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South Africa is an exporter of groundnuts (Arachis Hypogaea). The domestic market reaps the spinoff advantage that export quality reaches store shelves, but unfortunately at a price that is directly linked to the price traders achieve on the export market. The local edible groundnut demand is relatively stable, but some processors saw a dramatic decline in the demand for groundnuts within the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry. Businesses in the groundnut industry have a specific objective to create a turnaround strategy for groundnut production in South Africa, in an attempt to increase exports of locally produced groundnuts. This directly results that importance of the domestic market, compared to the export market is secondary. Since retail buyers are the “gatekeepers of consumer choice”, it is important to understand buying behaviour and brand loyalty, as well as the factors that influence buyers’ decisions in a business to business context. Limited literature exists for the domestic South African that highlights or indicates specific buyer preferences towards branded edible groundnuts. Furthermore, a general conceptual model to measure or to provide insight on retailer buyer preferences and buying behaviour lack, or are generally unrelated. An adapted model was used to analyse retail buyer behaviour, perceptions, and brand loyalty influences and data was collected by means of a self administrered questionnaire. Descriptive statistics as well as factor analysis were utilised to identify which factors influence retail buyers’ purchase behaviour and loyalty towards an edible groundnut brand. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy, Bartlett’s test of sphericity and Cronbach Alpha was used to determine whether the collected data was appropriate for factor analysis. Through the factor analysis the following ten factors were identified as having a significant influence on retailers’ buying behaviour as well as brand loyalty towards branded edible groundnuts: * Long-term relationship with a preferred brand. * Brand Loyalty. * Brand trust. * Brand performance. * Satisfaction. * Intentional repurchase. * Brand affect. * Company reputation. * Involvement. * Value for money. More research on this topic is required to develop a single conceptual model in order to measure and analyse retail buyer behaviour and preference for a specific brand on a larger scale within the FMCG industry. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Africa, and Southern Africa in particular, has been identified by both South African and international retail chains as an area for growth. Because conflict on the continent has all but dissipated, economic growth naturally follows political stability. Africa, with its wealth of resources, provides attractive markets for international investors. This increased investment leads to a growing middle class, with growing needs for goods and services. The reason for the interest from organised retail is therefore obvious. The challenge, however, is that, given the size of the individual markets in Southern Africa, it is not financially viable to have an independent marketing strategy for each market. There is no cross-national empirical research that has measured customers’ expectations and perceptions, allowing marketers to develop financially viable marketing strategies. This research, which can be considered an exploratory study, attempted to fill that void. Quality is an elusive and indistinct construct, and as such, it is difficult to measure. A large body of customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction literature acknowledges the importance of expectations in the customers’ evaluation (perception) of their service experience. Although there are several models which have been used to measure service quality, SERVQUAL remains the most popular. It has been successfully adapted to a range of service and retail environments, more especially in emerging markets. This study also employs an adapted SERVQUAL instrument to measure customer satisfaction levels in Southern Africa. The main objective of this study was to investigate the similarities in and differences between the perceptions and expectations regarding service quality of the customer groups of retail stores in different Southern African countries in order to develop financially viable retail strategies. In order to achieve this, the following secondary objectives were identified: *To determine the applicability of the adapted SERVQUAL model in Southern African countries. *To determine, by means of a cross-national study, whether other dimensions of service quality are relevant in the development of a service quality model in a Southern African context. The research population constituted all the existing and potential customers of Beares, Ellerines and FurnCity stores in Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Swaziland, Lesotho and South Africa. Six hundred questionnaires in total were distributed, one hundred being sent to different stores in each of the six countries. Stores were chosen from both rural and metropolitan areas. This was a convenience sample and an interviewer-administered survey. Existing and prospective customers were intercepted in the store and interviewed by store managers. The findings indicated that there were statistically significant differences between expectations and perceptions in two factors of the measuring scale. Although the measuring instrument SERVQUAL was found to be both valid and reliable, only two factors were loaded during the analysis stage, and, as a result, the adaptability of SERVQUAL is questionable. The effect of culture does not form part of the SERVQUAL measuring scale yet service quality literature indicates that national cultures affect both the perceptions and the expectations of service quality. / PhD (Business Management), North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2014

The importance of the retail environment has been a prominent area of research for over four decades, focusing upon the effects of design. The retail environment, like other aesthetic surroundings affects customers’ behaviour, perceptions and attitudes. Yet, while there is a growing body of research regarding design, there is little research to date specifically on fashion retail shopping environments. Technology has made shopping via multiple channels possible and economically feasible, and the demand for more channel options is being driven by the consumer. The significant growth of online retailing has led to the evolution of traditional retailing, developing from a single channel to multi-channel models. This study has used both quantitative and qualitative research methods in order to explain theoretically the online shopping environment cues that contribute towards creating an online fashion shopping environment. As this research is taking into consideration the development of the retail market and the movement of retailers towards multi-channel fashion retailing, design cues which can be replicated, or transferred from a physical shopping environment to an online shopping environment will be discussed. Fashion retailers can use the different channel environments to induce a desired shopping experience for the consumer, facilitate the consumers’ needs and fulfil the retailers’ strategic objectives. This report includes new perspectives on how website design has developed during the past decade as a result of advances in technology and consumer acceptance. This research will identify and develop some important issues related to online environment cues and consumers' perceptions of online design that have not been addressed by previous studies by investigating literature regarding the physical and online shopping environment, design cues that form part of an online fashion environment focusing on the strategic design of an online retail store will be studied.

