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The presented paper analyzes share repurchase announcements of currently DAX, MDAX and SDAX listed companies during the 20-year span of 1998 to 2018. The findings show a significantly lower average abnormal return on the announcement day (1.937%) and a lower cumulative average abnormal return around the announcement day (1.943%) than previous studies reported. Moreover, the medium-term cumulative abnormal returns are found to be significant and positive (2.70%). This study finds evidence for the signaling hypothesis, which states the intention behind the repurchase of a company being a perceived undervaluation.
The use of social media for marketing purposes has already begun replacing virtually all traditional marketing practices in order to cater to a generation of digital natives and young festival goers – a trend that can be especially observed in the music industry today. For all that, not all marketers of music festivals are fully informed about the necessity of a well-developed and multifaceted social media strategy. The goal of this study was to explore the topic of strategic social media in music festival organizations and to derive a model upon which music festival organizations can establish and form their social media strategy more effectively. For this purpose, a literature review was conducted and a combined social media model for assessing social media strategies of music festival organizations was proposed. Six prevailing themes pertaining to social media strategy that were identified constitute the model: 1. Channel selection and evaluation, 2. Audience analysis, 3. Communication style, 4. Social media content, 5. Social monitoring and risk management, and 6. Roles and responsibilities. In the second part of this study, a qualitative research design employing interviews and a case study was used in order to explore strategic social media use in leading festivals in Serbia, Croatia and North Macedonia. The findings of this study reveal about the impact of specific social media platforms, the use of analytics tools for gathering audience insights, the two-way interactive communication with the fans, the efficiency of content resulting from co-creation, the role and importance of PR in social media, as well as the position of social media in the organization and the staffing approach for social media marketing.
An Analysis of the Recent Developments in the Competitive Situation of the German Airline Industry
(2019)
This study analyzes the competitive situation of the German airline industry for short-and medium-haul flights. Developments within the industry’s market structure and its concentration as well as its attractivity are assessed with the help of a supply-and demand-model as well as an H.H.I. Index calculation and the utilization of the Five Forces Model. This is followed by an evaluation of the operations of the largest carriers in the course of a value chain, to determine how the incumbent operator Lufthansa is affected by the developments within the industry also in regard to competitive positioning. The study is finalized with a SWOT analysis in order to give recommendations as to how Lufthansa can improve its positioning and to see how the industry will develop further in the future. The results indicate a development from a monopoly to a Bertrand oligopoly with intense competition based on price, a trend that is further confirmed by high market concentration indicating an increase in power for the top three airlines but also more fierce rivalry between those carriers. The current market environment is notparticularly attractive and therefore difficult to operate in, especially for Lufthansa as a premium full-service carrier. Lufthansa’s largest difficulties are created by its high operational and personnel cost compared to its low-cost competitors. These expenses can be reduced by strategic investments into digitization and automation along with a fleet modernization in order to benefit from technological trends and meet the demand of the future’s passenger.
Over the decades, several reasons like globalization, pressure from large counterparts (SMEs suppliers and customers), outstanding performances and advantages of competitors have driven SMEs to adopt standardized and integrated Enterprise resources planning (ERP) systems. However, implementing an ERP system is a very complex and risky project mainly for SMEs which can lead to ERP implementation ineffectiveness. There are many causes of ERP ineffectiveness, but important one mainly for SMEs is a lacking connection to organizational behavior (including structure and culture) during the ERP implementation, which may lead to misfits between existing organization behavior (structure and culture) and ERP systems because of two separate characters. The integration and standardization nature of ERP systems may not be compatible with all aspects of existing organizational behavior, and it is likely that some aspects or dimensions in organizational behavior influence the ERP implementation success or failure. Based on the theory of organizational structure and culture and the prior literature, this study examines which traditional organizational structure indicators (centralization and formalization), and on the other hand, culture indicators (team orientation and change orientation) affect the implementation of an ERP system. The finding ensures that a high degree of centralization and formalization dimensions of organizational structure has a positive, significant influence on ERP implementation effectiveness. Likewise, there is a positive and significant relationship between team orientation and change orientation of organizational culture with ERP project success. By analysing two firms of Estonia and Germany, this study declares that SMEs have a moderate attention towards their ERP implementation projects which shows that it is not always a problem of ERP implementation failure and proves that SMEs should be focusing not only on technical aspects of ERP system but on organizational aspects particularly on structure and culture as well that may increase the success chance of ERP implementation.
