The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the impacts of virtue signaling and tokenism within the cosmetic industry and how it relates to corporate social responsibility. Secondary research has been gathered and analyzed to find insight into how these aspects in marketing can impact the profits and other measures of success within business. This will lead to an understanding of how corporate social responsibility can be beneficial to the cosmetic industry, especially as companies grow and expand their target market. This thesis research is based on secondary research built from articles and advertisements. Additionally, research will be pulled from company statistics in profits and sales to determine success in different product launches and the marketing tactics utilized. After analyzing these differences and the types of advertisements that lead to the most successful results, it can be determined that virtue signaling and racial/ethnic tokenism can hinder success potential and thus, in contrast, companies that adhere to the ethical implications within corporate social responsibility will benefit from a reputation of sincerity.

As fan demographics of major professional sports continue to increase in age, research on youth fandom continues to be a topic of interest for researchers. There are relatively few studies in the space that adequately address the issue of an aging population of fans and highlight the importance of growing fandom starting at a young age. There have been previous studies that have looked at sports fandom and age demographics on a broader scale. This thesis aims to add on to that research by focusing more closely on younger fans and their experience with baseball prior to their college years. The data presented in this thesis was conducted through a predominately qualitative online questionnaire. This research is primarily focused on investigating three topics of interest within the consumer behavior realm of the sports industry. First, to provide a baseline understanding of what factors in childhood potentially impact a person’s likelihood of fandom as they age. Second, to look into promotions and activations that could potentially influence a consumer's behaviors and likelihood of attendance at a Major League game. Third, to provide a comprehensive look at whether or not the understanding of baseball impacts if a person is a fan of the sport. With the data collected from this research, the MLB and individual professional baseball teams can look into ways to capitalize on the findings of the research to promote youth fan engagement. Furthermore, this research identifies a significant need for the league and/or teams to invest in youth fandom and fandom enhancement opportunities.

My research aimed to examine the marketing strategy of the popular K-Pop group BTS and how they've managed to globalize their music over the past few years. The analysis focuses on the 7 P's of marketing, and how their strategy has evolved over time. My research is in the form of a video and serves as a creative documentary analyzing their marketing strategy. The link to the creative project can be found in the appendix of the research paper.

Social media has not always been a traditional form of business strategy for the fashion industry, therefore a study on the role of social media on user engagement for different tiers of fashion brands was conducted. A combination of multiple regression models, ANOVA analysis, and hashtag analysis was done to understand various aspects of the research question. Tests were run against different post types to gain deeper insights on engagement levels and statistical significance. Post frequency and correlation analysis was conducted to understand how followers respond to the content. Overall, reels and carousel media were the most successful in increasing and maintaining user engagement. Prada has the most inactive users and ineffective social media strategies to increase engagement. While they have a high following they are unable to sustain engagement levels through their posts. Whereas, Teddy Fresh, despite being a smaller brand has been successful in maintaining engagement levels through their niche target market. Lastly, SKIMS has the fastest growth rate and has been able to increase following through their high frequency post schedule. For each of the brands, this information can be used to further strategize the marketing content. Social media is dynamic and therefore the approach for curating content will differ; being able to understand which types of posts are doing well is helpful for the brands as they can continue to run analysis when needed.

N₂ fixation and ammonia oxidation (AO) are the two most important processes in the nitrogen (N) cycle of biological soil crusts (BSCs). We studied the short-term response of acetylene reduction assay (ARA) rates, an indicator of potential N₂ fixation, and AO rates to temperature (T, -5°C to 35°C) in BSC of different successional stages along the BSC ecological succession and geographic origin (hot Chihuahuan and cooler Great Basin deserts). ARA in all BSCs increased with T until saturation occurred between 15 and 20°C, and declined at 30–35°C. Culture studies using cyanobacteria isolated from these crusts indicated that the saturating effect was traceable to their inability to grow well diazotrophically within the high temperature range. Below saturation, temperature response was exponential, with Q₁₀ significantly different in the two areas (~ 5 for Great Basin BSCs; 2–3 for Chihuahuan BSCs), but similar between the two successional stages. However, in contrast to ARA, AO showed a steady increase to 30–35°C in Great Basin, and Chihuhuan BSCs showed no inhibition at any tested temperature. The T response of AO also differed significantly between Great Basin (Q₁₀ of 4.5–4.8) and Chihuahuan (Q₁₀ of 2.4–2.6) BSCs, but not between successional stages. Response of ARA rates to T did not differ from that of AO in either desert. Thus, while both processes scaled to T in unison until 20°C, they separated to an increasing degree at higher temperature. As future warming is likely to occur in the regions where BSCs are often the dominant living cover, this predicted decoupling is expected to result in higher proportion of nitrates in soil relative to ammonium. As nitrate is more easily lost as leachate or to be reduced to gaseous forms, this could mean a depletion of soil N over large landscapes globally.