Larissa Nowotny reived the Prize of the Foundation of the Fritz Gutmann Brewery for her thesis on the topic of sustainability 2021. Her Master's thesis is entitled „Innovative last mile logistics as a driver of sustainability – an analysis of the start-up market in Germany“, her supervisor was Stefan Voigt (Chair of Supply Chain Management & Operations). In her thesis, Nowotny investigates and discusses whether innovative start-up companies in Germany have a positive impact on the level of sustainability of the last mile, in particular on minimizing environmental impact, and what challenges, especially of a financial nature, they have to overcome in the process. As Nowotny found out, consumers would be willing to wait longer for a delivery if it was delivered in a particularly sustainable manner. For this reason, she recommends, especially for urban environments, grouping deliveries together by building and delivering them on fixed days instead of only delivering to individual apartments on an ad hoc basis. This could minimize the number of trips and vehicles - and thus help save resources.
Awards for WFI Students and Faculty at the Dies Academicus 2022
The Prize for the best Master's thesis went to Julia Scheuerer. Her thesis is entitled „Social Presence in the Context of Urban Air Mobility – an Experimental Study to Investigate the Impact of Different Types of Social Presence on Passengers' Trust and Perceived Safety when Using Air Taxis“. It was supervised by Frederica Janotta from the Department of Service Management. This thesis is dedicated to the acceptance of autonomous air cabs by the population. For this purpose, Julia Scheuerer developed a research model, which was the basis for an survey. Her analysis showed that auditory cues, and in particular a combination of visual and auditory cues to a contact person on the ground, elicit high social presence when using air cabs. This in turn, directly leads to higher perceived usefulness, trust, and safety, and indirectly leads to higher intention to use.
Ute Braun and Prof. Dr. Jens Hogreve, who both teach and research at the Chair of Service Management, are awarded the prize for excellent teaching for their innovative teaching concept in the course "Return on Service Design & Customer Experience". In the course, students first work out the theoretical foundations of successful service management in internationally mixed teams, with the help of scientific articles. In a second step, the teams then have to apply their acquired knowledge in a business game in which they themselves become service managers of a hotel chain and at the same time compete directly with their fellow students. This combination of the elaboration of scientific findings on the basis of current journal articles and their direct transfer to entrepreneurial action is a unique combination in the transfer of knowledge. In addition, the strong focus on achieving a high level of learning motivation through the use of scientific findings from psychology should be emphasized.
