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Branding is one of the most important tools a business can use. Whether consumers know it or not, every purchasing decision that they make – be it for a product or service – is rooted in the brand. Thus, it is somewhat of a surprise that branding for individuals did not become popularized until 1997, with Tom Peters’ article “The Brand Called You.” In his article, Peters remarks on how changes in the marketplace and technology make developing a personal brand more accessible, as well as more important. The increasingly competitive marketplace combined with the rise of social media means that personal branding is even more important and more attainable today. Thus, it is vital for students entering the workforce to develop a brand that will allow them to distinguish themselves. This research examines whether or not students understand what personal branding is and if they have taken the steps to develop their personal brand. The research questions are as follows:
• Do students understand what personal branding is?
• Are students able to define their skills?
• Do students have a career plan?
• Do students have a plan to promote their brand?
A pilot study was first distributed to students of Arizona State University which found that students lack an understanding of what personal branding is and have a need for the knowledge and tools to develop a personal brand. A workshop was then developed to address these issues. This workshop was held three times: first, for a Landscape Architecture class, second, for a marketing class, and third, for a student sales organization. The workshop discussed branding, personal branding, and then the participants were able to begin working on developing their own personal brand. The students in the first workshop had two sessions and were able to complete their own personal brand process with the workshop leader, while participants from the second and third workshops completed it on their own, after only a single workshop session. After completing the in-person workshop, participants shared their brand with their fellow students in a Google Plus page. Finally, participants completed an exit survey. This exit survey was used to measure the research questions.
The first workshop proved to be most effective, even though the participants in the first workshop were all landscape design students and the majority of the participants in the second and third workshops were business students. It was found that unless the students’ own brand development process was finished during the workshop or affected the students’ grade, it would not be completed. It was also evident in all of the workshops that slides with imagery were more effective at starting discussions than the text-heavy slides. As such, future workshops should be designed with a greater time allowance, the intent of the students’ own brand development process to be completed during the workshop, and the presentation should be redesigned to better initiate discussion among participants.
• Do students understand what personal branding is?
• Are students able to define their skills?
• Do students have a career plan?
• Do students have a plan to promote their brand?
A pilot study was first distributed to students of Arizona State University which found that students lack an understanding of what personal branding is and have a need for the knowledge and tools to develop a personal brand. A workshop was then developed to address these issues. This workshop was held three times: first, for a Landscape Architecture class, second, for a marketing class, and third, for a student sales organization. The workshop discussed branding, personal branding, and then the participants were able to begin working on developing their own personal brand. The students in the first workshop had two sessions and were able to complete their own personal brand process with the workshop leader, while participants from the second and third workshops completed it on their own, after only a single workshop session. After completing the in-person workshop, participants shared their brand with their fellow students in a Google Plus page. Finally, participants completed an exit survey. This exit survey was used to measure the research questions.
The first workshop proved to be most effective, even though the participants in the first workshop were all landscape design students and the majority of the participants in the second and third workshops were business students. It was found that unless the students’ own brand development process was finished during the workshop or affected the students’ grade, it would not be completed. It was also evident in all of the workshops that slides with imagery were more effective at starting discussions than the text-heavy slides. As such, future workshops should be designed with a greater time allowance, the intent of the students’ own brand development process to be completed during the workshop, and the presentation should be redesigned to better initiate discussion among participants.
