Business Commons^™

Celebrity Impact On Fashion Brand Choice Using Social Media, Jaclyn Newbert

Theses and Dissertations

Today social media is rapidly growing. Many social media users, specifically Instagram users, are from the Millennial generation (born between 1982 and 1999), and Generation-Z (born between 2000 and 2020) (knoema.com, 2020). They love to share their life through social media, especially by posting and viewing others’ photos and videos on Instagram. Celebrity endorsement of products and brands has shown to increase both brand awareness and sales for companies. The purpose of this study is to investigate social media influence of celebrities on consumers’ brand choices. A conceptual model is developed to investigate the influences of physical attractiveness, celebrity credibility, …

Student-Run Agencies: A Guideline For Agency Survival, Brooke Borgognoni

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this paper is to study 110 student-run agencies (including advertising, public relations, integrated/digital marketing, communications, and graphics and/or design) in the U.S. by analyzing how they currently operate, what practices exist in the agencies for learning, growth, and continuation and how leadership roles of students and advisors influence the agency. This project built upon past studies of student-run agencies and expanded on the topic using the evolutionary theory of a firm by analyzing factors that determine whether it appears that a student-run agency might dissolve or last. This was determined by measuring the faculty advisor involvement level, …

Relationship Marketing And Intercollegiate Sport Promotion, Alison Fridley

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The first article, a case study on a NCAA Division I Power Five university in the southeastern United States, employed a case study framework, explored target markets and exposure techniques through both the planned behavior theory and social identity theory theoretical lenses. This study aimed to better understand how university students and booster club members identify as a social group. The data emerged into four distinct themes, including communication, social interaction, connection, and hospitality. The findings suggested booster club members are primary fans and help the team generate fan interest. The importance of sociability was clear and the implications for …

Merchants Without Borders: Qusman Traders In The Arabian Gulf And Indian Ocean, C. 1850-1950, Mansour Alsharidah

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a history of the economic, social, and political life in Arabia, the Arabian Gulf, and the Indian Subcontinent from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. It draws on materials from al-Qasim, Kuwait, Bahrain, Karachi, Bombay, Calcutta, and London, in addition to travelers’ accounts. These materials and accounts are used to explore the extent and significance of al-Qasim’s international trade between Arabia and India through the Arabian Gulf. It further examines how Qasimi merchants mobilized commodities and traded in the port cities of the Arabian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, taking advantage of changing regional and global political …

Consumer Food Socialization In The School And Home, Ashley Deutsch Cermin

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Consumer socialization literature has focused on individual socialization agents and their isolated effects. However, as John (1999) pointed out, children do not grow up in a social vacuum. Instead, the multitude of agents socializing children find their narratives interacting and their effects continually shaped and co-created. To understand how school-age children learn about food, I interrogate the complexity of socialization in three essays.

In the first essay, I take an ethnographic approach to investigate the interactive effect peers and adults, namely service workers, have on children’s food socialization in a public-school lunchroom. By combining a Loseke’s (2007) layered narrative model …

The Relationship Between Leadership Practices And Organizational Commitment Of Telecommunicators, André Lanier

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The performance of 9-1-1 telecommunicators can mean the difference between life and death for the person on the other end of a phone. Effective leadership is critical to the success of the public safety answer point (PSAP) and the organizational commitment of the 9-1-1 telecommunicator. Bass and Riggio’s (2006) Full Range of Leadership Theory (FLRT) is the basis for the current study. The FRLT covers leadership styles from laissez-faire to transformational (Matikainen, 2019).

The purpose of conducting the study was to identify and describe the 9-1-1 telecommunicator’s organizational commitment based on the PSAP leadership categories. The study made use of …

Market Coverage, Franchise Ownership, And Outlet Survival, Jingbo Zhang

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the relationships between market coverage, franchise ownership, and franchise outlet survival rate.

In the first essay, I develop a spatial market coverage measure by integrating geocodes of outlets across five fast-food franchise systems. This spatial market coverage builds upon one navigation system algorithm by utilizing geographic coordinates. This measure can be applied by entrepreneurs to examine their geographic coverage and address issues of market oversaturation and lack of coverage.

