@masterthesis{Mader, type = {Bachelor Thesis}, author = {Mader, Annika}, title = {Organisationales Lernen: Methoden zur F{\"o}rderung organisationaler Lernprozesse mit Hilfe mentaler Modelle}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:hbz:1383-opus4-1258}, school = {Hochschule Rhein-Waal}, pages = {44}, abstract = {Seit den neunziger Jahren ist bekannt, dass organisationales Lernen der Schl{\"u}ssel zu einer erh{\"o}hten Anpassungsf{\"a}higkeit der Organisation an die Umwelt ist und somit einen langfristigen Wettbewerbsvorteil verspricht. Die vorliegende Arbeit greift relevante Probleme der Umsetzung des organisationalen Lernens in die Praxis auf und gibt Hinweise zur methodischen Unterst{\"u}tzung. Verschiedene Theorien und Modelle zu organisationalem Lernen werden herangezogen, um die Bedeutung mentaler Modelle f{\"u}r den organisationalen Lernprozess herauszustellen. Es werden f{\"u}nf Methoden auf verschiedenen Ebenen des organisationalen Lernprozesses identifiziert, die individuelle mentale Modelle aufdecken, ver{\"a}ndern und die Schaffung von geteilten mentalen Modellen innerhalb der Organisation f{\"o}rdern. Die Klassifizierung und Bewertung dieser Methoden zeigt, dass ein hohes Maß an Selbstreflexion bei der Anwendung erforderlich ist und eine Kombination der Methoden auf Individuum-, Gruppen- und Organisationsebene am wirksamsten erscheint. Ziel der Arbeit ist es, Praktikern ein tieferes Verst{\"a}ndnis f{\"u}r die Bedeutung geteilter mentaler Modelle zu vermitteln und Anregungen zur Verbesserung des organisationalen Lernens zu geben.}, language = {de} } @masterthesis{Medvedeva, type = {Bachelor Thesis}, author = {Medvedeva, Olga}, title = {What Marketing Strategies Are Used in the Shipping Industry?}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:hbz:1383-opus4-6920}, school = {Hochschule Rhein-Waal}, pages = {59}, abstract = {This work is dedicated to marketing strategies used in the shipping industry. During a collection of current data about the strategies of four maritime companies from Germany, Sweden, Russia and Turkey, an empirical study with a qualitative research method of one-on-one interviews was applied. The results of the work demonstrate an active use of both traditional and digital marketing strategies such as direct mail, printed media in a form of catalogues and magazines, telemarketing, trade shows, sales promotions, face-to-face communication, email marketing, website, SEM (Search Engine Marketing), SMM (Social Media Marketing), blogging and video marketing in all the interviewed enterprises. Brand creation is important in the shipping industry and is the main reason for an implementation of marketing strategies by maritime firms due to a great amount of advantages a strong brand brings. When measuring the effectiveness of the success of implied marketing strategies, non-financial metrics are more important for shipping firms than the financial ones due to their ability to measure some elements that are related to both a brand and a shipping enterprise such as market share, customer counts, take rate, churn rate, retention rate, customer satisfaction, occupancy of a shipping enterprise with orders, delivery time and variation order.}, language = {en} } @masterthesis{Takafakare, type = {Bachelor Thesis}, author = {Takafakare, Chiyedza}, title = {A critical assessment of the impact of an organization's affiliationtosocial movements on brand equity: A study of the Black Lives Matter Movement}, school = {Hochschule Rhein-Waal}, abstract = {Brands and advertising agencies have successfully tapped into the cultural momentum of social and political issues to attract new customers and promote their products. Numerous studies have examined the link between marketing and social and political movements, but advertising firms have largely ignored them. This study was titled "Acritical assessment of the impact of an organization's affiliation to social movements on brand equity: A study of the Black Lives Matter Movement". The study was guided by the objectives which were to identify the benefits of organizational allegiance to social movements on brand equity, determine the factors affecting social allegiance to social movements on brand equity, and recommend strategies that enhance brand equity. The study adopted a mixed methods approach whereby using a sample size of 65, online surveys were administered. Data was analyzed using descriptive means and SPSS was the main analysis tool. Findings illustrated that organizational allegiance to social movement has an impact on brandequity, profitability, and brand recognition. Brands are increasingly using social movements to promote their products, and much recent research has been done to understand what constitutes a socio-political activist brand, to explore consumers' attitudes, and determine if the perception of a brand as being socio-politically engaged has animpacton consumers' product use. When companies adopt a socio-political stance, they give consumers a far better opportunity to identify with them, while also allowing them to differentiate themselves from competitors by using secondary sources of meaning. Nonetheless, there are still untapped resources to be discovered, particularly in connection to the relationship between organizational allegiance and social movement participation.