of the consumers are making irrational purchase decisions and that they therefore do not use the opportunity to act rationally, although today’s society provide good opportunities. The information search behavior doesn’t seem to depend on product category except that the information sources used differ among categories. The result also shows that younger consumers search more information in comparison with older consumers. Another finding is that neither ability to find information, lack of time or information overload seem to be reasons for that the majority of the consumers have not searched for information and nor do it seem to be the reason for why the consumers that do search for information stop to search. That they are not seeking seems instead to be because they feel that they know enough about the kind of product they have bought and the main reason that those who search stop to search is that they feel that they have found enough information to make a purchase decision. Key words: Consumer behavior, purchase decisions, the buying decision process, information search, rationality, irrationality, search goods, experience goods, information overload

Contemporary South African higher education institutions have undergone many drastic changes in recent years with regard to the demographic composition of students and organisational structures. Huge demands in terms of transformation have been placed on these institutions while they have simultaneously been transforming from former Technikons to Universities of Technology. This causes staff to be faced with major changes which affect all aspects of the institution. The objective of this research was to investigate whether role overload, job satisfaction and locus of control could be used to predict turnover intention of employees in a higher education institution. Further objectives included empirically determining whether locus of control had a mediating effect between role overload, job satisfaction and turnover intention. A cross-sectional survey design was used and an availability sample was taken from a South African higher education institution («=210). Five measuring instruments were administered as part of a larger questionnaire. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse the data and a series of regressions was used to test for the hypothesised mediating effect. The reliability coefficients obtained for the scales indicated that the Cronbach Alpha coefficients for qualitative role overload, job satisfaction and turnover intention were acceptable; however, those for quantitative role overload and locus of control were below the recommended cut-off mark. The results showed that there was a strong relationship between the dimensions of overload, indicating that the feeling of having too much to do in the time available is accompanied by the feeling that individuals do not have the skills to complete their required tasks. Furthermore, it was found that if employees feel that they have too much to do and that they do not possess the skills to complete tasks, they will be dissatisfied with their jobs. Both quantitative and qualitative role overload contributed to the participant's thoughts of leaving the institution and it was concluded that a satisfied employee is less likely to think of leaving the organisation. Locus of control had minimal relationships with quantitative and qualitative role overload, as well as with turnover intention. Locus of control was, however, found to be related to job satisfaction. Locus of control was found to be a poor predictor of turnover intention and did not mediate the relationship between role overload and job satisfaction on the one hand, and turnover intention on the other. It was concluded that job satisfaction was the strongest predictor of turnover intention. By way of conclusion, recommendations were made both for the organisation and for future research. / Thesis (M.A. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.

[Truncated abstract. Formulae and special characters in this field can only be approximated. See PDF version for accurate reproduction.] Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been developed over the past two and a half decades to enable non-invasive assessment of soft tissues in the human body. MRI provides images of the tissues in the body with intensities weighted by nuclear magnetic relaxation properties of the tissue. Recent advances have utilised MRI as a quantitative tool with the nuclear magnetic relaxation rates in tissues being accurately quantified. One clinical application of quantitative MRI has been in the quantification of body iron stores in the management of iron overload diseases. MR images also contain information about the spatial variations of relaxation rates, which could be clinically useful. In the quantification of liver iron concentrations, proton transverse relaxation rate (R2) maps have been used not only to quantify iron concentrations but also to visualise the spatial variations. The work in this thesis addresses the use of spatial information from proton transverse relaxation rate maps in clinical practice. The quantitative spatial information contained in these maps is analysed in two clinically important settings, namely the non-invasive assessment of liver fibrosis and the assessment of magnetic susceptibility artefacts in cardiac proton transverse relaxometry. Spatial distributions of liver R2 maps were quantified using texture measures based on grey-tone spatial dependence (GTSD) matrices. Some of these measures gave a statistically significant distinction between patients with minimal or no fibrosis and those with fibrosis or cirrhosis. Distinction of fibrosis using this technique was enhanced in subjects with iron overload diseases, suggesting that iron is required as a contrast agent for sufficient sensitivity of image texture to fibrosis. In subjects with low tissue iron concentrations, tissue hydration was observed to also have an influence on R2. In patients with end stage liver disease, a model combining tissue iron concentration and tissue hydration gave a better prediction of R2 than iron concentration alone. A model combining several of the texture measures was developed using logistic regression and was found to improve distinction of high-grade fibrosis from low-grade fibrosis. For the distinction of F0 and F1 fibrosis stages (as assessed by the METAVIR system) from F2 and above the area under the receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curve was 0.75. As this model was developed using a cohort of subjects with varying pathologies, the performance of the model is expected to improve if only iron-loaded subjects are considered.

