Business Commons^™

The Impact Of Medical Device Usability And Accessibility Information On Purchasing Decisions Of People Without Disabilities, Maysam M. Ardehali

Theses and Dissertations

The disparity between people with and without disabilities in timely diagnosis and appropriate treatment is exacerbated by inaccessible medical devices. The industry appears reluctant to address the shortcomings or provide usability and accessibility information to enhance the purchasing decisions of people with disabilities. This reluctance is mainly caused by the lack of market motivation based on perceptions of market size and the profitability of investments in accessibility evaluation and improvement. This study aims to challenge this notion by demonstrating that usability and accessibility information do not solely benefit what may be considered a “niche market,” and the purchasing decisions of …

Enhancing A Brand With The Introduction Of Merchandise And A Social Media Content Schedule, Rachel Imming

Theses

This project focuses on how to enhance a brand by incorporating merchandise for the brand and utilizing a social media content schedule to push out content consistently and uniformly. The primary beneficiary of this project is J.E.D.I. Brew Co, a small craft brewery out of Southern Illinois. The aim of the project is to study the important aspects of marketing and brand awareness, in order to help a brand better promote themselves. Ultimately, the project studies consumer engagement, advertising, experiential marketing, storytelling, and consumer behavior to help brands understand how these things affect and aid their business.

Diver Perceived Value And Satisfaction On The Mississippi Gulf Coast, Ka'lon Duncanson

Honors Theses

The Mississippi Gulf Coast is known for its coastal beauty and the tourism that comes from the recreational activities associated with the water. However, there appears to be an underserved segment of the tourism industry. The coast provides opportunities for local scuba divers to take part in a range of diving activities, but there is minimal support for this tourism activity in Mississippi. There is a need for greater understanding about what local divers value in their diving experiences and how this might lead to greater satisfaction with this activity. Along with overall perceived value, the argument is made that …

College Girl's Guide To Fayetteville, Ar, Sydney Johnson

Human Nutrition and Hospitality Management Undergraduate Honors Theses

The mission behind creating the College Girl’s Guide to Fayetteville, AR was to ease the adjustment from high school to college for females attending the University of Arkansas. This is one of life’s most monumental transitions, often resulting in anxiety, depression, and loneliness, specifically among the female demographic. With that in mind, the intent of the guidebook was to develop culture, confidence, and community on campus. In the aftermath of Covid-19, loneliness on college campuses has become an epidemic in need of a university-wide solution to increase student satisfaction and retention. A research aspect that heavily impacted the project was …

A Capstone Journey In Enterprise Software Consulting For Microsoft: How An Interdisciplinary Philosophy Fosters Critical Thinking And Promotes Cross-Functional Teamwork, Jacob Mccall

University Honors Theses

This capstone review thesis explores the application of strategic innovation and enterprise software with a Portland State University (PSU) School of Business Administration (SBA) interdisciplinary team consulting for Microsoft. Faced with improving pitch meetings with a new target audience of Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs), Microsoft’s West Coast enterprise software sales team sought consultation from the PSU SBA 2023 Business Honors cohort. This text reflects on the precursors responsible for the consulting project’s success, including the university’s guiding principles, interdisciplinary philosophy, and applicable business practices. The final solution includes insights into CMO types, needs development, a marketing enterprise software visual sales …

Crossing Digital Borders: An Exploration Of Changes In Exposure And Perceptions Of Other Cultures Via Social Media Platforms, Madison Mahoney

Marketing Undergraduate Honors Theses

Social media's explosive growth has revolutionized global connectivity, engaging billions of users and transforming how we learn and share in digital communities. Social media has enabled cross-cultural connectivity and cultural exploration, showcasing diverse lifestyles and customs.

In this Honors undergraduate thesis, research was conducted exploring the relationship between exposure to other cultures on social media and user's perception from seeing this content. This research gauged if there were more positive or negative associations for people from other countries or cultures due to exposure via social media, users' perception and reaction to culturally-insensitive content on platforms, and consumer reaction to culturally-oriented …

Essays On Sales Force Turnover And Job Satisfaction, Hossein Hashemi Bahramani

Doctoral Dissertations

Salespeople are among the most valuable resources of a firm. The salesperson’s roles in value realization includes translating a firm’s offerings into financial and relational rewards, co-creating value with customers, and forming and maintaining business relationships. Thus, retaining salespeople and enhancing their job satisfaction are among the top priorities of managers and the focus of this dissertation. This dissertation presents three essays in sales management. Essay 1 provides a quantitative synthesis of turnover literature using meta-analytical methods. Using 129 samples of 36,436 salespeople, this study conceptualizes the antecedents of salesperson turnover into 30 unique groups and presents a bivariate meta-analysis …

