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Globalization has developed more and more within the business world as well as private life during the last decades. Globalization has influenced the way companies are conducting business and their approach towards the consumers which can have an influence on their way of purchasing. Consumers nowadays have more than ever the possibility to get involved and gather experiences from abroad, as well as companies are taking advantage of this globalization. Within this thesis the following question will be discussed: Do consumers see the value companies try to create for them with an identical offer the same way in different markets? This idea is based on Theodore Levitt’s theory of globalization which comprises standardization of an offer since consumer needs are homogenizing globally. Douglas & Wind instead state that segmentation with adaptations is necessary to fulfill all consumer needs. Within this elaboration the question whether standardization is accepted and liked by the consumers is discussed and analyzed by including an empirical research. This research is based on Zeithaml’s model of the Perceived Quality Components, which was the fundamental base behind formulating the survey questions. These were submitted in Germany, the Republic of Ireland and Sweden to be able to discuss and visualize how the consumers of these different markets perceive different aspects of a company’s offer. One particular company, which is seen as doing business globally, was chosen as a test object. Based on the test object Lidl - which consumers were questioned about in the survey - it was possible to conduct a comparison of consumers’ general expectations against components of Lidl’s offer such as price, weekly specials, product range, etc. where differences and similarities between the three countries of Lidl’s fulfillment of these expectations were achieved. They were analyzed to discover to which extent globalization is present. Resulting from the comparison it was concluded that nowadays segmentation is important but developing with time globalization seems to increase in significance. Recommendations for further research about topics which were omitted due to limited resources are presented.

¡@¡@Famous for its products all made in Taiwan and relatively cheap prices, Lativ is one of the popular clothes brands in Taiwan. By a great deal of key word advertising, Lativ gets its popularity and makes its sales rise tremendously. However, taking into consideration of ascending product costs and limited production in Taiwan, Lativ decided to change the location of production lines from Taiwan to China and Vietnam in the beginning of 2012. The issue of production difficulties in Taiwan comes again. In this cosmopolitan trend of division of labour, it's a tough problem that clothes companies in Taiwan could boost the taste of customers in Taiwan by the feature of products made in Taiwan. This research into the change of the customers' tastes with varied brands and different places of production is to find the new way for clothes companies in Taiwan to manage. Country image and other variables are discussed and select to form research model. The goal of this research is to find the relationship between country image and consumers' perceived quality. Another goal is to find the moderator effect between country image and consumers' perceived quality. Sample of 328 collected through questionnaire survey from field and online, and hypotheses were tested by regression analysis. ¡@¡@The result showed that there is a significant relationship between the country image and consumers' perceived quality, and the brand awareness is a moderator between the country image and consumers' perceived quality. The result also indicated that the higher country's design image, prestige, and workmanship image leaded to higher consumer's perceived quality. But country's innovation image did nothing to consumer's perceived quality. Furthermore, brand awareness is a moderator only between the country's design image and consumers' perceived quality. Based on the result, suggestions are as followed: clothing store can claim "brand in Taiwan" instead of "made in Taiwan." They can cooperate with the competitor or form horizontal alliances to increase Taiwan's design image which increase consumer's perceived quality.

To consumers, price promotion delivers economic incentive. Lower price means lower cost which consumers need to pay for products and services. That explains the reason that price promotion becomes a common short-term sales strategy. In the other hand, price promotion could be one negative signal to the quality. As a result, positive benefits in sales volume brought about by economic incentive of price promotion could be canceled out by the negative signal to quality, so far as to cause the decrease of sales volume. However, the positive relationship between prices and qualities is not necessarily tenable. When some outside factors exist, the negative effects which price promotion causes to the quality will be reduced. This will make price promotion work more effectively. According to Transaction Utility Theory, consumers¡¦ purchase intention depends on perceived acquisition value and perceived transaction value. Perceived acquisition value decides the percentage between perceived benefit and perceived cost. And perceived transaction value determines the difference between the fair price which consumers consider and the real price which they pay. The higher perceived acquisition value and perceived transaction value, the greater consumers¡¦ purchase intention. This research takes outbound package travel as the observation target and applies 2*2*2 experimental design method to analyze. The variables include price promotion range (fewer discount, larger discount); brand awareness (lower brand awareness, higher brand awareness) and information supply (shorter supply, richer supply). After taking questionnaires analysis, this research concludes: 1. When price promotion gets fewer, brand awareness higher and information supply richer, consumers¡¦ perceived quality and internal reference price will be higher. 2. When consumers¡¦ perceived quality gets higher, perceived transaction value higher, and perceived cost lower, their perceived acquisition value will become higher and so as their purchase intention. Based on conclusions of this research, when brand awareness is higher, price promotion will produce more significant effect on raising consumers¡¦ purchase intention. Secondly, marketing sectors can stop price promotion from becoming the negative signal to the quality by providing consumers with more related information. Thirdly, since perceived quality is the most important factor which will influence consumers¡¦ purchase intention, enterprises should concentrate efforts on raising the quality for effectively stimulating consumers¡¦ purchase intention.