<p>One of the most frequent things we do as consumers is make purchase. We pay for a coffee or for food, we pay for necessities around the house, we even pay for one another, buying drinks or dinner for a friend every now and then. In today’s marketplace, the decision of whether to purchase is also coupled with the decision of how to make a purchase. Consumers have so many different methods to pay for their transactions. Can the way a consumer chooses to pay change the likelihood that s/he make a purchase? And then post-purchase, can the payment method used to pay for a purchase influence how connected individuals feel to that product, brand, or organization? Given that we sometimes pay for others (and vice versa), can the way we pay influence our interpersonal relationships?</p><p>In what follows, I argue that the way individuals pay, and specifically the pain associated with making a payment, can have a pervasive effect on their decision to make a purchase and how they feel post-transaction. Across three essays, I focus on how the pain of paying can influence the likelihood to purchase an item from a consideration set (Essay 1) and subsequently, how the pain of paying can influence post-transaction connection to a product, organization, or even to other people (Essay 2 and 3). Across field, laboratory, online, and archival methods, I find robust evidence that increasing the pain of paying may initially deter individuals from choosing. However, post-transaction, increasing the pain of payment may have an upside: individuals feel closer and more committed to a product that they purchased, organization that they donated to, and feel greater connection and rapport to who they spent their money on. However, I also demonstrate the boundary conditions of these findings. When individuals are spending money on something that is undesirable, such as paying for a competitor, increasing the pain of payment decreases interpersonal connection and rapport.</p> / Dissertation

A radio base station (RBS) may become overloaded if too many mobile devices communicate with it at the same time. This could happen at for instance sport events or in the case of accidents. To prevent CPU overload, the RBS is provided with a controller that adjusts the acceptance rate, the maximum number of connection requests that can be accepted per time interval. The current controller is tuned in real radio base stations and the procedure is both time consuming and expensive. This, combined with the fact that the mobile data usage is predicted to increase puts more pressure on today's system. Thus, there is a need to be able to simulate the system in order to suggest an alternative controller. In this thesis, an implementation of the system is developed in Matlab in order to simulate the RBS system load control behaviour. A CPU load model is estimated using system identification. The current version of the CPU load controller and an alternative PI CPU load controller are implemented. Both are evaluated on different test cases and this shows that it is possible to increase the performance of the system with the alternative CPU load controller, both in terms of lower amount of rejected connection requests and decreased CPU load overshoot.

Thesis (MSc (Genetics))--University of Stellenbosch, 2008. / The porphyrias are a group of genetic diseases resulting from the accumulation of haem precursors due to defective enzyme activity in either one of the last seven enzymes in the haem biosynthesis pathway. One of the common hepatic porphyrias, porphyria cutanea tarda (PCT), arises from the inhibition of uroporphyrinogen decarboxylase (UROD) activity. It is characterised by excessive urinary and hepatic excretion of uroporphyrinogens and manifests cutaneously in the form of dermatitis. Two main forms of PCT have been described, namely familial PCT (fPCT) and sporadic PCT (sPCT). PCT is a complex disease and a few genetic (including modifier loci) and environmental precipitating factors have been implicated in the aetiology of PCT. An important exacerbating factor, iron overload, is observed in the majority of PCT patients. The aim of this study was to determine whether DNA sequence variation in the 5' untranslated regulatory region of four genes involved in iron metabolism i.e. CP, CYBRD1, HAMP and SLC40A1 may in any way be associated with PCT. The study cohort consisted of 74 patients from three diverse South African populations including 15 Black (eight males and seven females), 30 Caucasian (13 male and 17 females) and 29 Coloured (18 males and 11 females) individuals as well as 132 population-matched controls. The promoter region of the selected genes were screened for variation utilising the techniques of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification, heteroduplex single-stranded conformational polymorphism (HEX-SCCP) analysis, restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis and bi-directional semi-automated DNA sequencing. Twenty three previously described and eleven novel variants were identified. The novel variants comprised CYBRD1: -1540G/A, -1474G/A, -1452T/C, -1346T/C, -1272T/C, -645T/C; G(T)8G(T)nG(T)nG(T)9; HAMP: -429G/T and SLC40A1: -1461T/C, -1399G/A, -524C/T. Statistically significant associations were observed at a number of loci. In silico analysis revealed several putative transcription factor binding sites (TFBSs) spanning the regions of variation. The disruption of an existing (or creation of a novel) TFBS is thought to occur in the presence of a variant in a number of instances. This may lead to the manipulation of transcription rates, thereby depicting a possible mechanism for gene dysregulation. The study presented here was undertaken as a preliminary investigation to determine the contribution (if any) of variants in the regulatory regions of candidate genes in iron metabolism in South African PCT patients. Considering the increasing incidence of PCT, in particular the Black South African population, it is necessary to elucidate the underlying mechanisms of iron overload in PCT patients. The propitious findings signified in the study, in conjunction with phenotypegenotype correlations, will assist in clarifying the association between iron overload and PCT. / jfl2010 / Imported from http://etd.sun.ac.za April 2010.

