Camp Carey is an annual freshman orientation program that takes place before the beginning of the semester in late July and early August. As the incoming W. P. Carey classes continue to grow each year, so to does the size of Camp. Beginning this project, we looked at potential that we could directly impact the quality of the camp experience, and ensure that Camp remains a memorable and quality experience for all involved. Camp is directed and facilitated every year by W. P. Carey staff members and a group upperclassmen, the camp directors and facilitators. Due to the direct impact that these upperclassmen have on the camp experience, we decided to focus our attention on improving the training provided to these individuals, and to emphasize a process of continuous data collection and improvement. The director training is broken into three modules that focus on risk management, facilitator selection, and facilitator training. Each of the seven exercises in the director training is based on a tool or practice used by modern companies in project management and human resources management. They were designed with three goals in mind: to immediately increase the directors' level of preparedness for Camp, to produce a written record to be used by directors in subsequent Camp seasons, and to provide directors with an introductory level of experience with concepts and tools that will benefit them in their professional careers. The facilitator training portion centers around the creation of a 1 credit, repeatable hybrid course to both reward facilitators, train them in proper conduct and materials for camp, as well as collect valuable feedback from the facilitators. The creation of a larger spring training session, designed to prepare the facilitators for activity facilitation, emergency preparedness, and representing W. P. Carey and ASU, and the implementation of a summer review training session are designed to prepare facilitators to lead the best camp possible. Further, the essays and surveys involved in the class are set up to gather valuable information and feedback from the facilitators for further improving the program year-over-year.

Our research encompassed the prospect draft in baseball and looked at what type of player teams drafted to maximize value. We wanted to know which position returned the best value to the team that drafted them, and which level is safer to draft players from, college or high school. We decided to look at draft data from 2006-2010 for the first ten rounds of players selected. Because there is only a monetary cap on players drafted in the first ten rounds we restricted our data to these players. Once we set up the parameters we compiled a spreadsheet of these players with both their signing bonuses and their wins above replacement (WAR). This allowed us to see how much a team was spending per win at the major league level. After the data was compiled we made pivot tables and graphs to visually represent our data and better understand the numbers. We found that the worst position that MLB teams could draft would be high school second baseman. They returned the lowest WAR of any player that we looked at. In general though high school players were more costly to sign and had lower WARs than their college counterparts making them, on average, a worse pick value wise. The best position you could pick was college shortstops. They had the trifecta of the best signability of all players, along with one of the highest WARs and lowest signing bonuses. These were three of the main factors that you want with your draft pick and they ranked near the top in all three categories. This research can help give guidelines to Major League teams as they go to select players in the draft. While there are always going to be exceptions to trends, by following the enclosed research teams can minimize risk in the draft.

This honors thesis project provides analysis on the barriers to treatment seeking regarding mental health. Research on treatment seeking barriers was done, and then used to create a digital campaign that was run via organic sharing and a boosted Facebook post using custom audiences. The research begins to examine the relationships between stigma and help-seeking regarding mental health. The leading barriers for seeking mental health treatment include both social and self stigma. Social stigma involves fearing judgment from others regarding mental health, and self stigma involves people's negative judgments about having mental health issues themselves. There is a negative cycle between self and social stigma as people's self perceptions often reflect into society, and society's general opinions often influence people's perceptions of themselves. In order to decrease mental health stigma efforts must be made to erase both self and social stigma. Research on consumer psychology showed the effectiveness of targeting people's need for belonging. In order to target people's need for belonging the campaign was designed to show mental health issues as a commonality between people that can be solved, rather than as a negative discrepancy. Research into digital marketing trends showed Facebook as one of the most powerful platforms for reach and audience targeting, so it was chosen as the ideal platform for this campaign. The analysis of barriers to treatment seeking, consumer psychology, and digital marketing culminated in the digital campaign, "Just because you can't see it...doesn't mean it's not there," promoting mental health awareness, which ran for 5 days reaching 9,874 people and getting 5,117 views.

Amazon Prime Air is the innovative new service that promises automated drone delivery in thirty minutes or less. The platform has not yet been brought to market, but there is a plethora compelling data available that suggests it will be a unique and highly disruptive business segment for Amazon. The aim of this thesis is to analyze the framework laid out by Amazon.com, Inc. for their anticipated Prime Air drone delivery platform, and offer our recommendations for what steps the e-commerce giant should take moving forward. Following a brief recap of the company's founding and a breakdown of its various business segments, we will begin our analysis by examining past strategic decisions that Amazon has made which have directly contributed to their current market position. It is our goal to construct a narrative of what events lead the company to begin developing a fleet of automated delivery vehicles. Following this history lesson, we will review and criticize the existing elements of Amazon's Prime Air platform, and explore any possible alternatives that they could have taken to optimize the development of this exciting new technology. Criticisms will touch upon elements such as cost efficiencies, brand management, and utilization of infrastructure to name but a few. These criticisms will be based upon data sourced from Amazon's available material as well as comments from market analysts and journalists. The culminating element of our analysis will be to offer our professional recommendations as to what we believe the next logical steps that Amazon should take for their Prime Air platform. These recommendations will be informed by our criticisms and our understanding of Amazon as a corporation. This chapter will be largely concerned with guiding Amazon towards a fully optimized drone delivery platform. Our recommendations will be based upon our extensive experience concerning cost and logistical efficiencies, as well as our knowledge of Amazon as a corporation. We will offer succinct suggestions for Amazon's immediate needs as well as long-term solutions to lingering obstacles that they may face.

