Business Commons^™

A Survey Of Employer Needs And Expectations From Business Programs At Higher Education Institutions, Tulay Girard, Krissa Weyant

AMTP Proceedings 2014

The recent economic slowdown and changing nature of business environments have made it increasingly challenging and competitive for recent graduates to qualify for higher level positions. Higher education institutions continuously ask what employers are looking for in a newly graduated candidate. However, most do not exactly know the answers. Understanding the changing needs and expectations of employers has become a priority for higher education institutions to remain competitive in their markets. Academics also have to respond to these changes by understanding whether they prepare their students to meet the needs and expectations of employers. This exploratory study aims to understand …

Exploring The Use Of Managerial Intuition In Retail Site Selection Decisions, Kendra Fowler

AMTP Proceedings 2014

This study empirically investigates the process by which retailers make site selection decisions. As Craig, Ghosh, and McLafferty (1984) note in a special edition of the Journal of Retailing devoted to locational analysis, “the choice of a store’s location is perhaps the single most important decision a retailer has to make… even slight differences in location can have a significant impact on market share and profitability” (pg. 5). Recent changes in the retail landscape make the continued study of retailer site selection a worthwhile pursuit (Mejia and Benjamin 2002, Wood and Reynolds 2013). Among the many variables included in contemporary …

Understanding The Competitive Environment Of Nonprofit Organizations: A Resource-Advantage Theory Approach, Omer Topaloglu, Robert E. Mcdonald

AMTP Proceedings 2014

Competition in the nonprofit sector has dramatically intensified in the past two decades as a result of the increased number of nonprofit organizations (NPOs), decreased and diffused governmental support, and entry of for-profit companies into markets that are traditionally the domain of nonprofits. In an attempt to enhance the understanding of the nonprofit competition, the authors adapt a general theory of competition to commercial nonprofits, those that generate external benefits by commercial activities. Applying resource-advantage (R-A) theory, a dynamic theory of competition adapted from the business literature, we discuss how these entities can leverage their various resources in order to …

Exploring Impact Philanthropy, Altruistic, Hedonic, And Egoistic Motivations To Support Animal Causes, Clinton Amos, Gary R. Holmes, Anthony T. Allred

AMTP Proceedings 2014

Due to unpredictable economic turbulence, it is imperative that nonprofit organizations understand and implement segmentation practices to better target donors to maintain continual growth in donations. While such strategies are well implemented in for-profit arenas, non-profit organizations still lag behind in the implementation of segmentation and targeting practices. The targeting of donors by nonprofit organizations tends to be unfocused and sporadic at best. Early research on the practice of segmenting potential donors suggest that nonprofit firms should resist profiling their existing donors based upon demographic characteristics alone and should rely on examining demographic variables in relation to meaningful motivational forces. …

Moderating Effects Of Service Guarantee, Service Relationship, And Perceived-Risk On Customer Satisfaction, Kungpo Tao

AMTP Proceedings 2014

Customer satisfaction has been one of the most frequently used terms in marketing. With the benefits of customer satisfaction, service providers can save more costs doing customer retention and advertising. Premium pricing, for example, is also the benefit derived from the service’s buffering effect. In service industry, service guarantee and building up service relationship with customers are very common and useful strategies to gain customer satisfaction. Due to the growing competitive industry, marketers have made efforts building the customer-service relationship in order to attract new customers and secure existing relationships with customers. After experienced a service delivery or consumption, customers …

Online Service Benefits’ Impact On Relationship Strength, Quality, & Continuation Intention, Kendra Fowler, Eileen Bridges

AMTP Proceedings 2014

Many service providers now use social media, both as a way to interact efficiently with their customers, and as a means of gathering customer data needed to better manage customer relationships. Thus, social media can both provide service and assist in developing better future service. In the present research, we examine in detail whether and how social media perform the first of these tasks by examining its use as a tool for online service benefit provision. Then, we consider how benefits customers receive from maintaining relationships with service providers via social media impact outcomes, including reported relationship strength, customer loyalty, …

The Impact Of Multi-Dimensional Sport Service Quality On Game Attendance Associated With Professional Sports: A Case Of Major League Baseball Spectator, Kevin K. Byon, Younghwan Choi, Brian H. Yim

