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This thesis explores the nature of value, and value co-creation within the context of collaborative category management relationships in the UK grocery sector. Category management is the process which involves a collaboration between food manufacturers (suppliers) and retailers to manage the needs of shoppers. Research into category management is very timely as the retailing industry is currently facing one of its greatest challenges. Shoppers are becoming more demanding and expect better value from their purchases. The research reveals that shoppers are switching from branded to private label products following on from the recent success of Discounters. This has created opportunities for all category suppliers including private label and smaller niche suppliers, if they produce retailer specific innovative and creative ideas. It was also found that the role of the category captain was abandoned five years ago, despite being the focus of the category management literature even today. The role now known as ‘preferred supplier’ is available to any category supplier and is no longer the exclusive right of the largest branded supplier. The current research study has involved UK based food industry supplier category managers and retail buyers, to understand if category management collaborations created value. Following a phenomenological approach using long qualitative interviews, the findings were controversial in that both the suppliers and retailers were not completely satisfied with the category management relationship, and that value was not always created. This finding contradicts existing research, and indeed the rhetoric that normally purveysin practice. The researcher anticipatesthat the thesis will alert practitioners to the underlying issues that exist and encourage them to find ways of working closer together, without fear of displeasing the other partner. It will no doubt spark reformist debates between suppliers and retailers, as well as update the category management literature. The research findings move the category management conversation forward from an objective to a subjective explanation of value creation. Finally, it introduces the importance of Service-Dominant Logic S-DL in creating value through the lens of the five axioms of S-DL. It also adds further insight from a supplier’s perspective based on confidential testaments of practitioners on the front-line.

Franz Peter Schubert (1797-1828) began composition of the Sonata in C Major, D. 840 (“Reliquie”) during April of 1825. It was first published in Leipzig in 1861 and dubbed the “Reliquie” by the publisher K.F. Whistling, based on the mistaken assumption that it was Schubert’s last piano sonata. Following the complete Moderato and Andante movements, Schubert left the Minuetto: Allegretto and Rondo: Allegro movements unfinished. The primary purpose of this treatise is to compare and contrast the published completions of the unfinished Minuetto: Allegretto and Rondo: Allegro movements as finished by Ludwig Stark, Ernst Krenek, Walter Rehberg, Harold Truscott, Armin Knab, Paul Badura-Skoda, Dieter Einfeldt, Noël Lee, Martino Tirimo, Geoffrey Poole and Brian Newbould.

This dissertation addresses two issues concerning the deformation behavior of a cobalt-based superalloy: 1) the strain-induced face-centered-cubic to hexagonal-closepacked phase transformation and 2) the anisotropic lattice-strain development. Cobaltbased alloys are known to exhibit a metastable face-centered-cubic crystal structure at room temperature. This structure can transform to the thermodynamically-stable hexagonal-close-packed phase upon application of a load. While this phenomenon has been studied and documented before, this work offers a more in-depth study on this issue, as it addresses the phase transformation under several loading modes: monotonic tension, monotonic compression, stress-controlled high-cycle fatigue, and strain-controlled lowcycle fatigue. The experimental technique utilized in this research is neutron diffraction. This nondestructive method is particularly well suited to the problem because it can be used to study the transformation with the mechanical load applied in-situ. Anisotropic lattice strain development is a natural problem to study, as neutron diffraction is also well suited for this measurement. Individual crystallites in a polycrystalline matrix by nature have directionally-dependent responses to the applied stress. When neighboring anisotropic grains interact, inhomogeneities known as intergranular strains develop. This dissertation assumes that the total lattice strain is the sum of two contributions: the linear-elastic contribution and the plasticity-induced intergranular contribution. Within the context of this analysis, the effect of the phase transformation on the deformation behavior is also inferred.

A means of producing photographic edges using visible radiation is often a requirement for evaluating some of the image characteristics of a photographic emulsion. The method of producing edges described uses a high quality razor blade for the knife edge held at a small angle to the film plane. The instrument is detailed and elaborates on the major features of the constructed apparatus. These features are a vacuum surface to insure film flattness; the knife edge held by a jaw-clamp assembly that pivots to allow for contrast control of the image; and exposure through a tungston-halogen lamp and an electronic shutter which has a separate timer.