Business Commons^™

Homestead Golf Resort And Conference Center: Resort Perceptions Of Past And Potential Customers, Christopher Green, Zhe Wang, Cody Webb

Student Works

Christopher Green, Zhe "Shelly" Wang, and Cody Webb, here-ta-known as CSC Consulting, performed and compiled the research project for the Homestead Resort. The purpose of the report is to help develop a market strategy through discovery and analysis of past and potential customer's perceptions of Utah resorts and the Homestead Resort. Following the meeting with Larry Jackstien, marketing consultant for the Homestead Resort, CSC Consulting formulized the following objectives: Determine past and potential customers perceptions from Salt Lake and Utah counties. Identify the key sales motivators that encourage customers to choose a resort property. Identify the most effective media for …

Environmental Soil Science: A Marketing Research Strategy, Steven Diamond, Bryce Youngquist, Mariella Horna

Student Works

Before we commenced the research process, three main objectives were set forth by MBS Consulting. The research objectives are as follows: Determine the potential future path of the Environmental Soil Science program. Determine the overall appeal of changing the name of the Environmental Soil Science program. Obtain an understanding of a student's mind-set when selecting a major. MBS Consulting is comprised of Steven Diamond, Bryce Youngquist and Mariella Horna.

The Original Hawaiian Noni Juice Company: A Study, David Roberts, Aaron Pittard, Max Rogers

Student Works

This market study is designed to provide decision-making drivers for the retail market entrance of the Hawaiian Noni product in the retail store environment. The scope of this study includes the entire United States retail health food store market. Kapono Consulting is comprised of David Roberts, Aaron Pittard and Max Rogers.

Aligning Employees Through "Line Of Sight", Wendy R. Boswell, John B. Bingham, Alexander J.S. Colvin

Faculty Publications

Aligning employees with the firm’s larger strategic goals is critical if organizations hope to manage their human capital effectively and ultimately attain strategic success. An important component of attaining and sustaining this alignment is for employees to have a bline of sightQ (LOS) with their organization’s strategic objectives. In this article, we illustrate how the translation of calculated firm goals into tangible results requires that employees not only understand the organization’s strategy, but also accurately appreciate what actions are aligned with realizing that strategy. Using recent empirical evidence, theoretical insights, and tangible examples of exemplary firm practices, we provide thought-leaders …

Horizontal Inequity In The Property Taxation Of Apartment, Industrial , Office, And Retail Properties, Gary C. Cornia, Barrett A. Slade

Faculty Publications

Researchers have carefully examined assessment unifor- mity in ad valorem taxation for single-family residential properties and they have frequently reported nonuniform outcomes in the appraisal of these properties. This study analyzes the uniformity of assessed valuations across apartment, industrial, office, and retail properties in Maricopa County (Metropolitan Phoenix), Arizona. Specifically, we investigate horizontal equity, which results when the assessment ratio (assessed value/sales price) is uniform across properties with similar market values. We examine horizontal equity over a five-and-one-half-year period (January 1998-June 2003). After applying both parametric and nonparametric tests, we find statistically significant evidence of horizontal inequity. We find that …

Publication Records Of Facility Promoted At The Top 75 Accounting Research Programs, Steven M. Glover, Douglas F. Prawitt, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

This paper presents a descriptive analysis of the publication records of faculty promoted from 1995 to 2003 at the top 75 accounting research programs (as ranked by Trieschmann, et al. 2000). The presentation and analyses of these data are designed to be useful to faculty and evaluation committees from a benchmarking and decision-making perspective. From a benchmarking perspective, the results will be useful in helping schools as they develop or refine relevant policies and research expectations. The results may be particularly useful in view of the fact that average accounting faculty publication records differ from the average publication records of …

The Effects Of Financial Statement And Informational Complexity On Cash Flow Forecasts, Leslie Hodder, Patrick E. Hopkins, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

We characterize the operating-activities section of the indirect-approach statement of cash flows as backwards because it presents reconciling adjustments in a way that is opposite from the intuitively appealing, future-oriented, Conceptual Framework definitions of assets, liabilities and the accruals process. We propose that the reversed-accruals orientation required in the currently mandated indirect-approach statement of cash flows is unnecessarily complex, causing increased cash-flow forecast error and dispersion. We also predict that the mixed pattern (i.e., +/–, –/+) of operating cash flows and operating accruals reported by most companies also impedes investors’ ability to learn the time-series properties of cash flows and …

How Do Crises Spread? Evidence From Accessible And Inaccessible Stock Indices, Brian H. Boyer, Tomomi Kumagai, Kathy Yuan

Faculty Publications

We provide empirical evidence that stock market crises are spread globally through asset holdings of international investors. By separating emerging market stocks into two categories, namely, those that are eligible for purchase by foreigners (accessible) and those that are not (inaccessible), we estimate and compare the degree to which accessible and inaccessible stock index returns co-move with crisis country index returns. Our results show greater co-movement during high volatility periods, especially for accessible stock index returns, suggesting that crises spread through the asset holdings of international investors rather than through changes in fundamentals.

