The share of insurance market in Taiwan used to be retained solely by 8 local corporations. Since Taiwan opened its insurance market to American incorporations in 1986 and to local companies, as well as the Special Examination for Insurance Personnel for legal Insurance Auxiliary in 1992, the insurance industry in Taiwan has stepped into the era of fierce competition. By October 2007, companies registered under the Insurance Brokerage Association of Taiwan (IBAT) had reached 562. From 1997 to 2007, the share of life insurance premium had increased from 0.6% to 7.43%. However, the number of selling personnel in insurance companies has decreased over these years, while that of insurance brokers and agencies have increased. Compared to insurance corporations, insurance brokerages are limited in size, finance and resources. Consequentially, the key to maintaining compatibility is the management of selling personnel. The following are the conclusions made after three case studies of major insurance brokers in Taiwan, insightful interviews and careful analysis. 1. Compared to other channels of selling, the advantage of selling personnel is the unbending trust built through one-on-one selling. 2. The advantage of unbending trust is established upon the reinforcement of educational training for selling personnel, especially interactive training. 3. In order to encourage re-purchasing, good after-market services are necessary, which are the combined efforts of the selling personnel and the company. 4. In order to attract talent, it is essential to maintain advantages six aspects of competitive sales: ¡]1¡^Morality ¡]2¡^Capability¡]3¡^Vantage ¡]4¡^Preparedness ¡]5¡^Motivation¡]6¡^Equipment The following are the suggestions for different stakeholders. 1. For insurance brokerages: ¡]1¡^Large corporations could establish inclusive information network. ¡]2¡^Small companies could unite resources through inter network. ¡]3¡^Improvement in the management of selling personnel so as to build fine working ethics should be taken into consideration. 2. For insurance brokerage unions: ¡]1¡^Conducting analysis of selling records is encouraged. ¡]2¡^Setting up loan CRM system to member companies is suggested. 3. For associated governmental organizations: ¡]1¡^Enhance the status and professional images of insurance brokerages. ¡]2¡^Denoting that the income of selling personnel is the income of executing sales is recommended.

As the growth of internet, the E-commerce has become a global business trend. Under this globalization of the e-economy, the international value chains, such as the division of labor, force the domestic enterprises such as manufacturing and service industries to face this great challenge in recent years. The reason why the information technology(IT) services industries are flourishing for past few years is due to they can provide a combination between professional knowledge and information technology for improving enterprises¡¦ international competiveness to gain excess-profit. However, the market in Taiwan is too limited to survive for those service providers. Under such highly competitive market, the services industries have made a drop in making profits. In order to sustain technological leadership to maintain a stable market place, how to integrate inter limited resources becomes a key factor to gain business improvement. This study will be the case for the study, the first industrial survey, a systematic insight into the company's resources, markets, technology, organizational structure and found that the company's strengths, weak, facing the threat of competition and opportunities for further growth. Organizational model and then explore the sale of better mode of change and corporate resources to business organizations, the impact of sales and marketing organizations before and after changes in sales performance for the effect of changes in sales organization, summed up the following conclusions: 1, The IT services industry sales organization designed based on strategic objectives and characteristics of its Selling Motion designed. 2, Sales organization of IT services industry transformation, the enterprise intangible resources of personnel and organizational skills that affect business sales organizations key to the success of the transformation factor. 3, Sales organization of IT services industry transformation, that need to design model according to their characteristics to be adjusted business performance assessment methods.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2001. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 178-189). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2001. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 178-189). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M.S.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Thomas J. Watson School of Engineering and Applied Science, Department of Systems Science and Industrial Enngineering, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.

Zugl.: Hamburg, Universiẗat der Bundeswehr, Diss. 2009.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1968. / Typewritten.