ContributorsBinsfeld, Jacqueline Rose (Author) / Montoya, Detra (Thesis director) / Gray, Nancy (Committee member) / Department of Marketing (Contributor) / W. P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2015-12
Description
Does the USA PATRIOT Act place unconstitutional pressure on the telecommunications industry to comply with federal surveillance requests for information at the determent of their domestic and international operations? Is the Act in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment protection against unlawful search and seizures due to its vague language and lack of judicial oversight or adequate safeguards? In this thesis I will analyze whether, the USA PATRIOT Act infringes on a corporation's civil liberties through both historical references of both its legislative structure and design as well as current issues at the center of Congressional controversy. The forced cooperation demanded of the telecoms by the government subjects these businesses to possible consumer distrust, financial burdens, and inability to ensure confidentiality of communications for their multinational clients. The U.S. based telecommunications firms will continue to grow in the global marketplace; however, their competitive advantage will be limited by the excessive misuse of Federal powers to access United States' consumer information through third-party enterprises. Therefore, the provisions relating to the government's unchecked access to telecommunication data are unconstitutional because they do not serve a legitimate government interest in the least restrictive manner possible. They should be revised to balance both national security concerns and a telecom's right to protect its corporate infrastructure and brand.
ContributorsWhitaker, Victoria Lynn (Author) / Lynk, Myles (Thesis director) / Coordes, Laura (Committee member) / Department of Economics (Contributor) / W. P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2015-12
Description
This paper explores the history of sovereign debt default in developing economies and attempts to highlight the mistakes and accomplishments toward achieving debt sustainability. In the past century, developing economies have received considerable investment due to higher returns and a degree of disregard for the risks accompanying these investments. As the former Citibank chairman, Walter Wriston articulated, "Countries don't go bust" (This Time is Different, 51). Still, unexpected negative externalities have shattered this idea as the majority of developing economies follow a cyclical pattern of default. As coined by Reinhart and Rogoff, sovereign governments that fall into this continuous cycle have become known as serial defaulters. Most developed markets have not defaulted since World War II, thus escaping this persistent trap. Still, there have been developing economies that have been able to transition out of serial defaulting. These economies are able to leverage debt to compound growth without incurring the protracted consequences of a default. Although the cases are few, we argue that developing markets such as Chile, Mexico, Russia, and Uruguay have been able to escape this vicious cycle. Thus, our research indicates that collaborative debt restructurings coupled with long term economic policies are imperative to transitioning out of debt intolerance and into a sustainable debt position. Successful economies are able to leverage debt to create strong foundational growth rather than gambling with debt in the hopes of achieving rapid catch- up growth.
ContributorsPitt, Ryan (Co-author) / Martinez, Nick (Co-author) / Choueiri, Robert (Co-author) / Goegan, Brian (Thesis director) / Silverman, Daniel (Committee member) / Department of Economics (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / W. P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2015-12
Description
The purpose of this honors thesis is to discover ways for a large humanitarian organization to more cost effectively manage its fleet of vehicles. The first phase of work involved cleaning the large data set provided by the organization. Next, we used the program STATA to run a Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR) to see which variables have the largest effect on the percentage of price decline and total mileage of each vehicle. The SUR model indicated that price decline is most influenced by cumulative minor repairs, total accessories, age, percentage of paved roads, and number of accidents. In addition, total mileage was most affected by percentage of paved roads, cumulative minor repairs, all wheel drive, and age. The final step of the project involved providing recommendations to the humanitarian organization based on the above results. We recommend several changes to their fleet management, including: driver training programs, increasing the amount of preventative maintenance performed on vehicles, and increasing the amount of accessories purchased for each vehicle. Implementing these changes could potentially save the organization millions of dollars due to the scope of its operation.