To explore the viability of a new training evaluation criteria, theories from the areas of service, adult education, and training, were combined to form a model of Perceived Quality of Training and Transfer. Operating from the paradigm that training is a service, a rigorous scale development process was initiated to discover the dimensions of perceived quality of training, a new construct within the realm of training evaluation based upon trainees' impressions of training. Thirty-six supporting items, representing nine dimensions of perceived quality of training, formed the scale developed in the first phase of this study. To test and further refine the perceived quality of training scale, 164 trainees from six different instructor-led training classes in the hospitality industry completed pre-training and post-training surveys that evaluated scale items as expectations as well as perceptions of training. Comparing measurement techniques, findings indicated that a perception only measure of training quality was more highly correlated with trainees' overall quality of training ratings than was a gap measure (perceptions minus expectations). Exploratory factor analysis conducted in phase 2 of the study revealed that the six dimensions of perceived quality of training, as determined by the perception measurement, are interactivity, climate, courtesy, relevance, tangibles, and credibility. These dimensions are similar to the dimensions of service quality, thereby giving credence to the idea of tapping into eclectic literature bases to address issues of training evaluation. Lastly, test results indicated that the perception measurement of the perceived training quality scale was significantly and positively correlated with trainees' intentions to use training when they returned to their jobs. / Ph. D.

The purpose of this study was to identify a set of perceived indicators of institutional quality for theological schools. To identify the most commonly agreed upon indicators of perceived quality for theological schools, 69 variable indicators of quality were selected from research regarding quality in higher education and in theological schools and compiled into the Inventory of Determinants of Quality for Theological Schools (IDQTS). This instrument was mailed to presidents or deans of non-Catholic theological schools, theological school faculty members, theological school graduates who are practicing ministers, and church leaders. Of the 487 surveys mailed, 288 were returned to be included in this study. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) procedure was executed for each of the 69 IDQTS items to determine if the group means of the four study group responses were significantly different. The level of significance was set at .01. Thirty-nine IDQTS items were found to have no significant difference in the group means for responses at the .01 level. Twenty-nine of these 39 items were rated as Important or Most Important perceived indicators of institutional quality for theological schools with overall means of 3.00 or higher. Ten other items were rated as Less important to Unimportant perceived indicators of institutional quality for theological schools with overall means of 2.99 or lower. When the four study groups were treated as four individual raters and Kendall's Coefficient of Concordance was applied to their responses on the IDQTS, a W of .8881 was calculated with p < .01. Of the IDQTS items perceived to be ranked in the highest one-third of indicators of institutional quality in theological schools, eight were associated with student outcomes, five were associated with faculty, four were associated with administration and organization, four were associated with curriculum, one was associated with institutional demographics, one was associated with student services and none were associated with institutional resources.

