Social media is connecting individuals all over the world, where the power of interaction and information sharing has shifted from companies to consumers. Since companies now have a harder time reaching out to consumers, social media influencers have been used as a solution to influence the purchase decisions of consumers and thereby drive purchases. However, while social media influencers are said to have an impact on the purchase decisions of consumers, less is actually known about the influence on all stages of the purchase decision process. As the purchase decision is not solely based on its own but rather follows from a series of steps, also called the purchase decision process, more research based on this area is of importance. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to explore how consumers perceive the influence of social media influencers during the different stages of the purchase decision process. In order to gather consumers’ perceptions about the influence of social media influencers, a qualitative study has been conducted where thoughts and experiences of participants have been studied. The findings of this study show that social media influencers ability to provide content, expertise, attractiveness, social identity and trust shows evidence of how the influence of social media influencers play an important role in each and every stage of the purchase decision process of consumers. The implications of this thesis is that the study could be of use to companies who seek to engage in influencer marketing and want to better understand how social media influencers affect consumers. The original value of the study is that it acknowledges how the influence of social media influencers affects all stages of the purchase decision process, as no previous study has explored this context.

Gamification is the new strategy that is applied in different areas from healthcare to the education, it is gaining a lot of popularity. Gamification is applied also in the online retailing, for trying to influence the consumer behavior. In this research paper Steam is going to be taken as a case study, since the platform is gamified. The aim of the study is to understand how gamification can influence the consumer behavior in the online retailing. As a main theoretical framework, the Fogg behavioral model. The main variables of the model are motivation, ability and trigger. In specific how the gamification can prompt the human motivation. In order to answer to the research question qualitative and quantitative research has been conducted. The qualitative research was conducted by interviewing users of the platform. While the quantitative research was conducted using a survey. The interviews and the regression model showed that extrinsic and intrinsic motivation play an important role in influencing the purchase intention of the users. According to our findings gamification influence the purchase intention by prompting the motivation of the users and at the same time also ability does influence positively the purchase intention.

[pt] Este trabalho tem como objetivo testar se cone de volatilidade aplicado ao mercado de opções brasileiro pode trazer informações adicionais à decisão de compra e venda de volatilidade. Outra contribuição deste trabalho é mostrar se os efeitos do sorriso de volatilidade e da estrutura a termo da volatilidade persistem diante de operações realizadas com o cone de volatilidade.Os resultados indicam que a comparação da volatilidade implícita com o cone de volatilidade pode ser um indicador eficiente para prever a evolução da volatilidade futura. Além disso, não só foi evidenciada a eficiência do cone como há indícios de que os ganhos são ainda mais acentuados para operações com opções dentro-do-dinheiro. Quanto a operações com opções de curto e médio prazo de duração até o exercício não existe índicos suficientes que comprovem a diferença nos resultados obtidos com a utilização do cone de volatilidade. / [en] The present study has the objective of testing if the volatility cone applied to the option market can improve the decision process of buy and sell volatility. Another contribution from this study is to assess if the volatility smile and the term structure of volatility persist when the volatility cone is used to build some operation.The results indicate that the balance of implied volatility and the volatility cone can be an efficient indicator to forecast the tendency of future volatility. Moreover, there are some indications that in-the-money options yield better results than others. On the contrary, there is no indication that short-term and medium-term options yield different results when using the volatility cone.

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The practice of promoting food to children via advergames is a highly topical issue which attracts much concern due to the low nutritional value of the promoted foods. This thesis examines the effects of customised food advergames on children’s affective, cognitive and conative responses. It also investigates the role persuasion knowledge and prior brand usage have in children’s interaction with advergames. In particular, whether children’s persuasion knowledge acts as a barrier to those responses. This research is situated within the domains of marketing communications, consumer behaviour and consumer socialisation. It adopts an affect transfer theory, the Dual Mediation Hypothesis (DMH), to explain the transfer of affect from an advergame to children’s responses. Three versions of the same advergame were designed for the purpose of this thesis with different levels of customisation (i.e. control, low and high experimental conditions). An experiment among younger (5-7 year olds) and older (11¬12 year olds) children reveals that customisation in advergames has a detrimental effect on children’s affective, cognitive and conative responses. It was the control condition, without customisation options, that rendered a positive impact on brand attitudes and preferences relative to the other two experimental conditions. Persuasion knowledge does not influence children’s affective, cognitive or conative responses. This implies that children’s understanding of the persuasive intent of an advergame does not act as a barrier against its effects. Age had a significant role on children’s attitudes towards the advergame, but not on their other responses to it. Finally, prior brand usage has a positive impact on children’s responses apart from on advergame attitudes. This thesis has implications to policy and practice. It is evident that children from two distinct age and cognitive developmental groups cannot protect themselves from advergames’ effects. Therefore, regulators should broaden the scope of concern to older and younger children alike.

