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Das Ziel der Bachelorarbeit ist es, den Prozess der Liquiditätsplanung in dem Unternehmen Audi Brussels S.A./N.V. zu verbessern. Dabei soll eine transparentere, genauere, automatisierte und flexiblerer Planung entstehen. Zunächst wurde der aktuelle Planungsprozess genau untersucht und auf Schwachstellen und Problemfelder analysiert. Daraus wurden Handlungsoptionen für Audi Brüssel abgeleitet. Diese wurden in lang-, mittel- und kurzfristige Lösungen eingeteilt. Die langfristigen Verbesserungenmöglichkeiten beschäftigen sich mit der Einführung von voll integrierten Software-Lösungen in Form von Datenanalyse-Plattformen. Die mittelfristigen Handlungsalternativen umfassen speziell angefertigte SAP-Berichte, durch die mehr Zahlungsströme frühzeitig erfasst werden können. Die kurzfristigen Optionen beinhalten die Überarbeitung der Excel-Grundlage der Planung. Wichtiger Bestandteil ist dabei die Erstellung eines Excel-Tools, das eine Übersicht über die verschiedenen Planungsebenen und deren Verlinkungen bietet und dazu eine flexiblere sowie schnellere Erstellung der Planung ermöglicht. Zudem wird eine rollierende Monatsplanung eingeführt.
Funding is the key to success for a start-up. Since start-ups are often operating in innovative industries, they rarely receive loans from traditional debt lenders such as banks. However, start-ups do have the option of acquiring money for company growth through equity financing. One possibility for this is venture capital. In this scope, Germany is significantly behind the United States of America due to various aspects. This problem shows the relevance of the topic and justifies the critical examination of this subject. This work aims to analyze the German venture capital market, its development over the last 20 years, its advantages on the one hand and its disadvantages on the other hand as well as its future perspectives. Beyond that, the differences between the German and the American venture capital market and its success factors are presented. To answer all research questions, a broad literature review in combi-nation with several conducted expert interviews, which are evaluated on the principle of the qualitative content analysis according to Mayring, is applied. The results of the analysis indicate that there are mainly three fields that are crucial for a successful venture capital market: Political actions, attitudes of the society, and the economic situation. Within these fields, some aspects of Germany are considered worse than in the U.S. In the United States of America politics often intervenes to create better conditions for investments via venture capital. Besides, the risk affinity of society in the U.S. is a major advantage compared to the risk-averse society in Germany. This is complemented by a pronounced start-up mentality in the U.S. and the positive attitude of society towards the failure of a new start-up. In Germany, the opposite can be found in both aspects. Nevertheless, the German venture capital market has developed positively in recent years and has some advantages, such as a wide range of government grants for start-ups and the opportunity for investors to earn high returns on the initial investment. All experts that were interviewed are very confident that venture capital in Germany will continue to develop positively. They identified the reasons for this evolution in an increasing number of start-ups and better skills among the founders, which increases a start-ups' chances of success. For this reason, the experts forecast rising yield expectations, as well as an increasing number of venture capital providers, and venture capital takers. This research also indicates that the volumes of venture capital funds will rise, and the COVID-19-pandemic will accelerate the development of venture capital in Germany. The results of the research clearly show that despite some weaknesses, the German venture capital market has been on a good path for several years, and that there is a high probability that the growth will continue in the future.
This thesis proposes the adoption of renewable energies as a means to foster economicdiversification in oil and gas dependent rentier states. Surprisingly, oil and gas endowment does not always imply wealth and prosperity, mirroring the on-going debate whether natural resource dependent countries are blessed or cursed by their resource abundance.
This thesis seeks to bridge this gap by focussing on rentier states and the question whether rentier states are cursed or blessed. Based on the example of Oman, the proposed approach will be closely assessed. Additionally, the Sultanate’s challenges stemming from natural resource dependence and its preparedness for a post-oil era will be investigated.
