Entrepreneurial and Small Business Operations Commons^™

Successfully Scaling Digital Technology Ventures: An Empirical Study Of The Strategic Choices That Maximize Firm Value, Scott Morris

Dissertations

Our study aims to understand the choices managers working for subscription-based digital ventures must make at arguably the most critical juncture of their firm’s lifecycle. With few slack resources to repair mistakes, managers at these scaling firms must make decisions that are larger in scope and scale than in the start-up phase. Tradeoffs are often required as decision-makers face choices such as investing more resources in sales and marketing to drive growth or in product development to improve quality and add new products or features. In many instances, the question is whether to forego some growth opportunities to maximize profitability …

Local Label: Why Localism Matters And A Business Plan To Address It., Sydnie Wilson

Marketing Undergraduate Honors Theses

The use of technology within business is evolving and increasing in necessity. As large businesses and corporations invest in research and development, innovations, and data analytics, the ability to serve customers more effectively and efficiently increases substantially. Local Label is a solution for this need.

Local Label is a mobile retail app that connects local consumers to all accessories, shoes, and clothes available at local retailers. The app would be a hub for local retailers to promote their apparel and accessories. Local Label leverages its marketing to be in sync with local events, special occasions, and holidays. The app’s front-face …

Renewal Health - An E-Commerce Wellness Business, Olivia Helen Griffin

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Market Analysis And Strategy Formulation For Appalachian Cast Iron, Perry Kate Chumbley

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Marketing as a revenue generator for businesses seeks to entice consumers into making a final purchase. How this is achieved varies greatly depending on the size of firm, the goods or services being advertised, distribution channels, and other factors. This manuscript includes the creation of a marketing strategy for a small, online business, Appalachian Cast Iron, through the investigation of current literature, and analyses of the external and internal environments. The results provide strategies for areas in which the firm has opportunities to improve.

Dunites Wine Company: Digital Redesign, Alexandra Messner

Graphic Communication

This project is a digital redesign for Dunites Wine Company, a small San Luis Obispo wine brand. By improving their website usability and consistency, Dunites Wine Co. can generate excitement and awareness about their brand. The end deliverables will include photography, refreshed branding, and an updated website.

Auto-Exploited: Narrative Explorations Of The Commodification Of Time, Grace C. Willis Ms.

MSU Graduate Theses

This thesis is an exploration of the phenomenon of the auto-exploitation of the modern individual through and in conjunction with the commodification of time. It explores the eruption of gig-work in recent decades in the United States, and the ways in which the modern individual is both consumer and product, buying and selling her own constructions of identity in order to gain time, fiscal currency and a sense of socioeconomic worth from herself and others. Using theoretical frameworks of Karl Marx, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Catherine Rottenberg and Byung-Chul Han, I explore the ways in which the modern individual is …

The Effects Of Network Structure And Social Information On Contribution Performance On Crowdfunding Platforms: An Experimental Investigation, Yanni Hu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The long-term potentiality of online communities and activities depends critically on contribution behaviors of online individuals. In this dissertation, this study deepen and extend our understanding of contribution behavior by applying contributions to crowdfunding platforms, whereas social networks, social information, and social influence affect people’s contribution decisions, which in turn influences their contribution performances. Specifically, this study looked into how contribution behavior at crowdfunding platforms is shaped at a fundamental level of social interactions initiated by social and information technologies on contribution performance, using online and natural experiments as study methodologies.

Examining the effects brought by online social interactions on …

E-Commerce Brand Design And Website Prototyping, Ashley J. Tuliau

Graphic Communication

MJ Swim is an e-commerce brand and website concept with a focus on customizable products and individualized sizing. Most online swimwear companies follow a fast-fashion business model which prioritizes mass production and offers affordable prices. However, aside from the many environmental consequences of this, fast fashion leaves large disparities in clothing quality, sizing accuracy, and product uniqueness. My primary goal was to create a dynamic website that would be flexible across a variety of devices and allow for optimal product customization. My secondary goal was to create a strong and inclusive brand identity that would thrive in a solely online …

Arclothmasks: A Pandemic Startup Journey, Adam Jackson

Information Systems Undergraduate Honors Theses

Covid-19 changed the way the world operated when it became a pandemic in 2020. The need for personal protection equipment was unexpected and suppliers were not prepared for the demand. The government mandate of masks furthered the need of PPE across the nation. To help fill this shortage, many companies began to retool their manufacturing processes from clothing to masks. This thesis will dive into one PPE company and its journey from the start of the pandemic. The business plan for the company will follow it along with graphs and charts that help tell the tale of the startup.

