Business Commons^™

Examining The Potential Of Design Thinking For Marketing Students In The Context Of Workplace Learning And Performance Challenges, Christina Pinkaow

Masters

Design thinking, which initially emerged in the 1980s, has notably been recently receiving increased attention, particularly in business communities, as a process that enables rapid, innovative, and user-centric problem solving (Lockwood, 2010). As the forthcoming generations of marketing graduates enter this ‘Consumer Age’, they will be forced to think innovatively and empathetically in order to adjust to constant and rapid changes in our environment (Hanttu, 2013). Design thinking equips modern marketers with the opportunity to become consumercentric and effectively generate innovative solutions on a constant basis to complex challenges that exists (Mohr, 2015).

While the concept is gaining increasing hold …

Analysing The Promotional Effects That Open Source Software Has For Paid Editions: A Dual Mediation Hypothesis Approach For An Emerging Software Business Model, Ernesto Ongaro

Masters

Attracting new leads to use a software product can be costly for a software vendor. One way to secure more leads is to offer trials and unpaid editions, but their use should not be arbitrary. The emerging business model of commercial open source allows a vendor to promote its software for free while converting some of the users to paid; but does the free community edition actually serve as promotion for the commercial edition? This promotional effect is measured through the user’s attitudes and cognitions towards the advertisement and their subsequent purchase intentions. Survey results from 134 users of a …

Designing Museums For Participation, Collaboration And Social Interaction, Martin Mccarthy

Masters

This thesis documents the design and development of novel interactive experiences that explored concepts aimed to enhance the visitor experience to Cork Butter Museum, Cork, Ireland.

The context to the work is that in recent years, museums and cultural institutions are increasingly motivated to apply creative strategies to engage visitors who come for recreational, social and sometimes educative purposes. Novel museum exhibits designed to cater for such needs often involves the integration of new media technologies in response to rising expectations visitors have with regards to being actively engaged during their visit. This often requires a higher level of participation …

The Parent Child Purchase Relationship, Catriona Nash

Masters

This is an interpretive inquiry into the ‘parent-child purchase relationship’. This study aims to understand the parent-child purchase relationship from the consumer perspective, rather than the much reported ‘vested interest’ perspective, in order to enhance and inform an understanding of the phenomenon. Commencing with an overview of current literature, specifically that of the pester power phenomenon, to contextualise the theoretical framework, the extant construct of pester power is examined along with detailed arguments from vested interest parties supported by international studies. The child consumer is examined from a cognitive and socialisation perspective, but more pertinently in relation to their influencers; …

The National Game And Irish Society: The Gaa As A Cultural Brand, Aine Carroll

Masters

The link between brands and culture is well documented (McCracken, 1986; Ritson and Elliott, 1999). However the purposeful creation of brands related to culture is less evident (Vincent, 2002; Holt, 2004). It is this lack of theoretical understanding of cultural brands that drives this study. The objective of this study is to investigate the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) as an iconic brand within the socio-economic context of Ireland. The literature has been divided into two chapters, the first is an overview of consumer culture as the context within which brands have taken on great importance, in the construction of self …

An Exploration Of Enterprise Level Partnership And The Influences Informing Private Sector Organisations' Choice Of This Model In The Republic Of Ireland, Kevin O'Leary

Masters

The research follows the strategic choice of Partnership and seeks to gain an understanding of the processes and practices which define this concept and the political, economic and historical influences which have shaped it's evolution. The primary focus of this study is to explore the factors which have shaped the decision of private sector einployers to engage with or to reject Partnership as an appropriate model. The literature and the surveys consulted suggest that Partnership has not become an established or mainstream activity and reflects singularly low levels of uptake despite being actively promoted by Government and it's social partners. …

Rebranding: A Case Study Approach, Maria Size

Masters

The primary objective of this study is to explore how and why companies implement rebranding campaigns. The study stemmed from a realisation by the author that the area of rebranding is very much under-researched academically although anecdotal evidence indicates and increase in the occurrence of the phenomenon in recent years. Therefore the purpose of this research is to add to the insufficient body of literature on rebranding through exploring it from a corporate perspective. The two chapters of the literature review examine the available literature on the topic of rebranding it is holistic sense, and subsequently the possible effects of …

The Determinants Of Charitable Donations In The Republic Of Ireland, James Carroll

Masters

This thesis explores the variable that affect the probability of donating and the variables that affect the size of donation by Irish households. The datasets employed are the Irish Household Budget Surveys, 1994/1995 and 1999/2000, which are analysed using a tobit model and a double-hurdle model with an inverse hyperbolic sine transformation. Between 1994 and 2000, Ireland witnessed a remarkable and well-documented economic boom. This thesis provides insight into how the determinants of charitable donations change in an economy such as the Republic of Ireland’s, which has undergone such rapid economic and cultural changes. To date there has been no …

An Examination For The Marketing Strategy Of The World Rally Championship, Sean O'Connor

Masters

In 2000, International Sportsworld Communicators Ltd. (ISC) acquired a ten year exclusive commercial rights agreement for the World Rally Championships. Previously the sport attracted a low level of media exposure. ISC planned to market the WRC with the intention of gaining a top five position as a global sports television brand. The main aim of the present study is to examine the marketing strategy of the WRC by ISC. In particular, this study focuses on the strategies taken to increase the Pan European TV coverage for the WRC. ISC identified television as the priority channel for building audience and the …

The Role Of Commitment In Relationship Marketing In Consumer Services: An Airline Perspective, Ceara Cooper

Masters

This study proposes a relationship marketing model, which identifies the antecedents of commitment in the context of consumer services. The literature review initially considers relationship marketing (RM) and the concept of commitment from the context of the marketing and social psychology literature. Commitment is a key element of RM. If parties to a relationship are not committed, the relationship risks dissolution. In this study, commitment is conceptualised as having two distinct dimension i.e. affective and calculative commitment. Affective commitment represents a positive motivation for relationship continuance, whereas calculative commitment represents a negative motivation. Many studies consider commitment to be a …

Managing Change Towards Service Excellence: Sds A Case Study, Jean Gorman

Masters

In a business environment where change is the only constant, companies must direct their attention to activities that will make their offerings excellent. The attainment of service excellence is a very prominent theme in the literature on services marketing. However, while the benefits of programs to achieve this status are unquestionable, there are in fact very few service companies that are regarded as excellent in the market place. Therefore the main objective is to determine how a company manages the activities towards achieving service excellence. The foundations of the primary research lie in both the literature on change management and …