Student Poster Section

Student Poster Section 2013

Use of humor appeals in advertising
Nikolina Dreven

Abstract There are numerous factors influencing consumer's decision to purchase a product or use a certain service, and the aim of this study was to discover how humor appeals influence the consumer's decision to purchase products or use certain services. The study was conducted on 50 respondents from Varaždin County area. Likert scale was used during the development of the questionnaire. At the beginning of the study, a hypothesis was stated saying: "Humor as an appeal affects the consumer's decision to purchase a product or use a particular service." This hypothesis was proved by a conducted survey. Specifically, out of 50 surveyed subjects, 23 respondents (46%) have replied that humorous appeals affect their decision to purchase products or use certain services, whereas 6 subjects (12%) responded that humorous appeals influence on their decision to purchase products or use certain services to a greatest extent. As for the questions pertaining to agreed/disagreed with a particular statement, out of 50 subjects, 27 respondents (54%) replied they agreed with the statement: "Humor in advertisements enhances my attention and memory.", and 7 patients (14 %) responded that they fully agree with the above statement. Likewise, out of 50 subjects, 29 respondents (58%) replied they agreed with the statement: "I believe that humor is useful in advertisement of products whose purchase is based on feelings or experiences.", and 12 subjects (24%) responded that they completely agree with the above statement. By the conducted research and based on the obtained results, a hypothesis has been proved that the humor as an appeal does affect the consumer's decision to purchase products or use particular services, which has also confirmed the results of previously conducted worldwide research related to the use of humor in advertising. People are much more receptive to positive messages in the ads [1], therefore humor has a large role in it, being able to arouse the audience's attention and encourage potential customers to buy a particular product or to start using a particular service.

Negotiation of the international environment
Marko Hosni

Abstract Negotiations are very important in business and private communication and therefore they are a constant subject of studies and analyzes. The goal of this paper is to define negotiations, show the importance and role of negotiations and their preparation, define negotiations strategies, and also psychological types of negotiators and negotiation techniques for the sole purpose of emphasizing the importance of nonverbal communication. It will also elaborate the usage of above mentioned elements in international environment, importance of knowing foreign languages, cultures, customs and behavior. Before starting any kind of negotiations it is important to prepare, define goals, collect information about business partners, choose one of those business partners, establish the negotiations team and define time and place for this whole process. It is possible to negotiate spontaneously or choose one negotiation strategy. Negotiation strategies are: principled negotiation, hard negotiation, soft negotiation, position negotiation and fictive negotiation. There are also several psychological types of negotiators: dominant, extrovert, introvert, innocent, actors, philosophers and guardians. Some of the techniques that are being used are: Good guy – bad guy, Take it or leave it, Final offer, Walk out, Divide et impera etc.
A small research on a sample of 80 people, students and businessman, shows on which degree are they familiar with the importance of negotiations, have they ever been involved in international negotiations, do they know basic negotiation strategies and techniques and which of those did they use, if they know any foreign languages, cultures, customs, if they can recognize nonverbal communication and control their own and finally it determines the level of satisfaction with the results of their negotiations. The research also shows the level of satisfaction with their own communication and negotiation skills and how willing they are to improve those skills. Gathering and analysis of information was done by descriptive statistical method. Results are shown with graphs, tables and descriptions so they can be compared. Here are some of the results from the conducted research:
- 51% of inquired subjects are students, 30% are employed and 19% are unemployed.
- On the scale from 1 to 5, 50% of inquired subjects graded importance of negotiation techniques with 5, 43% with 4 and only 7% gave a lesser grade.
- 30% of inquired subjects aren't familiar with negotiation strategies, 29% negotiates spontaneously, while 41% are familiar with some of negotiations strategies.
- 89% of inquired subjects aims to win-win outcome and only 11% aims to win-lose outcome.v - 87% of inquired subjects never participated in any kind of international negotiations.
- Most of subjects is familiar with Good guy – bad guy (14%), Take it or leave it (14%) and Final offer (15%) techniques.
- 54% of inquired subjects believe they can recognize non-verbal communication and 46% thinks otherwise.
- 61% of inquired subjects believe they can control their own non-verbal gesticulations and emotions while the remaining 39% thinks otherwise.
- 58% of inquired subjects speak one language, 33% two languages, 6% three or more and 3% don't know any foreign language.
- 78% of inquired subjects are familiar with the culture of other negotiating side while 22% don't.
- 79% would be willing to attend additional seminars to learn about negotiations and 21% is not.
- 87% of inquired subjects worry about the other side's interests while 13% doesn't.
- 61% of inquired subjects consider themselves good spokesmen while 39% thinks otherwise.
- 79% of inquired subjects considers skills to be something that can be learned and 21% consider them to be inherent.
- 71% of inquired subjects negotiated in teams and 29% did not.
- 69% prepare before negotiations and 31% negotiates spontaneously.
- 44% of inquired subjects says they are using ICT while negotiating and 56% don't.