While research has shown the positive impact of sensory cues and cue- congruency on emotion and behavior in retail store atmospheres, these cues have primarily been investigated in isolation or in pairs. Consequently, little is known on how multi-sensory cues in interplay impact on consumer emotions and purchase behaviors. In addition, research has not yet provided any clear conceptualization of congruency in marketing when designing retail store atmospheres, other than stating that some cues are expected to match, therefore become pleasantly perceived. Thus, the main purpose of this research is to examine and show how multi-sensory cues in interplay and congruency can be utilized in creating a retail store atmosphere to enhance consumer emotions and purchase behaviors. To address the purpose, a sequential method was adopted with four essays. The first essay explores multi-sensory interplay in marketing contexts with a literature review that forms the basis for a research agenda. The second essay employs focus groups to highlight the congruency between cues, products and the retail setting, and identifies which category of cues is in need of investigation. The third essay uses field experiments to investigate two congruent visual, auditory and olfactory cues (six cues in total) in a retail setting, and their impact on consumer emotion and purchase behavior. The final essay, also use field experiments to examine and duplicate one cue from each sense, and employs these together in interplay, to show how multi-sensory cues in interplay impacts emotions and purchase behaviors. This research concludes that multi-sensory cues in interplay in a retail store atmosphere have a greater impact on consumer emotions and purchase behaviors than single visual, auditory and olfactory setting-congruent sensory cues. Among single sensory cues, those perceived as complementary in the atmosphere, specifically auditory and olfactory in an already visual dominated atmosphere, have the largest impact on consumer emotions and purchase behaviors. Overall, this research signifies that congruent multi-sensory cues in interplay emerge as reliable predictors for the influence on consumer arousal, valence, time spent, touching, browsing and purchasing Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

The main research objective of this study was to find out whether perceived value significantly affects consumers’ purchase intention. Additionally, this study examined if there are any significant differences in perceived value for different fast-food restaurant brands and attempted to identify which fast-food restaurant is perceived to be the industry leader. A total number of six fast-food restaurants (McDonalds, Subway, Starbucks, Wendy’s, Burger King, and Taco Bell) were selected. Findings showed that among the five perceived service value dimensions, Starbucks is the leader in terms of quality, emotional response, and reputation. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and multiple regression analysis were performed to test the study hypotheses. Results indicated that there were significant differences in perceived value for different fast-food restaurant brands. Besides, monetary and behavioral price significantly affects consumers’ purchase intention. Findings are expected to help hospitality marketers to strategically manage their brands.

La finalidad del presente trabajo es explicar cómo la legislación peruana recibe dos conceptos que han sido importados del Common Law para ser usados, bajo la legislación peruana, en operaciones de compra venta de acciones. El primer punto que se revisará en el presente trabajo es analizar si la violación a la cláusula de declaraciones y garantías cuenta con un remedio específico de acuerdo al Código Civil peruano. El segundo punto que se revisará es si la cláusula de limitación de responsabilidad en caso de falsedad o inexactitud de las declaraciones la cual es usada en el Common Law es válida de acuerdo a la legislación peruana / Trabajo de investigación

The aim of the thesis is to provide an overview of the automobile aftermarket customization and to evaluate its potential on the Czech market. The first goal is to understand why product design is crucial for consumers in general and to highlight its importance for automobile industry. Moving forward, the historical development of the automotive design with emphasis on external factors influencing technical and design development and, consequently customers preferences is provided. In order to analyze the potential of the customizing companies in the Czech Republic, a research among several Czech and German modifiers was conducted. The outcomes of the research enabled to draw the conclusions and evaluate the actual potential of automobile aftermarket modification.

The usage of the packaging as the marketing tool gains on its importance and allows companies to differentiate from each other and gain the attention of the potential customer. The aim of the current thesis is to provide an analysis of the impact of packaging on the consumer buying behavior on the example of the chosen company. Moreover, the research investigated to which extent company's customers are satisfied with the packaging they get, and to which extent such packaging incited them to buy the chosen company's products. Furthermore, the recommendations regarding packaging were presented. The mixed research method has been chosen for the research, since it provided a complex picture on the researched area, it included both quantitative and qualitative approaches. The data collection included the qualitative research in the form of the interview with the manager of the chosen company and quantitative research which was conducted and analyzed through the survey.