The purpose of this study is to develop a model that tests the impact of attendees' perceived importance of event design on their overall satisfaction of the event. By understanding what attendees' perceive as important and valuable to their overall experience, and thus enhancing their overall experience, researchers, planners, and managers alike will potentially have a tool for assessment and forecasting. Responses were collected from 373 participants who have attended a particular large music and gaming festival. The study found that the perceived value and importance of event design has a significant and positive effect on an event attendee's overall experience. This study has established a scale for planners and designers to implement in other event evaluation circumstances to allow for them to identify their weak links according to their customer base, and then enhance them in order to improve future event growth. / Master of Science

Background: Incorporating microtransactions has become a popular business model for video game publishers as it ultimately provides stability and reduces financial risk. While microtransactions are becoming increasingly prevalent, they do not come without trouble as they have been linked to unfair gameplay advantages and reduced satisfaction with the game. However, understanding and meeting players’ perceived values mean that developers can incorporate microtransactions more effectively and avoid such concerns. Problem: Despite comprehensive research and the consistent recognition of perceived values as having a significant impact on the propensity to purchase microtransactions, the existing literature has yielded inconclusive results regarding the precise extent of their influence. Furthermore, the current body of literature has mainly focused on multiplayer games which differ greatly in their nature compared with single-player games, meaning that these findings do not necessarily apply in a single-player environment. Thus, very little is known about what happens when the social element is absent in the game and more research is needed on single-player games to understand this impact, where perceptions can be explored in another setting yielding potentially different results. Purpose: The research seeks to examine the influence of social elements on players’ attitudes toward purchasing microtransactions and build a theoretical framework. With the absence of research on single-player games and the distinction to multiplayer modes, emergent findings will elaborate adjacent theories on microtransactional gaming and provide an increasingly nuanced understanding of the topic. Research Question: How does the social element of gaming impact players’ willingness to purchase microtransactions? Method: Ontology – Interpretivism; Epistemology – Social Constructionism; Methodology – Inductive Exploratory Multiple Case Study; Data Collection – 10 Semi-structured Interviews; Interview Technique – Laddering Technique; Sampling –Purposeful Sampling and Snowball Sampling; Data Analysis – Thematic Content Analysis. Conclusion: The present study provides evidence of four distinct perceived values, namely self-expression, emotional, convenience, and social, which exert influence on players' willingness to purchase microtransactions. Notably, the social aspects within the gaming environment were found to differentially impact each of these values. Furthermore, these perceived values were found to possess a temporal dimension, indicating whether the anticipated benefits would be realized immediately, in the future, or both. To determine the overall perceived value and purchase intent, players assess the expected benefits of perceived immediate and future value relative to the purchase's associated costs and perceived social risks.

Background - Multiple studies within different industries have shown that the majority of innovations adopted by organizations partly or completely fail, in the critical stage between the decision to use the innovation and its routinization. In the pursuit of understanding what makes innovation implementation fail or succeed, previous research has examined innovation implementation as a rather static process within single dimensions. We therefore still know little about what is beyond the implementation other than routine use, meaning that other outcomes have been overlooked. Purpose - Expanding on the dynamic view within innovation implementation literature beyond routine use by exploring how and why unintended outcomes form. Methodology - Inductive, qualitative methodology based on a single case study at Saab AB. Data were collected through a total of 13 unstructured and semistructured in-depth interviews to map the implementation process of Model Based Definition (MBD). Findings - By understanding innovation implementation as a dynamic process of mutual adaptation we found that when an organization implements an innovation, unintended outcomes may arise from Unreasonable expectations, Obstructed adaptation, Underestimated need for adaptation, One-way adaptation and Over adaptation. Our research has thereby highlighted the importance to not only consider if but also how an innovation is implemented.