Moreover, this thesis will analyze whether a paradigm shift in Oman’s energy sector can mitigate prevailing challenges and support the country’s economic diversification.
These three research questions will be answered through surveying and analyzing literature and data pertinent to the research topic. Findings indicate that rentier states tend to be more vulnerable to the resource curse and the impending fossil fuel depletion as it could cause public outcry and political and economic turmoil. Oman as a rentier state faces a grim post-oil era, fueled by many challenges, including dwindling oil and financial reserves, productivity losses driven by labor market distortions and rapid population growth.
Finally, findings suggest that the combination of economic and energy diversification can have strong positive effects on the Omani economy, such as freeing oil and gas reserves for export revenues, job creation, and private sector strengthening. However, Oman’s renewable energy industry is still in its infancy and faces various challenges, ranging from absent policies and adequate financing to heavily subsidized fossil fuels. As of now, the proposed approach is overly ambitious as the installed renewable energy capacity is too low to create significant employment opportunities or to free oil and gas for export purposes. However, heightened volatilities and economic shocks in recent years were eyeopening for the Omani government and have resulted in stronger efforts to enforce economic development plans. Similarly, the political transition after the death of Sultan Qaboos injected new impetus into Oman’s economy, which will facilitate the diversification of economic bases.
The management of the company Brasch Feinkost is striving for a digital process, which is particularly necessary and examined in incoming goods.
The change from analog to digital processes cannot be implemented without further planning in advance, which is why a concept must be developed that includes different steps. The introduction of warehouse management software in particular requires basic steps that are part of a clear concept. The representation of the actual processes in the incoming goods department at Brasch Feinkost are not only necessary for a specification sheet, but should also show comparisons between analog and digital processes by creating the target processes. With the identified weaknesses and approaches for improvement, the necessity of the digital way of working is shown by means of different analyzes and external benchmarking. The market research is ultimately intended to find a suitable provider of digitally supporting software based on the specified optional and mandatory requirements.
With the increasing popularity of online learning, many education providers increase their portfolio of educational courses. This analysis looks at existing literature and conducts two studies regarding the willingness to pay (WTP) for online and offline courses.
The first study consists of a van Westendorp price sensitivity meter (PSM) and a Gabor-Granger pricing method. The surveys are conducted to find differences in consumers´ WTP for online and offline courses and potential causes for the differences. The second study consist of short analogue case studies of services in the online and offline environment and factors that influence consumers´ WTP, supported by a literature review in the front of this analysis.
The results are that the WTP for offline courses slightly exceeds the WTP for online courses and that a multitude of factors, with positive, negative, neutral or ambiguous effects, play a role in consumers´ WTP for online and offline services.
The results and implications from this analysis are useful for service providers, that look to adapt their prices to the consumers´ WTP for services in online and offline environments. In particular for educational service providers and service providers that are unsure how to price online services in comparison to offline services.
Many companies, especially in the United States, use share buybacks as part of their distribution policy to increase shareholder value. Even though share buybacks send a positive signal to the capital market participants often leading to higher stock prices, they are not always advantageous for investors. Little is known about share buybacks in the covid-19 pandemic 2020. This scientific paper aims to critically examine share buybacks concerning the current crisis by applying a benchmarking process to the performance of companies with huge share buyback programs. Moreover, experts in the field of study analyze the reasons for the performance and give an outlook as part of two further research questions. Using the S&P 500 as a benchmark, the analysis shows that these companies significantly underperformed during the crisis. According to the experts, capital-intensive, cyclical value stocks with low multiples and high debt have repurchased massive amounts in the past, leading to failure in investing in the business model's future viability and thus of the company. The crisis highlighted the weaknesses of share buybacks, which could lead to fundamental changes in the future. This research's findings are useful for investors who want to make more rational and differentiated investment decisions concerning share buybacks, as part of their due diligence process, during the next crisis.
