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Being Creative: Not An Act But A Habit, Matthew William Smith

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

This project explores what it means to be creative, how to practice creativity, and how a creative practice can be used to bring about the change one wants to see in the world. Many theories and ideas from historical and modern scholars influenced the work. The literature review findings were synthesized to produce a practical and tangible creative practice prototype and a strategic action plan.

Cause Campaign For Dating Abuse In College, Isabel Elaine Kerr

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Through a cause campaign and partnership with the James Madison University (JMU) Health Center (UHC), this project confronts the widespread social issue of intimate partner violence (IPV), or dating abuse, in college-aged relationships. Encompassing all forms and subsets of dating abuse, the campaign intends to initiate conversation, facilitate awareness, and express support within the university community. The campaign is scheduled for implementation in October 2019, National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, in conjunction with the UHC’s other awareness efforts.

Boys That Blend: How Men In Makeup Can Affect Social Media Marketing Efforts, Matthew Meyers

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Studying Abroad: A Travel Campaign, Flora Lindsay

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This project displays the steps taken in order to create a successful marketing campaign for the Center for Global Engagement at James Madison University. It explores the history of studying abroad, its perceived benefits, concerns, and existing marketing strategies. The client is studied in depth in order to create a SWOT analysis of its current state. From this research a creative strategy statement is created to better understand the target audience, competition and strategies for the campaign. The campaign idea then comes to life in the deliverables to be used by the client for marketing efforts.

Strategies To Improve Business Performance With Information From Social Media, Taylor Chan

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

In the past 3 decades, China has experienced rapid economic growth. The China retail market reached renminbi (RMB) 29,651 billion in 2016, up by 10.4% from 2015. Using traditional ways that developed before the Internet era to acquire information regarding customers' changing preferences for products and services in a fast-moving business world is insufficient to support management in the retail industry to make informed strategic decisions. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore successful customer-centric strategies that business leaders used to improve business performance with marketing information acquired from social media. The population comprised business leaders from …

Fifty Shades Of Day - The Varied And Incomplete Meanings Of Marketing Capabilities, Gregory J. Tanguay

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Capabilities theories have been the subject of robust research efforts since being bridged into the Marketing domain from the organizational strategy literature approximately 25 years ago. While much empirical work has been performed to establish and clarify the relationships between marketing capabilities and firm performance, little work has been done in the ensuing period to describe and clarify the construct itself in the period ensuing its introduction to the marketing domain.

This has led to a large yet unchanging body of research founded upon a relatively vague construct. Marketing capabilities theory offers the domain an interesting means to explain marketing’s …

Small Business Marketing Strategies For The First 5 Years, Shiina Pai

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Small businesses have an integral role in the U.S. economy and represent 99.7% of all employers in the United States; however, approximately 50% of small business start-ups fail within the first 5 years. Developing and implementing a well-formulated marketing strategy is critical to the success of business because a marketing strategy provides long-term benefits for a company's financial performance and increases the survival rate. The objective of this case study was to explore the marketing strategies that small retail business owners use to sustain their businesses for the first 5 years. The population was 5 successful retail-based small business owners …

Profitability And The Financial Strategies Of Women-Owned Small Businesses, Kellie J. Emrich

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The fastest growing segment of business development in the United States comes from small business start-ups, with 42% of these businesses being women owned. Women-owned businesses are annually 25% less profitable when compared to the average small business in the United States. Based on the theory of planned behavior, the purpose of this single exploratory case study was to investigate how women small business owners and their employees use financial strategies to increase the profitability of their businesses. Data came from semistructured interviews with 1 woman business owner and 5 business consultants who work for the women-owned small business. The …

Essays On The Strategic Implications Of Marketing Capabilities: Marketing Exploration And Exploitation, Joseph Mitchell Price

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation examines how exploitation and exploration capabilities impact organizational performance for competitive advantage. The first essay reviews previous empirical, simulation, and theoretical studies to provide a synopsis and quantitative assessment of previous empirical research. The organizational performance implications of both exploration, exploitation, and their interaction (i.e., an ambidexterity) are evaluated through the substantiation of previous findings. Exploration and exploitation focus are discrete options that require a cognitive choice and are constrained by firm resources. The results show exploitation as having the greater relative impact on performance folloby exploration and ambidexterity. Essay two conceptualizes marketing capabilities as exploitation and exploration. …

Towards A Strategy-Balanced Measure Of Business Performance: Conceptualization And Empirical Examination With The Market Orientation Construct, David William Lambert

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Although previous research has theoretically asserted and provided partial empirical support for a positive relationship between an organization's market orientation and business performance, few studies have demonstrated this relationship using a broader conceptualization of business performance that extends beyond market-based and financial measures. This dissertation conceptualizes and develops valid measurements of key dimensions of a business performance construct—termed strategy-balanced measure of business performance (SBMBP)—and empirically tests this construct with the market orientation construct. To fully capture the financial and operational domain of business performance, the SBMBP construct is developed through a multidisciplinary literature review, in-depth telephone interviews, and industry and …

The Integration Of Firm Resources: The Role Of Capabilities In Strategy And Firm Performance, Daniel Lynch

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Distinctive capabilities are defined as a firm’s accumulated skills and knowledge that may lead to competitive advantage (Day 1994). Distinctive capabilities are founded upon Resource-Based Theory (Barney 1991) that focuses on internal resources as opposed to external market forces (Porter 1980). The present research discusses the integration of distinctive capabilities into this framework; that is, do certain distinctive capabilities (resources) create superior firm performance when linked to the appropriate generic business strategy?

The literature on firm performance has a rich history and is theoretically grounded in several disciplines including economics, sociology, and organizational behavior (Anderson 1982). However, there has not …