This research explores the meaning of inclusive behavior of team leaders and members in the context of GVTs. The author focuses on implicit biases underlying inclusive behaviors. By investigating biases, this bachelor thesis provides a collection of exemplary behavior and best practices to overcome them.
As inclusive behavior in GVTs is a field of expertise that has not been explored extensively in relation to implicit biases, this research aims to add to the existing research.
It is based on primary and secondary data. The literature review is used to develop a comprehensive understanding of the challenges of GVTs, the leadership responsibilities, and building trust. It also investigates team effectiveness on the example of Project Aristotle as well as the impact of implicit biases on GVTs. Survey results and in-depth interviews with members of two GVTs uncover realistic examples for the aspects comprised in the literature review.
The results show that literature and reality correspond to a large extent. Furthermore, they reveal the impact of different levels of inclusive behaviors on teams’ ability to work together over a distance. While GVTs face many challenges, they see new opportunities in technology to extend beyond those.
The conclusion centers the importance of various communication channels and informal encounters as key to inclusive behaviors for GVT. Moreover, limitations to the research and a critical assessment for future research are discussed in the conclusion.
This paper analyzes the terms User Experience (UX) and Expatriate Experience (XX), and by conducting empirical research, explores the UX of an intercultural coaching app, its possible influence on XX and offers suggestions for further development. This research is not only relevant to the development of the digital coaching tool, The RockMeApp but also gives ideas for further research. By analyzing the findings of the literature review and the empirical research conducted, namely eleven interviews with clients of the RockMeApp, several conclusions were made. Firstly, both UX and XX can be regarded as highly subjective and dynamic topics that are difficult to define. Secondly, new insights on XX from the expat’s perspective are given as well as a practical example of UX research. While the RockMeApp is perceived to be very good in terms of utility and usability, recommendations have been made on how to enhance its UX, mainly regarding its structure, aesthetics and the inclusion of emotions and explanations.
Due to the recent political and economic events of the so called U.S.-China Trade War, the media broadcasted extensively about both parties placing tariffs on each other. This situation impacts heavily on global value chains and brings an increasing focus on GVCs in terms of an economic upgrading in China. A re-examination of the bilateral trade relationships of China and its value added on export products becomes an interesting topic which deserves to be analyzed. In order to understand how GVCs function in international trade and their impact on public and private sectors, an overview of GVCs is presented. Using one of the successful examples of GVCs, this paper focuses on China’s high-tech industry and aims to evaluate its role in GVCs. By reviewing the transformation and development of high-tech industry in China, this paper provides insights into the change of industrial structure and current challenges during the transitional phase. By analyzing statistical data from Input-Output Table for China’s most advanced sectors – computer, electronic and optical products – this paper found out that China’s role of GVCs has changed overtime. More precisely, there is a trend of moving towards knowledge- and service-intensive sectors.
Retail banking provides financial services for individuals and families, and one overlooked aspect has been on international students in Germany. This study aims to discover and rank what are important banking factors for international students at HFU. Building on existing work from other geographical areas, it asks: What are the key factors that international students at HFU consider when choosing a bank?
Based on reviews of past literature, an online survey was distributed to potential respondents via email and social media channels. Analysis of the responses demonstrated that the most important factor is in the following order: (Most important) Security -> Services -> Financial Factors -> Convenience -> Reputation (Least important).
