Two tales of one city: Image versus identity

By applying the concepts of brand personality and attitudinal loyalty of a city as a brand, the objective of this study is to investigate the perceived place brand identity versus image and to empirically examine and compare their relationships with loyalty toward a city as a brand. This is to make a comparison between two groups of internal stakeholders; namely, residents of a city (image) and city officials (identity). The results indicate that there exists a great difference in the components of loyalty between city officials and the residents of the city. The results also reveal that how brand personality of the studied city is perceived varies between the two groups of internal stakeholders evaluated in this study. As the results of this study shift the focus from tourist (external) stakeholder to the internal ones representing two different internal perspectives of a city, they constitute a significant contribution to the process of city brand personality creation. This is of importance since the starting point in communicating the attractiveness of a city to the external stakeholders is how the city is perceived as a brand from its internal stakeholders’ perspectives

Application of disconfirmation theory on customer satisfaction determination model in mobile telecommunication : case of prepaid mobiles in Iran

The conditions for doing business are changing rapidly. In last few years the mobile telecom market has witnessed a substantial growth and rapid changes globally as well as domestically. Customer satisfaction is a critical issue in the success of any business system, hence: one of the key challenges of this market is how they satisfy and retain their customers and also manage service quality, which holds a significant importance to customer satisfaction and their perceived performance. In order for companies to survive and grow, they must find new ways of thinking, which has led to doing marketing researches, especially those related to customer satisfaction. This thesis tries to find a model which can best describe the customer satisfaction formation in mobile telecom sector and will apply and evaluate it in the Iranian market of this area. It will also study the dimensions of service quality (SERVQUAL) on the perceived performance of the customers in the market. For doing so, a survey has been performed on customers of the only prepaid mobile service operator in Iran, questionnaires were distributed among them and the results analyzed based upon the proposed research questions and hypotheses, and finally the conclusions and implications were made.Validerat; 20101217 (root

Application of disconfirmation theory on customer satisfaction determination model in mobile telecommunication : case of prepaid mobiles in Iran

The conditions for doing business are changing rapidly. In last few years the mobile telecom market has witnessed a substantial growth and rapid changes globally as well as domestically. Customer satisfaction is a critical issue in the success of any business system, hence: one of the key challenges of this market is how they satisfy and retain their customers and also manage service quality, which holds a significant importance to customer satisfaction and their perceived performance. In order for companies to survive and grow, they must find new ways of thinking, which has led to doing marketing researches, especially those related to customer satisfaction. This thesis tries to find a model which can best describe the customer satisfaction formation in mobile telecom sector and will apply and evaluate it in the Iranian market of this area. It will also study the dimensions of service quality (SERVQUAL) on the perceived performance of the customers in the market. For doing so, a survey has been performed on customers of the only prepaid mobile service operator in Iran, questionnaires were distributed among them and the results analyzed based upon the proposed research questions and hypotheses, and finally the conclusions and implications were made.Validerat; 20101217 (root

Essays on the issues of readability in business disciplines

A determinant of effective communication is readability. Put simply, readability is a prerequisite and key criterion for understanding the written word. Readability involves writing a piece of text in a way that provides a good chance of understanding it and transferring meaning between the writer and the reader at first exposure and in the same sense that the writer intended. Business communication often uses a considerable amount of written text to deliver its messages. Whether these texts are read and understood by the intended target audience may depend highly on the ease with which they can be read. If a user of business information cannot comprehend the content of written materials, a shared understanding between user and author cannot be achieved. Therefore, readability should be any business writer's primary goal, yet it is a tough and ongoing challenge.While not advocating that writers need to oversimplify their texts, business communicators should make a conscious effort to ensure that their writing is simple, concise, consistent, and easily understandable to all prospective readers. However, many business texts seem to be written with little thought to general readability. The readability problem with much of the written material that people create in different business disciplines may arise from assuming that they are conveying the intended message to the target audience and being unaware of how people absorb written information. This thesis aims to address the issues of readability in business disciplines by reporting on five studies. The first article reviews existing readability literature in different business disciplines. This paper identifies the breadth and diversity of readability research content as well as the main directions and magnitude of progress. It aims to examine the current trends in the area to better understand and foresee their impact on development of the field and, based on the analysis of past readability research in business, to provide clues about the future. The effectiveness of business texts in communicating with readers will be investigated based on their readability through the remaining four papers that are examined for this thesis.Texts are routinely evaluated for comprehensibility using a variety of approaches and materials, including readability measures. These measures aim to compute the difficulty level of a text. In this thesis, many of these measures were used to evaluate the selected business texts to determine their reading level and to discover the differences in the reading level among various sources of business texts. This thesis concludes with insights gained from the five articles, providing implications, limitations, and directions for further research.Godkänd; 2012; 20120502 (satset); DISPUTATION Ämnesområde: Industriell marknadsföring Opponent: Professor Gerard Prendergast, Department of Marketing, Hong Kong Baptist University Ordförande: Biträdande professor Maria Ek Styvén, Institutionen för ekonomi, teknik och samhälle, Luleå tekniska universitet Tid: Måndag den 4 juni 2012, kl. 10.45 Plats: A 109, Luleå tekniska universitet</p