Evidence On What Cfos Think About The Ipo Process: Practice, Theory, And Managerial Implications, James C. Brau, Stanley E. Fawcett

Faculty Publications

Many privately held companies aspire to go public through an initial public offering. But the IPO process is time-consuming, expensive, and fraught with uncertainty. With the aim of shedding light on the process and reducing at least some of the uncertainty, the authors asked several hundred CFOs to share their experiences and perceptions with regard to six specific aspects of the IPO process: (1) motives for going public; (2) the timing of IPOs; (3) criteria for choosing an underwriter; (4) cause of IPO underpricing; (5) IPO signaling; and (6) reasons to stay private.

Why Have Debt Ratios Increased For Firms In Emerging Markets?, Todd Mitton

Faculty Publications

I study trends in capital structure between 1980 and 2004 in a sample of over 11,000 firms from 34 emerging markets. The average firm's book-value debt ratio rose by 10 percentage points over this quarter century; market-value debt ratios rose by 15 percentage points. I study how this rise in leverage was influenced by the firm-level demand for and the country-level supply of debt financing. The central finding is that the increase in debt ratios can largely be attributed to changes in the characteristics of emerging market firms over this period. For the average firm, the most prominent determinants of …

Supply And Demand Shifts In The Shorting Market, Lauren Cohen, Karl B. Diether, Christopher J. Malloy

Faculty Publications

Using proprietary data on stock loan fees and quantities from a large institutional investor, we examine the link between the shorting market and stock prices. Employing a unique identification strategy, we isolate shifts in the supply and demand for shorting. We find that shorting demand is an important predictor of future stock returns: An increase in shorting demand leads to negative abnormal returns of 2.98% in the following month. Second, we show that our results are stronger in environments with less public information flow, suggesting that the shorting market is an important mechanism for private information revelation.

The Application Of Model Checking For Securing E-Commerce Transactions, Bonnie Anderson, James V. Hansen, Paul Benjamin Lowry, Scott L. Summers

Faculty Publications

As firms become progressively more dependent on Internet-based information systems, they are increasingly vulnerable to defects in those systems. These defects can lead to errors, undetected fraud, and malicious intrusion. Information system errors can be catastrophic, whether they occur in market transactions, banking, air traffic control, and so forth. Resulting damages can include lost revenue, lost data, lost trust, and increased costs.

Consequently, effective design of e-business processes is essential to avoid defects that can otherwise lead to errors, fraud, and intrusion. Whereas carefully designed e-business protocols can perform effectively within most expected situations, assuring correct processing under all circumstances …

Family Acculturation, Family Leisure Involvement, And Family Functioning Among Mexican-Americans, Owen D. Christenson, Ramon B. Zabriskie, Dennis L. Eggett, Patti A. Freeman

Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between acculturation and family leisure involvement and aspects of family functioning ( cohesion and adaptability) from Mexican-American parent, youth, and family perspectives. Acculturation was measured using the Bidimensional Acculturation Scale for Hispanics (BAS), family leisure involvement was measured using the Family Leisure Activity Profile (FLAP), and family functioning was measured using the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales (FACES II). The sample was obtained from communities in Texas and Utah and consisted of 74 Mexican-American families, including a parent and child from each family. After adjusting for sociodemographic variables, the …

Information Pursuit In Financial-Statement Analysis: Effects Of Choice, Effort, And Disaggregation, Mark W. Nelson, William B. Tayler

Faculty Publications

Prior research provides evidence that financial-statement users weight information less heavily in judgment when that information is provided in a less accessible format (e.g., information disclosed in a footnote or less important financial statement rather than being recognized on the income statement (Maines and McDaniel 2000)). We provide evidence that, conditional on users performing the analysis necessary to transform the financial statements to appear as if disclosed information had been recognized, users may weight that information more heavily than it would have been if it had been recognized. Our experiments are set in the context of constructive capitalization of operating …

Relation-Specific Capabilities And Barriers To Knowledge Transfers: Creating Advantage Through Network Relationships, Jeffrey H. Dyer, Nile W. Hatch

Faculty Publications

This study examines the role of network knowledge resources in influencing firm performance. More specifically: Can a firm that uses the identical supplier network as competitors and purchases similar inputs from the same plants achieve a competitive advantage through that network? In a sample of U.S. automotive suppliers selling to both Toyota and U.S. automakers, we found that greater knowledge sharing on the part of Toyota resulted in a faster rate of learning within the suppliers’ manufacturing operations devoted to Toyota. Indeed, from 1990 to 1996 suppliers reduced defects by 50 percent for Toyota vs. only 26 percent for their …