Essays On Salesperson’S Motivation And Job Satisfaction-Performance, Claire H. Cha

Doctoral Dissertations

Salesforces are important to firms as they drive a significant part of the firm’s brand, financial, and relational performance. Salesforce performance, job satisfaction, and motivation have remained key topics of interest to practitioners as well as researchers (Hansen & Levin, 2016; Pullins, 2001; Williams & Plouffe, 2007). This dissertation includes three essays. Essay 1 aims to address a lingering question theoretically and managerially. What is the relationship between satisfaction and performance? That question is assessed with a unique longitudinal simultaneous design to test four leading hypotheses of the causal relationship between salespeople’s job satisfaction and performance. The study’s design addresses …

Exploring The Operationalization Of Market Sensing In A Higher Education Organization, Ashish Bhardwaj

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Market sensing is a dynamic capability of an organization that enables management to understand the market environment and develop strategic plans that best position the organization to continue to be relevant to the marketplace and sustain an advantaged competitive position. Extant research has explored the difference between ordinary and dynamic capabilities and proposed the role of dynamic capabilities as enabling the configuration and reconfiguration of the organization’s assets in response to or in anticipation of a rapidly evolving market environment, to maintain competitive advantage.

Market sensing dynamic capability has been hypothesized to consist of three key organizational processes – sensing, …

The Relationship Between Startups’ Early Adoption Of Digital Platforms And Startups’ Pre-Money Valuation, Bader Hassan Faqeeh

Dissertations

The objective of this study was to explore whether there was a significant positive relationship between startups’ early adoption of the digital platforms, namely, 1) mobile application, 2) a premium domain name website, and 3) the existence of active startup social media accounts, and startups’ pre-money valuation. To achieve this objective, this research used a relatively novel method in entrepreneurial research to collect data, whereby LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator was used along with an automation tool in order to send hundreds of automated connection and message requests to investors on LinkedIn who were sent a copy of the survey questions along …

The Psychological Motivations Of Attendees To Engage And Share Their Event Experiences, Denise Matoushek

Theses

Social media usage, content creation and consumption has increased steadily throughout the years. This facet has impacted the event industry and their audiences’ expectations of immersive and high-end digital opportunities with the goal of memory capturing and user generated content. In addition to providing digital event opportunities, meeting audiences on their psychological level when in attendance at events heightens the likelihood of revisits, word-of-mouth, and social media sharing. The two main psychological aspects to study are that of belonging and internal motivation. In the event field, belonging is the feeling or association to a community of peers and internal motivation …

How Does Advertising Salience Impact Conversion Rates? The Mediating Role Of Consumer Engagement, Yu Cheng

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Previous studies have mainly analyzed the relationship between advertising salience and conversion rates using subjective data from questionnaires or experiments. However, existing researches have not provided a clear explanation of how advertising salience affects conversion rates. In contrast to the existing literature, this study utilizes objective data from advertising agencies and establishes a mediation model to investigate how advertising salience influences conversion rates in news feed advertising. Empirical research shows that consumer engagement serves as a mediating variable between advertising salience and conversion rates, while market share, regional marketization level, and regional income level play moderating roles in the relationship …

Secondary Features Of Importance For A Url Ranking, Atajan Abdyyev

Dissertations and Theses

This paper investigates the impact of secondary ranking factors on webpage relevance and rankings in the context of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), focusing on the jewelry domain within the United States e-commerce market. By generating a keyword list related to jewelry and retrieving top URLs from Google's search results, the study employs machine learning models including XGBoost, CatBoost, and Linear Regression to identify key features influencing webpage relevance and rankings.The findings highlight specific optimal ranges for features like Outlinks, Unique Inlinks, Flesch Reading Ease Score, and others, indicating their significant impact on better rankings. Notably, Random Forest model performed best …

Investigation Of Privacy Within Health Marketing, Digital Activism, And International Contexts, Alec N. Slepchuk

Doctoral Dissertations

Privacy, which has a long history of academic inquiry across multiple disciplines, is critically important to modern marketing. Advances in digital information technologies have allowed marketers to provide personalized services to consumers at the cost of their privacy. However, as new technologies increase privacy tensions across all facets of life, so does the need for situational scholarship on privacy. This dissertation uses a variety of datasets, theories, and analytical methods to examine three important privacy contexts: healthcare (industry), activists (actors), and countries (nations). Essay 1 draws on justice theory to examine the role of fairness in consumers’ decision to use …

Yala Designs Marketing Strategy, Anna Buckley

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper dives into the complexities of a sustainable pajama company's social media marketing strategy. This paper also analyzes the strategies of competitors and market leaders in an attempt to formulate suggested strategies based off their success.

