Consumers interact with each other and within their social networks. Influentials have an overproportional influence on other consumers? preferences and choices, thus having relevant implications for product development, marketing planning and strategic marketing. An important question that...

Viral marketing is the business approach that uses peer-to-peer communications to increase product awareness and adoptions through widespread social networks of receivers. Benefiting from the unprecedented fast growth of online social networks, this marketing maneuver merits a deeper...

In this thesis we consider how user-generated content that is assembled by different popular Web portals can be exploited for Multilingual Information Retrieval. We define the knowledge that can be derived from such portals as Social Semantics. We present to approaches, Cross-lingual Explicit...

In this dissertation we study several key issues faced by firms while introducing new products to market. The first essay looks at product rollovers: introduction of a new product generation while phasing out the old one. We study the strategic decision of dual vs. single roll jointly with...

Der Tourismus wird oft als Erfolgsfaktor der endogenen Regionalentwicklung für strukturschwacheländliche Räume verstanden. Landschaftlich attraktive Gebiete können mit demErleben einer intakten und unzerstörten Natur- und Kulturlandschaft, einer vielfältigen TierundPflanzenwelt sowie...

Place branding has become a major focus of operations for destination marketing organisations (DMO) striving for differentiation in cluttered markets. The topic of destination branding has only received attention in the tourism literature since the late 1990s, and there has been relatively...

Place branding has become a major focus of operations for destination marketing organisations (DMO) striving for differentiation in cluttered markets. The topic of destination branding has only received attention in the tourism literature since the late 1990s, and there has been relatively...

In the past two decades there has been increasing interest in branding tourism destinations in an effort to meaningfully differentiate against a myriad of competing places that offer similar attractions and facilities. The academic literature relating to destination branding commenced only as...

Place branding has become a major focus of operations for destination marketing organisations (DMO) striving for differentiation in cluttered markets. The topic of destination branding has only received attention in the tourism literature since the late 1990s, and there has been relatively...

The proposition underpinning this study is engaging in meaningful dialogue with previous visitors represents an efficient and effective use of resources for a destination marketing organization (DMO), compared to above the line advertising in broadcast media. However there has been a lack of...