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2014. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: We are living in an increasingly global and connected society with information creation increasing at exponential rates. The research sets out to help solve the problem of mitigating the effects of information overload in order to increase the novelty of our interactions in the digital age. Online social-networks and microblogging services allow people across the world to take part in a public conversation. These tools have inherent constraints on how much communication can feasibly occur. Become too connected and a user will receive too much information to reasonably process. On Twitter (a microblogging service), lists are a tool for users to create separate feeds. The research determines whether lists are an effective tool for coping with information overload (abundance of updates). Using models of sustainable online discourse and information overload on computer-mediated communication tools, the research found that lists are an effective tool to cope with information overload on microblogging services. Quantitatively, individuals who make use of lists follow more users and when they start using lists they increase the amount of information resources (following other users) at a greater rate than those who do not use lists. Qualitatively, the research also provides insight into the reasons why people use lists. The research adds new academic relevance to ‘information overload’ and ‘online sustainability’ models previously not used in the context of feed-based online CMC tools, and deepens the understanding and importance of usercurated filtering as a way to reap the benefits from the increasing abundance of information in the digital age. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Ons leef in ’n toenemend globale en gekonnekteerde samelewing waarin inligtingskepping toeneem teen ’n eksponensiële koers. Hierdie navorsing het ten doel om die newe-effekte van die oorvloed van inligting te verlig sodat daar meer waarde uit ons interaksies in die digitale era kan geput kan word. Aanlyn sosiale-netwerke en mikroblog-dienste laat mense wêreldwyd toe om deel te neem in ’n openbare gesprek. Hierdie aanlyn gereedskap het egter inherente beperkinge op hoeveel kommunikasie prakties moontlik is. Wanneer gebruikers té gekonnekteer raak, word daar te veel ingligting ontvang om redelikerwys verwerk te kan word. Op Twitter (’n mikroblog-diens) is lyste ’n hulpmiddel waarmee gebruikers afsonderlike strome van inligting kan skep. Deur die gebruik van modelle van ‘volhoubare aanlyn diskoers’ en ‘inligtingoorlading’, bewys hierdie navorsing dat lyste ’n doeltreffende hulpmiddel is om die oorvloed van inligting te verlig op mikroblog-dienste. Kwantitatief volg gebruikers wat lyste gebruik meer gebruikers vergeleke met die wat nie lyste gebruik nie. Wanner hul lyste begin gebruik, volg hulle gebruikers teen ’n hoër koers as dié wat nie lyste gebruik nie. Kwalitatief bied die navorsing ook insig oor die redes vir die gebruik van lyste. Die navorsing onderstreep die akademiese relevansie van ‘inligtingoorlading’ en ‘aanlyn volhoubaarheid’ modelle wat nie voorheen gebruik is in die konteks van stroom-gebaseerde aanlyn gereedskap nie, en verdiep die begrip en belangrikheid van gebruiker-saamgestelde filtrering as ’n manier om die voordele te trek uit die toenemende oorvloed van inligting in die digitale era.

abstract: This thesis describes research into the application of socially reflective, or "Slow", design principles to modern mediated systems, or "Fast" technology. The "information overload" caused by drastic changes in the nature of human communications in the last decade has become a serious problem, with many human-technology interactions creating mental confusion, personal discomfort and a sense of disconnection. Slow design principles aim to help create interactions that avoid these problems by increasing interaction richness, encouraging engagement with local communities, and promoting personal and communal reflection. Three major functional mediated systems were constructed to examine the application of Slow principles on multiple scales: KiteViz, Taskville and Your ____ Here. Each system was designed based on a survey of current research within the field and previous research results. KiteViz is a visually metaphorical display of Twitter activity within a small group, Taskville is a workplace game designed to support collaboration and group awareness in an enterprise, and Your ____ Here is a physical-digital projection system that augments built architecture with user-submitted content to promote discussion and reflection. Each system was tested with multiple users and user groups, the systems were evaluated for their effectiveness in supporting each of the tenets of Slow design, and the results were collected into a set of key findings. Each system was considered generally effective, with specific strengths varying. The thesis concludes with a framework of five major principles to be used in the design of modern, highly-mediated systems that still apply Slow design principles: design for fundamental understanding, handle complexity gracefully, Slow is a process of evolution and revelation, leverage groups and personal connections to encode value, and allow for participation across a widely distributed range of scales. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S.D. Design 2011