}, language = {en} } @misc{Akbik, type = {Master Thesis}, author = {Akbik, Hia}, title = {The Effect of Risk and Uncertainity on Purchasing Decisions}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:hbz:1383-opus4-15858}, school = {Hochschule Rhein-Waal}, pages = {95}, abstract = {The end of 2019 has brought upon the world a new virus called Covid-19 that has quickly evolved into a pandemic at the start of 2020. To control the spread of the virus, countries around the world were forced to implement various strict measures that includes travel bans, lockdowns, and limited social contacts. As per pervious pandemics, this crisis had severe consequences on economy, consumer behavior, purchasing decisions and people's mental and physical wellbeing. Consumers were forced to adapt and find alternatives that would fit the "new norm". This added to the psychological distress people were experi-encing and in turn increased their feeling of risk and uncertainty. Thus, this research con-ducts a semi-structured exploratory in-depth interview (N=16) to profoundly investigate the effect of risk and uncertainty on consumers' purchasing decisions in Germany. Find-ings of this study suggests that consumers with high uncertainty avoidance and high per-ceived risk are more likely to have a changed behavior. Their purchasing decisions are more oriented toward necessities and self-development products. On the other hand, con-sumers with low uncertainity avoidance and risk perception have experiences less change in terms of consumer behavior and purchasing decisions. The results of this research would help companies understand consumers' psychological needs which is often ne-glected in literature to provide the needed products and services. It would also benefit the academic and professional world by knowing what to expect during crisis and if changed behaviors will continue after the pandemic is over.}, language = {en} } @misc{Shrestha, type = {Master Thesis}, author = {Shrestha, Natasha}, title = {Consumer view on social media brand communication during the pandemic}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:hbz:1383-opus4-17255}, school = {Hochschule Rhein-Waal}, pages = {88}, abstract = {Brand communication through social media has grown significantly in recent years specifically during the covid-19 pandemic, becoming one of the most popular and effective forms of online communication for businesses and consumers. Due to the tremendous increase in social media brand communication during the COVID pandemic, businesses need to study the views or the response of consumers to it and understand how to fully leverage it. With the objective to understand the consumer's views toward social media brand communication during the pandemic, influencing factors of social media brand communication were first examined, and then consumers' responses towards those factors were studied. Two research questions were developed to execute the study. The thesis first relies on a literature review to assess the influencing factors of social media brand communication during Covid-19. Then the thesis, in the empirical part, applies the qualitative research method by conducting semi-structured interviews with 10 participants grouped by aged 25-34 and users of both Facebook and Instagram. The interview was conducted via ZOOM, audio recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using MAXQDA. The result showed that the influencing factors of social media brand communication were informativeness, entertainment, credibility, interactivity, and electronic word of mouth. In general situation, the brand's product information and value-related information were the central focus of the consumers but during the covid pandemic covid related information, CSR, health-related messages in entertaining form, source expertise, high level of brand interaction and word of mouth from the trusted sources were the influencing factors of social media brand communication. Consumers responded favorably to those brands that were able to incorporate all these factors in social media brand communication. The study is limited to Facebook and Instagram users in Germany who are between the ages of 25 and 34.