Vodafone: the relationship between brand image and online marketing strategies

The competition in global marketplaces is progressively increasing due to a large number of local players that form the telecom industry. For this reason, it is essential for companies to establish a strong brand image to maintain its position in the market. Vodafone has been one of the fastest growing companies in the world. Nevertheless, it still holds the number two position in the telecom European market and the sixth, in the international sphere. This aspect encourages us to dig into which factors need to be considered to reach the zenith. We have focused on the international online marketing strategies that are used by telecommunication companies to establish and enhance brand image in the global market. With the example of Vodafone, the research concentrates on the intricacies of the relationship between brand image and online marketing strategies in order to enhance brand image internationally, in the context of the global telecom sector. For this purpose, two detailed online surveys were conducted to gather opinion about the effects of online marketing strategies on brand image. It also aims to find the gaps in the online strategies and improve them in order to boost up the brand image of Vodafone

Numerical prediction of flow in curved ducts and volute casings

Imperial Users onl

BM3D Image Denoising using SSIM Optimized Wiener Filter

Image denoising is considered as a salient pre-processing in sophisticated imaging applications. Over decades, numerous studies have been conducted in denoising. Recently proposed Block Matching and 3D (BM3D) Filtering added a new dimension to the study of denoising. BM3D is the current state-of-the-art of denoising and is capable of achieving better denoising as compared to any other existing method. However, the performance is not yet on the bound for image denoising. Therefore, there is scope to improve BM3D to achieve high quality denoising. In this thesis, to improve BM3D, we first attempted to improve Wiener filter (the core of BM3D) by maximizing the Structural Similarity (SSIM) between the true and the estimated image, instead of minimizing the Mean Square Error (MSE) between them. Moreover, for the DC-Only BM3D profile, we introduced a 3D zigzag thresholding. Experimental results demonstrate that regardless of the type of the image, our proposed method achieves better denoising than that of BM3D

Wheat Flour Marketing in Bangladesh: a case study on packaged Atta, Maida and Semolina in two major City Corporations of Bangladesh

Wheat flour is one of the most preferred cereal items of the world. This paper tries to identify demand supply gap of commonly consumed wheat flour like Atta, Maida and Semolina in two major city corporations of Bangladesh. The objectives of the research is to explore the demand supply gap, key players’ performance, their pricing and distribution strategy, SKU wise contribution to sales as well as consumers’ preferences to brands. This study is mostly in quantitative nature while some secondary information has also taken into consideration to estimate the market size. Study reveals that “Teer” brand is the market leader in Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) in all of the three flours whereas “Pusti” brand dominates Chittagong City Corporation (CCC) market in both Atta and Maida flour and brand “Horse” ahead in Semolina flour. Comparing with the sales performance of the most selling brand “Teer”, study shows that there is an approximately 5300 Metric Tons monthly demand supply gap in the market for all these three products. Interestingly, study unveils that DCC market is based on 2 kg SKU while CCC market completely based on 1 kg SKU. In case of Atta and Maida, selling of 1 kg SKU is comparatively more profitable than selling of 2 kg SKU. Both in DCC and CCC, retailers mainly purchase from distributors but in CCC, some retailers purchase their stocks from whole sellers. Both in DCC and CCC “Teer” is the most preferred brand. Keywords: Wheat flour marketing, demand-supply gap, brand performance, pricing, distribution, consumer preference, Banglades

A Testing and Experimenting Environment for Microscopic Traffic Simulation Utilizing Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality

