Business Commons^™

The Valuation Of User-Generated Content: A Structural, Stylistic And Semantic Analysis Of Online Reviews, Noi Sian Koh

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The ability and ease for users to create and publish content has provided vast amount of online product reviews. However, the amount of data is overwhelmingly large and unstructured, making information difficult to quantify. This creates challenge in understanding how online reviews affect consumers’ purchase decisions. In my dissertation, I explore the structural, stylistic and semantic content of online reviews. Firstly, I present a measurement that quantifies sentiments with respect to a multi-point scale and conduct a systematic study on the impact of online reviews on product sales. Using the sentiment metrics generated, I estimate the weight that customers place …

The Performance Of Venture Capital Funds And Vc-Backed Ipos: An Evidence From China, Weng Hong Lou

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This study is divided into three parts based on the listed companies on the Small and Medium Enterprise Board on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in China. The first part is to study the investment performance of Venture Capital Funds. I found that the investment return in terms of investment multiple and annual rate of return is better than those in the US market, and also the VC investment portfolios outperform the public equity market. Furthermore, I compare the performance of non VC-backed IPOs and non VC-backed IPOs by using the Buy-and Hold Abnormal Return and Wealth Relatives. Both measurements show …

Optimal Advertisement Scheduling In Breaks Of Random Lengths, Ajay Srinivasan Aravamudhan

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Broadcasters generate a large part of their revenue through advertising, especially in live sports. Scheduling advertisements can be challenging in live broadcasting, however, for sports such as Cricket that have breaks of random lengths and number during which the ads are shown. This uncertainty, coupled with the high price of spots for major competitions, means that improving ad scheduling can add significant value to the broadcaster. This problem shares similarities with the stochastic cutting stock problem and the dynamic stochastic knapsack problem, with applications in the wood, steel and paper industry and the transportation industry respectively.

This dissertation adds to …