Live Music Venue Marketing In A Post-Covid Northwest Arkansas, Griffen Walden

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

What does a medium sized music venue, nearing its centennial in a college town, do when its doors have closed for the first time since a short 2004 renovation, due to the novel Coronavirus Pandemic? George’s Majestic Lounge, the historic live music venue located in the heart of downtown Fayetteville, Arkansas, ceased operation for 134 days, its longest ever closure, and emerged into a climate massively different from what it had entered the pandemic in (Drury, et al. 2021). This venue has stood the test of time; opened in 1927 by George Pappas, it has remained in its railroad-adjacent position …

Canadians Redefining R&B: The Online Marketing Of Drake, Justin Bieber, And Jessie Reyez, Amara Pope Ms.

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In a country that long failed to accept, include, and institutionalize R&B music as part of Canadian culture, musical artists Justin Bieber, Drake, and Jessie Reyez have successfully broken-down barriers by having successful careers as racially diverse Canadian R&B artists. This qualitative study surveys the literature on classifications of the R&B genre and of Canadian identities in popular media. The theoretical framework of discourse analysis is used to conduct a brief episodic history of Canadian R&B and to evaluate how the music genre “R&B,” is traditionally associated with people who have "Black" and "American" identities, and how a “Canadian” identity …

Being Authentic On Social Media With Generation Z, Soyombo-Erdene Ariunbold

Theses

This paper discusses the evolving landscape of social media and the significance of authenticity on social media platforms for Generation Z. It emphasizes the rise of social media platforms, shedding light on their authenticity and the profound influence they have on users' mental well-being. The paper also highlights the necessity for content creators and brands to adapt by incorporating more unpolished content on social media platforms.

The final deliverable will include a detailed survey analysis of the content authenticity on BeReal application. The findings of this study will offer valuable insights into the increasing demand for authenticity on social media …

Making Then Meaning, Ben Denzer

Masters Theses

This is an artist talk contained within a book. It is 816 pages and 49 minutes long. Closed captions run across the spreads. A video of this talk can be watched on bendenzer.com/making-then-meaning

At RISD, I’ve been prompted to expand the scope and tools of my practice and to reflect on questions of meaning in my work.

I spend my days making things, but I’ve never really had good answers to questions of why I make the things I make, or what their meaning is. I don’t think there are simple answers to these questions.

I think meaning comes from …

The Role And Impact Of The Communications Department And Investor Relations Functions On The Process Of Privatization, Iulia Erhan

Student Theses and Dissertations

Current market conditions, and the heavy responsibilities placed on publicly traded companies by investors and regulators alike, have led many publicly traded companies to consider going private. The going-private decision, however, involves a complex set of actions and strategies. This paper analyzes the privatization process and the role that the Communication and Investor Relations departments play throughout the transaction. Its initial focus will be on communication with employees, including communication that facilitates the executive team’s decision-making activity related to employee retention. It will be followed by a review of the range of external communications, such as the going-private transaction announcement, …

Battaglini Winery: Marketing Collateral Development & Rebranding, Lexi L. Battaglini

Graphic Communication

The Battaglini Winery is a small family-run winery located in Sonoma County. The winery has no existing brand guidelines and any marketing collateral in current use has outdated information and design elements. The purpose of this project is to provide the winery with cohesive and refreshed brand guidelines while using these guidelines to generate relevant marketing materials for consumers.

Maintaining Institutional Memory For Non-Commercial College Radio Fundraising, Samantha K. Riordan

Journalism

This paper outlines how to run a non-commercial, non-profit radio station fundraising program, commonly called a Pledge Drive. Cal Poly’s radio station, KCPR 91.3, hosts an annual Pledge Drive in the spring. KCPR staff, specifically the fundraising manager and marketing director, lead the KCPR team in raising funds that support our operations for the upcoming year. This paper will detail the strengths of past fundraising drives and potential improvements to fundraising drives in the future while addressing the question of: How do college radio stations create continuity in non-commercial radio fundraising to ensure success amid changing economic conditions and the …

Moondoggie's Ad, Mia Horvath

Graphic Communication

I created a 2 minute ad for Moondoggies that defines the brands “attitude” as well as establishes its demographic, highlights the products they sell, and showcases the natural beauty of the region Moondoggies was founded in.

