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This thesis is a study of Thai consumer behavior that affects the purchasing and servicing in the furniture retail industry. A market survey was conducted in Thailand to support this study. The target group of this study is people residing in Bangkok aged 25 year old and above. In order to find a suitable strategy for the new IKEA in Thailand, the data gathered was analyzed and discussed by applying the type of Kano’s model with IKEA’s strategies. It was also analyzed in terms of conceptual level between Kano’s model and research strategy. The study reveals that consumer behavior and characteristics of consumer requirements in Thailand are different from others counties. IKEA has to adapt suitable strategies that are consistent with Thai consumer behavior to achieve consumer satisfaction. This thesis also discussed that Kano model can inform strategy making process in term of quality and customer satisfaction as the results from Kano model quantitative analysis provide understanding of customer requirements and their attributes.

Dissertation--Bamberg Universität, 2004. / Bibliogr. p. 391-403.

Implicit learning is the learning of underlying regularities hidden in the environment without the learner being conscious of what is being learnt. First language acquisition in young children is essentially implicit (Krashen, 1982), but the role of implicit learning in second language acquisition is debatable. Previous research on learning of tonal languages focused on perception and identification of language tones in relatively explicit settings, and showed that tonal language experience may not help with learning a new tonal language in an explicit setting (So & Best, 2010; Wang, 2006). Yet, little research was done on the implicit learning of language tones, and on whether prior tonal language experience plays a role in such implicit learning. In this study, simplified Thai tonal rules were used as a learning target to investigate if implicit learning of such rules is possible. Implicit learning performance among native tonal language speakers with no knowledge of Thai, non?tonal language native speakers who have learnt/have been learning tonal languages other than Thai, and non?tonal language speakers with little knowledge of tonal languages were compared. Results showed that the native tonal language group implicitly learnt the target, and some trends of learning were found in the tonal language learner group, but not in the tonal language na?ve group. This advantage of tonal language experience over the learning of tonal patterns suggested that tonal language experience can be transferable to the learning of a new tonal language in implicit settings. This suggested that, rather than being hindered by their prior linguistic experience, learners with some tonal language background may benefit from implicit settings when learning a new tonal language. / published_or_final_version / English / Master / Master of Philosophy

The purpose of this cross-sectional, descriptive, correlational study was to describe the relationships among demographic factors (age, gender, education, income), perceived severity of illness, perceived barriers to action, perceived self-efficacy, and interpersonal influences (social support) and health-promoting behaviors (HPB) and to identify predictors of HPB. A nonprobability sample of 110 participants with Chronic Renal Failure (CRF) was recruited from the outpatient clinic of Burirum hospital and Surin hospital located in north-eastern Thailand. All participants were individually interviewed by the principal investigator in a private area within an outpatient clinic. Six variables were significantly correlated with the HPB. They were age, education, perceived severity of illness, perceived barriers to action, perceived self-efficacy and social support. According to the results from the analyses of demographic data and HPB, participants who were younger and had higher educational levels practiced more HPB. From the analyses of perceived severity of illness, perceived barriers to action, perceived self-efficacy, and social support and HPB, the results showed that participants with lower levels of perceived severity of illness and lower levels of perceived barriers to action reported better HPB. In contrast, the participants with higher levels of perceived self-efficacy and social support reported better HPB. By using a stepwise multiple regression analysis, two predictors were identified from 8 predictor variables, and those two accounted for 78.2% (p < 0.01) of the variance in HPB. Two variables that contributed significantly to the variance in the HPB were perceived self-efficacy ([beta] =.769, p < 0.01), and social support ([beta] = .162, p < 0.01); whereas age, gender, income, educational level, perceived severity of illness, and perceived barriers did not contribute to the variance in the HPB. The study found that participants who experienced better perceived self-efficacy and social support reported better HPB. In contrast age, gender, income, educational level, perceived severity of illness, and perceived barriers did not enter as predictors in this stepwise regression equation. / text

