Business Commons^™

The Impact Of Visual Cues And Service Behavior On The Consumer Retail Experience, Taylor Bjerk

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

With product differentiation low in the retail industry, businesses need to create strong brand images and increase customer loyalty in order to remain competitive. Visual merchandising is one tool that businesses have to communicate their message in a compelling and strategic manner. Within the scope of visual merchandising there are a number of atmospherics, or cues, which include visual, tactile, and auditory, that can be used in conjunction with one another to influence consumer behavior. Service encounters also have a strong influence on the consumer retail experience and must be managed effectively to make sure their influence is positive. All …

A Step In The Right Direction, Kyle Draper

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The Small Enterprise Education and Development (SEED) Program is a semester long internship through the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business. Through the program, students are able to travel abroad and "teach basic business and financial principles to local entrepreneurs ... to break the poverty cycle by teaching others to become self-reliant and improve their standard of living in a sustainable way"

Targeting The Weak: A Content Analysis Of Violence In Advergames, Arshak Papazyan

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

With a rising trend of targeting children using various means of advertisement, the popularity of advergames has significantly increased. Although previous research suggests that negative content in advergames result in less favorable attitudes toward the game (Waiguny, et al., 2013), the presence of violence in advergames targeted to children aged three to ten years is significantly high. Despite the growing concern regarding violence in advergames and other means of advertisement targeted to children, research has not yet investigated the actual amount of violence in advergames. To shed light on this important issue, the present research discusses results of a descriptive …

How Do Choice Of Major And Industrial Structure Influence College Graduates' Unemployment Rate In China, Xiuwen Shi

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Recently, the higher education market is developing very fast, and China’s universities and colleges are increasing their enrollment. More and more college graduates with higher education backgrounds enter the labor market and the college graduates have to face higher unemployment pressure when they find jobs. For the college graduates’ unemployment problem, many literatures and research are focusing on over-enrollment problem, the influence of the major differences, and the influence of the industrial structure development.

This thesis examines the consequence of the over-enrollment problem with a group of data set and linear regressive analysis model. The finding indicates that there is …

Assessing The Probability Of Bankruptcy, Jarom Heaps

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Knowing whether or not a company is financial stable has always been a top concern for analysts and money managers. This paper compares the effectiveness of default prediction using two different types of measures: accounting and market based. Accounting measures have been the most popular even though, according to theory, a market based measure reflects all available information. Theory goes as far to say that accounting measures can add no incremental value to a market based measure. In my research I found that accounting based measures can be effective in their predictive power; the market-based measure (BSM) results were much …

Efficient Parallel Approaches To Financial Derivatives And Rapid Stochastic Convergence, Mario Harper

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This Thesis explores the use of different programming paradigms, platforms and languages to maximize the speed of convergence in Financial Derivatives Models. The study focuses on the strengths and drawbacks of various libraries and their associated languages as well as the difficulty of importing code into massively parallel processes. Key languages utilized in this project are C++, Python, Java, C, and Matlab. Along with these languages, several multiprocessing libraries such as C++ AMP, Python NumbaPro, Numpy, Anaconda, Finance Toolkit and such were compared. The results of the development and implementation of code suggests that once we massively parallelize the operations, …

Human Capital, Capital Structure, And Employee Pay: An Empirical Analysis A Replicated Confirmation, Yiling Ke

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This paper replicates the paper named Human capital, capital structure, and employee pay: An empirical analysis written by Thomas J. Chemmanur, Yingmei Cheng, and Tianming Zhang in 2013. In this paper, I examine the effect of market leverage on labor expenses to prove the predictions of Titman (1984) and Berk, Stanton, and Zechner (2010). Through the OLS regression analysis, I find that market leverage has a significantly positive effect on total, cash, equity-based compensation of chief executive officers (CEOs). So an increase market leverage will always lead to an incremental labor cost, and in fact labor costs will limit the …