This study is aimed at valuing two companies in the IT services industry with different valuation approaches. Therefore, the preconditions for an accurate and meaningful business value as well as the procedure, strengths and limitations of these approaches are examined. Additionally, the accuracy of the results is determined through comparison of valuation estimates with their corresponding stock prices occurring within the three months following the business valuations.
Furthermore, it is examined if one valuation approach is superior in terms of accuracy. Finally, to verify the quality and explanatory power of the valuation results, they are compared with the outcomes of the study on the information content of equity analyst reports by Paul Asquith, Michael B. Mikhail and Andrea S. Au. The results of the business valuations show that within the three-month period, no price target was exactly achieved by the corresponding stock prices.
Furthermore, no valuation approach could be determined that is significantly more accurate than the others. It can be concluded that despite some limitations in the explanatory power of the valuations, the average percentage approximations of Mastercard’s and Visa’s stock prices to target prices were only slightly below those of the comparative study. In view of the fact that the research capacities and experience behind these business valuations are significantly lower than those of the top analysts in the comparative study, the results are considered consistent with the outcomes of the study on the information content of equity analyst reports.
Personalisierte Online-Werbung und Datenschutzbedenken: Perspektiven aus den USA und Deutschland
(2020)
Today, personalized online advertising is part of user's everyday life. Based on data collected online, targeted advertisements are displayed. This approach often triggers concerns among users about the protection of their data, which has made data protection a globally important issue in recent years. This is also the case in Germany and the U.S. These two countries have two fundamentally different approaches to protecting their users' data, which is due to different perspectives on privacy and the culturally different handling of user data.
Based on cultural behaviors, there are many differences between users from the U.S. and Germany, but that they also have some similarities that affect user behavior and attitudes toward personalized online advertising. The concept of personalized customer communication is promising and can be beneficial for both users and advertisers. The cultural aspects help to assess a user's personal boundaries in order to decide on the degree of personalization of an advertisement so that no concerns are raised.
An analysis of the inter-rater reliability of ESG ratings within the consumer staples industry
(2020)
The aim of this study is to gain further insights into whether ESG ratings of the same firms from different rating agencies differ. To this end, this study examines and compares in particular the ratings of the providers Bloomberg, Sustainalytics and MSCI for companies in the consumer staples industry. The study comes to the conclusion that there are in some cases significant differences between these three providers in terms of the respective ESG ratings. Furthermore, a company-size bias is shown for Bloomberg and Sustainalytics ESG ratings. It appears that these agencies rate companies with a large market capitalization better than firms with a lower market value. These large discrepancies in ESG ratings of companies within the consumer staples industry and individual rating problems, such as the company-size bias, mean that today's ESG ratings tend to be not reliable and not valid. The study shows that ESG ratings will have to change a lot in the near future in order to contribute positively to the investment selection of socially responsible investors.
New developments in decentralized ledger technologies may have a huge impact on how we perceive and use money now and in the future. Most notably, it has led to the development of cryptocurrencies and a variation thereof –stablecoins. This thesis discusses the potential impact of Proof of Work based cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin on the money market and the central bank’s ability to maintain control over the money supply. The IS-LM model is used to evaluate the effects of a private-issued digital currency. However, due to the characteristics of POW based cryptocurrencies, their impact on the money market is neglectable. In contrast, private-issued stablecoins of large international businesses with the potential of gaining enough users to overcome hindering network effects may pose a serious threat to the financial system, if there is no regulation on their usage.
As a response to this development and combined with the phenomenon of a declining cash usage in many countries, central banks have started to conduct research in their own digital currency, namely central bank digital currency (CBDC). Countries such as Sweden or The Bahamas have already started with the implementation of trial phases of their respective CBDC. However, design choices of the country’s digital currency differ due to financial, geographical, and cultural circumstances, among others. Nevertheless, many countries have utilized decentralized ledger technologies as the underlying technology for CBDC, showing its promising potential for further research and future developments.