In the second essay, I extend the spatial market coverage and examine how this spatial market coverage and franchise ownerships affect franchise outlet survival rate, which has not …

Cultivating Cooperatives: Benefits And Challenges Of Co-Ops And Recommendations For Maine’S Emerging Aquaculture Industries, Phoebe Walsh

All Theses And Dissertations

Two emerging Maine industries, kelp (Saccharina latissimi and Saccharina angustissima) and Atlantic sea scallop (Placopecten magellanicus) aquaculture, have enormous market, environmental, and social potential but are faced with challenges of small scale and limited operations, inadequate infrastructure, market visibility, and limited expertise. Because many industries, particularly the dairy industry, have benefited from the use of cooperatives (co-ops) to aggregate an extremely perishable product, quickly process and effectively market and distribute, this research explores the cooperative model as a potential tool for the nascent scallop and kelp industries. Aquaculture co-ops are new in Maine. The first, the …

Exploring Customers' Reactions To Enforcement Of Fine Print, Sudipto Sarkar

Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this dissertation is to investigate the effects of enforcement and/or unenforcement of “Fine Print” on consumers’ reactions. “Fine Print” is defined as both the explicit and implicit conditions under which the product/service contract waives firm responsibility and accountability toward unsuccessful product/service experience, and outcome or lack of customer satisfaction with the same. Study 1 examined the interaction effects between “Fine Print” and “Company Size” on trust, satisfaction, repurchase intention, switching intentions, and word-of-mouth in a retailer context. The results revealed significant interaction effects between “Fine Print” and “Company Size” for satisfaction and repurchase intention, where satisfaction and …

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 …

Essays On Investments And Real Estate Finance, Shahedur Rahaman Chowdhury

Theses and Dissertations

Essay I examines the role of macroeconomic fundamentals in explaining the explosive behavior or price exuberance in the US local housing markets. Using monthly observations between November 1997 and December 2016 we employ the double recursive approach from Philips et al., (2015) to identify the emergence of price exuberance in each of the 291 U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Areas in the sample. Our estimations results show that population and income per capita have a significant positive effect on price exuberance, while unemployment rate and fixed mortgage interest rate have a negative effect. The marginal impacts of these macro fundamentals on housing …

The Impact Of Consumer Perceptions Of Tanking On National Basketball Association Attendance, Hua Gong

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation studies the impact of consumer perceptions of tanking on National Basketball Attendance (NBA) attendance. The prevalence of tanking in the NBA raised concerns that some teams were purposely avoiding winning games in order to improve their draft position. The majority of previous studies on tanking have focused on developing empirical evidence of the existence of tanking in sport. Yet, no study systematically explored the impact of perceived tanking behavior on consumer demand for sport. As tanking teams rarely reveal their tanking strategy to the public, fans may not correctly identify tanking behavior in sport, and thus are likely …

The Economic Impact Of Tennis In South Carolina, Xue Zhang

Theses and Dissertations

This aim of this study was to estimate the economic value eighteen junior tournaments held in South Carolina in 2019. Over two hundred surveys were sent out to junior player and fifty two responses were received. Factors in the survey including transportation, gender, age, household income, on-site and off-site expenditure contributed to results in this paper. After analyzing the data collected, significant results were discovered.

Analysis On Suicidal Ideation Among Adolescents (12-17 Years) In The Usa, Himani Raturi

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Suicide is one of the leading health concerns in United States among adolescents and the presence of suicidal ideation (SI) is quite high, with ~20-30% of adolescents reporting it at some point. Though we have seen growth and development in the prevention of suicide, there is limited research on the ability to identify the adolescents which might be at risk for SI. The objective behind the project is to identify adolescents with SI using machine learning.

The project shows statistics from different articles on adolescents in the U.S. For this study, adolescent data was taken from NSDUH 2018. Moreover, detailed …

Email Data Breach Analysis And Prevention Using Hook And Eye System, Shubhankar Jayant Jathar

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Due to the recent COVID-19 outbreak, there were a lot of data leaks from the health sector. This project is about the increase in data breach incidents that are taking place. In this project, There is an analysis of different types of breaches that are found online and are practiced to steal valuable information. Talking about different aspects that lead to data breaches and which are the main sector or main epicenter for data leaks. The analysis tells that most of the data breaches are done using emails and to overcome this limitation a system has been designed that will …