On this basis, it is recommended that banks consider taking into account the top important determinants (such as availability of online banking, cyber security, reliability, financial stability and responsiveness) and the least important determinants (word of mouth recommendation, popularity of the bank, tangibles, bank branches and parking facilities) when tailoring their strategies.
With information on corporate ethical behavior now more accessible than ever, consumers have become increasingly socially and environmentally aware, which has translated into a growing demand for ethically made products. For ethically minded consumers, certification labels such as fair trade or organic are simple indicators of whether a product meets their ethical standards. For companies that wish to become certified, which is a lengthy and sometimes expensive process, there are several pertinent questions to consider, such as how much customers really value particular labels and whether multiple labels yield significant added competitive benefits. One should also consider how best to collect this information, because simply asking customers via surveys isn’t guaranteed to return results that actually reflect or predict real-life behavior (Carrington et al. 2010). For this paper, we collected information on consumers’ willingness to pay for products with the organic and fair trade labels (both individually and in combination) using two different methods: a traditional questionnaire and a reaction-time based electronic research method designed to reveal subconscious value perceptions. The factors involved were product type and number of labels. We found little evidence to suggest that additional ethical labels significantly increase willingness to pay.
This research is exploring how companies can create the right brand image through marketing activities and brand management. We will determine all the components needed in luxury goods industry for a successful brand image establishment and how important this is in the luxury industry. We will start by discussing about the important aspects of brands, luxury and the luxury industry leading to a more practical chapter of the brand image creation methods in luxury goods industry with real life examples and finally concluding the brand image being a main ingredient in consumer-based brand equity creation. The conclusion is formulated with Aaker´s (1991) model of brand equity and Keller´s (2013) dimensions of brand knowledge and finally supported by Na et al. (1999) model of brand power.
The main focus of this thesis will be to shed light on the existence of cognitive biases. As many researchers, such as Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, have proven in the last five decades, people are not always as rational as they would like to believe. It is important to understand the origin of this irrational behaviour as well as its implications on judgements and decisions. Furthermore, cognitive biases also have a significant influence on consumers’ buying behaviour and decision-making. Through extensive research in secondary as well as primary data it will be shown how much of an influence the cognitive biases anchoring, hyperbolic discounting, loss aversion, endowment effect and decoy effect have on consumer buying behaviour. Additionally, recommendations of how these influences can be used in marketing will be given.
Globalisation has significantly shaped the way international organisations operate nowadays. The increased connectivity is continuously raising the number of global virtual teams, connecting employees across borders for project work. With cultural diversity, geographic dispersion and virtuality increasing the complexity of collaboration, the leadership of virtual teams constitutes a critical challenge. Consequently, the topic of leadership and its behavioural implications is progressively gaining businesses’ attention. However, due to limited research in this field, this thesis aims at identifying whether and how leadership behaviour affects virtual team collaboration, specifically between German leaders and Chinese team members.
After outlining behavioural characteristics of virtual leaders as presented by literature, the empirical research focuses on expert interviews with German virtual leaders. Here, a specific focus is put on their perceptions of their Chinese teams, the emerging challenges, their behaviours and the creation of a new virtual culture.
The results show the importance of leadership behaviour in this setting. They emphasise the effect it has on the virtual team members and provide recommendations with regards to behavioural adaptation to master this challenge.
Open-plan office design is deemed to be a beneficial tool for facilitating communication and collaboration. However, its alleged advantages are not proven by the chosen contemporary research presented in this thesis. By means of comparative analysis of secondary data, the thesis provides evidence for detrimental influence of open-plan office design to the workforce. Consequently, the well-being model proposed by Chartered Institute of Personnel Development is employed, thus enabling placing the influence of open-plan design within well-being domains and determining that this workspace arrangement affects employee well-being detrimentally. Having established the interconnectedness of the subjects, the thesis concludes by providing suggestions for management and expressing the need for further research.