Customer lifetime value has been a popular topic within the marketing field with which many researchers and marketing managers have been dwelling. The topic plays an important role in customer segmentation and has been studied and applied in a variety of business areas. The main objective of customer lifetime value and customer segmentation is to classify the importance level of each client to a company and compare it to other clients. Questions, such as which marketing strategies should be implemented for which customers and how much should be invested in a certain group of customers can all be answered by customer lifetime value and customer segmentation. However, the related literature is missing comparative research on assessing the amount of time from the initial point of acquisition that a client needs to be with the company in order to accurately predict its customer segment. This paper intends to provide a clarification to the problem. Purpose: Analyze customer profitability with clustering analysis and identify how many years does a customer need to be with a company to accurately predict its customer segment. By determining this number, managers can understand their clients better and establish which clients will most likely yield a greater profit at an early stage of the relationship. Methodology: Using data mining to clean and prepare our financial services dataset, we selected young clients who were less than ten years old. Linear regression and K-means clustering analyses then returned five clusters of clients. Next, we predicted the accuracy levels of customers with two to seven data points against the "correct" segment. Lastly, we validated our overall prediction accuracy levels using the chance probability and the desired classification accuracy, calculated from a discriminant analysis. Findings: We found that using five data points or more to cluster returned percentage accuracies greater than the desired classification accuracy. However, this desired classification accuracy and the percentage accuracies were fairly low and not sufficient to use as a base for business decisions and other managerial purposes.

This paper is a research study of the market for fine art. The art market describes the collective ecosystem of artists, sellers and buyers creating, selling and buying art. A literature review was conducted with the purpose of understanding why art is valuable. This research states that there are three primary categories of value that apply to art: Financial, Signal and Quintessential. Financial value refers to the monetary value of art. Signal value refers to the social value of owning or creating well-known art. Quintessential value describes art's ability to elicit feelings and ideas from those who engage with the art. A hypothesized model of the art market was created that associated the three entities of the art market with the three value types. Two research studies were conducted that analyzed the ways that these three value types exist in the art market. Based on the findings of the research, it was determined that all three-value types influence each entity. However, the three value types rank in terms of overall importance and impact on the entities. This new model of a three-tiered value type model applies to consumer preferences in the market for luxury items.

Educational attainment is important for economic and personal well-being. While policy makers continue efforts to increase access to higher education, a national outcomes have yet to improve. Higher education application and attendance is complex and heavily influenced by predetermined factors. Social capital and a thorough barriers analysis begin to unpack the context and issues around high school graduation and college going, specifically for minority, low income, and first-generation students. An analysis of higher education outcomes nationwide and within Arizona, specifically in the Phoenix Union High School District (highly representative of low income, first generation, and minority students) reveals that current trajectories are not enough to significantly improve educational attainment. Some notable programs exist that have implemented student, school, and scholarship centered interventions, in addition to conditional acceptances. This paper will create a simulation of a new intervention based on past efforts and their outcomes, ‘Automatic Acceptances,’ within the state of Arizona starting in the 2017-2018 school year until the 2030-2031 school year. Overall, given the increase in educational attainment as a result of the simulation, the ‘Automatic Acceptances’ intervention is validated.

Contraceptive methods are vital in maintaining women’s health and preventing unintended pregnancy. When a woman uses a method that reflects her personal preferences and lifestyle, the chances of low adoption and misuse decreases. The research aim of this project is to develop a web-based decision aid tailored to college women that assists in the selection of contraceptive methods. For this reason, My Contraceptive Choice (MCC) is built using the gaps identified in existing resources provided by Planned Parenthood and Bedsider, along with feedback from a university student focus group. The tool is a short quiz that is followed by two pages of information and resources for a variety of different contraceptive methods commonly used by college women. The evaluation phase of this project includes simulated test cases, a Google Forms survey, and a second focus group to assess the tool for accuracy and usability. From the survey, 130 of the 150 (80.7%) responses believe that the recommendations provided can help them select a birth control method. Furthermore, 136 of the 150 (90.0%) responses believe that the layout of the tool made it easy to navigate. The second focus group feedback suggests that the MCC tool is perceived to be accurate, usable, and useful to the college population. Participants believe that the MCC tool performs better overall compared to the Planned Parenthood quiz in creating a customized recommendation and Bedsider in overall usability. The test cases reveal that there are further improvements that could be made to create a more accurate recommendation to the user. In conclusion, the new MCC tool accomplishes the aim of creating a beneficial resource to college women in assisting with the birth control selection process.

The COVID-19 pandemic has and will continue to radically shift the workplace. An increasing percentage of the workforce desires flexible working options and, as such, firms are likely to require less office space going forward. Additionally, the economic downturn caused by the pandemic provides an opportunity for companies to secure favorable rent rates on new lease agreements. This project aims to evaluate and measure Company X’s potential cost savings from terminating current leases and downsizing office space in five selected cities. Along with city-specific real estate market research and forecasts, we employ a four-stage model of Company X’s real estate negotiation process to analyze whether existing lease agreements in these cities should be renewed or terminated.

Micro influencers have become extremely powerful in terms of swaying buying patterns among consumers. This thesis examines the greater impact that micro influencers have on brand marketing. This was completed through a literature review that highlights the evolution of marketing, influencer marketing, discussing reach, relevance, and resonance, and Generation Z’s purchasing decisions. In addition, we conducted an online survey through Qualtrics that allowed us to analyze the impact social media influencers have. The results of our research indicate that TikTok is used most frequently, but Instagram is where social media influencers are followed most. From our data, we concluded that Generation Z is most influenced by authentic, genuine content created by influencers regardless of follower count. We recommend that a brand interested in reaching Generation Z (we refer to the brand as “Brand X”) use micro influencers, as our research shows that genuine relationships are valued among this generation. We believe that micro influencers are the most valuable to use as they are able to create meaningful relationships with consumers due to their reach, relevance, and resonance with the individuals their content reaches.