The aim of the current study was to reconstruct the sport venue quality dimensionsas an autonomous quality with a utilitarian perspective and examine the impact on spectators’ perceived risk, price perception, and sustained consumption intentions. Venues for National Basketball Association (NBA) and Major League Baseball (MLB) games that mostly represent indoor and outdoor sporting facilities were chosen, and subjects were spectators who have experience of attending professional team sport events in sport venues. The study employed an online survey for data collection, and a total of 595 samples were utilized for data analyses. The data set was randomly split into two halves for a principal component analysis and a confirmatory factor analysis, respectively. Results of the PCA generated 11 factors for venue quality including seating comfort, facility aesthetics, layout accessibility, safety, cleanliness, seating view, space allocation, facility system, electronic device, parking, and signage. The reliability and validity of the measurement model were also confirmed. In the structural model analyses, venue quality was found to be significantly associated with perceived value, perceived risk, and sustained consumption intentions. The relationships among perceived value, perceived risk, and sustained consumption intentions were also positively significant. The mediating effects of perceived value and perceived risk were found in the relationship between venue quality and sustained consumption intentions. The findings of the current research will contribute to the sport management literature by providing meaningful insights on capturing the essence of sport venue quality, based on an autonomous quality, and how it affects spectators’ price perception, alleviates perceived risk, and leads to sustained consumption intentions.

Background: Customers find great psychological satisfaction and pleasure when shopping. Customer satisfaction is crucial for a business's success, and increasing it will strengthenfinancial performance and competitiveness. Offline shopping still dominates the customersindustry, although customers are increasingly choosing online shopping as a result offast-growing technological developments in society. However, physical experiences shouldnot be left behind due to customer’s satisfaction from the instant gratification they desire. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explain how customer perceived value, customerexpectations, and touch experience have an impact on customer satisfaction in an offlineshopping context. Methodology: This research is conducted through a deductive and quantitative approach,which has an explanatory aim. Three hypotheses have been deducted from theoreticalconcepts found from previous research. The data collection method was collected through aninternet-based, self-completion questionnaire, to see if the hypotheses were supported or not.A total of 105 respondents participated in the study. Findings: The findings indicate that customer perceived value H1, which explains a positiveimpact on customer satisfaction in the context of offline shopping, cannot be supported due tostatistical insignificance. Customer expectation, as presented through H2, and touchexperience, as presented through H3, were found to have a statistically significant andpositive impact on customer satisfaction. The conceptual model was revised in this studybased on the new findings, retaining the acceptable assumptions as the new model. Conclusion: In offline shopping, the positive impact of customer expectation on customersatisfaction is the most obvious, followed by the touch experience. Customer perceived valuehas no positive impact on customer satisfaction, and the reason for this situation may be thatthe perceived value of customers differs among different consumption levels.

Global Alliance of Marketing and Management Associations (GAMMA). The purpose of this study was to propose and empirically test a sport spectator behavioral model. The model presented here is a micro-level perspective of value creation in the context of live sporting events. This study used directional hypotheses to compare the influence of different value dimensions on specific customer behaviors in the setting of North American professional sport. Structural equation modeling was performed to examine path coefficients for the hypothesized relationships in the model. Organization-related value propositions were found to be stronger predictors of perceived economic, hedonic, and social value. One exception to this was customer density, which negatively impacted certain value perceptions. The hedonic value was found to have the strongest influence on customer in-role and extra-role behavior. The behavioral model tested here can be used in future studies to examine how sport organizations and their customers can create value in the live event setting and how the roles performed by each stakeholder influence future behavior. Findings suggest there are several actions marketers and managers can take to increase customer perceived value and prompt spectators to attend future events or act as advocates for the organization.

The offer of vacation packages is a marketing tool called bundling, selling at least two separate products at one single price (Guiltinan, 1987). Sellers adopt bundling strategies in order to sell more at lower costs, to contract consumer surplus, and to create value for consumers. Consumers purchase a package based on the trade-off between the perceived benefits and costs involved in purchasing the package compared to assembling different products/service. In other words, the perceived value of the package is the reason for consumers to purchase a package or not. The study serves two purposes. One is to examine the dimensionality of perceived value as a construct, in the pre-purchase stage. The other is to investigate the relationships between bundling strategies and perceived value, and perceived value and purchase intention of a vacation package. Bundling strategies taken by sellers include how many items to put in a package and what price discount for the package compared to the sum of all separate products. The findings of the study show that perceived value in service setting is composed of perceived acquisition value and perceived functional value, instead of perceived acquisition value and perceived transaction value proposed by scholars such as Thaler (1985) and Grewal et al. (1998). This is one of the theoretical contributions by the study. Another contribution of the study is the exploratory examination of the interaction effect between pricing strategies and product strategies for a bundle. The study provides evidence that bundles without a discount are perceived as having very low value and consumers expect a discount, large or small, from buying a bundle. And the larger the number of products in a package, the larger the discount size consumers expect to get. / Ph. D.