The goal was to determine if the subjects are familiar with the importance of negotiations, strategies and techniques that are used in negotiations and the importance of knowing foreign languages, cultures and customs. Also, another goal of this research was to see if there's a possibility of using ICT in international environment. The results determine if subjects need to improve their skills through additional education and seminars. Also, results could be useful to faculties so they could consider starting new classes and programs in other educational systems so the students would be more educated and competent on the labor market and later business negotiations.

Relations between the lifelong learning and employment processes
Ksenija Kocijan

Abstract Lifelong learning affects many different aspects of our lives, and one of them is employment. Skills and knowledge we posses today go out of date in a very short period of time. It is inevitable to always learn new things and improve our existing knowledge.
As a part of my final thesis I carried out a research using “Graduate Persuit Mistery Cards” to verify the interest of high school students in continuing their formal education. This research is a continuation of cooperation with Mrs. Adela Colhon from YMCA of Greater from Toronto.
The research was carried out with a sample size of 45 examinees in the School of economics and trade in Čakovec. Students were presented with the tool and after a short introduction they started playing the game. They all seemed to have a great time, and the atmosphere was amazing. After they had finished playing the game, they had to fill out a questionnaire consisted of fourteen statements.
The results of the research show that most of the examinees liked the game, and that they find this tool to be very useful. They also show that the game encouraged them to think even more about continuing their formal education. I also wanted to find out who is that encourages them the most to continue their education. Are those their parents, professors or their friends? The results show us that the students’ parents encourage them the most and their friends the least to continue their education. The professors should be more involved in that process and the results related to that statement should have been much better. Examinees consider the informal education to be just as important as formal education, and are aware of the importance of lifelong learning. The results also show that not enough attention is dedicated to the subject of lifelong learning in their high school. Even though they know lifelong learning is important, most of them do not use their leisure time to learn new skills that could help them to get a better job in the future.

Comparison of American and Croatian Students in the Knowledge of Human Rights and Their Correlation with ICT
Alenka Bencek

Abstract Communication practices across the world were, because of the rapid evolution of information and communications technology and associated digital communications, over the past two decades dramatically changed. This has had profound implications for human rights on a number of levels.
There are four main sets of challenges and opportunities that digital communications present for human rights. The first of these refers to the rights to freedom of expression and association. The second main set of opportunities and challenges refers to the right to privacy. The third relate to the right of people to take part in cultural life, to benefit from the benefits of scientific progress and to access knowledge and information, and the fourth relate to the broad umbrella right to development.
The aim of this study was to examine students' general knowledge about human rights, about the organizations dealing with the protection of human rights, etc. In addition to general knowledge, the goal also was to find out how many students are familiar with human rights in terms of ICT and to find out students' opinions on the impact of ICT on human rights. The data source for this study was a questionnaire that was made in the tool GoogleDocs and placed in various student groups on Facebook for Croatian students. For American students questionnaire was sent to American colleagues who forwarded him to U.S. students.
The survey that was used for the study consisted of 10 questions. Some questions have been closed type, where students should mark one of the answers, while the rest of the questions were open-ended and these questions were used to gather suggestions and thoughts of students. The survey involved a total of 40 respondents from Croatia, and 30 respondents from USA. From the research we can see that students are poorly familiar with human rights in general, and especially with human rights within the ICT and therefore information on human rights should be increased. With formal and also informal education about human rights, promoting awareness and understanding of the issues, providing expertise and direct support etc. the situation could be improved.

The role of the social skills in the business communication
Marinko Kokotec

Abstract Social and communication skills are skills without which people cannot “survive” in the modern business world because of his instability and constant changing. Therefore people need to work on themselves and improve their skills to be able adapt to the new environment in the best way. Social skills are most often thought of as a set of skills that allow people to communicate, relate and socialize with others. They include both verbal and nonverbal forms of communication, and may be defined differently from one culture to another. These skills often are the way others determine a person's status, consider people as potential friends or mates, and consider them for employment or promotions in the workplace. Communication skills refer to ability to convey information, from one person to another, effectively and efficiently. Communication represents the condition of success of private or business relationships. In order to make communication more efficient, well-developed skills of speech and writing are important and therefore are the success of communication in many cases equated with verbal abilities of the individual. First part of the paper refers to more detailed definitions of basic terms in this paper, social and communication skills, and terms that are associated with them: teamwork, motivation for work and progress and lifelong learning. Second part of this paper refers to the research. Research has been done with the help of the survey and three case studies. The survey had 18 questions, they were Likert type, with 5 possible answers (from “completely disagree” to “completely agree”), 118 respondents answered on them (all were older then 18), and they vetted 3 defined hypotheses (null hypothesis and the two hypotheses) that are related to social and communication skills. 3 people from business world, that are thoroughly familiar with the areas of this paper, were interviewed for the case studies. In the end, some conclusions related to the survey, defined hypotheses and conducted case studies were made.

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