Coaching has increasingly been used in organisations to develop leadership capability. However, due to a lack of empirical research, very little is actually known about what it is and how it works, resulting often in organisations experiencing difficulties and frustration when they come to use and review its effectiveness. Coaching carries many different definitions, none of which is accepted as ‘universal’. This implies that the term is complex. In order to understand coaching more clearly the thesis dedicates a separate chapter to each of the following eight sub-questions: 1. What is understood by the term coaching? 2. What impact does the retail organisation have on the coachee? 3. What are the desirable characteristics of the coachee? 4. What skills does a person need to be able to coach? 5. What does the coach do? 6. What does the coachee experience during a coaching session? 7. What are the outputs from coaching for the organisation and the coachee? 8. How can the organisational sponsors control the quality and consistency of the coaching? Qualitative research is gathered from coachees in a major UK retailer to suggest four key coaching insights. Firstly the majority of coachees experience a change in their ‘self’ as a result of their coaching. Secondly coaching is valued highly by coachees as the only opportunity they get to talk about themselves. Thirdly many of the potential benefits from linking coaching to broader theories and philosophies do not appear to be evidenced in this research. Fourthly there is little evidence to suggest there has been any explicit transfer of capability from the coach to the coachee. The thesis concludes that coaching is a complex that can be used to raise awareness in the multiple elements that constitute the self. In this way the coachee becomes more conscious of how they interpret events, more considered in choices they reflect, more precise in decisions they make, and more adept at controlling their reactions. Coaching can focus on different dimensions of the self and change in what is done accordingly. For example it can consider past events having similarities to therapy: it can consider current events with a focus on organisational performance and goals, and it can consider the coachee’s future potential to influence transformational change with a focus on theories and philosophies. Although changing depending on the element and dimension of self, coaching often involves talking, listening, and reflection to increase understanding. By focusing on deepening self-awareness, coaching has the potential to create a spiral of self-development. For this to be possible the coachee must prepare for independence from the coaches by taking responsibility for their own development. This is possible by firstly developing their own self-learning mechanisms and secondly by developing a ‘life goal’ or ‘guiding philosophy’ capable of igniting an inner drive to carry out these self-learning mechanisms on a continuous basis. The coaching stakeholders are responsible for what coaching achieves. The coach has a responsibility to make the other coaching stakeholders aware of its complexity as well as providing a profound appreciation of its potential. However the need for the coachee to be of the right mindset for coaching (i.e. willing to face themselves and commit to the rigors of intrinsic development) is a vital stakeholder characteristic if it is to be potentially successful. Coaching impacts the coachee’s self-awareness, which leads to greater ‘self-leadership’ capability, which is likely to impact their behaviours and actions and enhance the interpretation they give to others who recognise traits that may attract their followership.

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The objectives of this study are to investigate the formulation and implementation of strategies within Retail Bank at corporate, business unit, functional and operational levels, focusing specifically on who is accountable and responsible for strategy formulation and implementation at each of these levels, as well as the factors related to the success or failure of strategy implementation and how success is measured. In addition, this study attempts to determine whether or not the financial industry as a whole plays a significant role in the success of strategy implementation within Retail Bank.

<p>Urban problems have several features that make them inherently dynamic. Large transaction costs all but guarantee that homeowners will do their best to consider how a neighborhood might change before buying a house. Similarly, stores face large sunk costs when opening, and want to be sure that their investment will pay off in the long run. In line with those concerns, different areas of Economics have made recent advances in modeling those questions within a dynamic framework. This dissertation contributes to those efforts.</p><p>Chapter 2 discusses how to model an agent’s location decision when the agent must learn about an exogenous amenity that may be changing over time. The model is applied to estimating the marginal willingness to pay to avoid crime, in which agents are learning about the crime rate in a neighborhood, and the crime rate can change in predictable (Markovian) ways.</p><p>Chapters 3 and 4 concentrate on location decision problems when there are externalities between decision makers. Chapter 3 focuses on the decision of business owners to open a store, when its demand is a function of other nearby stores, either through competition, or through spillovers on foot traffic. It uses a dynamic model in continuous time to model agents’ decisions. A particular challenge is isolating the contribution of spillovers from the contribution of other unobserved neighborhood attributes that could also lead to agglomeration. A key contribution of this chapter is showing how we can use information on storefront ownership to help separately identify spillovers.</p><p>Finally, chapter 4 focuses on a class of models in which families prefer to live</p><p>close to similar neighbors. This chapter provides the first simulation of such a model in which agents are forward looking, and shows that this leads to more segregation than it would have been observed with myopic agents, which is the standard in this literature. The chapter also discusses several extensions of the model that can be used to investigate relevant questions such as the arrival of a large contingent high skilled tech workers in San Francisco, the immigration of hispanic families to several southern American cities, large changes in local amenities, such as the construction of magnet schools or metro stations, and the flight of wealthy residents from cities in the Rust belt, such as Detroit.</p> / Dissertation

In recent years, small towns have experienced declining levels of retail activity attributable to a variety of factors. Previously conducted research identifies a number of these factors such as changing population dynamics, continuously evolving retail practices, locational factors, and an assortment of other macroeconomic factors. Although retail decline is common for many small towns, there are some small towns that have been able to maintain their viability in an ever-changing economic climate. The primary purpose of this research is to better understand what spatial and socio-economic characteristics contribute to retail growth and decline in a series of small towns. This research highlights a selection of small towns across a 14 county area within east Texas. The selection of small towns includes a number of towns with an increasing number of retail establishments as well as a number of towns with decreasing retail establishments over the 14 year study timeframe. Contained within this research is a discussion of small town economic and retail development, as well as findings regarding spatial and socio-economic characteristics as they relate to retail growth and decline in small towns. This research finds that locational characteristics do have an effect on retail growth and decline. The research also supports the literature, which states retail growth and decline is more pronounced within certain retail categories.