ContributorsPisauro, Jeffrey (Co-author) / Miller, Michael (Co-author) / Eftekhar, Mahyar (Thesis director) / Maltz, Arnold (Committee member) / Fowler, John (Committee member) / Department of Supply Chain Management (Contributor) / W. P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2015-12
Description
Sex trafficking in the United States is an enormous illegal underground business economy that involves the sexual exploitation of many persons. Due to the large nature of the sex trafficking business and the many different types of sex trafficking, it is helpful for social workers, government agencies, and activists to understand the intricacies of the various types of sex trafficking. This research focused on determining the human resources business structures behind pimp businesses that relied on mental coercion of the victim. The data source used, Pimpfeet.com—an online pimp authored blog—provided data from actual pimps on their business practices that were analyzed to determine trends in recruitment and retention. These trends were compared to human resource management theories from business literature to determine to what extent, or if at all, a pimp’s business recruited and retained workers in a way that was similar to how a legal business would, according to human resources strategies. The data extracted from Pimpfeet.com and used in this study consisted of 69 pimp quotes that were put into three recruitment categories and five retention categories based on human resource management literature in order to see which categories were used for recruitment and retention by pimps. This study found that pimp recruitment and retention followed, to some extent, the same models described in the human resource management literature, with slight modifications. This study showed that job embeddedness theory (Holtom, Mitchel and Lee, 2009) was able to explain much of why sex trafficking victims are retained so well by pimps since they are so embedded in the prostitution lifestyle. These findings show the different business techniques that pimps use for recruitment and retention of sex workers and are useful for understanding how a social worker, government entity or an activist can combat these forces to help remove victims from a pimp’s control, or keep victims from getting recruited in the first place. Further areas of research related to this topic were suggested.
ContributorsRivera, Kameron (Co-author) / La Benz, Alexis (Co-author) / Roe-Sepowitz, Dominique (Thesis director) / Corley, Kevin (Committee member) / W. P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Chemical Engineering Program (Contributor) / T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
"The Problem of Hope: Literary Tragedy in Mid-Twentieth Century American Fiction" examines Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, and Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar through the lens of tragedy. This thesis delves into how conflicts between internal and external identities can create a tragic individual, what kinds of success count toward achievement of the "American Dream," and whether the tragic "common man" is the socially normative one or the socially disenfranchised one. It raises a three-dimensional theoretical approach to American tragedy and, most importantly, considers the significance of tragic hope for American literature. This paper questions the construction of American identities across class, race, and gender according to social scripts. It seeks to uncover what forces these scripts exert on American cultural myths and rereads those myths through tragedy to explore Miller's idea of a noble common man. By moving from Miller to Ellison to Plath, this thesis traces the undercurrents of tragedy through some of the most identity-focused novels of mid-twentieth century American fiction to see how the overarching American narrative changed from 1940 to 1969 as the US underwent significant social changes domestically and image changes abroad. Ultimately, this paper concludes that tragedy in mid-twentieth century American fiction points toward a new idea of American success as a success that occurs beyond social scripts.
ContributorsMedeiros, Amy Marie (Author) / Holbo, Christine (Thesis director) / Sadowski-Smith, Claudia (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor) / W. P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Company X has developed RealSenseTM technology, a depth sensing camera that provides machines the ability to capture three-dimensional spaces along with motion within these spaces. The goal of RealSense was to give machines human-like senses, such as knowing how far away objects are and perceiving the surrounding environment. The key issue for Company X is how to commercialize RealSense's depth recognition capabilities. This thesis addresses the problem by examining which markets to address and how to monetize this technology. The first part of the analysis identified potential markets for RealSense. This was achieved by evaluating current markets that could benefit from the camera's gesture recognition, 3D scanning, and depth sensing abilities. After identifying seven industries where RealSense could add value, a model of the available, addressable, and obtainable market sizes was developed for each segment. Key competitors and market dynamics were used to estimate the portion of the market that Company X could capture. These models provided a forecast of the discounted gross profits that could be earned over the next five years. These forecasted gross profits, combined with an examination of the competitive landscape and synergistic opportunities, resulted in the selection of the three segments thought to be most profitable to Company X. These segments are smart home, consumer drones, and automotive. The final part of the analysis investigated entrance strategies. Company X's competitive advantages in each space were found by examining the competition, both for the RealSense camera in general and other technologies specific to each industry. Finally, ideas about ways to monetize RealSense were developed by exploring various revenue models and channels.
