Managers have to consider different methods of keeping customers loyal to their specific company in order to secure revenue. Traditionally, pricing and pricing strategies have been good ways of acquiring and keeping customers. The purpose of this thesis is to provide a better understanding of how managers view this phenomenon today. In a sense, to analyze which importance managers place on pricing as a method of achieving customer loyalty. In order to obtain a greater understanding of the subject, semi-structured interviews with non-standardized questions took place. The thesis used a thematic approach to analyze the collected data. The findings and conclusions suggested that managers view price as an important factor but there are several other factors such as flexibility, customer satisfaction and competence that should be given an equal amount of attention if a company is to achieve customer loyalty.

Past research has shown that there are many factors that influence projective test responses. This is especially true of the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). Certain variables that have been found to influence the TAT response were studied in this experiment. These variables included the subjects’ scores on purported measures of the personality trait of aggression, and various parameters of the TAT cards themselves. This experiment included three studies which investigated the relationship between test measures of aggression and aggressive behavior. The three studies were conducted concurrently using the same subject population: forty-two male inmates at the Oregon State Penitentiary. They were divided into two groups of aggressiveness according to the crime they had committed; 21 inmates had committed aggressive crimes and 21 inmates had committed non-aggressive crimes. The subjects wrote stories for eight TAT cards; completed a questionnaire including items of aggression, guilt, and defensiveness; and provided personal information such as age, educational level, and amount of time in prison.

A suburban district in the southwestern region of the United States created a choice-based program in which students have the opportunity to address their social, emotional, and academic needs through a mid-day period where they have the ability to attend tutorials or engage in a variety of club and social activities. Each day, students choose the activity that best serves their needs, be those academic, social, or emotional. In order to determine students' attitudes, opinions, and uses of the program in an effort to improve its effectiveness for student success, this qualitative study was planned to respond to the research questions: (1) how do students spend the emPower period? and (2) what are students' thoughts, attitudes, and opinions with regards to emPower? The research began by examining student responses to a previous principal survey asking their opinions on the program. Following the analysis of the survey, focus group sessions of five students from each high school grade were held to discuss student perceptions, choices, and uses of the program. The discussions were audiotaped and transcribed. Thematic data analysis resulted in themes of stress, social life, environment, regulations, choice and tutorials. Findings included a continuum of maturity evident with students' choices as they progressed in grade level; enhanced student decision making and self-reflection; cultivating positive student-teacher relationships. Student suggestions for the program involved extending the time length of the period, teaching younger students to use the program effectively, and updating the way the advisory class is taught to be more beneficial to students.

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The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze stories that don’t often get told or heard. Traditionally, nonreligious people have had to keep their lack of belief to themselves out of fear of persecution. In the literature review of this dissertation, I summarize previous scholarship about leaving religion. In an effort to learn about autobiographies written by nonreligious women, I utilize storytelling as a theoretical framework, located within the rhetorical uses of personal narratives, and ask: What are the types of challenges, experiences, and topics that nonreligious women include in their stories?; How do these autobiographies invite readers to understand personal accounts of religious departure?; and How do these autobiographies invite social change and consciousness raising? To answer these questions, I applied thematic narrative analysis, from a rhetorical perspective, as a way to discover the commonalities amongst the stories, as well as the unique characteristics that each story possesses. While each woman had a unique story, there were five common themes that emerged among the memoirs: family, intellectual, relational, sociocultural, and professional. Inspired by the language of the “women’s sphere,” I labeled each of the themes as a realm in the “sphere of life” with hope that the sphere of life can help explain how religion influences a person’s life. I discovered that, even though some of the women lost some relationships with family and friends, all of the women mentioned that they are happier now that they are being true to themselves. The authors also mentioned that it is important to be at peace with who they are since this is likely their one and only life. With that in mind, it is important to have choice and authenticity in one’s life. Finally, this study demonstrated the power of storytelling and how autobiographies can invite social and attitudinal change.

The thesis presents one approach to reading the Song of Songs as a unified composition. The first chapter examines the various arguments for unity and disunity that have been put forth in the history of the Song's interpretation. Although no definitive structure based on patterns of repetition seems possible in the Song, the chapter argues that the complex web of repetition in the text points to a unified composition. The second chapter explores the possibility of a regulating structure based on the interaction of voices in the Song. After outlining the various genres evident in the Song, as well as the speaker-addressee relationships within these genres, the chapter argues that such a regulating structure is to be found in the Song's unified discourse setting. This discourse setting consists of two lovers who interact with the Daughters of Jerusalem. The third chapter examines some of the implications of such a unified discourse setting for the interpretation of the Song. The chapter suggests that while the discourse setting is consistent throughout the work, two distinct fictive realms are apparent within the text: one fictive realm deals with the escapades of two lovers; a second fictive realm presents the endeavors of Solomon. The chapter argues for an explanatory relationship between the block of material pertaining to Solomon and the discourse setting of the work. The block of material pertaining to Solomon, because it features the Daughters of Jerusalem as characters, has particular relevance for the Daughters as they reside in the discourse setting of the work. The chapter also argues for a thematic relationship between the stories about Solomon and the narratives and lyrics which deal with the two lovers. The love poetry serves to mold the reader's evaluation of particular images which recur within the Solomonic material. The discourse setting and the two distinct fictive realms work together to convey a negative evaluation of Solomon's treatment of the Israelites, represented metaphorically as the Daughters of Jerusalem within the Song. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

There are nuiaerous ways of conceptualizing 9 large body of roGearch. OftBri studies differ on more than one variable* This is particularly true of investigations into the possible relationship between TAT performance and overt aggressive behavior* Little con-- distent systematic research ha.'j been undertaken in this area. Instead of holding a number of experimental variables or dimensions constant across studies in order to fully explore the effects of a given independ.ent variable, researchers arbitrarily select experimental dimensions. Thus there are a vast variety ox distinctly different populations examined on the basis of differing oriteiia of what con-ititutes aggressive behavior. To further complicate the matter, responses' to anything from one to twenty T.AT or TAT-].lVc cards have been scored by systems often unique to a given study.