Cultural considerations for Germans working with Japanese in virtual teams for project management
(2019)
In today’s globalized and multinational working world, being part of a team that uses technology in order to cross distance, time zones and even organizations, a so-called virtual team is becoming increasingly common. While extensive research on this topic is available, most of the current research is very theoretical and only in part useful for a member of a virtual team in order to enhance performance. A clear guideline on how to effectively work in an intercultural virtual team is not existent at this point.
This research, aims to produce a clear guideline for Germans working in virtual teams with Japanese in the style of the Project Management Body of Knowledge Guide. Identifying the key challenges of virtual teams and the specific cultural differences of Germans and Japanese, based on Hofstede’s cultural dimensions model are the starting point for this research. Due to the specificity and the novelty of this research a grounded theory approach has been taken and in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with 12 Japanese employees, who regularly work in virtual teams with Germans. Grounded in the experiences and challenges of the participants, the findings help construct a guideline for Germans working with Japanese in virtual teams.
Results are structured according to 4 of the key challenges virtual teams face: trust, communication, leadership and technology/knowledge sharing. The guideline addresses the different communication styles of Japanese and Germans, differences in hierarchical thinking as well as the more collectivistic point of view of many Japanese. The guideline, that has been produced, is intended as a quick guide including recommendations for Germans to enhance their virtual team work with Japanese.
The fight against global warming and the challenge of reducing CO2 output are critical issues for emitters, such as the fossil fuel sector. Many governments, acting in concert, will heavily regulate emissions in the future to not exceed a 2°C increase in temperature, as agreed on in the Paris Agreement in 2005. Heavy investments in renewables, research and development, and carbon storage are signs of the beginning of this progress to energy transition.
Due to the increases in CO2, measured in the atmosphere, many environmental organizations and scientists have studied the matter carefully. Their results show that if nations continue on their current path and do not decrease their CO2 output, it will take no longer than 26 years to exceed the 2°C limit.
The fossil fuel industry, as the main emitter of CO2, will have to depreciate many of their reserves, because CO2 containing fossil fuels listed on stock exchanges exceed the amount absorbable by the earth. This means, that if the content of CO2 recorded on worldwide stock exchanges would be extracted, an increase beyond 2°C is foreseeable. The bubble, similar to the Lehmann Brother case in 2008, will burst someday and cause high losses when extraction limits are implemented.
The impact of climate change related emission regulations on entities´ financial statements is identified as a research gap. This study focuses on the accounting standards and depreciation of minerals as it is an important matter for the current and future economic situation. Depending on current actions taken by extracting entities and governing power the future for the energy industry will look very different from today.
The age of connectivity has come with maximum convenience, variety and transparency for shoppers. In light of an increasingly informed consumer with a trained eye for inauthentic marketing, traditional brick-and-mortar retail has recognised the need for differentiation from online competitors. As a consequence, retailers are progressively moving away from transaction-focused retailing to the creation of multi-sensory and emotionally engaging customer experiences through experiential retailing.
As a means of showcasing the brand, experiential retailing is particularly gaining popularity among consumer electronics brands. However, considering the high cost and non-transactional focus of experiential retailing, the question arises whether this approach creates long-term benefits for the brand. Therefore, this bachelor thesis aims to identify whether experiential retailing constitutes a viable branding tool for consumer electronics. Upon establishing a relationship between the concepts of experiential retailing and branding based on literature review, this paper uses qualitative research to investigate the implications of this relationship as perceived by a brand representative and consumers. The analysis of the conducted expert and focus group interviews, identifies experiential retailing as a means of increasing brand awareness, whilst addressing other brand constructs such as brand experience and brand loyalty. With respect to this, this paper substantiates the applicability of experiential retailing as a branding tool for consumer electronics.
The objective of this thesis is it to find out which factors are influencing the interpersonal
communication between two leaders in job sharing. With the help of a literature review,
a communication model including three relevant factors for the area of application could
be developed. Those factors are the relationship between the partners, the choice of an
adequate communication medium and contextual factors. It could be shown that those
factors have an influence on the communication frequency and mode. Recommendations
what needs to be considered regarding each factor to ensure an effective communication
are given.