O ambiente organizacional está cada vez mais embebido em tecnologias, que proporcionam novas formas de interação entre indivíduos e entre empresas. As tecnologias móveis, posicionadas nesse ambiente, são tecnologias que transformam o cenário dos gestores, trazendo facilidades e desafios ao mesmo tempo. Analisar a participação destas tecnologias na vida gerencial é relevante para poder perceber como os gestores lidam com elementos emergentes da intensa integração de suas atividades com as tecnologias móveis e todas as suas possibilidades. Neste cenário, os gestores financeiros lidam adicionalmente com uma transformação na sua profissão. A queda da rentabilidade do mercado de capitais fez com que uma série de produtos de investimentos proliferassem, exigindo deste profissional não apenas habilidades de operador, como também de gestor e aconselhador financeiro, para conseguir atrair e guiar seus clientes dentro de tantas novas opções disponíveis. Este estudo procurou compreender a participação das tecnologias móveis nas tarefas destes gestores financeiros, dada a realidade de sobrecarga do seu uso. Através de um estudo com 11 profissionais do mercado financeiro, foram aprofundadas as dimensões da sobrecarga do uso de tecnologia móvel, quais sejam a sobrecarga de recursos, de informação e de comunicação. Quanto a sobrecarga de recursos, os profissionais estudados relataram adequação das tecnologias móveis nas suas tarefas, especialmente no que tange à mobilidade e comunicação. Em relação a sobrecarga de informação, a percepção de grande quantidade de informação foi relatada por todos os participantes, alguns dos quais destacando também a replicação dessa informação e a dificuldade em encontrar fontes confiáveis. Por fim, na sobrecarga de comunicação, o aspecto de notificações instantâneas foi o mais comentado, não apenas no âmbito profissional mas também no âmbito pessoal. Dessa forma foi possível captar as percepções dos profissionais acerca da existência destas três sobrecargas, bem como alguns impactos nas suas tarefas profissionais, formando um conjunto de palavras-chave característicos de cada dimensão. / The organizational environment is increasingly embedded in technologies that provide new forms of interaction between individuals and companies. Mobile Technologies, inside this environment, are technologies that transform the managers’ scenario, bringing facilities and challenges at the same time. Analyze the participation of these technologies in managerial life is important to realize how managers deal with emerging elements of the intense integration of its activities with mobile technology and all its possibilities. Additionally, in this scenario, financial managers deal with a transformation in their profession scope. The profitability decline of capital markets has caused a number of investment products to proliferate, demanding from him not only professional skills of the operator, as well as manager and financial advisor skills, to attract and guide their clients in so many new options available. This study sought to elucidate the role of mobile technologies in the tasks of these financial managers, given the overload use reality. Through a study of 11 financial market professionals, were deepened the dimensions of the overload of using mobile technology, namely the resources, information and communication overloads. About the resources overload, professionals studied reported adequacy of mobile technologies in their work, regard especially with mobility and communication. In relation to information overload, the perception of a large amount of information was reported by all participants, some of which also highlighting the replication of this information and the difficulty in finding reliable sources. Finally, within the communication overload, the instant notifications aspect was the most talked about, not only in the professional but also on a personal level. It was thus possible to analyze the perceptions of this professionals about the existence of these three overloads as well as some impact on their professional tasks, forming a set of characteristic keywords in each dimension.

Industrial companies are dealing with an increasing data overload problem in all aspects of their business: vast amounts of data are generated in and outside each company. Determining which data is relevant and how to get it to the right users is becoming increasingly difficult. There are a large number of datasets to be considered, and an even higher number of combinations of datasets that each user could be using. Current techniques to address this data overload problem necessitate detailed analysis. These techniques have limited scalability due to their manual effort and their complexity, which makes them unpractical for a large number of datasets. Search, the alternative used by many users, is limited by the user’s knowledge about the available data and does not consider the relevance or costs of providing these datasets. Recommender systems and so-called market approaches have previously been used to solve this type of resource allocation problem, as shown for example in allocation of equipment for production processes in manufacturing or for spare part supplier selection. They can therefore also be seen as a potential application for the problem of data overload. This thesis introduces the so-called RecorDa approach: an architecture using market approaches and recommender systems on their own or by combining them into one system. Its purpose is to identify which data is more relevant for a user’s decision and improve allocation of relevant data to users. Using a combination of case studies and experiments, this thesis develops and tests the approach. It further compares RecorDa to search and other mechanisms. The results indicate that RecorDa can provide significant benefit to users with easier and more flexible access to relevant datasets compared to other techniques, such as search in these databases. It is able to provide a fast increase in precision and recall of relevant datasets while still keeping high novelty and coverage of a large variety of datasets.