Privatization refers to the shift of ownership of a property or service from the public sector to the private sector. It has often been used as a technique to increase the efficiency, release the costs of operations and generate income from selling off the assets. Privatizing the public properties will affect the society in different ways, both positively and negatively. There are many examples of privatization of public properties around the globe and in Hong Kong. For people in Hong Kong, privatizing the commercial properties of Hong Kong Housing Authority (HKHA) by The Link Real Estate Investment Trust (The Link REIT) in November 2005 would be the latest and most well-known example of privatization of public properties and the case will be further studied in this research in order to find out the effects on the society which are caused by the privatization of public properties. The properties which are now owned by The Link REIT are divided into three groups according to their size, and one shopping centres will be picked randomly from each group. The nearest HKHA shopping centres to the three selected The Link REIT shopping centres will be picked as comparisons. Questionnaire, interviews and goods prices comparisons will take places in those shopping centres. Findings from the research have proved that there are different impacts on the shoppers and tenants of the privatized shopping centres when comparing to those shopping centres still owned by HKHA. Some of the differences are positive while some are negative. These differences mainly occur on the environment, property management, rent level and prices level. As expected, the management of The Link REIT shopping centres has better comment but the shoppers and tenants are not pleased with the prices level and rent level. On the other hand, the financial status of HKHA before and after The Link REIT's privatization has also been studied in this research and it proves that selling off the commercial properties to The Link REIT did help HK.HA to overcome the financial difficulty. It is believed that the negative impacts are the "side effect" of privatization which could not be really eliminated, but should be able to mitigate. Hence, several recommendations have been made which are mainly about improving the public relations between The Link REIT and the public as well as the way the company adjusts the rent level. ii / published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

Hong Kong is an international metropolis and “Shopping Paradise”. Therefore, shopping in Hong Kong becomes one of the popular and important customary activities for the people. To compete with the keen and rapid change of market competition and shoppers’ living style and prevent old and deteriorated mall image, it is important for mall owner and operator to upkeep mall’s competitiveness by refurbishment work and repositioning exercises. To examine the repositioning strategies of Shopping Mall in Hong Kong, case study of New Town Plaza would be the selected mall in this research for further evaluation. Face to face interviews were conducted with Shoppers and Tenants respectively regarding their perception of mall image and competiveness attributes, including mall image, shopping environment and accessibility attributes among selected shopping mall-New Town Plaza before and after refurbishment work. At last, it found that mall repositioning exercise had drawn a great influence on different stakeholders. Based on research result, it showed that interviewees generally recognized that brand image of tenants, mall’s image and competiveness were improved after mall refurbishment. Also, more high-ended shoppers were attracted to visit and shop in the mall. As comparing with before refurbishment work, Interviewees were visited more and stayed longer due to its freshness image and modern design. Although mall refurbishment work and repositioning exercise brings lots of positive feedbacks for different stakeholders and extend the product life of the mall, it does not represent such exercise appropriate for applying in all shopping mall. Therefore, mall owner or operator was reminded to take further consideration for planning such work and finally recommendations were suggested for them in considering the repositioning and refurbishment work in the future too. / published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

This paper aims to understand the customer satisfaction between Mainland shoppers and Local Shoppers regarding the shopping centre in HK. It will be reviewed and analyzed based on shopping centre management theories. Apart from finding out the shopping behavior of mainland shoppers and Hong Kong shoppers, we would like to understand their customer satisfaction on different customer services aspects. Data was collected through questionnaire. Survey of two shopping centres were carried out to understand the customer satisfaction. In-depth study on the customer satisfaction between Mainlanders and Hong Kong people is then carried out. It was found that Mainland shoppers and local shoppers have different expectation in different customer services aspects. For example, Mainlander thinks that prices of the products in both shopping centre - Harbour City and Landmark North is reasonable. However, local shoppers think that the product in Landmark North is expensive. Also, the Mainland shoppers think that both the shopping centre provide a wide range of product for them. However, Hong Kong people expects the variety of product are not enough in both the shopping centre. On the other hand, they both appreciate the high customer service performance in Hong Kong. In conclusion, Hong Kong and Mainlander appreciate a wider range of shops in term of price, product category and exhibition. Shopping centre managers should provide a comfortable environment which could enhance the shopping experience of the customer. / published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