R&D Project Portfolio Selection With Multiple Stakeholders, Wenqi Lian

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Research and Development (R&D) is time consuming, expensive and risky; yet product life cycles are shortening and competition is fierce. Therefore, R&D often requires the collaboration and input of multiple stakeholders. This dissertation studies how collaborations involving multiple stakeholders can effectively make R&D project portfolio selection decisions to create the optimal social welfare. The two essays in the dissertation build stylized analytical models to examine R&D project portfolio selection in two different settings, academia and industry respectively. The models explicitly acknowledge the different information, goals and operational decisions of the stakeholders. In the first essay, we study a two-stage funding …

Learning And Adaptation Under Uncertainty And Ambiguity, Lei Zheng

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The first essay is about how high and moderate aspiration levels compare in terms of affecting the decision making and reinforcement learning in an uncertain environment. After developing a thought experiment and a computational model, I used lab experiments to test the model’s predictions: a high (moderate) aspiration level reduces (increases) feedback ambiguity about the relative attractiveness of different options, thus increases the exploitation (exploration) tendency of the decision maker. The behavioural difference suggests that high aspirations lead to better performance in stable environments, but worse performance after disruptive shocks. The second essay investigates whether organizations should commit more (or …

Social Media In Business-To-Business Marketing And Sales: Review Of Literature & Research Recommendations, Daniel Bello Manjarrez

University Honors Theses

Social media usage in business to business marketing and sales has been steadily rising since its advent in the late 2000s. Similarly, research surrounding social media in this context has increased, with specific focus on its usage, influence, and adoption from B2B marketers and salespeople. This focus has resulted in gaps in the literature, especially when regarding small and medium B2B enterprises. This review of literature provides a systemic understanding of the research landscape by identifying the theory, methods, context, and results of twenty-one peer-reviewed business marketing articles concerning social media. This review also proposes five key recommendations to inform …

Faith-Based Paths To Business Success: Malaysian Manifestations Of The Evangelical-Neoliberal Nexus, Králik Martin

Student Works (2020-2029)

The thesis profiles a number of evangelical Christian groups which operate in Malaysia’s Klang Valley. Some of them have embraced business, financing, investment and real estate undertakings on a significant scale. The objective was to cast new light on how the confluence of evangelical and neoliberal capitalist forces (occurring first in the United States and now transnationally) influenced and at times directly shaped their setting up, development and growth, as well as broader socioeconomic and political positions. In particular, the aim was to map out and analyse the founders’ and members’ choice of religious affiliation; their personal motivations and the …

The Effects Of Organic Products On Conventional Products And Retailer Assortment Planning, Zhihao Zhang

Theses and Dissertations

The rapid growth in organic products has posed a major challenge to conventional retailer assortment planning. On the one hand, conventional retailers, driven by the relatively high margins of organic products, have increased organic product offerings. On the other hand, the shelf space for conventional retailers has remained the same, with newly opened stores much smaller in sizes. Therefore, retailers need to carefully manage their conventional product assortments to harvest the benefit of offering and increasing organic product assortments. In order to manage the assortment efficiently, conventional retailers need to understand how organic products would affect their existing products, consumers, …

Clarifying And Measuring The Value Of Human Capital Resources, Donald Hale, Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

The concept of value is central to the strategic human resources (SHRM) and strategic human capital resource literatures (SHCR) because of their grounding in Resource Based Theory (RBT). In order to facilitate a firm’s competitive advantage, both the SHRM and SHCR literatures argue that the practices and people in a firm must work together to generate resources that are valuable, rare, inimitable, and non-substitutable. Value is the first and primary consideration in this logic. Despite the centrality of value in both literatures, prior attempts to identify and measure human capital resource (HCR) value (e.g. utility analysis) have produced mixed results …

Is There A Relationship Between The Gender Of The Ceo And Short-Termism Or Long-Termism?, Kerry Calnan

Doctoral Dissertations (DBA)

Based on a panel of S&P 1500 firms from the period of 2008-2016, we evaluate whether firms managed by female CEOs exhibit the same short-termism or long-termism as firms managed by male CEOs. We evaluate in terms of market based, firm based and investment indicator. Our goal is to better understand if there is a relationship between the gender of the CEO and short-termism or long-termism.

Our results find firms with female CEOs have lower Tobin’s Q, lower ROA, however, they spend more on research and development than firms run by male CEOs.