The Impact Of User-Generated Content On Consumer Purchase Intention, Alyssa Anderson

Theses

This project investigates how various forms of user-generated content impacts consumer purchasing decisions. Primary and secondary research is executed for a broader understanding of UGC implications on modern consumers. The final deliverable is a website that offers an in-depth analysis of the culture of creators and how the dynamic has shifted in recent years. Additionally, UGC cases are studied to determine the impact they have on consumers, and guides are offered to director brands on how ensure consistency and alignment with their brand identity and implement UGC into their marketing strategy.

Small Business Marketing In The Sports Industry, Cheyenne L. Abbett

University Honors Theses

This thesis explores how small sports businesses can avoid high failure rates by establishing a strategic marketing plan that makes the most of their constrained resources. The current literature on sports marketing strategy examines social media, relationship, and influencer marketing, but is limited in its application to small businesses. The purpose of this thesis is to address and fill that gap. This thesis consists of a literature review of the previously stated topics, best practices that incorporate the findings of this research, and a brief case study of these recommendations in action. Best practices include establishing a greater purpose for …

The Evolution Of The Nba’S Culture, Trey Jones

Theses

This project focuses on the National Basketball Association’s dress code problems from 2004-2005 to the 2022-2023 NBA season. Highlighting how a predominantly black athletes' association, run by white men, changed in multiple ways to respect the fashion and culture of its community over this 20-year period. The community that was most represented on the court, and those who support the league at home. Doing so through the influence of the media, player opinions, race, fashion, time, and executives. Showcasing how a prominent business, such as the NBA, can change it its brand to be acceptable and successful.

Manage Your Money Wisely: How Consumers And Marketers Can Effectively Communicate Money Issues, Alexander Park

Olin Business School Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Consumers and marketers find it challenging to communicate money matters. For example, consumers experience discomfort and uneasiness when discussing financial issues with their social relationships. Firms often receive backlash when sharing their good financial deeds (e.g., charitable efforts) with consumers. Because financial matters can be a sensitive topic, in my research, I explore the difficulties consumers and marketers experience when communicating money issues and how they can better navigate these problems.In Chapter One, I investigate a particularly uneasy interaction that consumers often face with their friends and acquaintances: the need to ask for money back. Seven fully preregistered studies (N …

Essays On Customer Relationship Management, Nan Zhao

Olin Business School Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The general topic of my dissertation is customer relationship management. Specifically, I use quasi-experimental causal inference methods, randomized field experiments, and machine learning methods to study and measure consumer response to co-branded credit cards and email communications promoting subscriptions.

In Chapter 1, “The Impact of Co-branded Credit Card Adoption on Customer Loyalty”, we estimate the treatment effects of adopting a co-branded credit card on spending and loyalty behaviors using a comprehensive longitudinal dataset from a North American airline. Our data set contained detailed records of both airline credit card adopters and non-adopters, including their travel and loyalty program activities over …

Refund Psychology, Tianjiao Yu

Olin Business School Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Consumers frequently receive refunds from prior purchases. In this research, I examine if money refunded from previous purchases is more likely to be spent than money that does not go through a refund process. Across eight fully pre-registered studies, I test how consumers’ willingness to spend depends on the transaction history of their money. I find that money refunded from a previous purchase is more likely to be spent on items unrelated to that purchase than non-refunded money that is otherwise identical in its source. I suggest that this pattern arises because the refunded money is earmarked as “spending money” …

Brand On The Run: The Effects Of Internal And External Stakeholder Communication Of Corporate Rebranding Efforts, Abby Vandiver

Honors Theses

A company’s most valuable asset is its brand. Not just limited to its name and logo, a brand is loosely defined as the identity of an organization. A strong brand identity can create strong customer loyalty. Changing even a part of this identity can cause confusion and ultimately revenue loss. This study examined how business owners and marketers communicate with their stakeholders when they decide a rebrand is necessary. After researching current literature on this topic, businesses in Oxford, Mississippi which have undergone a rebrand in the last decade were recruited to answer questions. Ten organizations participated either through interview …