<p>  </p> <p>The purpose of the present study was to investigate the influence of purchasing purposes and country of origin on consumer’s purchasing intentions for sparkling wine, considering the effect of consumer’s value perceptions on the product. Two study populations were investigated: general U.S. wine consumers and self-identified food and beverage practitioners. It was found that for the general U.S. wine consumers, buying wine for gift giving or self-gifting would result in different purchasing intention and perceived emotional-social value, but Country of Origin (e.g., French Champagne or U.S. Sparkling Wine) did not result in any differences in purchasing intentions or perceived values. The practitioner group did not note any significant differences  between scenarios given the purchasing purposes and country of origin on their purchasing intentions and perceived values. Correlations of perceived emotional-social value, perceived price value and purchasing intention were found. Several practical and theoretical implications were presented. </p>

This research project is a quantitative enquiry focused specifically on the value consumption of digital business platforms (DBP's) in relation to how informal sector traders (IST's) are using them to buy, sell and market their product and services in their daily trade functions. This study has adopted the approach of classifying the social media platforms, internet banking platforms and mobile payments platforms, as a single collective and defined under the banner of Digital Business Platforms. The advantage to this approach, is that it provides a multi-dimensional view of the perceived value-axis based on positive and negative experiences of using a variety of digital platforms including messaging, payments, and banking applications on their mobile phones in their daily trading functions. This study examines the positive experiences of perceived value (PV), collectively in the form of social value (SV), emotional value (EV) and functional value (FV). On the opposite end of the value spectrum, are the negative experiences of perceived risk in the form of price risk (PR) and technical barriers (TB) for the same group of informal sector traders. Understanding the relational impacts of these positive and negative experiences of value consumption, may lead to an understanding of their influence in the perceived usefulness (PU) and the perceived ease of use (PEoU) of DBP's. The results of these relationships will shed some light towards the behavioural intention (BI) to adopt DBP's and their actual usage in the long term. The analysis yielded the following results: for positive experiences, emotional value had the least impact on both perceived ease of use and usefulness and functional value was higher than social value. This means that IST's place more value on the utility of DBP's, than the emotional and social values. Regarding the negative experiences, price risk had the most significant impact on the willingness to adopt DBP's by ISTs.

This thesis offers dialogue about the relations between learning and Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). The dialogue is guided by the question of how to design education to increase perceived values of learning. It pays attention to how learners approach learning availabilities in various learning settings based on learners’ perceived values of learning. The aim is to understand the perceived values of learning in order to reflect its relation to ICTs. The field of learning is understood from the perspectives of formal, non-formal and informal learning. The field of ICTs is understood from the perspectives of information, communication and technology. The perspectives of learning and ICTs are chosen as a way to understand them by ‘going back to basics’ to find an origin or a point of departure for reinterpreting and understanding them. This approach has influenced the presentation of the thesis and how it is structured so that dialogic and interpretive research opens up dialogic spaces for reflections regarding the relations between learning and ICTs. Two studies in two different education systems, formal and non-formal, are included in the thesis work. The data are collected via qualitative methods such as photo interviews and individual and group interviews in which learners’ expressions of learning are in focus. The approach of the included articles that present the two studies was to first understand learning and then relate it to the understanding, potential and use of ICTs. The results and contributions from the articles are summarised via the three perspectives of the perceived values of learning, the relations between learning and ICTs and the influences of perceived values of learning. The theoretical tools, pedagogical attitude and positioning of ICTs guide the discussions and analysis of these perspectives towards the conclusions of the thesis work. The reader of the thesis can expect a journey along a winding road, which both addresses and involves policies’ and researchers’ implications and conceptions of learning and education. A framework for the perceived values of education when perspectives of learning and ICTs are related is considered to represent the understanding of the coherent whole of the thesis work. Three main contributions of the thesis work are put forth. The first contribution is the framework for perceived values of education, or the perceived value framework (PVF). The second contribution is the understanding of perceived values of learning. The third contribution is the specific photo interviews about learning situations that is considered to be a contribution to already existing methods such as photo-eliciting (Cappello, 2005) and stimulated recall (Haglund, 2003).