Shopping centres play important roles in the public rental housing estate system. They function as socio-economic mediums among local residents. According to Hong Kong Housing Authority (HKHA), the Hong Kong government (the government) provides rent supplements with local tenants to encourage them to develop their own businesses. As a result, local and small-scaled businesses have been developing steadily. Home Ownership Scheme (HOS) is a private-subsidized housing scheme implemented by HKHA. The sale of HOS‟s housing units is HKHA‟s major source of income. Yet, the government suspended HOS because of the financial crises broken out in 1997, which reduced HKHA‟s revenues dramatically. Despite the fact that the demand of rental public housing was increasing, HKHA had inadequate resources for public housing development. Thereupon, the government decided to privatize their assets (shopping centres, market stalls, cooked food stalls and car parks) by transferring them to a private sector – The Link Real Estate Investment Trust (The Link). Privatization is a common economic tool for governments that can increase revenues in a short period. Nonetheless, privatization has numerous negative impacts. Before privatization, the social and political parties had a hostile attitude towards privatization. They doubted whether The Link would change the existing business strategies and focus on profit maximization through increasing the rent from tenants unreasonably. Nevertheless, HKHA decided to privatize its assets in November 2005. The Link has been taking the overall management role in the privatized assets for almost 9 years. It has been criticized for over-emphasizing on business maximization by sacrificing public and social interests. This study is to discuss and evaluate the socio-economic impacts of privatization and The Link on the public estates. Questionnaires for the visitors and tenants, observations for the social events of The Link and searched for the news and annual reports of The Link had been carried out for evaluating the actual social and economic impacts from the daily operations of The Link. The results show that both of the positive and negative aspects of the social and economic impacts are caused by The Link after privatized the assets from HKHA. It is encouraged that the government and the service provider should review the effectiveness of the progress. In addition, those negative impacts which caused by privatization can be turned to be positive if the government and the private sectors work together on regular review and continuous improvements. / published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

Shopping is a daily necessary activity to most of the people in Hong Kong. From the old days when people went shopping in the bazaars to the recent days when most people go shopping in shopping centres, the dominant mode of shopping changed. The effects brought by different kinds of shopping facilities to people are worth studying. It is not difficult to observe the trend that old retail developments in old districts are mainly shopping streets while new retail developments in new towns are mainly shopping centres. Some voices from the public are pushing the retaining of old street shops and old street cultures despite the property developers tend to build shopping centres in their new projects. The benefits from shopping streets and shopping centres to shoppers and developers have been studied in this dissertation by empirical and conceptual background study, survey to shoppers and shop operators and information provided by property agents and employees of private developers. From socialization point of view, the comprehensive tenant mix and comfortable shopping environment in shopping centres attract shoppers to stay longer in shopping centres than in shopping streets which increase the chance of interaction among shoppers thus improve their level of social lives. However, the stability of shops and shop operators in shops at shopping streets is beneficial to building up community strength within the neighbourhood. The relationships among shoppers and shop operators and among shop operators in shopping streets are stronger than that in shopping centres. For the benefits other than socialization aspect, shops in shopping streets provide cheaper goods due to the relatively lower rents and lower overhead costs in shopping streets while shopping centres provide better accessibility and better facilities due to their better management. For the benefits to developers, developing shopping centres is beneficial to them in the ways of increasing their rental income when leasing retail premises and boosting the selling prices of residential properties where shopping centre is a bundle of the development. In some of the projects of official organizations, such as Urban Renewal Authority, we can see that benefits from these two shopping facilities can be merged together. For example, the design of shopping streets and the buildings around and setting up greenery areas along shopping streets can improve the air-conditioning problem and improve the attractiveness of staying to shoppers. Private developers also introduced old shops to their shopping centres. Product prices of old shops remain the same in shopping centre as in shopping streets. However, the relationship among shoppers and shop operators cannot be copied easily even if the old shop signs are the same. Time is needed for building the strength within a community. / published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

The online shopping industry has been growing over the past decade (Statista, 2014). Former researchers identified consumers’ utilitarian and hedonic online shopping motivations. A qualitative research was conducted to understand the utilitarian and hedonic online shopping motivations of students to shop fashion online. A phenomenological interviewing method was used to generate detailed and in-depth descriptions of the seven students’ experiences of the University of Borås. Respectively three utilitarian and four hedonic online shopping motivations emerged out of the data and could be linked the motivations identified by Vignali and Reid (2014). This paper analyses the utilitarian online shopping motivations respectively convenience, price and discounts and selections and hedonic online shopping motivations respectively enjoyment, sociability, trend discovery and exclusivity. Regarding the utilitarian online shopping motivation convenience several convenience dimensions emerged out of the collected data and matched the dimensions identified by Jiang, Yang and Jun (2013) respectively, respectively access, search, evaluation, transaction, possession and post-purchase convenience. Regarding the hedonic online shopping motivation enjoyment, several dimensions emerged out of the data and could be linked to dimensions identified by Monsuwé et al. (2004) respectively escapism, pleasure and arousal. Some of the linkages that could be found by comparing former research were also found in the data collected. Regarding the utilitarian online shopping motivations, information availability identified by Vignali and Reid (2014) could be linked to evaluation convenience and product availability identified by Vignali and Reid (2014) could be linked to access convenience. Regarding the hedonic online shopping motivations, relaxation shopping identified by (Ozen and Engizek, 2014) could be linked to escapism, social shopping (Ozen and Engizek, 2014) to sociability and idea shopping (Ozen and Engizek, 2014) to trend discovery. The analyses on the linkages further deepened the understanding of both utilitarian and hedonic motivations of students to shop fashion online.