}, language = {en} } @masterthesis{Steup, type = {Bachelor Thesis}, author = {Steup, Maike}, title = {Untersuchung der Pr{\"a}ferenzen der Generationen Z und Y bei der Arbeitgeberwahl unter Betrachtung der Arbeitgeberattraktivit{\"a}t - eine empirische Untersuchung}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:hbz:1383-opus4-17447}, school = {Hochschule Rhein-Waal}, pages = {70}, abstract = {Das Ziel der vorliegenden Bachelorarbeit ist die Pr{\"a}ferenzen der Generation Z und Y gemessen an der Arbeitgeberattraktivit{\"a}t zu analysieren und entsprechend zu vergleichen. Dazu wurden 93 Studierende in einer quantitativen Onlineumfrage befragt. Die Umfrage basiert auf der Employer Attractiveness Scale von Berthon, Ewing \& Ha aus dem Jahr 2005 sowie auf der Authentic Living Scale von Wood et al. aus dem Jahre 2008. Erg{\"a}nzungen wurden in den Bereichen ethischer Diversit{\"a}t, Unternehmenskultur, Glaubw{\"u}rdigkeit, Authentizit{\"a}t und pers{\"o}nliche Werte vorgenommen. Diese Aspekte sind im Fragebogen von Berthon, Ewing \& Ha im Vergleich mit anderen Arbeitsattraktivit{\"a}tsmodellen, beispielsweise das Treiberfaktorenmodell von Nagel (2011), unterrepr{\"a}sentiert, haben allerdings laut einer umfassenden Literaturrecherche f{\"u}r die jungen Generationen Z und Y an Wichtigkeit zugenommen. Die Ergebnisse liefern einen umfassenden Vergleich zu allgemeinen Aspekten der Pr{\"a}ferenzen beider Generationen an den Arbeitgeber. Die jungen Generationen unterscheiden sich nur leicht voneinander, was aufw{\"a}ndige Anpassungen an HR-Strategien und Praktiken nicht notwendig macht. Die Bachelorarbeit ist f{\"u}r jegliches Unternehmen interessant, das ihre Zielgruppen (Generation Y \& Z) zum Zweck der Rekrutierung besser verstehen m{\"o}chte. Die Ergebnisse k{\"o}nnen in Recruiting- und Employer Branding Maßnahmen adaptiert werden.}, language = {de} } @misc{Sharma, type = {Master Thesis}, author = {Sharma, Neetu}, title = {Analyzing Customer Behvior Patterns \& Predicting Online Product Return Intentions: A Data Mining Approach}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:hbz:1383-opus4-19240}, school = {Hochschule Rhein-Waal}, pages = {74}, abstract = {During the past years, it is noticeable that the e-commerce industry has emerged drastically, offering accessibility to a variety of products to the customer where they can buy products from the comfort of their home. However, it is associated with a lot of new challenges for e-commerce businesses, particularly in understanding and managing the customer behavior patterns with the rising online product returns. Since the accessibility of online shopping has risen, assessing the critical factors related to product return and prediction has become a really challenging task for e-commerce vendors. This study also aims to segment the customers based on customer behavior prediction into two categories, i.e., high return risk and low return risk customers, and further develop strategies to reduce the online returns. This study is rather structured into four integral parts, where each part provides the comprehensive analysis. The first aspect involves analyzing and identifying the customer behavior patterns leading to product returns. The second aspect predicts the online product return based on selected features and the third is to segment the customers based on online product return prediction and categorize them into high return risk, and low return risk customers. The final step involves development of strategies to reduce the product return based on the intense analysis conducted. To achieve this meaningful research outcome, data analysis is conducted to understand the customer behavior patterns, and a Random Forest feature selector is used to identify the customer behavior patterns that lead to product return. Based on the identified features, classification models were applied to classify and predict whether the customer is going to return product or not. Furthermore, in these seven classification models such as Logistic Regression, Ada Boost, Decision Tree, Naive Bayes, XG Boost, K-Nearest Neighbors, and Random Forest were implemented and used to compare the performance of the classification models to find out the best performing model. Lastly, the segmentation of customers is carried out based on the online product prediction using Logistic regression with classification threshold method into high return risk and low return risk customer categories. The results obtained help in understanding the customer behavior and reduce the online product return by developing the strategies. This study will eventually help the online businesses in reducing returns which will also enhance the customer satisfaction.}, language = {en} } @masterthesis{Zerwas, type = {Bachelor Thesis}, author = {Zerwas, Marvin}, title = {Financial Stability of Football Clubs: Theoretical Background and Empirical Analysis of Selected European Clubs}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:hbz:1383-opus4-6322}, school = {Hochschule Rhein-Waal}, pages = {58}, abstract = {Professional football's economic attractiveness is enormous due to its popularity and broad anchoring in society. Consequently, the conditions for clubs have also changed. Today it is not only important to be successful in sports, but also to do business in a solid and sustainable way. Nevertheless, many clubs are still not able to do so. This is due on the one hand to a lack of experience and deficits in the management and control systems and on the other hand to the mindset to buy sporting success by all means. This frequently leads to clubs operating beyond their means and regularly posting high losses. Sustainable investments and future growth are often disregarded. That is why UEFA decided to introduce the Financial Fair play regulations in the year 2013. The rule is in place to avoid debt and to ensure healthy business operations over the long term. The analysis shows that in 2018 clubs will be more focused on using less debt to finance their activities and will be able to pay more debt than in 2012.