Business Commons^™

Creating Sustainable Brands: How The Green 4 Ps Influence Consumers' Attitudes Toward Brands, Julia Dipersio

Honors Capstone Projects - All

I study the important brand-building relationship between consumer characteristics and the green 4 Ps that has been neglected in the literature: how the green marketing mix can work simultaneously to influence a consumer’s attitude toward a green brand with the goal of understanding how a green brand image is created. This study considers Information Integration Theory and Social Judgment Theory to assess how attitudes can be formed through the green 4 Ps. I collected data through a Qualtrics online survey from 185 respondents. Subsequent regression analyses in SPSS revealed certain strong relationships between select consumer characteristics and a positive attitudinal …

The Investment Potential Of Modern Hip Hop Artists, Kyle Garuccio

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Popular modern hip-hop artists are often seen flaunting custom jewelry, pricey cars, expensive personal collections, and other highly-depreciative luxury items. The influence of hip hop culture on the spending habits of its members is responsible for these traditional portrayals. Members of the hip hop community feel the need to mold to the norms established by its history and momentous idols. If those who identify themselves as members of the hip hop community invested their money in the financial markets and instruments, they may have the opportunity to grow their income at a much larger rate. I propose possible market investment …

The Golden Ticket: How Blockchain Technology Can Be Implemented Into Event Ticketing, Jack Singer

Honors Capstone Projects - All

When the group/individual named Satoshi Nakamoto first conceptualized blockchain in 2008, it served as the underlying foundation to the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. In the years following, cryptocurrencies alike experiences massive gains in profitability; however, after the bubble had burst organizations began to look at the technology from a more academic standpoint. It was quickly found out that there is a massive application for blockchain in almost all sectors of industry from bulk stores (Walmart) to banking (IBM). This paper will explore how blockchain technology can be implemented into event ticketing, more specifically concerts. The current landscape of the industry is under …

Help Wanted: Inside The Role Of A Community Development Lending Policy Editor, Robert Spichiger

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Students receiving professional degrees are often less motivated than their peers to graduate from the Renée Crown University Honors Program at Syracuse University. One possible explanation for this is that these students are discouraged by the requirement of writing an academic thesis. To remedy this issue and motivate more students from the Martin J. Whitman School of Management to graduate from the Honors Program, this project aims to serve as an example to future business students of one possible way to structure a professional thesis.

This paper is a critical reflection of the skills one develops while working at a …

The Future Of The Renewable Fuel Standard, Jacob Urban

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Persistent uncertainty about the future of the Renewable Fuel Standard led to an analysis of the policy’s language and the varying degrees of political support for the program in the Senate. Applying probabilities to the various conceived scenarios resulted in a 40% change that the program continues in its current form in perpetuity. The report finds that a Democratic Congress would implement legislation that focuses on the policy’s missed environmental goals. Conversely, a Republican Congress would lead to the most uncertainty in the market due to competing views of the RFS within the program. With a narrow Republican majority, legislation …

The Rhetoric Of Blockchain Technology, Mira Kohli

Honors Capstone Projects - All

The purpose of this honor’s thesis is to consider the rhetoric about blockchain technology. It is recognizable that blockchain technology does not share a common definition, method, or general understanding; this absence or opacity influences its use in institutions and industries. To advance my thesis about the rhetoric of blockchain, I developed a framework to analyze and critique blockchain technology use. Then, I applied this framework to two articles that discuss the adaptation of blockchain in the financial industry. My findings were that advocates for the technology are influencing its intended use. The rhetoric surrounding the technology is why the …

Humanitarian Aid Logistics: Response Strategies In The 2015 Refugee Crisis, Molly O'Connell

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Humanitarian aid logistics is an emerging field that applies principles of supply chain management and logistics to the humanitarian relief sector. This thesis explores humanitarian aid logistics strategies in the context of the 2015 Refugee Crisis. An unprecedented number of refugees sought asylum in Europe beginning in 2015, where European officials and humanitarian organizations were largely unprepared to provide for them. The 2015 Refugee Crisis offers a unique perspective on humanitarian aid logistics because it requires both short-term and long-term response strategies. Through the framework of management science, a subfield of supply chain management, and logistics, this thesis creates a …