Study On New Sampling Plans And Optimal Integration With Proactive Maintenance In Production Systems, Sinan Obaidat

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Sampling plans are statistical process control (SPC) tools used mainly in production processes. They are employed to control processes by monitoring the quality of produced products and alerting for necessary adjustments or maintenance. Sampling is used when an undesirable change (shift) in a process is unobservable and needs time to discover. Basically, the shift occurs when an assignable cause affects the process. Wrong setups, defective raw materials, degraded components are examples of assignable causes. The assignable cause causes a variable (or attribute) quality characteristic to shift from the desired state to an undesired state.

The main concern of sampling is …

Comparing The Success Of Official Sponsors And Ambush Marketers: An Event Study Analysis Of Brazil Following The 2014 Fifa World Cup And 2016 Rio De Janeiro Summer Olympic Games, Timothy Koba

Theses and Dissertations

Mega sporting event hosting and sponsorship garner billions of dollars in investments from countries and companies, but their effectiveness has yet to be definitively determined. If the announcement of a host country serves as a signal to the investors who comprise a market, then there should be an increased return in response to the announcement. Similarly, if companies are activating their sponsorships during a sporting event there may be a higher return than what would be expected otherwise. The evaluation of the 2016 Summer Olympic Games held in Rio de Janeiro demonstrates that the announcement did not impact the market …

Competition In Upstream Humanitarian Supply Chain: Investigation Of Food Banks, Iana Shaheen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Global hunger is not about a shortage of food. Currently, the world generates enough food to sustain every man, woman, and child on the planet. However, in 2018, about 815 million people, or almost 11% of the population, were hungry worldwide (World Hunger Report, 2018). To respond to the problems in ways more adapted to the requirements of people in need, humanitarian organizations (HOs) are dedicated to becoming more effective and efficient (Weiss, 2013). With the boost in the number of people that require humanitarian assistance, the number of HOs is increasing each year. As a result, there is unanimity …

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 …

Auditor Information Spillovers And Company Operating Performance: Evidence From Targeted Auditor Switches, Tyler Kleppe

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this study, I examine whether companies realize operational benefits from making “targeted auditor switches” (i.e., engaging a new auditor recently dismissed by a competitor company). While prior work provides evidence consistent with companies perceiving that auditor information spillovers are costly, there is sparse extant evidence as to whether auditors actually do transfer operational information across companies. I find that companies that switch to a competitor’s former auditor realize significant subsequent improvements in operating performance, and I provide evidence that the association between targeted auditor switches and improvements in operating performance varies predictably with several across- and within-market factors. In …

Buffer Zones And The Recreational Golf Sector: A Negligence Case Content Analysis, Natalie Bird

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Buffer zones are a risk management method used within sport and recreation to protect participants and spectators from avoidable injury. Within the recreational golf sector, buffer zone standards do not exist. This poses a problem as golf courses in the recreational sector serve a wide range of customers in terms of age, skill level, and experience. A legal case content analysis of 1,561 golf negligence lawsuits aimed to answer research questions related to locations of incidents, circumstances that led to injury, and injuries or damages that were the result of errant golf shots. A Westlaw search provided the data for …

Knowledge Creation Enhancement In The Royal Malaysian Navy (Rmn) Fleet, Rusland Shaftdean Lufty

Student Works (2020-2029)

This study aims to gauge the extent of knowledge creation processes in the Royal Malaysian Navy (RMN) fleet with the use of the SECI (socialization, externalization, combination, internalization) knowledge creation process model proposed by Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995). This is in order for the researcher to propose a knowledge creation enhancement framework to the organization. Case study method was utilized in this study and both descriptive and interpretive analyses were employed to achieve the research aims. The descriptive data were used to triangulate the interpretive data and documentation reviewed by dividing the findings in accordance to the SECI conversion process. …

Factors Contributing To The Implementation Of Data Analytics In External Auditing, Jacky Yeamin

Student Works (2020-2029)

The objective of the study is to explore the factors effecting the implementation of Data Analytics in Audit process and the impact of those factors on Audit Quality. Two stages of study were performed to achieve the objective of the study, First, this study analysed response letters on the use of Data Analytics (DA) in external auditing submitted by stakeholders of audit services to the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB)’s Data Analytics Working Group (DAWG). Using the Modified IT Audit Model as a framework, this study performs a directed content analysis on all 50 response letters sent to …