Essays on the issues of readability in business disciplines

A determinant of effective communication is readability. Put simply, readability is a prerequisite and key criterion for understanding the written word. Readability involves writing a piece of text in a way that provides a good chance of understanding it and transferring meaning between the writer and the reader at first exposure and in the same sense that the writer intended. Business communication often uses a considerable amount of written text to deliver its messages. Whether these texts are read and understood by the intended target audience may depend highly on the ease with which they can be read. If a user of business information cannot comprehend the content of written materials, a shared understanding between user and author cannot be achieved. Therefore, readability should be any business writer's primary goal, yet it is a tough and ongoing challenge.While not advocating that writers need to oversimplify their texts, business communicators should make a conscious effort to ensure that their writing is simple, concise, consistent, and easily understandable to all prospective readers. However, many business texts seem to be written with little thought to general readability. The readability problem with much of the written material that people create in different business disciplines may arise from assuming that they are conveying the intended message to the target audience and being unaware of how people absorb written information. This thesis aims to address the issues of readability in business disciplines by reporting on five studies. The first article reviews existing readability literature in different business disciplines. This paper identifies the breadth and diversity of readability research content as well as the main directions and magnitude of progress. It aims to examine the current trends in the area to better understand and foresee their impact on development of the field and, based on the analysis of past readability research in business, to provide clues about the future. The effectiveness of business texts in communicating with readers will be investigated based on their readability through the remaining four papers that are examined for this thesis.Texts are routinely evaluated for comprehensibility using a variety of approaches and materials, including readability measures. These measures aim to compute the difficulty level of a text. In this thesis, many of these measures were used to evaluate the selected business texts to determine their reading level and to discover the differences in the reading level among various sources of business texts. This thesis concludes with insights gained from the five articles, providing implications, limitations, and directions for further research.Godkänd; 2012; 20120502 (satset); DISPUTATION Ämnesområde: Industriell marknadsföring Opponent: Professor Gerard Prendergast, Department of Marketing, Hong Kong Baptist University Ordförande: Biträdande professor Maria Ek Styvén, Institutionen för ekonomi, teknik och samhälle, Luleå tekniska universitet Tid: Måndag den 4 juni 2012, kl. 10.45 Plats: A 109, Luleå tekniska universitet</p

Stakeholders Engagement and Readability of Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting : A Study of Most Sustainable Firms

The social and environmental responsibility of business has become a major issue in recent years and communicating messages about such initiatives are likely to evoke strong and often positive reactions among stakeholders of every firm. Companies can generate favorable attitudes among their stakeholders by engaging them in CSR activities and eventually strengthen stakeholder-company relationships. As a result, there is a need for companies to communicate their CSR activities more effectively to stakeholders using different media. This paper considers the content of one type of such communications, the CSR report. Trough a content analysis, it looks at how five of top sustainable organizations address their stakeholders in their CSR reports. The readability of such reports for stakeholders will also be evaluated. The results suggest that only a selected number of stakeholders are addressed in the studied CSR reports and these reports found to be not readable enough for the intended audience.Godkänd; 2015; 20160330 (arakor

The online norm of reciprocity

Godkänd; 2014; 20140819 (arakor

Stakeholders Engagement and Readability of Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting : A Study of Most Sustainable Firms

The social and environmental responsibility of business has become a major issue in recent years and communicating messages about such initiatives are likely to evoke strong and often positive reactions among stakeholders of every firm. Companies can generate favorable attitudes among their stakeholders by engaging them in CSR activities and eventually strengthen stakeholder-company relationships. As a result, there is a need for companies to communicate their CSR activities more effectively to stakeholders using different media. This paper considers the content of one type of such communications, the CSR report. Trough a content analysis, it looks at how five of top sustainable organizations address their stakeholders in their CSR reports. The readability of such reports for stakeholders will also be evaluated. The results suggest that only a selected number of stakeholders are addressed in the studied CSR reports and these reports found to be not readable enough for the intended audience.Godkänd; 2015; 20160330 (arakor

Understanding industries-universities collaboration tendency : a Swedish-Tunisian comparative study

In order to understand the industries-universities collaboration (IUC) tendency on technology development in developed and developing countries, we analyze the current state of affairs in Sweden and Tunisia. Empirical investigation from 45 companies in both countries was conducted to measure their propensity (actual) and predisposition (in the future) to collaborate with the universities. R&amp;D managers first proposed a categorization of the IUC with regard to the technology development stages. Then, they explained to which extent their industries have been cooperating with the research centers at the universities and their intentions for future partnership. Results show that industries in Sweden are more involved in developing new processes; while Tunisian companies cooperate more with the universities to acquire new knowledge. Swedish companies tend to work on new technologies development as well. Conclusions on tendencies in both countries are drawn and recommendations for the universities are offered.Godkänd; 2010; 20100628 (ysko)</p