Advertising is an important mechanism by which firms are able to communicate with their current and potential consumers. An advertising campaign may satisfy a multitude of objectives for a firm. Namely, advertising can be used to create awareness for a product or brand. It may be used to inform consumers about the usage features and benefits specific to a brand or a given product, or generate favorable attitudes and preferences amongst customers. Additionally, advertising may aim to persuade consumers towards trial or purchase. All these objectives enhance e consumers’ response towards the firm and its products/brands, and in turn, advertising helps to achieve sales for the advertised firm in the long run. This dissertation examined the relationship between advertising expenditures and sales revenue at the aggregate and brand level for the Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) industry in the United States from 1986 to 2007. Two main objectives of this study were to: 1) analyze the relationship between advertising expenditures and sales revenue within the QSR industry; and 2) provide analysis of the relationship between advertising and sales revenues for leading QSR firms, in the United States during the observed period. Thus, the current study provides the most comprehensive analysis of the relationships between advertising and sales in the QSR industry to date. Hypotheses were tested by time series analysis. Specifically, a stepwise regression analysis with backwards elimination of non-significant predicators was utilized to select a set of statistically significant predictor variables. This study controlled for factors expected to affect sales revenues such as population size, price and inflationary effects. Findings from this study indicate that aggregate advertising expenditures and aggregate sales for the QSR industry in the United States were significantly and positively related from 1986 to 2007. This is the first study to examine this relationship over such an extended period of time—twenty-two years. Results from brand level show a positive and significant relationship between advertising expenditures and sales revenues for certain QSR brands. Additional analysis, explored the relationship between advertising expenditures and another measure of consumption, market share, for QSR firms in the United States during 1986 to 2007. Results from this set of analysis, demonstrated a positive and significant relationship between electronic advertising expenditures and market share for several QSR brands. A Chow test (Chow, 1960) was also conducted on the brand level models to test for the presence of structural breaks in the data. Other means of analysis are also offered, and the implications of the results to research and theory are drawn. The study also identified future directions for research. / text

The profitability of a manufacturer could be largely affected by underlying uncertainties embedded in the fast-changing business environment. Random factors, such as input material price at the procurement end or output product price and demand at the sales end, might produce significant risks. Effective financial hedging therefore needs to be taken to mitigate these risk exposures. Although it is common to use commodity futures to control the risks at either end separately, little has been done on the hedging of these risk exposures in an integrated manner. Therefore, this study aims to develop a planning approach that performs financial hedging on both the procurement risk and the sales risk in a joint manner. This planning approach is based on a framework that has a risk-averse commodity processor that procures input commodity and sells output commodity in the spot market, while hedging the procurement risk and sales risk through trading futures contracts in the commodity markets. Both the input and output commodities futures are used for the hedging. A both-end-hedging model is developed to quantitatively evaluate the approach. The evaluation is based on an objective function that considers both profit maximisation and risk mitigation. Decisions on spot procurement, input futures hedging position, and output futures hedging position are optimised simultaneously. As the input commodity is the main production material for the output commodity, positive correlation between the input material price and the output product price is considered. The customer demand is considered negatively correlated with the output product price. An ethanol plant using corn as the main input material is employed as an example to implement the proposed model. The model is represented as a stochastic program, and the Gibson-Schwartz two-factor model is employed to describe the stochastic commodity prices. Historical commodity price data are used to estimate the parameters for the two-factor model with state-space form and Kalman filter. By generating various scenarios representing evolving prices and the random customer demand, the stochastic program could be solved using linear programming algorithms under its deterministic equivalent. Numerical experiments are carried out to demonstrate the benefit that could be gained from applying the both-end-hedging approach proposed in this study. Comparing with traditional no-hedging model or single-end-hedging models, the improvement obtained from the proposed model is found to be significant. The effectiveness of the model is further tested in various price trend and price correlation, demand elasticity and volatility, and risk attitude of the decision maker. It is found that the proposed approach is robust in these various circumstances, and the approach is especially effective when the price trend is uncertain and when the decision maker has a strong risk-averse attitude. / published_or_final_version / Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

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