Interior textiles have been a part of the everyday life of humans for hundreds of years, especially for women whom the creation of textiles has been a usual feature. Archeological findings from the 16th century B.C. show that tools for spinning and weaving for home usage were a part of every household. This was common until the 19th century, when the industrialization in Europe took off and the first textile industries began to establish. This was the beginning of big changes to the modern man’s lifestyle and the way we consume interior textiles. As mass produced products have taken over the market, a counter-reaction among consumers have emerged. The consumers feel a bigger need for unique products, products that feel meaningful for themselves or in any other way increases the perceived value. This has led to a growing trend for DIY-activities (Do-It-Yourself). While the sales of DIY-related products and interior design products increases, statistics shows a decrease in the sales of textile meter fabrics, which is a raw material aimed to be used for interior design and DIY-projects. It can be identified by the way that businesses are selling textile meter fabrics that the strategies haven’t changed very much in the recent decades. Therefore, it is questionable whether the meter fabric assortment is on its way to extinction or if the offer needs to change to better suit the customers’ requirements. This study has focused on what elements of the textile meter fabric offer could be changed in a store in Germany. An analysis of a selective sample of the German customer and how they use textile meter fabrics has been made, but also on how they perceive the offer in store and what they wish to be changed in the textile meter fabrics department. The interviews were conducted in an anonymous store in Frankfurt, Germany. The empirical findings have been put in relation with studies of DIY-motivations and shopping experience. An interview with a sales leader of one of the leading stores of home textiles in Germany, including meter fabrics, has been done in order to put the customers’ answers in relation to how the store work with increasing the DIY-motivations towards the customers. The study has resulted in insights about the stores lacking ability to provide the customers with enough motivation for DIY-projects in regards to textile meter fabrics. A disconnection between the vision of the store and the customers’ perception of the offer has been discovered, where the possibilities of improvement are vast. The study also shows that a majority of the interviewed German males show little or no interest in both DIY and textile meter fabrics.

Association rule mining is one of the most popular data mining methods. However, mining association rules often results in a very large number of found rules, leaving the analyst with the task to go through all the rules and discover interesting ones. Sifting manually through large sets of rules is time consuming and strenuous. Although visualization has a long history of making large amounts of data better accessible using techniques like selecting and zooming, most association rule visualization techniques are still falling short when it comes to large numbers of rules. In this paper we introduce a new interactive visualization method, the grouped matrix representation, which allows to intuitively explore and interpret highly complex scenarios. We demonstrate how the method can be used to analyze large sets of association rules using the R software for statistical computing, and provide examples from the implementation in the R-package arulesViz. (authors' abstract)

Program: MIMA student – International Marketing Course name: Master Thesis (EFO705) Title: Consumer behavior toward online purchasing behavior Authors: Kaorat ThienmongkolPongsatorn Thaisuntad Supervisor: Daniel Tolstoy Problem: “What factors trigger the online purchasing decision of young SwedishConsumer?” Purpose: The purpose of this report is to study the insights about the factors that triggerpurchasing behavior of young Swedish consumer to shopping on the internet.The result will enable managers of e-commerce firms to outline strategies topenetrate the Swedish market, and will also contribute to e-commerceliterature in general. The students who study and interested in this area will beable to use this result as their empirical data and to enhance their knowledge. Method: 160 questionnaires were used as primary data. Stockholm, Goteborg, Uppsala,Vasteras, and Eskiltuna are the cities that authors collected the data. Forsecondary data, authors collected data from the website. Conclusion: Young Swedish consumers have positive experience on online shopping, trustand like to shop online. They concern on the type of product when shoppingon the internet. And young Swedish consumer also effect by situational factor. Keyword: online shopping, online purchasing decision, consumer behavior

This study proposes a model of e-shopping continuance intentions that incorporate the revised technology acceptance model and expectation confirmation theory to measure continuance online shopping intentions within Saudi Arabia. Using structural equation modelling to confirm the model fit, and a 463-person sample, the author finds that perceived usefulness, enjoyment, and subjective norms determine online shopping continuance intentions, across male (30% of the sample) and female (70%) respondents. The structural weights are largely equivalent, yet the regression paths from site quality to perceived usefulness and perceived usefulness to continuation intentions are not invariant across the research sample. This research thus moves beyond consideration of online shopping intentions to include factors that may affect online shopping continuance. The research model is able to explain 61% of the variance in intentions to continue shopping online. Therefore, online strategies cannot ignore either direct or indirect differences in continuance intentions due to behaviour differences among shoppers in Saudi Arabia. With the high percentages of participants from the main populated regions in Saudi Arabia, the research model can be generalized across Saudi Arabia. Thus, the research has added to the limited literature on online repurchase intention or continuance intention by testing the proposed model in a context that has never before been tested. Furthermore, few prior studies use SEM as their methodological approach, and even fewer apply invariance analysis to verify behavioural differences based on gender, regional, education, e-shopping experience, and e-shopping spending with a sample obtained from Saudi Arabia. This study addresses these various knowledge gaps. Moreover, this thesis provides managers with useful and important information they can use to plan their Web sites and marketing strategies. The findings will help e-retailers to identify which web site attributes influence consumers’ e-shopping intentions, and thus improve the effectiveness of their e-shopping sites. A more thorough understanding of e-shopping continuance intention helps e-retailers to entice e-shoppers to shop online more, and entice non-online shoppers to shop online. Keywords: Internet shopping, e-shopping, technology acceptance, behavioural differences, continuance intentions, online shopping, Saudi Arabia.