Individual Cognition And Dual-Task Interference In Group Support Systems, William G. Heninger, Alan R. Dennis, Kelly Mcnamara Hilmer

Faculty Publications

Previous research shows that synchronous text discussion through group support systems (GSS) can improve the exchange of information within teams, but this improved information exchange usually does not improve decisions because participants fail to process the new information they receive. This study examined one potential cause for this failure: Dual-task interference caused by the need to concurrently process new information from others while also contributing one's own information to the discussion. Although prior research argues that dual-task interference should be minimal, we found that it significantly reduced participants' information processing and led to lower decision quality. The effect sizes were …

Saving For Retirement On The Path Of Least Resistance, James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian, Andrew Metrick

Faculty Publications

We assess the impact on savings behavior of several different 401(k) plan features, including automatic enrollment, automatic cash distributions, employer matching provisions, eligibility requirements, investment options, and financial education. We also present new survey evidence on individual savings adequacy. Many of our conclusions are based on an analysis of micro-level administrative data on the 401(k) savings behavior of employees in several large corporations that implemented changes in their 401(k) plan design. Our analysis identifies a key behavioral principle that should partially guide the design of 401(k) plans: employees often follow “the path of least resistance.” For better or for worse, …

Body Image And Beliefs About Appearance: Constraints On The Leisure Of College-Age And Middle-Agewomen, Toni Liechty, Patti A. Freeman, Ramon B. Zabriskie

Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among body image, beliefs about appearance, and leisure constraints for college-age women and their mothers. The Body-Image Assessment Scale, the Beliefs About Appearance Scale, and a hierarchical leisure constraints scale were used to assess body image concerns, and leisure constraints. A convenience sample of 116 female students at a private American university and 76 of their mothers was utilized. Multiple regression and t-tests were used to analyze the data. Findings suggested that body image and beliefs about appearance pose leisure constraints for college-age and middle-age women. Findings also suggested that …

Constructing Commercial Indices: A Semiparametric Adaptive Estimator Approach, Douglas J. Hodgson, Barrett A. Slade, Keith Vorkink

Faculty Publications

Constant-quality commercial indices generated by ordinary least squares may suffer an efficiency loss due to leptokurtosis caused by outliers in transactions data. When the subsequent nonnormality occurs, substantial improvement in index precision is obtained by estimating the hedonic model using a semiparametric adaptive estimator technique. When this method was applied to 1,846 office transactions that occurred in the Phoenix metropolitan area from January 1997 through June 2004, a substantial standard error reduction of approximately 9% was realized relative to ordinary least squares estimates. The difference in average returns between the semiparametric method and ordinary least squares was about 0.25% in …

Initial Public Offerings: Cfo Perceptions, James C. Brau, Patricia A. Ryan, Irv Degraw

Faculty Publications

We examine four issues pertaining to initial public offerings (IPOs) using a survey of 438 chief financial officers (CFOs). First, why do firms go public? Second, is CFO sentiment stationary across bear and bull markets? Third, what concerns CFOs about going public? Fourth, do CFO perceptions correlate with returns? Results support funding for growth and liquidity as the primary reasons for IPOs. CFO sentiment is generally stationary in pre- and post-bubble years. Managers are concerned with the direct costs of going public, such as underwriting fees, as well as indirect costs.We find a negative relation between a focus on immediate …

A Theoretical Model And Empirical Results Linking Website Interactivity And Usability Satisfaction, Paul Benjamin Lowry, Trent Spaulding, Taylor Wells, Greg Moody, Kevin Moffit, Sebastian Madariaga

Faculty Publications

Usability is a key component of websites that are commercially successful. Interactivity has been inconclusively linked to website usability. This study strengthens the theoretical understanding of how interactivity affects usability by measuring user satisfaction—a subconstruct of usability—across bookstore and e-card websites. We build on theoretical models from Liu and Shrum [17] and Khalifa and Liu [15]. Users were asked to perform tasks of varying levels of interactivity at bookstore and e-card websites. Measures were obtained for the user’s expectations of, desires for, and satisfaction with the websites. Results indicate that interactivity is successfully able to increase website satisfaction. Finally, implications …

Why Do Reits Repurchase Stock? Extricating The Effect Of Managerial Signaling In Open Market Share Repurchase Announcements, James C. Brau, Andrew Holmes

Faculty Publications

This paper explores the effect of stock repurchase announcements on equity returns for publicly traded real estate investment trusts (REITs). In addition to providing analysis of the corporate decision to repurchase shares, the study of share repurchases in the context of REITs provides a novel opportunity to disentangle the impact of competing theories for the abnormal returns observed around repurchase announcements. Prior literature advances six hypotheses to explain the stock price reaction associated with repurchases. Given that the theories all predict the same stock price reaction, existing studies are unable to disentangle the competing hypotheses. The intent of this research …

