Business Intelligence Commons^™

Guinness Is The "Pumpkin Spice Latte" Of St. Patrick's Day, Jin-A Choi, Yi Luo, Bond Benton

School of Communication and Media Scholarship and Creative Works

This study by a team of faculty from the Joetta Di Bella and Fred C. Sautter III Center for Strategic Communication in the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University shows that Guinness was the most-discussed brand on social media leading up to St. Patrick’s Day, and not just in the traditional ways people share how they drink the popular beer brand. The volume of social media conversations related to Guinness beer and St. Patrick’s Day saw a 25% increase. Most social chats exhibited a happy mood as evidenced by a 62% joyful sentiment.

While the Shamrock Shake …

Halloween 2023: It’S A Barbie World!, Jin-A Choi, Yi Luo, Bond Benton

School of Communication and Media Scholarship and Creative Works

Encapsulated in pink, Barbie epitomizes a dreamland that stimulates feelings of nostalgia, joy, and imagination, fulfilling individuals’ desire to escape. Mattel, the parent company of Barbie, and Warner Bros. through 100 or more brand collaborations (del Barco, 2023), has relentlessly swept the world with a blitz of Barbie-themed merchandises, such as Barbie dreamhouse rentals, Barbie gaming consoles, Barbie pasta, Barbie pink suitcases, Barbie apparels, bright fuchsia Xbox, Barbie boat cruise, pink burger, etc. Staggering surge for online sales of Barbie-themed products affirms the impressive upswing of online consumers’ interest in Barbie.

With the significance of Halloween, the popularity of Barbie, …

The Social Media Industry: Where Is It Heading?, Yanli Zhang, Huy Will Nguyen, Young Hoon Jung, Isabelle Yi Ren

Department of Management Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The social media industry has entered a new stage with intensifying competition and heightened uncertainty about future directions. The purpose of this paper is to provide analyses of the current challenges and to identify industry-wide trends that may offer a roadmap for the future. This study identified five major trends in the current social media industry: 1) content is king, and that content is moving to visual; 2) artificial intelligence is key to competitive advantage; 3) network effects still matter, but business model innovation can overcome that barrier; 4) the need to broaden revenue sources; and 5) the strive for …

Tree-Based Algorithm For Stable And Efficient Data Clustering, Hasan Aljabbouli, Abdullah Albizri, Antoine Harfouche

Department of Information Management and Business Analytics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The K-means algorithm is a well-known and widely used clustering algorithm due to its simplicity and convergence properties. However, one of the drawbacks of the algorithm is its instability. This paper presents improvements to the K-means algorithm using a K-dimensional tree (Kd-tree) data structure. The proposed Kd-tree is utilized as a data structure to enhance the choice of initial centers of the clusters and to reduce the number of the nearest neighbor searches required by the algorithm. The developed framework also includes an efficient center insertion technique leading to an incremental operation that overcomes the instability problem of the K-means …

Family Ownership And Corporate Environmental Responsibility: The Contingent Effect Of Venture Capital And Institutional Environment, Zhu Zhu, Feifei Lu

Department of Management Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

As scholars and policy makers pay more attention to the environmental impact of economic activities, more focus has been placed on the corporate environmental responsibility (CER) of family firms, which accounts for the majority of businesses in both developed and developing countries. Using a sample of 4714 private enterprises across 23 provinces in China, the current study examines the effect of family ownership on CER investment, as well as the moderating effects of venture capital investment and local institutional development. Results show that concentrated family ownership leads to lower CER spending, however, when venture capital investment comes from developed markets, …

A Hybrid Data Mining Approach For Identifying The Temporal Effects Of Variables Associated With Breast Cancer Survival, Serhat Simsek, Ugur Kursuncu, Eyyub Kibis, Musheera Anisabdellatif, Ali Dag

Department of Information Management and Business Analytics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Predicting breast cancer survival is crucial for practitioners to determine possible outcomes and make better treatment plans for the patients. In this study, a hybrid data mining based methodology was constructed to differentiate the variables whose importance for survival change over time. Therefore, the importance of variables was determined for three different time periods (i.e. one, five, and ten years). To conduct such an analysis, the most parsimonious models were constructed by employing one regression analysis method—Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO), and one metaheuristic optimization method, namely a Genetic Algorithm (GA). Due to the high imbalance between the …

Subjectivity Of Diamond Prices In Online Retail: Insights From A Data Mining Study, Stanislav Mamonov, Tamilla Triantoro

Department of Information Management and Business Analytics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Diamonds belong to a unique product category whose perceived value is largely dependent on socially constructed beliefs. To explore the degree to which the physical properties of a diamond can be used to predict the diamond price, we perform data mining on a large dataset of loose diamonds scraped from an online diamond retailer. We find that diamond weight, color and clarity are the key characteristics that influence diamond prices. The data mining results also suggest a high degree of subjectivity in diamond pricing that may reflect price obfuscation strategies employed by diamond retailers.

Proctored Versus Unproctored Online Exams: Studying The Impact Of Exam Environment On Student Performance, Kimberly Hollister, Mark L. Berenson

Department of Information Management and Business Analytics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Increasing numbers of universities are offering courses in online and hybrid formats. One challenge in online assessment is the maintenance of academic integrity. We present a thorough statistical analysis to uncover differences in student performance when online exams are administered in a proctored environment (i.e., in class) versus an unproctored environment (i.e., offsite). Controlling for student grade point average (GPA), no significant differences in mean overall course performance or exam performance between the two groups were found, nor were there any differences in the mean vectors of individual exam scores. The study reveals that the group taking online exams in …

A Relative Comparison Of Leading Supply Chain Management Software Packages, Zhongxian Wang, Ruiliang Yan, Kimberly Hollister, Ruben Xing

Department of Information Management and Business Analytics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Supply Chain Management (SCM) has proven to be an effective tool that aids companies in the development of competitive advantages. SCM Systems are relied on to manage warehouses, transportation, trade logistics and various other issues concerning the coordinated movement of products and services from suppliers to customers. Although in today’s fast paced business environment, numerous supply chain solution tools are readily available to companies, choosing the right SCM software is not an easy task. The complexity of SCM systems creates a multifaceted issue when selecting the right software, particularly in light of the speed at which technology evolves. In this …

Using Van Valens Procedure In Business Research To Assess Consistent Differences In Multidimensional Variability In Two Or More Groups, Mark L. Berenson, Kimberly Killmer Hollister

Department of Information Management and Business Analytics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Much business research involves comparisons in two or more groups on many dimensions. This paper primarily focuses on demonstrating and providing guidance as to how researchers should approach a multivariate analysis in the comparison of sets of corresponding characteristics in two or more independent groups. In particular, this paper demonstrates the utility of a simple but not widely known procedure developed by Van Valen (1978) that should be employed to test for the significance of differences in overall variability in the sets of corresponding characteristics in two or more groups, a test that enjoys much statistical power in detecting significant …

Proctored Vs. Un-Proctored Exams In A Hybrid Course: A Brief Comparison Of Student Results, Kimberly Hollister

Department of Information Management and Business Analytics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The research aims to examine whether there is a difference in undergraduate student performance on skill-based exams in an introductory computer literacy course at a state comprehensive university when exams are administered in-class vs. online. Two samples, each consisting of approximately 107 students, are considered for this study. A comparison of exam scores will be used to identify differences in exam performance between the two groups.