Introduction: Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted infection and causes 529.000 cases of cervical cancer every year. Nowadays, there are vaccines available to prevent infection. Knowledge of HPV influence the attitude towards the vaccine and is therefore a factor of accepting the vaccine. Aim: The aim of this study was to examine the knowledge of HPV and attitudes towards HPV-vaccine among Thai female university students. Method:  Descriptive and cross-sectional study with quantitative method using a questionnaire. Purposive sampling was used. The sample consisted of students from two different universities in Bangkok, Thailand and out of the 201 students whom filled in the questionnaire, 192 questionnaires were used. Result: There were 64.6% of the participants that had heard of HPV previously. Of these, the most common source of information was health professionals. The HPV-vaccine was known by 42.6% of the participants and 17.4% had taken the vaccination. Over 90% of the participants had a poor or moderate knowledge of HPV. In total, most of the participants in the sample were found to have a positive level of attitude towards the vaccine (72.4%). Almost all participants wanted to know more about HPV and the HPV-vaccine and 88.5% thought it was necessary for them to get the vaccination. Conclusion: As some gaps in knowledge among the participants were shown, the information to young women should be improved and aim to increase the motivation towards the use of preventive methods, such as taking the HPV-vaccine.

This thesis explores the making of Thailand’s Civil and Commercial Code in 1925 (‘Code of 1925’), especially the drafting method the draftsmen employed, and ascertains how the use of this method affected Thai lawyers’ understanding of rules and concepts of the Code. The Code of 1925 emerged from a period in which Thailand was under threat from colonisation by Western powers. As a result of a number of unbalanced commercial treaties between the Thai and foreign governments, the jurisdictional sovereignty of the country had been eroded by consular jurisdiction and the principle of extraterritoriality. These ‘unfair treaties’ forced the Thai government to establish a modern legal system as part of its attempts to recover full judicial autonomy. The work of codification of civil and commercial law, which began in 1908 under the direction of French draftsmen, produced the desired result in 1925 only after Phraya Manavarajasevi (Plod na Songkhla) became involved. Plod was instrumental in replacing the French Code civil with the BGB of 1900 as the principal model and introducing the Japanese Civil Code of 1898 (‘Minpō’) and the ‘copying method’ which he referred to as the ‘Japanese method’ to the new Thai-dominated drafting committee. The Japanese Code and the ‘Japanese method’ were chosen owing to Plod’s belief that the Japanese had established their civil code by copying the BGB. This thesis shows that Alan Watson’s theory of legal transplants is well suited for explaining this type of legal development: the draftsmen copied the wording of English translations of provisions of the BGB and the Minpō without much concern about their conceptual foundations. They finished their task within seven months. But Watson’s contention that successful legal borrowing does not require ‘a systematic knowledge of the law’ must be approached with great caution. Plod was misled by a secondary source he consulted into believing that the Minpō was practically a copy of the BGB. In reality, the Japanese Code was influenced by a variety of foreign laws, including German and French law. The drafting committee’s lack of knowledge about the rules and concepts they borrowed and the method they adopted led to difficulties in interpreting the rules and concepts in question. This is illustrated in this thesis by a case study of the legal rules in the Code of 1925 on specific performance. Most of the Thai provisions concerning non-performance and remedies for non-performance were copied from the BGB, but two important rules concerning the rights to performance and damages (Articles 213 and 215) came from the Minpō. These provisions were mainly influenced by French law, but Plod and most likely other Thai draftsmen erroneously believed that they were of German origin. The text of these two articles clearly put specific performance and damages as remedies for non-performance on equal footing. The consequence of this is that Thai academics who maintain that specific performance is the primary remedy for nonperformance have struggled to justify this point of view. Whenever they expound on the principle of the primacy of specific performance in Thai law, Thai writers produce contradictory statements because the wording of Articles 213 and 215 forces them to accept that the creditor in case of non-performance has the right to choose between specific performance and damages. This thesis shows that legal borrowing without a proper use of comparative law and legal history and a systematic knowledge of the law borrowed can lead to undesirable results. Thai lawyers must employ comparative and historical methods when discovering the true character of the Thai rules and concepts. With the help of these methods, they may find common ground in legal concepts and resolve some theoretical problems.