Total Immersion: Virtual Reality's Path To Mass Adoption, Joshua Daghir

Honors Capstone Projects - All

With the release of devices such as the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Google Daydream in 2016, virtual reality seems poised to take over the tech and media landscape. Professional estimates of the projected popularity of these devices span extremely wide ranges, and many of these predictions fall victim to a self-serving bias. The purpose of this research is to identify the variables that affect the spread of the use of virtual reality, and to analyze how the characteristics of modern virtual reality relate to these variables. The framework used to identify and assess these variables comes from Everett Rogers’s …

Intrusive Or Beneficial: Do Corporate Cell Phones Affect Workplace Obligation?, Jamie Gelberg

Honors Capstone Projects - All

As mobile devices have crept into our personal lives, they have become a staple in professional’s lives as well. While these devices have made individuals better at instant communication, does this affect work-life balance? This paper aims to address this question through literature review, two primary data sources and an overall analysis. The target audience of this paper are employees with corporate cell phones and executives making decisions on mobile phone policies for their company or organization although, anyone can read it if they are interested in how technology influences daily routines.

When The Ultimate Goal Is Running Yourself Out Of Business: The Extent To Which For-Profit Strategic Management Tools Apply To The Nonprofit Sector, Haley Mcdonnell

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Competitive advantage is important to any entity committed to success in its respective space. However, competitive advantage – and competition in general – becomes a complex concept when applied to a context like the nonprofit sector so often marked by cooperation and collaboration. This research explores the gap in availability of applicable strategic management tools, like competitive advantage frameworks, between the for-profit and nonprofit realms. This research draws on 20 interviews conducted with nonprofit executives around the United States and compares the findings with literature currently available about the nonprofit context and competitive advantage. A framework of nonprofit competitive advantage …

Preserving The Past: The Future Of Museums, Stephanie Cox

Honors Capstone Projects - All

This project explores the future of the museum industry and seeks to examine the ways in which the industry has changed to adapt to the current competitive environment. It explores the increasing competitiveness inside the industry and the growing concentration of funding that has resulted in an extremely high percentage of unfunded museums.

The strategies that can be effectively employed to ‘modernize’ a museum are examined and several living history museums that have employed these strategies are used as examples of their relative effectiveness/ineffectiveness. An analysis of how the museum industry has morphed over time to create these mega-museums which …

Exploring Corporate Social Responsibility And The Important Role It Plays In Entrepreneurial Start-Up Businesses, Samuel Sanders

Honors Capstone Projects - All

The purpose of this Capstone is to examine the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and the role it plays in entrepreneurial start-up businesses. The paper introduces a more inclusive definition of the concept – Positive Impact Business Social Engagement. It explains the five facets of social responsibility and examines the impact of social responsibility on major business disciplines. The benefits and disadvantages of social responsibility are analyzed, and the financial performance of socially responsible companies is compared to S&P500 performance. Social responsibility in the start-up world is addressed and is contrasted with established large corporations. The characteristics of …

Globalization And Offshoring: The Effects Of A Globalized Workplace On Auditing Procedures, Mignon Farnet

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Intensifying audit competition, increasing audit quality standards, and rising demand for audit services have prompted accounting firms across the nation to adopt new methods to meet client and industry demands while not overextending audit staff or raising audit prices. The use of offshoring to utilize a global workplace has allowed firms to maintain their competitiveness and expand to new markets to creatively respond to the industry demand. While offshoring is not something new on the global scale, the auditing practice was a late arrival to this practice, especially when compared to manufacturing industries or even the tax practice within the …

Models For Storing Relationships: Relational Vs. Graph Databases, Dylan Hantula

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Relational databases have been the universal industry standard for almost as long as databases have existed. While relational databases are undoubtedly useful for storing tabular data that fits into a pre-defined schema of rows and columns, they are not very accommodating of interconnections within a data set. Forcing a highly connected data set into a relational database commonly results in severe performance issues in query return time. With the recent rise of social networks and other modern technological advancements, data is quickly becoming more connected and thus less suitable for relational databases. As a result, a new type of database, …

Profit Shifting And Manipulation, Byron Dela Rosa

Honors Capstone Projects - All

As of late, many U.S. firms have made their way overseas in ways many feel are unethical. U.S. multinationals have taken note of the unimaginable domestic corporate income tax rate the United States has set for these U.S. corporations. Similar to an individual paycheck you may receive, you must pay a portion to the U.S. government in taxes. And even more similarly, you wish that you did not have to pay it either. U.S. multinationals have the same mindset, as they have found ways to avoid the corporate income tax through foreign activity strategies. Using scholarly research papers and well-renown …