An Exploratory Study On The Impact Of Applied Ancestry On At-Risk Youth In A Wilderness Therapy Program Setting, Elisa M. Rancie

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether the Applied Ancestry program meets its objectives of assisting at-risk youth with regard to character development. The sample consisted of 40 youth (12-17 yrs) enrolled in the Anasazi Foundation Outdoor Behavioral Healthcare program. These teens were randomly assigned to either the control (n = 22) or treatment (n = 18) group. To measure the impact of Applied Ancestry on character development the VIA Signature Strengths Survey, developed by the VIA Institute, was used. A pre-post test comparison found no difference between the two groups, however the overall negative changes in survey …

Model Checking For E-Business Control And Assurance, Bonnie B. Anderson, James V. Hansen, Paul B. Lowry, Scott L. Summers

Faculty Publications

Model checking is a promising technique for the verification of complex software systems. As the use of the Internet for conducting e-business extends the reach of many organizations, well-designed software becomes the foundation of reliable implementation of e-business processes. These distributed, electronic methods of conducting transactions place reliance on the control structures embedded in the transaction processes. Deficiencies in control structures of processes that support e-business can lead to loss of physical assets, digital assets, money, and consumer confidence. Yet, assessing the reliability of e-business processes is complex and time-consuming. This paper explicates how model-checking technology can aid in the …

The Contribution Of Couple Leisure Involvement, Leisure Time And Leisure Satisfaction To Marital Satisfaction, Heather Ann Johnson

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to further clarify the relationship between couple leisure patterns and marital satisfaction by examining the contribution of joint couple leisure involvement, leisure time, and leisure satisfaction to couples' satisfaction with married life. The sample consisted of 48 married couples (N = 96). The Marital Activity Profile (MAP), a modified version of the Family Leisure Activity Profile (FLAP) was used to determine couple leisure involvement in core and balance leisure activities and leisure satisfaction. The Satisfaction With Married Life (SWML), a modified version of the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) was used to measure marital …

An Examination Of Family Communication Within The Core And Balance Model Of Family Leisure Functioning, Kevin M. Smith

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine family communication within the Core and Balance Model of Family Leisure Functioning. This was accomplished using path analysis, specifically using a mediator model. Family leisure was measured using the Family Leisure Activity Profile (FLAP), family functioning using the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales (FACES II), and family communication using the Family Communication Scale (FCS). The sample was youth (n = 90) and parents (n = 123) from 25 different states in the US. Family leisure involvement predicted family functioning variables from the youth and family perspectives, but only partially from the …

Praying, Playing And Happy Families: An Examination Of The Relationship Between Family Religiosity, Family Recreation, And Family Functioning, Sarah Taylor

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between family religiosity, family recreation, and family functioning. Mahoney's Joint Religious Activities Questionnaire was used to measure family religiosity, while Zabriskie's Family Leisure Activity Profile (FLAP) was used to measure family leisure involvement. Olson's Family Adaptability and Cohesion Scales (FACES II) was used to measure family functioning. The sample consisted of 121 parents and 99 youth from various faith groups and were selected using a convenience and snowball sample. Results indicated that there was a relationship between family religiosity and family recreation, and that both family religiosity and family recreation …

Mass Mailings Made Simple, Bonnie B. Anderson, Larysa V. Oprya, Marshall B. Romney

Faculty Publications

You want to tell 130 clients about several new professional services and send them updated fee schedules. You considered outsourcing the project to a direct-mail ad agency and found the setup alone for each variation of the letter was $65—way over your budget. Worry not. This is a job your support staff should be able to handle after reading this article.

Family Deepening: A Qualitative Inquiry Into The Experience Of Families Who Participate In Service Missions, Alexis A. Palmer

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to discover what families perceive as the benefits of participating in family volunteering; specifically service missions and the substantive impact the experience had on the families. A grounded theory approached was used. Five families were identified through a criteria-based snowball sampling technique. The data were analyzed using constant comparison. Based on the data analysis a core category emerged that encapsulated the result of the family service experience. The core category was coined, "family deepening." Family deepening encompassed the essence of the process the families in this study experienced. In order to achieve family deepening …

A Marketing Research Study For Snowbird Ski And Summer Resort, Sarah Ishmail, Sunne Drinkwater, Matt Conran

Student Works

The Snowbird Ski and Summer Resort is one of the most popular ski destinations in Utah. The resort was named the number one ski resort in the United States by Skiing Magazine for the past three years. One of the reasons Snowbird is so popular is because the resort is committed achieving the greatest possible satisfaction from it consumers. The Snowbird Resort commissioned students from Brigham Young University to determine the attitude, behavior and future expectation of holders of various Snowbird season ticket holders, and to help enlighten the resort about additional selling opportunities to their consumer. Investigators of Entertainment …