Non-governmental organizations play an increasingly important role in society today. The purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics, difficulties, and possibilities for NGOs working with social welfare in China. This paper presents data by using qualitative method and analyzes it with the social ecological perspective. The results of this study show that top-down NGOs like the one studied in this paper are experimental organizations which are established according to China's social environment in order to undertake the welfare services ordered by the government. In this way the government legalizes the working of NGOs. However, the result is that, on the one hand, NGOs help government to promote the quality of public services, and on the other, relying on the government becames an obstruction of NGOs development.

Abstract In the era of economic globalization and regional economic times, service-oriented manufacturing sector of management science, environmental protection standard 3R (reduce, recycle, reuse) of the environmental costs, but also business process in today's business and going to an important issue to consider ¡C Case study company is mainly engaged in punching industry, the key body parts to provide products to electronics companies, with highly customized industry characteristics. Provide customized technical experience accumulated experience of spunching product manufacturing competitive differentiation, price competition is not easy to flow in, but the customized product life cycle is short, indirect stamping industry in customer delivery and with the degree to be more flexible. How to create a company with limited resources, the greatest value, then the company needs to strengthen internal management and more to find the core competitive advantage to in response to management issues, the main investigator of this research-oriented background¡C In this paper the strategy and Jay Barney's resource-based theory of internal resources is essentially self-view business, and qualitative research methods to case analysis to identify the direction the company should be improved and the core competitiveness of the self-view. In addition to stamping industry, analysis of the external business environment to understand the case in the main electronic body parts to study why the dynamic competitiveness. The main motivation for this research study-cum-research purposes, it is summarized as follows : 1. To find out the status of cases, the company currently operates the main problems viewing and self-diagnostic analysis for the determination of clear cases of the company's main core competencies are¡C 2. The aim of analysis of the external environment stamping industry analysis, the main body parts for electronic analysis of the impact¡C On the question of the conclusion of the study and concluded that the internal processes of self-management process should be re-view, create value-based management company operating activities, the internal control system in the process of risk control mechanisms for building improvements. Another talent retention and on-site management services to scientific concepts and patented manufacturing technology development and applications introduction, so before the next wave to create the company's core competitiveness of services kinetic energy¡C Keywords: traditional industries, collaboration, SWOT analysis, purchase and

The era of increasingly well-developed communication, network, along with this wave of change, and the globalization, the economic opportunities brought by virtual world, is nothing more than companies do their utmost to pursue the scope. Increase the added value of products or services to enhance corporate profitability, originally only be used for sales of products and services in the physical store, joined network store sales and let the results of the rapid growth of invisible. But, what's the difference with the physical store, when in contact with the consumer products and services through web services. Will internet service changes product attributes in response of the consumers decision-making behavior? What's the important factor in rely on the procurement of online shoppers? The special attributes of the virtual economy, let us know, why trust is the reason of consumers purchase goods and services on recognized intermediary platform, and they gradually accumulating customer loyalty and purchasing intention. For this reason, we explored the trust antecedents, attribute dimensions, and how trust link to the loyalty and purchasing intention, as well as their composition and influencing factors. And based on the objects of online potential shopping group for the research topic, the trust associated with e-commerce community loyalty and customer purchase intention. By the stratified random sampling, a total of 248 samples were taken, and use of path analysis and stepwise regression to analyze the data in parallelly. In this study, convenience sampling questionnaire survey found that: "Personality-based trust", "institution-based trust" and "knowledge-based trust", link to the" customer loyalty "and" " purchase intention" via "Intermediaries trust. Trust in intermediaries¡¦ link to online shopper¡¦s purchases intentions, through "customer loyalty" with direct and indirect effects. The significant differences found, by analysis of the online shoppers demography of with and without the shopping experience in the past three months show on the trust of intermediaries. Therefore, we confirmed once again that the trust of the E-commerce community and its strong related items.

Leisure travel has become an important activity in Taiwan. According to the statistical data of Tourism Bureau, R.O.C., people in Taiwan spent about 280.5 billions on oversea¡¦s traveling in 2003. The number of outbound travelers has grown 40.77% compare with last February. It is obvious that the market of outbound travel is getting bigger year by year. The past research on the subject of travel behavior put emphasis on behavior aspect or satisfaction, there is little research discuss the effect of psychological aspect on purchase decisions. Some foreign research verify that the effect of self-concept congruence on product preference, brand preference, and purchase intension (Sirgy, 1982; 2000). They also extend their research to the area of traveling and discuss how the self-image congruity affects post travel satisfaction (Chon 1992), pre-travel purchase intension, or purchase possibility (Surgy and Su, 2000; Litvin and Goh, 2002; 2003). Based on the self-image congruence theory proposed by Sirgy (1982), and the integrated framework of self-image congruence with travel behavior constructed by Sirgy & Su¡]2000¡^, this research try to analyze if the level of real/ideal self-image congruence relate to the purchase intension of destination choice on four destinations with difference characteristics. The results show that outbound-travel decision makings of natives are affected by the inside congruence coordination of the psychological mechanism. Relationship between self-image congruence and tourists¡¦ purchase intention exists not only in western countries but also in Taiwan. Results also show that self-image congruence is related to purchase intention whether tourists are students or social workers. And toward the four totally different cities, New York, Bali, Rome, and Hokkaido, tourists¡¦s purchase intention is still affected by self-image congruence.

Thesis (M. Hous. M.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references.