AMTP Proceedings 2014

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of the four-factor sport service quality model on future game attendance associated with Major League Baseball (MLB) spectators. Based on the extensive review of literature, four factors of sport event quality model was developed, which included: (a) ticket services, (b) game amenities, (c) venue services, and (d) venue accessibility. Data (N = 266) were collected from spectators of a MLB team. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) were utilized to estimate the measurement model and the hypotheses. The SEM revealed that ticket services, venue services, and venue …

Atmospheric Music In The Nba Servicescape: Fan Involvement, Team Loyalty, Consumer Attitudes And Emotional Responses, Crystal Southall, Richard M. Southall

AMTP Proceedings 2014

Within the domain of entertainment and leisure services, sport is a unique experiential service-product. Further, sport consumer behavior has changed dramatically, as advances in technology have decreased barriers to and increased the scope of sport consumption. Sport consumers can now watch live, delayed, or recorded sport events when and where they choose. Therefore, sport organizations must focus on sustainability through the creation of a competitive advantage in the staging of live sport events. Given that the NBA product is consumed within an increasingly stimulating consumptive landscape (Andrews, 2006), this study sought to examine the relationship between NBA fans’ involvement, home-team …

An Exploratory Research On The Use Of Social Media, Raven Clark, Melek Meral Anitsal, Ismet Anitsal

AMTP Proceedings 2014

Peering years into the future may seem bit hubris, but in today’s uncertain society there seems to always be room for change. Ignoring short and long-term trends of social media could be damaging to a company whose main source of reaching their target market is through social media. Consumers are using social media as part of their daily routine, so why shouldn’t companies try and reach their customers through this platform? Can companies actually keep up with the changing trends demanded by the consumers? How do consumers feel about their social media being used as an advertising strategy for companies? …

The Impact Of Social Media On The Advertising Competitiveness Of Small Businesses, Cale Robert Hall

AMTP Proceedings 2014

Every business, from the largest enterprise to the smallest start-up, faces the continual challenge of staying in touch with their customers and continually earning their trust and business. Social media is the catalyst that is continually changing customer relationships and making them more interactive, open and collaborative. Today’s customers have more choices than ever before in terms of how they choose to learn about new products, services, and gain insights into areas of interest. For marketers to be successful, they need to realize that their customers; preferences are changing quickly, and that agility over formal, often static processes from a …

Consumer Empowerment: The Framework, Sanam Akhavannasab, Danilo C. Dantas, Sylvain Senecal

AMTP Proceedings 2014

There is mounting evidence that consumers possess more power now than they ever have before. Stories such as “United Breaks Guitars” (Tripp and Grégoire 2011) are regularly reported in the press as illustrative examples of this phenomenon. In our era of user-generated content, consumer power is an important issue for any business. For instance, an increasing number of companies are using social media monitoring tools to keep track of online conversations. However, the marketing literature on consumer empowerment is limited (Hunter and Garnefeld 2008; Kucuk 2009; Pranić and Roehl 2012). Generally adopting a conceptual approach (e.g., Kucuk, 2009); consumer empowerment …

A Direct Test Of Agency Theories Of Debt, Yilin Huang, Taylor D. Nadauld

Faculty Publications

When a firm is facing default, equity holders have incentives to engage in asset substitution, underinvest, or directly transfer wealth. Few papers document investment distortions on account of debt-equity agency conflicts, only that the threat of distortions influence ex ante financing costs. A non-agency RMBS deal represents an entity that is highly leveraged where, ex ante, equity holders know they will face default. This provides an ideal laboratory for testing whether the threat of default creates any of the distortions predicted in theory. We estimate agency costs associated with direct wealth transfers to range between $.011 and $.025 per dollar.

Improving Password Cybersecurity Through Inexpensive And Minimally Invasive Means: Detecting And Deterring Password Reuse Through Keystroke-Dynamics Monitoring And Just-In-Time Fear Appeals, Jeffrey L. Jenkins, Mark Grimes, Jeffrey Gainer Proudfoot, Paul Benjamin Lowry

Faculty Publications

Password reuse – using the same password for multiple accounts – is a prevalent phenomenon that can make even the most secure systems vulnerable. When passwords are reused across multiple systems, hackers may compromise accounts by stealing passwords from lowsecurity sites to access sites with higher security. Password reuse can be particularly threatening to users in developing countries in which cybersecurity training is limited, law enforcement of cybersecurity is non-existent, or in which programs to secure cyberspace are limited. This article proposes a two-pronged solution for reducing password reuse through detection and mitigation. First, based on the theories of routine, …

Library Instruction Case Wiki, Andy Spackman

Faculty Publications

We hope you find the guides and case studies collected here helpful, and we invite you to contribute by discussing your experiences on the discussion page for each case study, and by submitting case studies you have developed and used in your own instructional efforts.