Towards Cloud-Based Cost-Effective Serverless Information System, Isaac C. Angle

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

E-commerce information systems are becoming increasingly popular for businesses to adopt. In this work, we propose a serverless information system that will reduce costs for small businesses trying to create an e-commerce website. The proposed serverless system is built entirely in Amazon Web Services (AWS). The proposed serverless system allows businesses to pay for the use of cloud resources on a per-order granularity. This model reduces the cost of the information system when compared to a traditional cloud-based system. As e-commerce websites become more vital for small businesses, a cost effective serverless approach is promising.

Impact On Revenue Generation Of Olist Ecommerce Company On The Basis Of Various Product Parameters, Trupti Sanjay Niwate

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

E-commerce business is the most trending business in the entire world. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the global market of e-commerce is much more active than the traditional in-store market. Over the period, people used the internet more, which has incentivized them to shop online because it saves time and effort.

Specifically, in Latin America, the E-Commerce business is expanding at a tremendous rate. In particular, Brazil is a major business hub when we consider an e-commerce business since it has given a major impact on the world‘s total e-commerce business. Olist, the main e-commerce company which helps other marketers …

Rise Of Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google During Covid-19 Pandemic, Shivraj Pisal

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

FAANG is an acronym for Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Alphabet (which was previously known as Google), the five most important technology giants in the United States. The technology breakthroughs of these companies have had a significant impact on global economies, since they create jobs, link people, supply goods, and generate entertainment. As a result, a detailed analysis of FAANG stocks adds to the existing body of knowledge. Furthermore, because stock markets are very volatile and are influenced by a variety of known and unknown causes, it is vital to employ adequate tools for assessing their behavior (Jadhav et al., …

Covid-19 Impact On Business, Meredith Headlee

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

COVID-19 has not only been a major public health crisis, but it has also caused an economic shock. Small businesses have been at the losing end of the U.S. economy for years, but nothing has hurt them as bad as the COVID-19 crisis. The pandemic has devastated thousands of small businesses while larger companies have fared well and, in some cases, thrived. Although there has been an increase in bankruptcy filings among public companies, the numbers are far lower than in the 2008 financial crisis (Lahart). This paper will explore what impact the pandemic has had on small businesses, large …

Factors That Influence Entrepreneurship And Digital Talent In The Rural Heartland: Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, And Arkansas, Chett Daniel

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

The current state of many rural communities demands new, more relevant economic development strategies. Traditional models of rural economic development often rely on farming, natural resource extraction, and industrial type jobs that rely on lower cost labor usually focused on manufacturing of product or food. Farm jobs declined decades ago. Offshoring, and more recently automation is rapidly reducing the number of jobs available in rural areas. Jobs and economic vitality are critical to sustaining or growing communities. While traditional methods of industry attraction are still viable strategies to spur economic activity, rural areas must develop concurrent economic strategies driven by …

The Future Of Fashion: Corporate Social Responsibility And Essential Marketing Strategies, Taite Jorgensen

CMC Senior Theses

This paper analyzes how fast fashion has impacted future trends of the fashion industry. Due to globalization, the fast fashion industry has been able to create new norms of over-consumerism and international labor. Because of this, the fast fashion industry is able to mass produce in a way consumers have never seen before, in addition to making it all at extremely low prices. However, fast fashion brands are only able to mass produce cheap goods through unethical methodologies; these methodologies include unsustainable materials and practices, inhuman labor conditions and wages, and by making sizes that exclude bigger bodies. Consumers are …

Influence Of Convenience, Time-Savings, Price, And Product Variety On Amazon Prime Members And Non-Prime Shoppers’ Online Apparel Purchase Intention, Md Rashaduzzaman

Department of Textiles, Merchandising, and Fashion Design: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The number of internet users and online shoppers in the United States has grown at an incredible rate over the past few decades. Greater convenience and availability of a wide assortment of apparel products at a cheaper price made online shopping very enticing to consumers. Amazon.com (Amazon) gained unprecedented popularity among consumers with its Amazon Prime program. Amazon’s retail revolutions changed consumer’s way of shopping and expectations. Both online and physical store retailers are facing tremendous pressure to fulfill that level of expectation. Thus, it is essential for retailers clearly understand the shopping expectations and preferences of Amazon Prime members …

