A framework for quantitative analysis of user-generated spatial data

This paper proposes a new framework for automated analysis of game-play metrics for aiding game designers in finding out the critical aspects of the game caused by factors like design modications, change in playing style, etc. The core of the algorithm measures similarity between spatial distribution of user generated in-game events and automatically ranks them in order of importance. The feasibility of the method is demonstrated on a data set collected from a modern, multiplayer First Person Shooter, together with application examples of its use. The proposed framework can be used to accompany traditional testing tools and make the game design process more efficient

Engaging customers and the public profile via social networking and micro-blogging websites

Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references.Online social networks and micro-blogs are becoming increasingly important to organisationswithin the marketing process enabling business to conduct marketing research, marketingcommunications and customer service. There remains paucity in the body of knowledge as tohow organisations in South Africa are using specific social media technologies to conductsocial media marketing. This research report takes a specific focus on the micro-blogging andsocial networking phenomena and addresses the problem: What are the differences betweenorganisations utilizing social networking and those utilizing micro-blogging, to conductmarket research, marketing communications and deal with customer complaints in SouthAfrica?A review of the literature informed the research study that organisations use a variety of toolsand techniques in researching customers on social media platforms. Micro-blogging andsocial networking services were found to be valid channels for organisations to communicatemarketing information as well as deal with customer complaints due to product/serviceproblems. The study design allowed the collected data to be quantitatively analysedmeasuring independence between organisations using micro-blogging and social networkingservices within the marketing process

The Hallyu Wave as Soft Power: a portuguese case study

Dissertação de mestrado apresentada à Escola Superior de Comunicação Social como parte dos requisitos para obtenção de grau de mestre em Audiovisual e Multimédia.ABSTRACT: The entertainment industry has always been mostly dominated by the influential and powerful West. Either through cinema or music, the main figures of the field are, most often than not, North Americans and Europeans. However, in the last decades, thanks to globalization and certain technological advances, artists and creators from the East have started to conquer their own spot in the limelight of entertainment. From the Cool Japan strategy to the recent Hallyu Wave, Asian countries have invested in ways to export their culture to the rest of the world. The South Korean Hallyu Wave is no more than a materialization of culture flows in a globalized world. Thus, there is a need to understand what exactly is the ‘Wave’ and how it came to be. The main point of this project is to understand what the Korean Wave consists of and its repercussions as a Soft Power instrument.RESUMO: O Ocidente sempre dominou a indústria de entretenimento mundial, graças ao seu poder e influência. Seja no cinema ou na música, as principais figuras de destaque na área são, na grande maioria das vezes, artistas norte americanos ou europeus. No entanto, nas últimas décadas, graças à globalização e desenvolvimento da internet e redes sociais, artistas e produtores de conteúdos do continente Asiático começaram a conquistar o seu espaço na indústria de entretenimento mundial. Inicialmente o Japão tentou, através da estratégia Cool Japan com o anime, manga e J-pop, transformar o país numa superpotência cultural. Atualmente, através da Hallyu Wave (Vaga Coreana), a Coreia do Sul tem investido na exportação da sua cultura de forma a penetrar o mercado global . A Hallyu Wave é a materialização dos fluxos culturais do mundo globalizado. É por isso necessário estudar em que consiste e como surgiu esta nova Wave/Vaga de conteúdos asiáticos que tem como meta alcançar o mesmo poder e influência dos países ocidentais. Esta dissertação tem como principal objetivo perceber o que engloba e caracteriza a Hallyu Wave e as suas repercussões enquanto instrumento de Soft Power.N/

Identifying target audiences on social network sites by analyisng user connections : a social network analysis approach for instagram

Social Network Sites offer users and brands a platform to interact by following each other and liking, commenting and sharing of content. This dissertation demonstrates that brands can leverage on rich data emerging from user-user-, user-brand-, and brand-brand-connections on Instagram to identify, understand and target new prospects. The concept of homophily suggests that users are mainly connected to other users they perceive as similar to themselves and to brands they identify with. Taking these insights into account, this dissertation aims to develop an audience selection approach to identify prospects that are likely to be interest in following a focal brand on Instagram. By extracting real network data from Instagram, users were segmented based on their “follow-relationship” to a set of exemplar brands that share a similar image with the focal brand. Four segments were identified and profiled: True-Brand-Lovers, Fashion Seeker, Hidden Treasures and Intangibles. Additionally, by taking secondary layer effects into account, a targeting experiment was conducted on Instagram to examine whether and to what extent resulted segments can be employed to find highly interested prospects. Findings disclosed that new prospects can especially be found by detecting overlapping followers between brands within the set. Moreover, tendencies were found that new prospects can be detected in the secondary layer of existing followers, especially when their connection to the set is taken into account as well. Therefore, the results of this study suggest that taking users affinity to other entities to account can help brands to define more precisely targeting decisions.As redes sociais oferecem a utilizadores e marcas uma plataforma para que interajam. Esta dissertação demonstra que as marcas podem aproveitar a rich data emergente de interações utilizador-utilizador, utilizador-marca e marca-marca no Instagram, para identificar, perceber e visar potenciais clientes. O conceito de homofilia sugere que utilizadores estão principalmente ligados a outros utilizadores que sejam semelhantes a si mesmos e a marcas com que se identificam. Esta dissertação ambiciona desenvolver uma abordagem de seleção de audiência para identificar novos clientes que poderão ter interesse em seguir uma marca no Instagram. Ao extrair dados reais do Instagram, os utilizadores são segmentados com base na sua “follow-relationship” para determinar um conjunto de marcas que partilham uma imagem semelhante com a marca focal. Quatro segmentos foram identificados e divididos: True-Brand-Lovers, Fashion Seeker, Hidden Treasures e Intangibles. Adicionalmente, ao ter em consideração efeitos de segunda camada, uma experiência de targeting foi conduzida no Instagram para examinar se e em que medida os segmentos resultantes podem ser utilizados para descobrir potenciais clientes altamente interessados. Os resultados indicam que potenciais clientes podem ser encontrados particularmente ao detetar seguidores sobrepostos dentro do grupo. Para além disso, foram encontradas tendências que indiciam que potenciais clientes podem ser detetados na segunda camada de seguidores, especialmente quando a sua conexão ao grupo é levada também em conta. Portanto, os resultados deste estudo sugerem que ter em conta a afinidade dos utilizadores a outras entidades pode ajudar as marcas a definirem com mais precisão as suas decisões de targeting

