Business Commons^™

How To Excel In The Fashion Industry, Elizabeth Weaver

Senior Honors Projects

How to Excel in the Fashion Industry

Elizabeth Weaver

Faculty Sponsor: Claire Lacoste Kapstein, Textiles, Merchandising and Design

Co-sponsor: Art Mead, Economics

The fashion industry is most often thought of as a glamorous business filled with successful designers and supermodels. For fashion students, however, the industry they seek to enter upon graduation is drastically different. Students entering merchandising and retailing related careers will spend a large portion of their time analyzing data and working in Microsoft Excel.
As a graduating senior with a dual degree in Textiles, Merchandising and Design and Economics, I wanted to create a project that could …

The Importance Of Course Offerings On The Topic Of Environmental Sustainability At The University Of Rhode Island, Sarah Kane

Senior Honors Projects

For my project, I created a survey for University of Rhode Island students’ exploring their experiences and interest in course offerings on sustainability. I am distributing it to students through different mediums such as email, Facebook and in person. Through my analysis of the results, I am seeking some evidence about whether or not students at this institute feel that our school offers enough courses on this topic and whether or not students are interested in taking courses on this topic.

As a business major, I have taken several courses where we learned about surveying and analysis of the results. …

From Inspiration To Reality- Starting A Business Today, Nicole Christie

Senior Honors Projects

In today’s age of large corporations and superstores consuming the marketplace, small businesses must fight to stay afloat. In order to compete with these market giants, understanding the industry and establishing goals for the future are increasingly important. These ideals are especially essential for a small business initially entering the marketplace. This is the essence of my senior honors project.

During my career at URI, I combined my passion for pool and my business administration major to create a New England 9 Ball Tour. For the past three years, I have operated, managed, and promoted this successful tour which draws …

A Comprehensive Study Of The Patent Process, Andrew Schicho

Senior Honors Projects

A Comprehensive Study Of The Patent Application Process
Andrew Schicho
Faculty Sponsor: Bahram Nassersharif, Mechanical Engineering

Next year I will be attending graduate school to attain a PhD in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science. During this time, I will be completing a research fellowship which involves the study of new forms of green energy. The field of green energy is expanding and new inventions have the potential to be incredibly profitable if they are efficient and competitive in today’s market. It is likely that my research will need to be protected from competitors looking to create similar products for harvesting …

Alternate Models For Forecasting Hedge Fund Returns, Michael A. Holden

Senior Honors Projects

Alternate Models for Forecasting Hedge Fund Returns

Michael Holden

Faculty Sponsor: Gordon Dash, Finance and Decision Sciences

Investors have always wanted to improve the efficiency of modeling realized volatility to maximize directional trading returns and substantially improve profitability. As proposed, this honors project will provide evidence from hedge fund returns that a Radial-Basis Function (RBF) artificial neural network (ANN), specifically the Kajiji-4 RBF-ANN dominates other forecast methods in producing one-period ahead change-of-direction when forecasting the expected returns of various hedge fund indexes.

I began this project by collecting historical economic data in monthly increments to serve as the dependent variables. …

Bond Volatility Transmissions Between United States And European Markets, Seth Kulman

Senior Honors Projects

Bond Volatility Transmissions Between United States and European Markets

Seth Kulman

Faculty Sponsor: Gordon Dash, Finance and Decision Sciences

Recent events have illustrated the degree of connection between the world’s economies. Economic events occurring in one country are felt in countless others, most vividly demonstrated by the onset of a worldwide recession following the financial collapse in the United States. Volatility no longer stays contained within one local economy.

The purpose of this study is to examine volatility spillovers between the United States and European bond markets. To identify volatility effects in a given country, we will be using a …

Development For The Past, Present, And Future: Defining And Measuring Sustainable Development, Max Cantor

Senior Honors Projects

In 1987, the United Nations released the Brundtland Report, which defined sustainable development as “development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” While this definition provides a relatively stable theoretical base from which development economists and political scientists can begin to tackle issues surrounding sustainable development, the inherently amorphous nature of this definition has also created a fair amount of ambiguity in both the economic literature surrounding sustainable development and the subsequent attempts by economists to measure it.

Historically, those interested in the science of development have typically …

Marketing For A Non-Profit, Katerina Foutsitzis

Senior Honors Projects

I am a senior Marketing major, and I wanted to incorporate what I have learned the past four years into my honors project. Acting as a consultant to a local non-profit here in Rhode Island, I developed a marketing plan to help The Welcome House target their local affluent community. The mission of Welcome House is to provide emergency shelter to homeless men, women & families of Washington County, and to provide transitional, supported, permanent, affordable and safe housing to the poor of the community.

Homelessness is becoming a tiring and depressing subject due to its repetitive negative exposure and …

Exceling On The Job, Micah Schwartz

Senior Honors Projects

Graduating and seeking employment in this current economy can be a daunting challenge. However, when armed with the right tools, securing full-time employment is possible. In order to set oneself apart, it is essential to have a broader skill-set than that of other candidates.

As a Finance major here at the College of Business, I became interested in developing a set of “how to” tutorials for using advanced features of Microsoft Excel in order to better prepare students who will be entering the job market. Through a series of professional internships, I have picked up some crucial skills and have …

The Psychology And Behavior Of Consumers In The Fashion Industry, Jessica Delace

Senior Honors Projects

I have always been interested in all aspects of the fashion industry, from apparel production to retail sales. After interning in the sales department of a New York based designer, I became fascinated by the customers who spent over $10,000 to revamp their wardrobe every season. Were these women buying their clothes based on their own preferences, or did they buy the original $3,000 design to fit their lifestyle as a New York City socialite?

After completing a literature review on the psychology of apparel consumers, I wanted to determine if shoppers’ preferences were based on their own opinions, or …

Library Marketing And Graphic Design, John M. Passa

Senior Honors Projects

As the University of RI moves into the new millennium, it has created its brand, “Think Big, We Do”. This brand requires different collaborative marketing strategies for different units within the university. Academic libraries provide intellectual products, consumed by a specific audience.

Marketing academic libraries entails a market analysis of the target audience, creating a strategic plan to address the library’s marketing audience, and designing a marketing instrument. The target audience of the University Libraries was identified as college students under the age of 25 because of academic requirements, cost of textual materials, and access to electronic resources. Using library …