Microscopic traffic simulation (MTS) is the emulation of real-world traffic movements in a virtual environment with various traffic entities. Typically, the movements of the vehicles in MTS follow some predefined algorithms, e.g., car-following models, lane changing models, etc. Moreover, existing MTS models only provide a limited capability of two- and/or three-dimensional displays that often restrict the user’s viewpoint to a flat screen. Their downscaled scenes neither provide a realistic representation of the environment nor allow different users to simultaneously experience or interact with the simulation model from different perspectives. These limitations neither allow the traffic engineers to effectively disseminate their ideas to various stakeholders of different backgrounds nor allow the analysts to have realistic data about the vehicle or pedestrian movements. This dissertation intends to alleviate those issues by creating a framework and a prototype for a testing environment where MTS can have inputs from user-controlled vehicles and pedestrians to improve their traffic entity movement algorithms as well as have an immersive M3 (multi-mode, multi-perspective, multi-user) visualization of the simulation using Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) technologies. VR environments are created using highly realistic 3D models and environments. With modern game engines and hardware available on the market, these VR applications can provide a highly realistic and immersive experience for a user. Different experiments performed by real users in this study prove that utilizing VR technology for different traffic related experiments generated much more favorable results than the traditional displays. Moreover, using AR technologies for pedestrian studies is a novel approach that allows a user to walk in the real world and the simulation world at a one-to-one scale. This capability opens a whole new avenue of user experiment possibilities. On top of that, the in-environment communication chat system will allow researchers to perform different Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) studies without ever needing to leave the simulation environment. Last but not least, the distributed nature of the framework enables users to participate from different geographic locations with their choice of display device (desktop, smartphone, VR, or AR). The prototype developed for this dissertation is readily available on a test webpage, and a user can easily download the prototype application without needing to install anything. The user also can run the remote MTS server and then connect their client application to the server

Penerapan Metode Inquiry pada Materi Organisasi untuk Meningkatkan Hasil Belajar Siswa Kelas V SD Negeri Kuta Bak Mee Aceh Besar

Materi organisasi pada dasarnya bukanlah materi yang sukar, tetapi menjadi tidak mudah menggunakan metode konvensional, oleh karena itu perlu dicoba dengan menggunakan metode inquiry. Karena metode inquiry memiliki kelebihan penekanan pada pengembangan aspek kognitif, afektif, dan psikomotor secara seimbang, memberi ruang kepada siswa untuk belajar sesuai dengan gaya belajar mereka, sesuai dengan psikologi perkembangan belajar modern, serta melayani kebutuhan siswa yang memiliki kemampuan di atas rata-rata. Tujuan penelitian ini secara umum untuk mengetahui aktivitas guru dan siswa dalam menerapkan metode inquiry pada materi organisasi, serta untuk mengetahui peningkatan hasil belajar siswa kelas V SD Negeri Kuta Bak Mee Aceh Besar dalam pembelajaran PKN. Pendekatan penelitian ini bersifat Penelitian Tindakan Kelas (PTK). Penelitian dilaksanakan di SD Negeri Kuta Bak Mee Aceh Besar pada tanggal 3-17 Januari 2017. Subjek dalam penelitian ini seluruh siswa kelas V SD Negeri Kuta Bak Mee Aceh Besar yang berjumlah 16 orang. Pengumpulan data dilakukan dengan tes tertulis dan observasi. Pengolahan data dilakukan dengan mendeskripsikan data penelitian dengan menggunakan statistik persentase. Hasil penelitian diketahui bahwa pada aktivitas guru setiap siklus memperlihatkan adanya peningkatan. Siklus I, aktivitas guru sebesar 66,7%, siklus II meningkat menjadi 81,5%, dan siklus III meningkat lagi menjadi 94,4%. Aktivitas siswa setiap siklus memperlihatkan adanya peningkatan. Siklus I sebesar 61,81%, siklus II menjadi 77,59% dan siklus III menjadi 92,97%. Peningkatan hasil belajar siswa secara klasikal siklus I 18,75%, siklus II 56,25%, dan pada siklus III 87,5%. Sedangkan rata-rata nilai materi organisasi siswa juga mengalami peningkatan tiap siklus, yaitu siklus I 61,25, siklus II 75,0 dan pada siklus III 85,6. Dengan melihat hasil pembelajaran dengan penerapan metode inquiry dapat meningkatkan prestasi belajar siswa serta menciptakan suasana belajar yang aktif yaitu pembelajaran yang lebih berpusat pada siswa maka dapat digunakan untuk pembelajaran pada materi yang lain yang dianggap sesuai