Business Commons^™

Warranty Period And Product Price Optimization For Remanufactured Products, Yuxi Liu

Theses and Dissertations

This study considers a remanufactured electrical product under a tiered warranty policy. Warranty is key in ensuring a good manufacturer—consumer relationship. Manufacturers hope to minimize warranty costs while consumers believe that good warranty promises better product quality and reliability. This Thesis presents an optimal warranty period from the perspective of a manufacturer to maximize the total expected profits, while ensuring sustained consumer relation. We use real data from a local company with a global supply chain to provide a numerical example.

Three Research Essays On Human Behaviors In Social Media, Jiao Wu

Theses and Dissertations

Social Media (SM) has grown to be one of the most popular Internet technologies for individual users and has fostered a global community. For instance, recent statistics reveal that monthly active users of Facebook are almost 1.5 billion by Mar 2015. At the same time, 20% of internet users in the US are expected to have Twitter accounts. This figure has grown from 15.2% in 2012, and is expected to rise to 24.2% by 2018 (Twitter 2015).

People like spending their time on SM to track the latest news, seek knowledge, update personal status, and connect with friends. It is …

Optimal Cyclic Control Of A Buffer Between Two Consecutive Non-Synchronized Manufacturing Processes, Wenhuan Hsieh

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents methods for efficiently controlling a buffer that is located between two non-synchronized manufacturing processes. Several machines with different cycle times and/or batch sizes perform each manufacturing process. The overall operation cycles every T time units. The first objective of the problem is to minimize the average buffer inventory level during one cycle. The second objective is to minimize the maximum inventory level observed at any point during the cycle. This new optimization problem has not been previously considered in the literature. An integer program is developed to model this problem. In addition, two heuristic methods—a simulated annealing …

Essays On Corporate Finance Issues, Chanho Cho

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of two essays on corporate finance issues. In the first essay (Chapter 1), I explore whether business group affiliations affect the covariance structure of stock returns in Korea. I find that the stock returns of firms belonging to the same business group show positive and significant comovement. The strong comovement between group returns and firm returns is explained by correlated fundamentals. I find strong comovement among business group affiliate earnings. Moreover, variance decomposition of returns shows that cash flow news plays a relatively more important role in explaining group comovement than discount rate news, suggesting a link …

Three Research Essays On The Effects Of Culture Across It Diffusion Within Social Networks, Organizations, And Hospitals, Yu Zhao

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on two research streams: IT diffusion and culture, and each can be examined in various contexts. Specifically, this study investigates IT diffusion through online social network use, knowledge sharing towards the general organizational information systems, and hospital information systems usage. In terms of culture, espoused national cultural values, IT occupational subculture, and organizational cultural variables are examined in the following essays.

Essay1: Espoused National Cultural Values and Online Social Network Use: Towards an Extension of UTAUT

Prior research has developed a number of models for examining the acceptance and use of technology. This paper extends the unified …

A Study On The Synthesis - Structure - Property - Performance Relationship Of Bulk Functionalized Polyurethane Foams For Water Filtration Applications, Subhashini Gunashekar

Theses and Dissertations

Polymers, macromolecules made of repeat units, are one of the major building blocks of life. They exist naturally in the form of DNA, proteins, sugars, cellulose, natural rubber etc. However, it was only in the mid twentieth century man began to understand its true nature and developed a new class of materials called ‘Plastics’. In recent years, the concept of a truly tailor made polymer has become a reality as a result of better understanding of the polymer structure-property relationships, newer polymerization techniques and due to the availability of new low cost monomers. Polymers from different elements with any desired …

Three Essays On Retransmission Of Brand Messages In Social Media, Nima Yahyapour Jalali

Theses and Dissertations

Social networks have emerged as an important channel for brands to communicate with customers both directly as well as secondarily through customers who share the communications with others. A value of this channel to brands, therefore, depends on how effective they are in increasing the retransmission of their messages by customers. This is the issue that we investigate through three essays using the social media site Twitter as our research setting. Our investigation is based on the theory that retweeting is a choice made by consumers who rely on constructive preferences (Bettman, Luce and Payne 1998) while seeking three intangible …

Succeeding In Extremely Competitive Markets: Insights From The Mobile Appmarket, Ruijiao Guo

Theses and Dissertations

Some products and services today compete against hundreds or thousands of competitors. Faced with so much competition, developers offer their products and services for free, or at a very low price, to those who are interested in the hope of attracting a large group of users. We label such markets where producers give products away for free or charge a nominal price as extremely competitive markets. Businesses competing in extremely competitive markets need insights regarding how they can increase the interest in, and use of, their products by potential customers. Unfortunately, the literature provides few such insights. This is the …

The Effect Of Cultural And Emotional Intelligence On Mentor And Protege Perceptions Of Attitude Homophily And Relationship Quality In Culturally Diverse Mentoring Relationships, Gloria J. Miller

Theses and Dissertations

Mentoring has become more common in organizations as firms have discovered the benefits of this process, such as the retention and cultivation of employees who create the work and products of the organization. To meet the challenges associated with increasing diversity within organizations, researchers have focused on understanding diverse mentoring relationships (Athey, Avery, & Zemsky, 2000; Clutterbuck & Ragins, 2002; Hardy, 1998; Knouse, Hill, & Webb, 2005; Ragins, 1997). The demographic (e.g., ethnicity, gender, age) and situational (e.g., position, power) disparities between mentors and protégés often make it more difficult for diverse partners to develop quality relationships that are needed …

"Be A Sturdy Oak:" The Art Of Manliness And Rebranding Masculinity In 21st Century America, Leslie J. Peckham

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents the ways the blog, The Art of Manliness, negotiates a rebranding of masculinity through nostalgia-based marketing initiatives and individualistic language and perspectives. This blog, dedicated to the self-improvement of the modern man, relies on “intentionality” and makes room for both traditional forms of masculine consumption and progressive masculine domesticity. The thesis begins by illustrating the ways marketing initiatives have had a hand in creating masculinity and the ways society has adopted or rejected these representations. It goes on to discuss how a contemporary blog on masculinity, The Art of Manliness, has incorporated some of these marketing techniques …