Business Commons^™

Battle Of The Beds: The Economic Impact Of Airbnb On The Hotel Industry In Chicago And San Francisco, Katherine Goree

Scripps Senior Theses

The sharing economy is the private redistribution of goods via peer-to-peer sharing. Since internet use has saturated the U.S., the sharing economy has become widely internet-based. Airbnb, a website and app that facilitates the short-term rental of space to stay in another person’s home, has become a major component of the sharing economy.

This study includes an empirical analysis of the hotel occupancy rates in two major markets, San Francisco and Chicago, and how they have or have not changed, from the 2008 launch of Airbnb through the end of 2014. The study hypothesizes that Airbnb has had a statistically …

Crime In The Nfl: Does An Arrest History Lead To Better Performance?, Austin D. Crist

CMC Senior Theses

Teams in the National Football League will do whatever it takes to win football games, even if that means having players with a criminal arrest history on their roster. However, does being arrested result in improved performance? Do NFL players with an arrest history perform better than those without one? I examine the effect a criminal arrest record has on player performance in the NFL from 2000-2014, using the top 30 ranked players within each position group. The position I chose to analyze were: Quarterbacks, Running Backs, Wide Receivers, Defensive Linemen, Linebackers, and Defensive Backs. My findings show that having …

Proximity To Children: A Geospatial Approach To Understanding The Relationship Between Fast Food And Schools, Andrew Atwong

CMC Senior Theses

In a time when Americans are waking up to the health consequences of consuming fast food, researchers have discovered that fast food restaurants seem to be located in greater concentrations near primary or secondary schools. While this phenomenon affects the food environments of some children and carries implications as to their short term and long term health (which has also been well researched), this paper focuses primarily on fast food restaurants that are within walking distance of schools. Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to integrate geospatial, business, demographic, and food quality data, I use linear regressions to examine whether and …

The Role Of Disruptive Innovation, Personality Characteristics, And Business Models On Entrepreneurial Success, Will Shannon

CMC Senior Theses

Disruptive Innovation, according to the term’s founder Clayton Christensen, is defined as a specific type of innovation that is able to capture the lower-end of the market through quality, feature, or cost differences and leverage this position to achieve higher market share. Entrepreneurs who utilize disruptive innovation strategies have been historically able to create products and services that achieve massive financial and cultural success. Theories of personality characteristics have been previously applied to entrepreneurial activities, but not used to bridge the gap between developmental experiences and market success. Cross-industry analysis of ten top entrepreneurial business leaders from retail, food services, …

Who Will Be The First To Buy Autonomous Vehicles? An Application Of Everett Rogers’ Diffusion Of Innovations Theory, Reilly Jackson Umberger

CMC Senior Theses

Autonomous, otherwise known as self-driving, vehicles represent the future of transportation. Vehicles that drive themselves offer far reaching benefits from increased leisure and productivity for individuals to significant improvements in congestion and infrastructure for governments. The autonomous car will radically change the way we look at transportation, and they are right around the corner. However, the question remains: are we ready? Are we, as a society, ready to hand over the steering the wheel and trust autonomous vehicles with our safety? This paper predicts how the autonomous car will spread through society by analyzing and applying the product qualities and …

Transformational Leadership In The World Of Sales, Dalton R. Barnes

CMC Senior Theses

It takes a very specific type of person to be successful in sales; this makes recruiting and retaining effective employees a difficult task for companies in this field. Because finding and training these people is such a challenging task, it is in the best interest of companies to invest in training and developing their employees to be successful and avoid burning out. Bass and Riggio (2006) would note that in a field with such a high burnout rate, a transformational sales leader is important because they are generally able to build stronger follower loyalty, commitment, and satisfaction than their non-transformational …