ContributorsDunn, Nicole (Co-author) / Boudreau, Thomas (Co-author) / Kinzy, Chris (Co-author) / Radigan, Thomas (Co-author) / Simonson, Mark (Thesis director) / Hertzel, Michael (Committee member) / WPC Graduate Programs (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / Department of Economics (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Science (Contributor) / W. P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
This study examines the differences in presence and perception of the Samsung and Apple brands in Spain compared to the United States. Primary research was collected on-site in Spain and comparatively analyzed to experiences in the United States from the perspective of an American citizen. Qualitative data in the form of observations and interviews was collected as well as extensive secondary research. The study will conclude international implications of these two brands in Spain.
ContributorsNeerhof, Samantha Noel (Author) / Gray, Nancy (Thesis director) / Giard, Jacques (Committee member) / W. P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Department of Marketing (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
This study aimed to extend beyond existing research on the male-grooming industry to examine the reality of marketing an everyday cosmetic product to men. This thesis contains a two-part original research study involving a qualitative, exploratory study (Study 1) clarifying college-aged men's attitudes toward male grooming products and makeup for men; and a quantitative, experimental study (Study 2) created to test theories developed from Study 1. Study 1 discovered a pattern among male participants of citing functional/medicinal qualities of male-grooming products as their justification for purchase. Study 2 tested whether this could be applied to makeup by comparing the effects of two advertisements for male cosmetic products on the likelihood of purchase of the product advertised. The main implications of this research suggest that one way to integrate makeup for men into the mainstream market is to release products in free trials before releasing them for sale, since men in the study were somewhat likely to use a free sample of the product in the test advertisements, but unwilling to purchase it. Additionally, the presence of acne in the participants moderated the effects of the ads such that men without acne were more likely to try a cosmetic product when presented with the medicinal benefits of the product in addition to the appearance-enhancing benefits, rather than appearance-enhancing benefits alone. Overall, men with acne were more willing than men without acne to use the product, regardless of the advertising appeal.
ContributorsGibson, Jessica Lajoie (Author) / Eaton, Kathryn (Thesis director) / Lisjak, Monika (Committee member) / Department of Marketing (Contributor) / W. P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
In the last seven years the practice of capital punishment in the United States has been shaken by one of the most unlikely suspects- the prescription drug market. The practice of capital punishment has gone from fervent support to abolishment and back again throughout the nation's history. Over time the process of capital punishment has evolved from public hangings to a secretive medical procedure. The American people have become detached from the act because it is no longer right in front of their face, but often occurs in a small prison room with a viewing window for a select group of witnesses. The modern method of capital punishment is lethal injection- a three-drug protocol that is accepted as the most humane means of executing criminals. The protocol has faced criticism and legal challenges for years. This is in part because the United States stands alone as one of the last westernized democratic nations to regularly execute convicted criminals. European activist groups and government agencies have been fighting for abolishment in the United States for years with little progress. Recently, the activist groups discovered a novel way to make an impact on the capital punishment system in the United States that had not been attempted. The groups appealed to the drug manufacturing companies in Europe and exposed their supply chains to the public. When it was revealed that the drugs these companies produced were ending up in U.S. prisons for executions the companies eventually stopped all sales of execution drugs to U.S. corrections facilities. This led to the European Union banning all exports of drugs for lethal use in 2011. This study will analyze the effects of the lethal injection drug boycott on the death penalty in the United States. Since the ban, death penalty states have been scrambling in order to procure enough drugs to carry out their future executions. They have attempted to obtain the drugs illegally, trade between each other, reinstate older methods of execution, and entirely change their three-drug protocol to incorporate new drugs or less drugs. Executions have dropped both in the number of death sentences handed down and the number of executions. Also, polls analyzing acceptance of the death penalty have shown decreasing support for the practice domestically. Although there are other factors that may have contributed to the decline of capital punishment in the United States, it seems as though the international lethal injection boycott has made the most progress in the shortest amount of time and has the potential to drastically change the future of the death penalty in the United States.
ContributorsFleming, Karlea Paulette (Author) / Herbert, Anne (Thesis director) / Bodansky, Daniel (Committee member) / Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law (Contributor) / W. P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05