}, language = {en} } @masterthesis{Trost, type = {Bachelor Thesis}, author = {Trost, Jan}, title = {How to evaluate the financial performance of soccer clubs}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:hbz:1383-opus4-12787}, school = {Hochschule Rhein-Waal}, pages = {119}, abstract = {Professional soccer is the most popular sport in the world with growing social and eco-nomic importance. It has constructed its own sector and is a continuously enlarging economy, making it mandatory for the stakeholders in this industry to be able to evalu-ate the financial performance of soccer clubs. This thesis aims to detect how the finan-cial performance of soccer clubs can be evaluated. For this purpose, multicriteria deci-sion analysis (MCDA) methods and industry-specific factors are used to evaluate the financial performance of ten of the biggest soccer clubs in Europe for the seasons end-ing 2018, 2019, and 2020. To be precise, five different MCDA methods are used as well as a Performance Assessment Model (PAM), which includes sporting performance indicators into the calculation. Furthermore, the correlation between financial and sport-ing performance is being examined. The results show that the use of a multitude of MCDA methods, while also considering sporting performance indicators next to finan-cial ratios, is the best way to evaluate the financial performance of soccer clubs. Addi-tionally, there are other non-financial indicators influencing the financial performance of a soccer club that have to be taken into consideration as well. There is no statistically significant correlation between financial and sporting performance, but they influence each other indirectly due to a club's strategies and objectives.}, language = {en} } @masterthesis{Hinz, type = {Bachelor Thesis}, author = {Hinz, Nikola}, title = {Brand Equity's Impact on Firm Performance and the Supporting Role of Social Media}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:hbz:1383-opus4-15258}, school = {Hochschule Rhein-Waal}, pages = {36}, abstract = {The 21st-century has brought about a range of new, digital media which have experienced an exponential growth in popularity. This has been further supported by the emergence of social media, which provides users a platform for social networking and brands and firms an opportunity to reach consumers in a new manner. The integration of social media into marketing communications of a firm offers numerous benefits, including the strengthening of branding activities and the creation of heightened levels of brand equity, which ultimately translate into increased levels of financial performance as a result of increased sales and augmented pricing strategies and overall firm performance. Due to the tremendous impact of social media platforms, it is necessary for firms to strategically assess this topic and to consider numerous aspects to be able to fully grasp the benefits social media inherits. Therefore, a practical model was developed, which provides firms with a strategic approach towards integrating social media into their marketing practices and provides means for monitoring and controlling the new marketing channel. By utilizing social media, firms and brands can augment their overall performance as well as brand equity levels, which provides them with a competitive advantage and positioning in the market against the multitude of competitors. However, due to the dynamic nature of the sphere of social media, new developments and changes must be closely observed and adapted to, which requires an agile management and marketing of firms, as well as the allocation of adequate resources.}, language = {en} } @masterthesis{Hoff, type = {Bachelor Thesis}, author = {Hoff, Benedikt}, title = {Assessing new means of transportation: The role of eVTOLs}, school = {Hochschule Rhein-Waal}, abstract = {This Bachelor Thesis shows, that when it comes to the emerging industry of eVTOLs, literature reveals that there is a lack of empirical data in order to assess future market adoption of the flight services reliably. The research question: "Is there a target group for eVTOLs?" is analyzed theoretically with the Disruptive Innovation Theory (Bower and Christensen, 1995) and particularly the Technology Acceptance Model ("T.A.M.", Davis, 1989). One-to-one interviews, with potential regular- and premium users of eVTOLs are conducted and strive to verify the Expected results derived from theory, which are then classified as insufficient. The Results show, that there is an interest of potential users in eVTOL flight services. Distinct factors are displayed in the Results section, and while for regular users, trust in the vehicles and safety is important, premium users see time efficiency as a precondition. Overall, in addition to other factors, there is a lack of knowledge on the subject, which applies to both interview groups.}, language = {en} }