Discussion surrounding interprofessional education (IPE) among graduate and professional health sciences students is beginning to appear more frequently in academic journals, government reports, and health care reform recommendations. Recommendations from an international conference cited in the Lancet provide an interesting overview from world leaders about interprofessional care and its ability to improve health system performance. Since 1995, the Academic Health Sciences Center (AHSC) at East Tennessee State University (ETSU) has shown the value of IPE and continues to do so through the Interprofessional Education Program (IPEP). In this study, a focus group was conducted in fall 2014 to collect qualitative data on AHSC students’ perceptions of IPE and interprofessional training at ETSU. Two out of five AHSC colleges were represented by a total of four focus group participants. These participants included students from the Colleges of Public Health and Medicine, as well as a student from the Department of Psychology and one medical resident. Through use of a semi-structured interview procedure, a skilled facilitator asked participants to describe their academic experiences related to IPE at ETSU. A series of open-ended questions were presented in order to determine the general perceptions, attitudes, barriers, and beliefs of health science students regarding interprofessional experiences. The focus group was audio- and video- recorded, and the recordings were transcribed by the author. Four study staff members met and conducted separate thematic analyses to determine consensus on overarching themes from transcriptions. Themes identified through these analyses included: 1) specific emphasis on the importance of communication; 2) respect for the academic rigor of other health profession programs; 3) the desire for more IPE opportunities; and 4) having a positive and open mind was a characteristic considered impactful interprofessional education. The implications of these findings and considerations for methodological improvements will be discussed.

The purpose of this study is to explore how to make persuasive messages effective to sufficiently motivate individuals to form good security practice through two aspects - affect valence-based message and message framing effect. The two emotional appeals examined in this study include traditional fear appeals and humor appeals. Fear appeals, arousing people's fear to persuade them to take precautionary actions, are predominant in the literature of information security. By contrast, humorous messages have been found to induce positive affect, reduce negativity, and enhance message acceptance. In addition, messages can be illustrated in a broader context or can be presented with particular examples tailored to individuals' decision-making. The effects of these two ways - thematic and episodic frames - are also investigated in the fear and humor appeals. A multi-group experimental design is adopted to examine the hypotheses. 577 valid responses were collected from college students at Mississippi State University via a professional platform. Followed by a number of rigorous analysis, the results indicate that a humor appeal is more effective when framed in a thematic frame. Furthermore, issue relevance and gender difference are salient factors that can influence the interaction between affect valence and message frame. Additionally, both abstract and concrete fear appeals demonstrated a stronger impact than concrete humor appeals on individuals' intent to follow the positive security practice. However, there is no evidence that concrete fear appeals are more superior to abstract ones. It's not found that humor appeals are more effective than traditional fear appeals when promoting cybersecurity threats.

In Ontario, supporting "a system of care that provides women and their families with equitable choice in birth environment and provider," (PCMCH & MOHLTC, 2017, p.33) has been identified as one of the central objectives of the Provincial Council for Maternal and Child Health's Low Risk Maternal Newborn Strategy. In theory, pregnant people in Ontario can choose to seek maternity care from a midwife, a family physician, or an obstetrician; however, in practice, pregnant people's choice of provider remains constrained. Extant literature suggests that in order to afford pregnant people the opportunity to exercise autonomous choice of provider, health systems must ensure that an acceptable range of provider options is available and accessible within the local organization of maternity care, that pregnant people are made aware of and knowledgeable about the available provider options, and that pregnant people have the ability and resources to navigate access to their provider of choice (Mackenzie, 2014; Sutherns, 2004). As a result, I designed this thesis to fill a gap in the evidence base to determine whether or not provincial policies had translated into the levels of access, awareness, and resourcing required to afford pregnant people the opportunity, ability and propensity to exercise autonomous choice of provider within the local maternity care system in Ontario's Champlain Region. I sought to elicit the structural conditions that would be necessary to equitably support pregnant people's access to and choice of a maternity care provider. In the pursuit of these objectives, I adopted an integrated knowledge translation approach (Bowen & Graham, 2013), using an explanatory sequential mixed methods design (Creswell, 2014), which encompassed two complementary stages: (1) quantitative geospatial mapping to assess pregnant people's access to the full range of maternity care providers across the Champlain Region; and (2) qualitative focus groups and individual interviews with parents, providers, and policy-makers to explore the individual, organizational, and system-level factors that are enabling or restricting access and autonomy. Using a systems approach to the investigation of this locally-identified issue, I demonstrate in this thesis that pregnant people within the Champlain Region have inequitable opportunities to exercise autonomous choice of maternity care provider due to (1) system and organizational-level factors that are creating imbalances in the supply, distribution and mix of maternity care provider options, and (2) pregnant people's differential access to the enabling information and resources required to exercise autonomous choice of provider and to navigate access to their services.