M. Tech. Business Administration / Malls posed some threat to traditional retailers, but many retailers defended successfully by using niche, differentiation and customer focus strategies to dodge and defend competition from the malls. These strategies were however, weakened by new forms of competition which emerged from new retailers who located their businesses in the residential area of Soshanguve. Most of these new retailers were from other African countries in origin mostly from Somalia. It was not clear how these new retailers managed to attract a significant size of the market. This study attempted to investigate the threat of emerging shopping malls established inside Soshanguve as competitors of the traditional retailers of the township, which are mostly small in size. The study further investigated the causes of failure of many such traditional retailers and the development of robust strategies they could adopt in order to offset this new competition.

With the fast growing Chinese online marketplace and the increasing popularity of shopping imported products online in China, more and more practitioners and researchers are interested in understanding the cues that Chinese consumers use to evaluate imported products consumption online. Our quantitative study aims to identify what factors affect the behavior of Chinese online consumers towards imported products and the relationships between the identified factors and purchase intention, and thereafter help companies to understand how to increase Chinese online consumers’ purchase intention of imported products. The research model is developed based on The Theory of Planned Behavior. Data were collected through web-based survey in China. Subsequently, the logistic regression in SPSS was used for testing the 12 hypotheses. Results reveal that the purchase intention of Chinese online consumers to imported products is closely associated with Perceived Behavioral Control, Subjective Norms, Perceived Risks, Service Quality, Country of Origin and Price. However, Product Variety and graphically well-designed websites are not relevant to purchase intention when Chinese consumers evaluate online imported products. The findings of our study serve as a link between consumers and online retailers or companies. The information from this study can add knowledge to limited studies on the behavior of Chinese online consumer.

In Chapter 1, I analyze a setting where a pair of retailers which sell unrelated products at the same location (e.g., a strip mall) compete with other retailers located at a different strip mall across town by jointly introducing a bundling discount while independently setting their respective stand-alone prices. Customers who shop from multiple strip malls rather than only one incur additional exogenous shopping costs. I first show that if each retailer chooses a bundling discount non-cooperatively, then the equilibrium bundling discounts will be zero. In contrast, pairs of firms located at the same strip mall always find it profitable to jointly offer positive bundling discounts in order to encourage customer loyalty. Moreover, I demonstrate as a comparative static that as the shopping costs increase, pairs of firms have less incentive to make joint bundling arrangements in equilibrium. If only one pair can introduce a bundling discount, in equilibrium while total industry profit rises, consumer surplus and welfare fall with the increase in shopping costs. When both pairs offer the bundling discounts, all consumers buy a bundle in equilibrium. Thus, the presence of a positive shopping cost does not affect any industry variables in equilibrium except stand-alone equilibrium prices which decrease with the shopping costs so that the standard Hotelling result extends to this case. In Chapter 2, I investigate the effects of shopping costs on the merger incentives of these unrelated retailers in the context of bundling. I demonstrate that contrary to one’s initial conjecture, pairs of firms do not merge to internalize the externalities created by shopping costs and bundling discounts. While consumers are better off with the merger outcome, consumer and total welfare fall significantly when firms stay independent in equilibrium. In Chapter 3, I analyze how legacy carriers and Southwest Airlines respond to the threat of AirTran Airways entry. My estimation results suggest that equilibrium prices of legacy carriers are on average lower in response to the threat of entry by AirTran as expected, whereas those of Southwest are on average higher. This robust result on AirTran and Southwest competition echoes the pricing behavior in the pharmaceutical industry where brand-name prices increase before and after generic entry. The incumbent low cost carrier Southwest, especially with the incapability to further lower its prices significantly, may still find it profitable to capitalize on its loyal price-inelastic (i.e., high-end) customers. Anticipating a definite price cut from AirTran, however, the high-end customers of legacy carriers may be more sensitive to price differentials offered by AirTran relative to the high-end customers of Southwest because of the size of the offer. Hence, legacy carriers, in contrast, simply reduce their prices in response to threat of AirTran entry to keep these valuable customers. / text

The goal of this study was to develop a demographic profile of food co-op shoppers and to assess the relationship between policy importance ratings and two measures of shopper involvement. A survey measuring co-op shopper demographic characteristics, ratings of co-op environment and ratings of the importance of 13 co-op policies was completed by 283 food co-op shoppers in the fall of 1983 at the Food Conspiracy Co-op in Tucson Arizona. Overall, the strongest distinction between working members and non-members was a tendency for members to spend more at the food co-op. The two groups were similar demographically and similar in their ratings of the quality of food co-op atmosphere. Both groups rated range of co-op policies as important factors in store selection. These co-op policies were equally important to both members and non-members, and the importance ratings were largely unaffected by length of involvement with the organization.