Inverse Etfs And Market Quality, Darren J. Woodward

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Is financial innovation good or bad? Finance research analyzes data in an attempt to answer this and many other questions. This paper seeks to determine at least a partial answer to this question for one particular financial innovation, the inverse ETF. We look at how the introduction of the first inverse ETF affects the market quality of the component stocks. We find that volatility and illiquidity of the component stocks decreases relative to the rest of the market, on average, after the introduction of the first inverse ETF. We also find that short selling increases in the component stocks relative …

Frictions, The Flow Of Information, And The Distribution Of Liquidity, Spencer A. Montgomery

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This paper examines the effects of short sale deregulation on market quality by examining the implementation of regulation SHO, which removed the uptick rule for a subset of pilot securities. This created an exogenous event, allowing a direct examination of the effect of short sale constraints on the markets. This study builds on Roll and Subrahmanyam (2010) in examining the skewness of bid-ask spreads as they represent information asymmetry and market maker competition. We find that the price tests conducted in regulation SHO evenly effected both pilot and non-pilot securities, including a widening of bid-ask spreads and a decrease in …

Price Slides Within Cattle Markets Over Time And Space, Justin Edward Dickamore

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The production of cattle in the United State is a very large business. Production begins at the cow-calf level, where a calf is born and raised to a specific weight. This weight is the weaning weight and averages between 300-600 pounds. The calf is then typically shipped to a feedlot, where it is fed a high corn ration which increases the weight of animal quickly and cost effectively to reach a sufficient slaughter weight. Cattle production takes place primarily in 5 different geographical locations which include the North Central, Southeast, Northern Plains, Southern Plains, and West regions. Due to the …

Cultural Influences On Women In Leadership: An Extension Of The Hofstede And Globe Dimensions, Wendy Bosshardt

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Technology has forever changed the face of business. Although in the past business markets have been limited to local geographic areas, the concept of outsourcing has opened a diverse spectrum of international markets. An increase in suppliers and consumers can improve business effectiveness and efficiency, but entering international markets can be detrimental if the business is unaware of the subtle differences the new market has in regard to leadership styles and cultural values. Hofstede's cultural dimension analysis has been the primary research study for many industry and academic professionals (Bond 2002; Hofstede 1997). However, many scholars are questioning whether Hofstede's …

The Affordable Care Act: Five Years Later, Andrew Dana Izatt

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The challenges facing the American health care system are well known and manifold. The United States pays substantially more for its health care than any other developed, industrialized nation. Per capita health care spending in 2012 was $8,745, up from $356 in 1970 without marked improvements in life expectancy, quality of life, or outcomes. But despite all of our health spending, large portions of our population go without health insurance. Being uninsured carries real consequences. A report published in the American Journal of Public Health, by researchers at Harvard Medical School, using statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and …

Bringing The Best Of Business To School Administration, Michael Antony De Filippis

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The disciplines of business and school administration are recognized as distinct and separate in purpose, product, and operation. While fundamental differences do exist between the two, school administrators have a need for application of business principles in order to manage an educational institution. Schools are, at their foundation, organizations relying on effective management, budgeting, public relations, value creation, etc. Despite this need, school administrators often come from backgrounds in teaching rather than management.

Research was conducted from secondary sources and personal interviews with teachers, university professors, and school administrators to examine the similarities between administration in business and schools. The …

Women-Owned Business Branding: Consumer Behavior Based On Hedonic Vs. Utilitarian Positioning, Gracie Leeann Arnold

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Similar to the "country of origin" effect, branding a business with a specific ownership may have an effect on consumer purchasing behavior; but, as this trend grows so does the amount of research on how this effect is manifested. Large, powerful companies like Wal-Mart, Ex-IM Bank, and Toyota have recently launched initiatives to promote women-owned business enterprises by targeting women-owned suppliers. Women-owned business have seen unprecedented growth and market share in the past decade. In response, Wal-Mart has pledged to source $20 billion in goods from women-owned businesses by 2016. Wal-Mart began using the "Women-Owned" business logo (WOB) that was …