Cases for Advanced Business Students

• Building a Company List - Trucking in Texas
• Company and Market Research - Big Sweety and the Chocolate Manufacturing Industry
• Determining Market Size - Infant Formula
• Entrepreneurial Marketing - The Comic Book Guy
• Global Trade and Economics - Manufacturing Medical Instruments
• International Business - Launching the Wii
• International Marketing - …

Are State Tax Amnesty Programs Associated With Financial Reporting Irregularities?, Neal Buckwalter, Nathan Y. Sharp, Jaron H. Wilde, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Eagle Executive Magazine, Georgia Southern University

College of Business: News & Publications

• From the Desk of Dean Amason
• Student Honored Posthumously at Spring Commencement
• LaunchSAVANNAH First Year Anniversary Celebration
• College News
• Georgia Southern hosts Belgian consul general
• Department News
• City Campus News
• Graduate Studies Update
• Alumni Spotlight
• 40 UNDER 40: 11 College of business alumni Honored
• Development News

Sustainability Strategies In Supply Chain Management, Amit Arora

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Managers no longer view sustainability of organizations only in terms of profitability and economic growth of shareholders. Various competitive pressures are forcing managers to broaden the scope of sustainability to include explicit environmental and societal objectives too. These pressures are emanating from various sources such as depleting natural resources, regulatory policies from governments, erratic weather cycles, demanding customers and brand damage due to exposure about poor working conditions in supplier factories located in other countries. This dissertation consists of three essays that contribute to the practice and literature of strategic sustainable supply chain management by examining its four aspects: measure, …

A Federated Architecture For Heuristics Packet Filtering In Cloud Networks, Ibrahim M. Waziri Jr

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

The rapid expansion in networking has provided tremendous opportunities to access an unparalleled amount of information. Everyone connects to a network to gain access and to share this information. However when someone connects to a public network, his private network and information becomes vulnerable to hackers and all kinds of security threats. Today, all networks needs to be secured, and one of the best security policies is firewall implementation.

Firewalls can be hardware or cloud based. Hardware based firewalls offer the advantage of faster response time, whereas cloud based firewalls are more flexible. In reality the best form of firewall …

Safaricom: Innovative Telecom Solutions To Empower Kenyans, Laura Beauchesne, Nick Dorion, Nathaniel Griggs, Jeffrey S. Harrison

Robins Case Network

Safaricom is thriving by selling what many would consider a luxury product in an impoverished country. Africa is a vast market for telecommunications, and Kenya is the third largest mobile market. It is also one of the fastest growing economies in the region. This case contains a fascinating perspective on Kenya, and on the range of services Safaricom provides to its citizens. It also contains excellent detail on Safaricom’s business and philanthropic strategies.

Gratitude In Relationship Marketing: Theoretical Development And Directions For Future Research, Randle D. Raggio, Anna M. Walz, Mousumi Bose Godbole, Judith Anne Garretson Folse

Marketing Faculty Publications

Purpose – For centuries, gratitude has represented an integral component of social relationships, yet it remains relatively overlooked by marketing scholars in the study of commercial relationships. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how gratitude helps to build, maintain and transform commercial relationships and to suggest noteworthy areas of investigation for those researchers seeking to help companies understand the role of gratitude in relationship marketing.

Design/methodology/approach – Gratitude's role in relational exchange is explored by a review of relevant literature and two qualitative studies. Questions developed from the literature and exploratory interviews are then investigated in a main …

How Consumers’ Use Of Brand Vs. Attribute Information, Randle D. Raggio, Robert P. Leone, William C. Black

Marketing Faculty Publications

Prior research has identified that brands have a differential impact on consumer evaluations across various brand benefits. But no work has considered whether these effects are stable over time, or evolve in a consistent way. We address this question by decomposing consumer evaluations of brand benefits into overall brand and detailed attribute-specific sources in order to understand whether brand effects remain stable or evolve over time. With two unique datasets, the first containing cross-sectional data from Kodak across four different consumer goods categories, and another longitudinal dataset from the U.S. and Canada in the surface-cleaning category, covering seven brands over …

Beyond “Halo”: The Identification And Implications Of Differential Brand Effects Across Global Markets, Randle D. Raggio, William C. Black, Robert P. Leone

Marketing Faculty Publications

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether brands impact consumer evaluations in ways other than a consistent halo and the degree to which consumers use both overall brand information along with detailed attribute-specific information to construct their evaluations.