Rebranding Hillel At Syracuse University, Marisa Bunis

Honors Capstone Projects - All

My rebranding of Hillel at Syracuse University was a multi-step process. First, I had to understand what rebranding truly meant – what made a successful rebranding, what to avoid during a rebranding, etc. I gained this critical knowledge by reflecting on my education as an advertising major and consulting credible online sources on the topic. The next step was to gain a deeper understanding of my client, Hillel at Syracuse University. I again drew insights from my own experience as a student highly involved in the organization, and I also learned critical information from resources provided to me by Brian …

Instagram: Builiding A Following In Niche Audiences And Captivating Strangers Utilizing Visual Social Media, Maia Henderson

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, are used by advertisers to create brand identity and connect with consumers on a personal level. With the invention of Instagram however, fashion enthusiasts have been able to create their own visual accounts and build a following within a niche community. They don’t have to represent a specific brand or be sponsored, yet they are followed by many because of the quality of their content and by utilizing certain Instagram conventions. There is no known formula about how these accounts become so popular. These “Instafamous” accounts resonate deeply with their followers and …

Viewability: An Exaggerated Crisis, Jared Rosen

Honors Capstone Projects - All

This thesis addresses the ongoing debate surrounding Viewability within the digital advertising industry. Since advertising is the lifeblood of many publishers and sites across the web, it is vital that brands and marketers derive value from this relationship. The Media Rating Council and Making Measurement Make Sense Movement both over exaggerate the value of Viewability in the digital advertising marketplace. By examining a plethora of articles and regulatory standards, I have been able to conclude that Viewability is a soft metric that does not provide media insights into the success of a given campaign. By conducting interviews and reviewing articles …

Race And Gender In Public Relations: A Qualitative Analysis Of The Experiences Of Women And Women Of Color In Pr, Emelia Armstead

Honors Capstone Projects - All

The purpose of this research project was to better understand the state of diversity in the PR industry by examining the unique experience of women and women of color working in PR. Using qualitative coding methods, five blogs by both women of color and White women were coded to determine emergent themes. While some themes were consistent among all authors, other trends emerged only among White women or women of color, respectively. From the personal and professional experiences of these women, these themes offered insights into the effects of both race and gender on the experience of female PR professionals.

More Than Just A Game: From Regional Sports Rivalry To Separatist Politics, Ruitong Zhou

Honors Capstone Projects - All

In the Capstone, I will explore one of the most intense football clashes in history: El Clásico (The Classic), which refers to a match-up between Real Madrid C.F. and FC Barcelona. When these most successful football clubs meet on the field for 90 minutes of intense action, it soon becomes very clear that this is much more than just a game or just sports. The field can be seen as a battleground, and the game could be a substitute for war between two ideologies, cultures, and social classes. This rivalry has a real and profound political tone, which goes back …

Graphtracker: A User Opt-In Approach To Web Tracking, Kevin Daniel Aziz

Honors Capstone Projects - All

The web is a collection of interconnected documents and sites. A user will often jump not just from one site to another, but from one site to two or three others. How we explore the web is just as important as what we explore and what we discover as a result. In computer science, graphs are used to represent relationships between entities. By applying this concept to web tracking, graphs can capture the relationships between the sites we visit. We are building GraphTracker to tackle the difficult problem of tracking a user’s web activity. GraphTracker builds a “browsing graph” to …

The Rising Power Of The Renminbi As A Trade Currency In The Asean Countries, Brian Cheung

Honors Capstone Projects - All

This paper looks at the renminbi as a trade settlement currency in the countries that make up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The paper first looks at the trade picture in ASEAN, and how the old trade dynamics with the United States were broken down during the 1997 Asian financial crisis. In the ensuing power vacuum, China started to replace the United States as a trade partner, growing today to become even larger of a trade partner than the U.S ever was. The following section explores the role of the growth of the renminbi in use as a trade …

Examining The Relationship Between Ethical Strategies And Consumer Perceptions In The New Age Of Social Technology, Anabelle Uy