Bulk food exist in various kind of food, can be purchased by individual needs and quantities required, customer in Taiwan still stick to bulk food and the way sales. Recent year, many problems have revealed the bulk food safety issue. Therefore, Department of Health enacted bulk food labeling regulation in 2009 to clarify what information to be revealed, and has advocating the information to consumer about how to choose bulk food. The government hopes to increase the consumer knowledge and avoid food hazard. We can tell that knowledge must be an important part in decision procedure of food purchasing, but a few of research concern this issue. Hence, in this research product knowledge and other variables are discussed and selected to form research model. This research also discovered the bulk food safety situation unprecedentedly, gives an overview to readers. The goals of this research are find the mediator effect within involvement, perceived quality and repurchase intention and the moderator effect of product knowledge between the relationships of perceived quality and repurchase intention. Samples of 973 collected through questionnaire survey, tested the hypotheses by regression analysis. The result showed the three variables did have partial mediator effect. And the moderator effect was confirmed, product knowledge will weakened the relationship, implied the bulk food safety information advocacy would help to change the customer decision. Based on the result, suggestions are as followed: government should keep on educating consumer to establish proper food decision criteria; bulk food producer and distributor should improve the information reveal and food quality control spontaneously, to win customers¡¦ perceived quality and increase purchase.

As companies become ever more globalised, manufacture firms choose to outsource production to lower labour cost countries. However, as studies have shown, such a relocation of production may lead to undesirably decreased quality perceptions by consumers as the brand origin and country of production are de-coupled. This quality perception linked to congruity between brand origin and country of production has been studied for various products and product classes, but little has been written about how a luxury bed manufacturer may be affected by this phenomenon known as the country of origin effect. Thus in theory quality perceptions are higher if the brand origin and country of production are congruent and are further amplified if that country is already regarded highly in terms of production competence. In our study, we set out to verify this theory through a consumer-based questionnaire. Our results give strong evidence in support of this theory which is why we ultimately claim, from a theoretical standpoint, that the company we focus on should maintain its production location in Sweden.

Bulk food exist in various kind of food, can be purchased by individual needs and quantities required, customer in Taiwan still stick to bulk food and the way sales. Recent year, many problems have revealed the bulk food safety issue. Therefore, Department of Health enacted bulk food labeling regulation in 2009 to clarify what information to be revealed, and has advocating the information to consumer about how to choose bulk food. The government hopes to increase the consumer knowledge and avoid food hazard. We can tell that knowledge must be an important part in decision procedure of food purchasing, but a few of research concern this issue. Hence, in this research product knowledge and other variables are discussed and selected to form research model. This research also discovered the bulk food safety situation unprecedentedly, gives an overview to readers. The goals of this research are find the mediator effect within involvement, perceived quality and repurchase intention and the moderator effect of product knowledge between the relationships of perceived quality and repurchase intention. Samples of 973 collected through questionnaire survey, tested the hypotheses by regression analysis. The result showed the three variables did have partial mediator effect. And the moderator effect was confirmed, product knowledge will weakened the relationship, implied the bulk food safety information advocacy would help to change the customer decision. Based on the result, suggestions are as followed: government should keep on educating consumer to establish proper food decision criteria; bulk food producer and distributor should improve the information reveal and food quality control spontaneously, to win customers¡¦ perceived quality and increase purchase.

As the consumer market grows vigorously in recent years, the warehouse clubs and hypermarkets that were at the end of channel have replaced wholesalers to become the leaders of the retailing market. Under this circumstance, competition among all retailers is more and more fierce. The retailers must not only emphasize on ¡§quantity¡¨ to control the prices, but also place the importance on ¡§quality¡¨ to attract all consumers. According to the statistical data of The Ministry of Economic Affairs, it could be concluded that whether retailing business or hypermarkets still grows positively in recent years. Therefore, there are more and more competitors entering the retailing business. How retailers maintain their own competitive advantages and avoid not eliminating through competition would be the greatest and most vital challenge for all retailers. This research regards hypermarket retailers as the main research object, probing into the correlation among customer perceived quality, customer satisfaction and store performance. By sending out questionnaires, this research did a survey to analyze the customer perceived product and service quality. Moreover, this research also made a study of the relationship between customer perceived quality and customer satisfaction, and the relationship between customer satisfaction and store performance. Through the real analysis, it could be concluded that product perceived quality has a positive influence on product satisfaction in the retailing business. If the retailers of hypermarket could promote the evaluation of product perceived quality, it would become a key factor to improve customer satisfaction. Also, Service perceived quality would influence service satisfaction positively. Workers in the retailing business should offer customers pleasing service and correct shopping information. These are the key factors to progress service satisfaction. As for the relationship between customer satisfaction and store performance, it might be affected by different characteristics and structure of customers. In other words, the relationship might be non-linear.