Design/methodology/approach – The authors decompose consumer evaluations of brand benefits into overall brand and detailed attribute-specific sources through a standard CFA approach. Data cover 55 brands in four product categories sold in nine global markets.

Findings – Halo effects are rare in global CPG markets. The authors identify the presence of differential brand effects in eight of nine …

The Effect On Stockholder Wealth Of Product Recalls And Government Action: The Case Of Toyota's Accelerator Pedal Recall, Jayendra Gokhale, Raymond M. Brooks, Victor J. Tremblay

Accounting, Economics, Finance, and Information Sciences - Daytona Beach

We analyze the effect of Toyota’s faulty accelerator pedal on stockholder wealth. Using the event study methodology, we show that a major recall in January of 2010 caused the company’s cumulative abnormal returns to fall by 19%. Continued concerns that Toyota was unable to identify and adequately fix the problem induced the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to conduct its own investigation in March, 2010. The results of this government investigation exonerated the company and caused Toyota’s cumulative abnormal returns to rise by almost 9%. The Toyota case provides an opportunity to study a product recall with both company error …

T&L Powerpoint Career Day 2014, University Of North Florida

Transportation & Logistics Program General Materials

This PowerPoint was created for the Transportation and Logistics Flagship Program of the University of North Florida.

Flyer: Target 2014 Facility Tour, University Of North Florida

Transportation & Logistics Tours

This flyer was created for UNF's Coggin College of Business for their Transportation and Logistics Tour of the Target Facility in Lake City.

Flyer: Volkswagen Facility Tour, University Of North Florida

Transportation & Logistics Tours

This flyer was created for UNF's Coggin College of Business for their Transportation and Logistics Tour of the Volkswagen Facility.

Tls Newsletter, Volume 7, Edition 11. January, 2014, Unf Transportation And Logistics Society

Transportation & Logistics Society Newsletter

Inside the Newsletter: TLS Meeting on January 22. TLS President's Corner. Upcoming Events. 13th Annual TLS Hubbard House Holiday Drive. Get to know TLS Treasurer James Flannagan. T & L Spring Career Day--Are You Prepared? TLS on Tour--Bacardi Bottling Corporation. Life after Graduation with Rebecca Bratcher Cobb

Measuring Customer's Satisfaction On Bus Transportation, Rabiul Islam, Mohammed S. Chowdhury, Mohammad Sumann Sarker, Salauddin Ahmed

New York School for Career and Applied Studies (NYSCAS) Publications and Research

The purpose of the study is to examine the factors measuring customers’ satisfaction, especially the impact of service quality on customers’ satisfaction in public transportation industry in the university town of Sintok located in Kedah province of Malaysia. In order to assess the relationships between service quality and customer satisfaction survey http://www.scientificjournals.org/journals2007/articles/1003.htm data were collected from 300 Bus commuters. All hypotheses were tested using Pearson correlations, controlling for the background variables of gender, marital status, ethnicity and education. The results indicate that hypotheses 1 through 5 were supported. Using multiple regressions as a basis for causal paths, a model was …

Natural Gas Service Expansion Criteria In Maine, Kevin Mahaffey

Muskie School Capstones and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to gain an understanding of the framework used by Maine’s natural gas utilities in making decisions to expand natural gas infrastructure and service to new customers,and then to apply this knowledge in an attempt to identify municipalities that are potentially attractive candidates for service expansion within Maine.

This study is not a precise model for gas utilities, but is meant rather to be a reconnaissance study for finding viable and attractive candidates for service.This study was limited both by resources and the inaccessibility of proprietary information.

California – Land Of “Lawless Taxation” And The “Midnight Special”: Outlier Or Leader In A Growing Trend?, Mystica M. Alexander

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “Taxpayers in California recently found themselves the target of a retroactive grab for revenue by the Franchise Tax Board (FTB) in what has called an act of “lawless taxation” by the state of California. The source of the conflict was the Qualified Small Business Stock credit that had been in place in California since 1993. The tax credit, which was designed to encourage innovation and investment in California-based enterprises, allowed business owners who had at least eighty percent of their assets and employees in California to take a credit of fifty percent of the capital gain realized on a …