Do User-Generated Ratings Affect Hotel Valuations? – An Analysis Of The Chicago Hotel Market, Shailesh Patel

Dissertations

Today’s travelers are increasingly relying on aggregated online opinions to make purchase decisions. One of the sectors most impacted by these online reviews is the hospitality industry, where consumer review websites such as TripAdvisor, Expedia, and Bookings.com play a critical role in influencing consumer's choice of hotel and the price they will pay for the room. Recently, there have been studies investigating the various aspects of user-generated online reviews and ratings. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of user-generated ratings on hotel valuations. Our paper does this using regression analysis to study the impact of TripAdvisor …

Content Marketing And The Creation Of A Brand With Voice, Cicero Henrique Alves Teago

Business ETD Collections

This article argues that the future of content marketing is strongly linked to the development of new technologies and how new technological devices influence the way companies engage with consumers. This paper aims to investigate how the development of personal voice assistants opens a new direction for companies to create substantial individualized, informational and engaging content. Content marketing is defined as the development of relevant and consistent brand content to create value among customers. Companies are being influenced by new technologies to conduct distinct formulas of content creation to develop a more engaging and aligned customer and brand relationship. The …

Outcomes Of Platform Openness In Complementary Markets, Franck Loic Soh Noume

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Mobile platform ecosystems are hyper-competitive environments. They provide important entrepreneurial opportunities for businesses that develop mobile apps. Platform openness is foundational in mobile platform ecosystems as it enables interactions between complements and platform. Although there are several studies on the impact of platform openness, our understanding of the outcomes of platform openness remains limited. In this dissertation, we examine thoroughly underexplored facets of platform openness as well as understudied outcomes. In the first essay, we investigate the impact of platform openness on incumbent complements’ performance outcomes. We unravel important causal mechanisms related to competition dynamics between new entrants and incumbent …

The Future’S So Bright: A Business Plan And Market Research Analysis Of Fraze, Elizabeth Lanford

Honors Theses

This thesis is an overview of the creation and operation of Lindy and Liz, LLC dba Fraze. Fraze is an online boutique specializing in custom, beaded sunglasses. This thesis contains details of the founding, operation, and future of the business. The following business plan will give insights to marketing strategies, target audience demographics, and sourcing procedures.

Accompanying this business plan is market research relevant to the target market of Fraze. Part I details secondary research about the effects of social media on this target market and their consumption habits. It also contains insights about the products and marketing techniques most …

Web Analytics: Best Practices For An Organization’S Successful Performance; A Preliminary Analysis, Salma Dahbi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research presents an exploratory study concerning organizations’ best practices of Web analytics for a successful performance and the factors influencing the companies’ successful adoption of Web analytics.

A qualitative research methodology was used engaging a comprehension of Web analytics adoption using the Diffusion of Innovation theory (Rogers, 1995) and the theory building approach (Eisenhardt, 1989). Interviews with five companies from different industries were conducted.

Findings suggest that for a successful performance, companies should consider:

• Data for better decision making.

• Web analytics barriers

• Selecting the right KPIs and metrics based on the company’s goals.

• Web analytics …

Tailormade : Fine Art Merchandise, Mirabelle Alan

MA Projects

This Master’s Thesis Project proposes a three-year business plan for establishing TAILORMADE, an online platform that develops fine art merchandise through accessible means to combat intellectual property theft from emerging artists. It analyzes how merchandise is used as a method in transforming the ways we create, buy and sell art. It also addresses how fast-fashion stores use their mass-produced merchandise as to copy artworks from emerging artists without consent or compensation. Through this analysis, TAILORMADE proposes a company that sells merchandise made by the artist, for the art lover, and that maintains artistic integrity.

TAILORMADE also taps into an emerging …

Connecting Art And The Public Through Digital Marketing And Brand Collaboration – Co-Art, A New Art Marketing Agency, Qing Su

MA Projects

Traditional art marketing often focuses on physical exhibitions, in-person networking, and the endorsement of the art world “gatekeepers.” The making of a “star” artist relies not only on the quality of the art itself, but also on how galleries (the art marketers) orchestrate the complex power dynamics in the art industry – critics, curators, institutions, and collectors. This long-lasting mechanism leads to the elitization of the art world and disconnection with the mass public as it targets only a niche number of audiences that might make an influence on an artist’s career, price, and portfolio. COART is an agency that …

Gilgit-Baltistan At The Cross Road Of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (Cpec), Zulfiqar Ali Khan

MSJ Capstone Projects

This capstone project focused on the in-depth analysis of the role and impact of this multi-billion-dollar project on the politically deprived region of Gilgit-Baltistan. This region is the gateway to CPEC as it is the only region of Pakistan that shares border with China. The geographical ties, tributary and trade relationship and even family relationships between Gilgit-Baltistan and the Xinjiang region of China dates back centuries before the creation of Pakistan and the post revolution China.