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Technology’s growing influence on the daily lives of individuals in modern society is ubiquitous. The increased demand for transparency in business has affected not only consumer perception but the ethical strategies of firms as well. Today, consumer trends illustrate the importance of ethically sourced products and services. They use the platform of technology to gather and disseminate company information and discuss their satisfaction, or lack thereof, with the ethical strategies of firms. This higher value placed on ethical practices and transparency has transformed our previous viewpoint of conventional business. Firms must be able to meet the demands of consumers to …

Financing Small Market Baseball: A Case Study Of The Auburn Doubledays, Derek Wohlfarth

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Professional baseball has been played in Auburn, New York, since 1958, but over the last few years, the team has experienced a period of financial losses. The biggest hit was in 2013, when the team lost $125,000. The City of Auburn, which owns the team, no longer has the money to support the franchise, so in order to keep baseball in Auburn, the team must become self-sufficient. Auburn is the second-smallest market in the league, so the community needs to get behind the team in order for it to stay in operation. New management came in for the 2014 season …

Map Centered Analysis Of San Francisco Crime Trends, Brittany Moore

Honors Capstone Projects - All

The original purpose of my Capstone was to analyze crime statistics in San Francisco to draw conclusions that could help prevent crime. I chose to analyze crime statistics in my hometown because I believe that using a place that I’m familiar with and engaging in a project that would be addressing a problem that has affected my family would help to motivate me. I’m also deeply passionate about using data analysis skills in ways that will directly improve the human condition. I did this by accessing a dataset online, using R Program Language and creating maps of relationships of crimes …

The Role Of Investor Relations In Crisis Communications, Rebecca Leigh Warren

Honors Capstone Projects - All

By the end of the 2000s, Domino’s Pizza Inc. was facing decreasing sales and a dwindling stock price, as consumers were frequently disappointed in the quality of the chain’s food. In April 2009, the pizza giant was faced with a sudden crisis when a YouTube video surfaced showing employees contaminating food with bodily functions.

This study will focus on the events following the crisis. Specifically, the study will examine Dominos’ unique pivot towards a transparent communications strategy in hopes of revitalizing its business model and its share price.

The methodology used to explore Domino’s new communications approach includes an in-depth …

Technology Transfer And The Instrumentality Of Bayh-Dole: A Comparative Study Of Patent And Publishing Data, 1973-2007, Ethan M. Rothschild

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Technology transfer is the process by which universities and other higher education institutions (HEIs) channel discovered knowledge and innovations into commercialization. Increasing commercialization has been a feature of HEIs in the United States, especially, for the last several decades. A turning point can be seen with the passage of what is known as the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980. This landmark piece of legislation allowed universities to keep licensing rights from federally funded projects, an institutional ownership model that spurred innovation. HEIs with medical schools are especially affected due to the lucrative nature of biotechnology.

One such measure of innovation and, …

Incorporating Google Glass With Emergency Medical Services, Davis Cho

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Technology's integration into the Emergency Medical Field has been lifesaving. Quicker response time, treatment, and transport to the hospital have been possible through the help of new technology. Telemedicine is not new, but the way it is communicated is evolving. What is unique about using Google Glass for EMS is it would not restrict the user's mobility or function, which is incredibly important for First Responders who might need two hands to do compressions for CPR. My Capstone Project will give First Responders, such as Paramedics and EMTs, an extra set of hands through utilizing Google Glass.

Invest For Impact: An Exploration Of The Incongruities In Social Finance, Kelly Marie Thompson

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Within the impact investing industry, a definition for societal return and how to measure this concept is lacking. Although its potential has been proven, there is still very limited exposure to impact investing within the United States. The present study aims to survey the current status of the impact investment industry in the United States, assess the presence of gaps between investments and their outcomes, and formulate a framework for addressing such shortcomings. The current status of the impact investing industry was examined and evaluated in order to understand how the industry is defined, what is the outcomes social finance, …

Penn State Football: An Analysis Of Crisis Communication Best Practices And How Psu Overcame The Ultimate Pr Crisis, Meaghan Grace Lane

Honors Capstone Projects - All

This thesis paper is an analysis of the crisis communication response to the 2011 Pennsylvania State University child sex abuse scandal. The reputation of this iconic university and its football program was changed forever by this horrific event, which involved years of administrative cover-ups of the sexual assault of children by an assistant football coach. However, despite widespread public backlash, administrative upheaval and heavy NCAA sanctions in the months after the scandal broke, Penn State has since made major strides in image improvement.

This project delves into what defines best crisis communication practices, using Penn State as a case study. …