The rapid pace of change is posing a series of challenges both in industrialized and in emerging economies. Throughout history, one important measure to deal with change was to further develop technology, to find the right solution, to improve the current standard, in one word: to innovate. Over the past decades, different types of innovation have emerged. One fairly recent form is frugal innovation. The principle of frugal innovation is to build a strategic fit between affordability, quality and sustainability with the aim to create a greater value for customers while using fewer resources as capital, time or material. In view of contemporary developments like globalization, climate change, or increasing poverty which create issues across countries, industries and social classes, frugal innovation can offer solutions. Existing literature mainly reports about frugal innovation as an option to serve consumers from low income markets in developing countries. However, the concept might be already or might become in future equally crucial for industrialized economies. The purpose of this research is to investigate the future development of frugal innovation in industrialized economies. A critical question in this paper is to identify how much innovation concepts in industrialized economies differ from innovation concepts in emerging countries and in the following, to assess to what extend the frugal innovation concept would imply a reorientation for industrialized economies. The results indicate that innovators in industrialized economies still follow the typical “higher, faster, further strategy” and that different mind-sets might be necessary to introduce a frugal innovation approach. Moreover, the results show that frugal innovation offers a unique combination of principles that respond to a very high degree to present consumer, market or eco-political trends. A limitation of this paper is that in industrialized countries, hitherto there exist very few examples of frugal innovation concepts. Subsequently, the theoretical and empirical literature, which can be reviewed, is limited.
Online commerce is growing rapidly. With the wide accessibility of the internet, e-commerce is becoming the most important ways or medium for doing business globally. The growth of e-commerce business provides companies a great opportunity to invest online so as to position their brand.
This thesis observes the elements of online brand positioning. Furthermore, it analyses whether these elements can be applied to an online business. For this Zalando the online fashion retailer, will be taken as an example. It starts with a literature review on e-commerce definition, important factors for e-commerce business, advantages of e-commerce business, brand positioning, importance of brand positioning and online brand positioning elements. The chosen brand positioning elements are then applied to analyse the online brand positioning of Zalando. Furthermore, it observes the influence of brand positioning elements on their competitive advantages.
The brand positioning elements are benefits and feature, price and value statements, competitive advantages, information on product and services, processes, partnering and relationship, leadership claims and corporate power, corporate social responsibility and credibility. All these brand positioning elements are addressed by Zalando and these elements have played an important role for the positioning of Zalando`s brand.
Social media and social networks are terms which appear daily in all sort of different contexts. The importance of such online platforms is growing day by day. People spend an immense time of their everyday life in such networks. Therefore, it is not surprising that marketers have encountered the great opportunity coming along with this. This paper contributes to the little research on follower demographics and delivers an insight into the hotel industry in the Black Forest. It attempts to close the knowledge gap of comparing social media followers of hotels to actual hotel guests, shows how hotels can integrate social media in their marketing strategy and why it is relevant for different market participants. Moreover, a comparison of possible target groups was made.
For analysing social media followers of hotels, own primary data was collected in form of an email survey of hotels in the Black Forest. The findings were afterwards compared to actual tourist demographics derived from a former hotel guest survey in the Black Forest. According to responses of 85 hotels, the study found that hotel guests are usually from older generations (60+) and mainly male, whereas hotel social media follower tend to be younger (around 30) and female. This shows the possibility for hotels to target customers, different from their loyal customer base, via social media. Secondary data helped drawing further conclusions. Instagram clearly supports hotels to attract new customers. It has high relevance for hotels, as well as individuals, and can be integrated in each step of a marketing planning process. Target group analysis of current guests and potential new clients, who are present on social media, has made clear that both are coming with advantages and disadvantages. Hotels should enter new markets to enlarge their customer group, however, not at the dispense of loyal guests. Loyalty and customer relation management in the accommodation industry will always be an essential point.