In northern Thailand, legal and social change creates dilemmas for forest conservation. On the one hand, Thailand suffers from severe deforestation and biodiversity degradation mainly as a result of human activities that overuse and encroach on forest areas. On the other hand, forestry law has, in turn, intruded on traditional communities that lived in and relied on the forest before modern state law diminished their lands and community rights. One of the potential solutions to this dilemma is community forest management (CFM), which acknowledges the forest stewardship of the communities who rely on the forest and helps them to become better forest protectors. CFM refers to people’s participation in forest conservation in the form of collective community action. The right to practise CFM is guaranteed in the Thai Constitution as a community right. However, state forestry law provides direct authority to government agencies and dominates forest management without reference to the Constitution. My hypothesis is that the Thai legal system is not compatible with CFM because the legal culture is based on written law and not on living law, which comes from the legal consciousness of the villagers and government officers who practise CFM. I use interviews as a research method to investigate the legal consciousness of three groups of people involved in implementation of CFM: members of three selected northern lowland and hill tribe communities/villages; government officers; and legal professionals. I apply green legal theory to analyze the two types of law governing CFM: state law and the law of the commons. People in the selected forest communities apply their own CFM regulations and use state forestry law for support only when their regulations cannot handle extreme situations. The villagers’ own CFM – the law of the commons – together with state law, creates their “living law”. Government officers cooperate with CFM, knowing that it will help them fulfill their mission of forest conservation. In contrast, legal professionals rely only on state forestry law rather than the Constitution, despite its supremacy, and ignore the law of the commons. To explain this phenomenon, I “decode” Thai legal culture by investigating its historical and social contexts. I also examine the legal education system, law making processes, legal commentaries and court decisions, to understand what shapes Thai legal culture. In my view, the narrow focus on statute law in Thai legal culture, and the focus on law as a profession rather than as a justice-based discipline, can be explained by the “modernization” of Thai administration and laws, and by the encroachment of globalization and capitalism, both of which have resulted in moving away from traditional land management based on the commons. I conclude by suggesting that the acceptance of CFM in Thai legal culture can be improved by encouraging socio-legal study, increasing understanding of CFM, implementing constitutional legal principles – and by reclaiming the law of the commons. / Graduate

This thesis investigates how rural and remote communities in northeast Thailand harness information and communication technologies (ICTs) for community development and develops a new model of ICT-based lifelong learning centre for local communities. The main research questions are: 1. How to adapt ICTs to fit rural communities? 2. How to integrate ICTs into their lifestyle? 3. How to use ICTs to forge stronger ties within and between local communities? 4. How to develop ICTs in community-based lifelong learning centre? The objective of this research is to develop a model of ICT in community-based lifelong learning centers (CLC) that is suitable for northeast Thailand, and to propose policies for implementing ICTs in CLCs. This study used qualitative methodologies to explore the problem. Data collection took place in Thailand between April, 2005 to March, 2006. The fieldwork covered two communities in Krainun Village, Katharawichai District and Khok Yai Community Forest, Wapi Pathum District, Mahasarakham Province. The data collection procedures included using surveys and questionnaires to develop the research agenda with the target groups while focus group techniques were used as the main data-gathering instrument to further investigate their needs and develop the CLC model. Interviews, observations, workshops and study trips were needed for additional data. A triangulation approach was used to analyse the data from surveys, interviews, observations and discussions. The basic data from the surveys were categorised into four aspects: geographical data, public utilities, social data, and economic data. Using the issues-based analysis methodology, the qualitative data from the focus groups were analysed and interpreted and triangulation was applied to difference data sources. The recorded materials were transcribed and issues related to the research questions were identified. The next step focused on developing the CLC model which applied Knowles’ program development model for adult education and training. This focus on process is a distinguishing feature of this research and comprises the ‘new’ characteristic in the model presented. The study showed that the rural communities grasped the benefits of ICTs and through concrete situations, realised that ICTs could meet their needs. ICT learning activities using a hands-on practical approach motivated them to adapt and integrate ICT in their daily life. They applied their experiences to acquire new knowledge and technology. Their CLCs were developed based on a similar model of their understanding of, and motivation to use, ICT. The model of CLC in both communities is based on their needs, including the concept of establishing a CLC, CLC objectives, CLC management, implementation and evaluation.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Adelaide, Master of Arts in Gastronomy, 2004. / "October 2004" Bibliography: leaves 112-117.