This thesis focuses on problems related to unregulated construction of shopping malls in the city centres. Shopping malls are often built considering their negative effects on small merchants, urban environment etc. This particular problem was analyzed in two cities (Pardubice and Liberec) using elements of Retail Impact Assessment study and counterfactual impact evaluation method. Results showed that placing the shopping malls to the city centre changes the structure of retail units in its vicinity. Since customers prefer larger shopping facilities, their shopping behaviour changes, and small merchants are forced to addapt and compete with "all under one roof" shopping centers. Some of them cannot compete with these centers and are forced to close. Contribution of this research focuses on application of unique methods which indicated a need to regulate and coordinate building of large shopping centers within Czech cities. Key words: retail impact assessment, city centre, vitality, shopping mall

The main subject of my dissertation is a theoretical-empirical analysis of shopping centers as a specific type of subculture. Closer analysis of the shopping center's influence on contemporary lifestyle and consumer behavior patterns is accented. The whole structure of the dissertation is divided into three main thematic sections: 1. Shopping centers in the process of globalization and unification of human culture. 2. Shopping centers as a specific type of institution and subculture. 3. Shopping centers as a determinant of contemporary lifestyle. The source of information and data utilized for processing this dissertation are both theoretical literature and practical observation in Prague's shopping centers. The main goal of my dissertation is to contribute somehow to the phenomenon of consumer behavior in the postmodern culture. Key words : consumer society, shopping centre, consumption, corporation

The thesis is denoted to two principal issues of European insolvency law - COMI notion interpretation and forum shopping. On the background of historic development, it interprets the current wording of European Insolvency Regulation in the light of case law issued by the Court of Justice of the European Union. It also analyses benefits and drawbacks of proposed legislative changes to COMI motion in the connection with the contemplated amendment of the European Insolvency Regulation. It proposes that COMI of companies is determined using irrebuttable presumption of COMI in the place of their registered seat. Further, it distinguishes between positive and negative forum shopping. Also, it provides an overview of risks and advantages related to forum shopping. The thesis evaluates the efficiency of current and potential tools for forum shopping elimination. It also deals with the relation of forum shopping to EU principal freedoms.

Title: Analysis of employment agencies Objectives: The aim of this thesis is to explore employment agencies on Czech labour market and find out its functionality and credibility from the side of job seeker. One of the constitutive aim was also using the marketing method Mystery client. The term functionality of employmenet agencies was evaluated as attitude and ability of employment agency to mediate good job for job seekers. Methods: To obtain data, that allows to final evaluation, was used special technique of market research called Mystery client. This method represents hidden observation during job interview. The research was completed with question survey of selected staff consultants. Results: The results of the research indicated that employment agencies are mainly focused on outsourcing and are usually mediating short-term job for young and less educated people. The research also indicated that employment agencies are not able to mediate appropriate job in reached level of education. In spite of these problems, there were recommended three employment agencies that are properly able to communicate and react for job supply and demand. Key words: Employment agency, analysis, mystery shopping, mystery client, questionnaire

Many people have growing concerns about privacy issues, especially the treatment of personal information. Other researchers have demonstrated that consumers do not effectively use privacy policies while shopping online. Current research tends to focus on the contents of Online Privacy Policy (OPP). Often the OPP contains items to meet vendor interests rather than consumer concerns, such as how well the OPP reduces privacy risk. Moreover, various approaches interpret the contents of the OPP rather than the OPP effects on reducing privacy risk. These approaches have not made a substantial impact on consumer selection of a vendor. The research distinguished two types of Privacy Protection Information (PPI): the level of Vendor Privacy Risk (V) added by vendor practices allowed by the OPP and the level of Online Privacy Risk (O) not reduced by the OPP. A survey presented for each vendor the two types of PPI together with a product price. The results indicate that the respondents readily used PPI and preferred to have no Online Privacy Risk rather than no Vendor Privacy Risk. Of the six demographics attributes of the respondent, only the frequency of online shopping and the concern for privacy significantly increased the use of PPI. Recommendations were made for future research.

The assignment is mainly focused on the new trends in marketing with Internet assimilation. Beyond description of the main Internet function and use in Czech Republic, the assignment considers the latest marketing trends. More in detail the assignment is descripting the function of the group shopping. Both in USA (where the Group shopping came into being) and Czech Republic. A part of the assignment is also a research based on a questionaire, which is dealing with the Group shopping and it's future in Czech republic more into detail.