The project has been designed and implemented in a way that GB’s role is to provide the services of road and some other services …

Access To Justice Meets Opportunity: Reverse Auction Ventures As A Possible Solution To The Unaffordability Of Personal Plight Legal Services And Oversupply Of Lawyers, Shawn P. Quigg

Major Papers

Individuals who experience personal plight legal issues face several barriers to justice. Low- and medium-income earners are especially disadvantaged, given the high financial, temporal, and emotional costs associated with accessing justice. Simultaneously, law schools are graduating more law students than jobs available. The imbalance leaves many young lawyers, with mounting debt, no means with which to pay off the debt. The purpose of this study is to assess the viability of a legal services reverse auction platform as a solution to the access to justice and lawyer oversupply problems.

The feasibility study examines the characteristics of the business models of …

Virtual International Leadership Within Organizations: Overcoming Cultural, Language, And Physical Barriers, Jaye Goulet

Thinking Matters Symposium Archive

Advances in technology are allowing members of a team to collaborate while being geographically and spatially apart. These new teams, known as virtual teams, have benefits for both the organizations to which they belong and to the individual members. Organizations are able to utilize highly-skilled experts without the associated relocation costs. Team members are able to contribute to projects in their field of expertise without having to leave their homeland. These teams require a leader whose interactions build trust and loyalty without the benefit of face-to-face contact with other team members. Although virtual teams are rapidly growing, research is lacking …

Plan De Negocio Para La Creación De Una Empresa De Repostería Que Permita A Los Clientes Hacer Sus Pedidos Por Medio De Redes Sociales, Paula Daniela Chávez González, Juanita Del Pilar Gómez Acero

Administración de Empresas

El sector repostero en Colombia ha venido evolucionando, el cliente no demanda solo un producto que sea delicioso, también busca que un producto sea visualmente atractivo y cuente con un factor diferenciador relevante. Es por esta razón que se encontró una oportunidad en este sector, si bien la oferta gastronómica es amplia, el mercado a su vez también lo es. El cliente cada vez es más exigente, vive a la vanguardia de las tendencias gracias a la tecnología y con ella al internet. Las redes sociales en la actualidad son una gran ventana comercial que permite que los consumidores encuentren …

The Risk-Return Characteristics And Diversification Benefits Of Fine Wine Investment, Tania Salomon

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis evaluates the risk-return characteristics and diversification benefits of fine wine investment. It compares the historical performance of wine to that of equity, fixed income, real estate, and commodities. I calculate the correlation, volatility, and expected returns of these assets to examine whether adding wine to a portfolio increases its risk-adjusted return. I do this through the Markowitz portfolio optimization technique. The findings suggest that wine has a low correlation with traditional assets, providing diversification benefits. My results also show that adding wine to a portfolio increases its risk-adjusted return only when there is an allocation constraint of 0 …

Indian Microfinance Sector: A Case Study, Sean P. Gillon

Honors Theses and Capstones

In developing areas of the world with very little economic structure, many activities are not monetized. In other words, money is not used to carry out these tasks because the people in these areas do not have the expendable funds required. In order to combat this problem, micro financing has become increasingly more apparent in these areas of distress. Microfinance is an economic development strategy that allows for those in need to borrow actual money in order to start a business, go to school, or even gain access to everyday living requirements. Microfinance has made tremendous strides over the years, …

Youtube Money: The Impact Of Brand Management On Online Video Companies, Samantha Perry

Honors Program Theses

Many YouTube channels today operate not only as miniature media outlets, but as fully functional media companies operating independently through advertising revenue. The top creators of content on YouTube bring in millions of dollars of revenue each year. This thesis seeks to answer the question of how content creators can harness the power of brand management strategy in order to maximize revenue and grow their audiences over time. I overview current trends among content creators industry-wide, and then focus on a group of channels to analyze their brand management habits on- and off-line. I then examine data from brands’ videos …