Background: Tobacco marketing has been established as the main motivator for tobacco use among youth. A proliferation of tobacco promotional activities in retail stores has been observed yet little is known about its impact on adolescent smoking behaviours. The purpose of this study is to use secondary data to describe the prevalence of retail tobacco point-of-purchase (PoP) activities, examine its associations with adolescent smoking behaviours, and determine what ecological factors moderate the relationship between PoP activities and student smoking behaviours in British Columbia. Methods: This cross-sectional study surveyed grade 10-11 students from 22 randomly-selected schools in BC on student smoking behaviour and conducted observations in 57 retail stores on tobacco PoP activities located within a 1 km radius of these schools. Descriptive analysis was conducted on retail tobacco PoP variables. Individual data on smoking behaviour and school level data on retailers were linked to analyse the association between retail tobacco PoP activities and student smoking behaviour using logistic regression. Moderating effects of contextual factors were also examined. GIS maps were generated to illustrate study findings. Result: A moderate to strong presence of tobacco PoP activities was observed in all tobacco retail stores located in BC school neighbourhoods. Nearly all stores displayed cigarette products in a visible manner (98.25%) and posted tobacco control signage (94.74%). In this model, proportion of stores in the school neighbourhood with presence of tobacco advertising increased the odds of a student being a smoker (OR = 1.28-3.27). Proportion of stores in the school neighbourhood with presence of tobacco control signage decreased the odds of a student being a smoker (OR = 0.11-0.66). The odds of a student being a smoker increased if they resided on the island compared to living in the lower mainland (OR = 1.11-1.75). Discussion: Convenience stores exhibited more tobacco PoP activities than other store types. Retailers in the school neighbourhood that had tobacco advertisements and tobacco control signage exhibited both detrimental and protective effects on student smoking. This provides supportive evidence to ban tobacco advertising in retail stores and increase efforts for creating an anti-tobacco environment in neighbourhood retail stores. Maps generated served descriptive and hypothesis generating purposes.

Background: The advice and opinions given by consumers online have been proven to have a positive influence on consumers purchase intentions. It has previously been established by researchers that consumer-created information is more trustworthy compared to information provided by a seller. As a result, consumers’ eWOM has taken over the stage on the internet. Social media has in comparison to traditional media brought communication to a new level in terms of engaging consumers online. For instance, bloggers nowadays are assumed to be viewed as peers that can generates social ties between a blogger and a blog reader due to a blogger’s credibility. Thus, the power of peer communication is of relevance when considering persuasion in real life as well as online. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine how eWOM can be a powerful tool through social ties between the source and the receiver when it comes to generating consumers’ purchase intentions. The authors intend to contribute with an understanding of how different sociodemographic factors of homophily and source credibility can potentially have a direct or indirect influence on the persuasion process online. To understand the process of how consumers are persuaded through eWOM the authors examine the relationship between Swedish blog readers and Swedish bloggers and the process of how the readers are absorbing and using the bloggers’ message. Methodology & Method: This study was conducted using a qualitative methodology approach. The primary data was collected through interviews and observations. Ten interviews were implemented on the selected sample consisting of women living in Sweden, who are in the ages of 16-25 and read famous Swedish lifestyle blogs. Furthermore, the favourite blogs of the interviewees were observed by the researchers in order to complement the interviews. Conclusion: From this research the authors have found that homophily creates social ties between the blog reader and the blogger, and therefore this underpins that the likelihood of persuasion is higher if several factors of homophily exists. However, the factors of homophily are not sufficient on its own to establish a relationship between eWOM and purchase intentions. Rather, source credibility is considered to be the major factor that determines the extent of purchase intentions.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of different types of consumer knowledge and values on their attitude towards buying organic personal care products and their purchase intentions of organic personal care products. The aim was to make a theoretical contribution to the research area of consumer behaviour in the context of organic products. As no research had been conducted on how different types of consumers’ knowledge affect their attitudes towards buying organic products and their purchase intentions of organic products, this study aims to address this research gap. In addition, while previous studies have mainly focused on organic foods this study aims to enhance knowledge about the little researched sector of organic personal care products.

Fertilizer plays a major role in the profitability of the farmer’s business, his/her future success as well as the sustainability of his business. Fertilizer is also one of the most expensive farm inputs, and therefore, has the ability to make or break the farmer. The emerging farmer market segment is expanding and holds a great deal of potential for fertilizer companies to supply the growing need of fertilizer in this market. Almost all fertilizer marketing strategies of South African companies have been designed to cater for the commercial farming sector; however, if fertilizer suppliers want to focus on the emerging farmer market segment, they need to understand buying behaviour of emerging farmers as well as their needs when developing strategies to utilize opportunities in this developing market. This study aims to do just that by identifying factors playing an important role in the buying behaviour of emerging farmers in the Free State when purchasing fertilizer. This study was conducted in two phases. During phase one, a literature review was conducted; phase two consisted of an empirical study. Questionnaires were used as a measuring instrument and were filled out by 32 participants to determine emerging farmer buying behaviour. Data was analysed by means of descriptive statistics and correlation analyses. The Coefficient of Cronbach’s Alpha was employed to verify the validity of the data. The results show that four (4) factors; (i) Service, (ii). Brand, (iii) Product and (iv). Learning/Psychological factors highly influence emerging farmers’ fertilizer purchase decision. The study also finally draws recommendations and conclusions for managerial perusal. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014