Superwoman schema: using structural equation modeling to investigate measurement invariance in a questionnaire

Evaluating the psychometric properties of a newly developed instrument is critical to understanding how well an instrument measures what it intends to measure, and ensuring proposed use and interpretation of questionnaire scores are valid. The current study uses Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) techniques to examine the factorial structure and invariance properties of a newly developed construct called Superwoman Schema (SWS). The SWS instrument describes the characteristics of a superwoman (strong woman) which consists of 35 items representing five subscales: obligation to present an image of strength, obligation to suppress emotions, resistance to being vulnerable, intense motivation to succeed, and obligation to help others. Multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and a multiple indicators multiple causes (MIMIC) model were the SEM approaches used to examine measurement invariance in the SWS instrument. Specifically in the multigroup CFA analyses, configural invariance, metric invariance, intercept invariance, residual variance invariance, and latent mean invariance are examined between a group of young (18-39 years old) women and middle-aged (40-65 years old) women. In the MIMIC model, the hypothesized model of the SWS was used to investigate the group differences in the young and middle-aged women. Both SEM techniques provided a didactic discussion about the findings of the study, which confirmed that the SWS instrument could be broadly used (i.e., invariance held) to compare young and middle-aged African American women on superwoman characteristics. Further research is needed to better understand the possible contextual factors (i.e., racial or gender stereotyping, oppression, spiritual values, etc.) that may contribute to group differences on the SWS subscales and minor violation to invariance

Measuring consumers' engagement with brand-related social-media content: development and validation of a scale that identifies levels of social-media engagement with brands

The main purpose of this study is to develop a scale to measure consumer's engagement with social media brand-related content. The reported scale (CESBC) comprises three dimensions: consumption, contribution, and creation. Qualitative techniques were used to generate an initial pool of items that capture different levels of consumer engagement with social media brand-related content. Quantitative data from a consumer survey (=2252) was then collected in two phases to calibrate and validate the ensuing scale. Results confirmed the structure and psychometric properties of the CESBC. As expected, each subscale is significantly correlated with nomological network constructs, i.e., brand equity and brand attitudes

Personalized marketing campaign for upselling using predictive modeling in the health insurance sector

Internship Report presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Data Science and Advanced AnalyticsNowadays, with the oversupply of several different solutions in the private Health Insurance sector and the constantly increasing demand for value for money services from the client’s perspective, it becomes clear that Insurance Companies shouldn’t only strive for excellence but also engage their client base by offering solutions that are more suitable to their needs. This project aims, using the power that predictive models can provide, to predict the existing Health Insurance clients who are willing to move in a higher tier product. The case presented above could be described under the term of upselling. The final model will be used for a personalized marketing campaign in one of the most prominent bancassurances in Portugal. At the moment the ongoing upselling campaign, uses only few eligibility criteria. The outcome of the model has as a goal to assign a probability to each client who is eligible to be contacted for this campaign. The data that were retrieved to train the model, had a buffer period of one week from when the ‘event’ took place. This is crucial for the business, because there is always the time-to-market parameter which should be taken into consideration in the real world. The tools that were used for completing this Data Mining project were mostly SAS Enterprise Guide and SAS Enterprise Miner. All the Data Marts that were needed for the particular project, were built and loaded in SAS, so there were no obstacles or connectivity issues. For data visualization and reporting, Microsoft PowerBI was used. Some of the tables in the Data Marts, are being updated in a daily and other in a monthly basis. Of course, all the historical information is being stored in separate tables, so there is no information loss or discrepancies. Finally, the methodology that was followed for the implementation of the Data Mining project was a hybrid framework between the SEMMA approach as it is the one that is proposed by SAS Institute to carry out the core tasks of model development and CRISP-DM

The Colonial Zoanthid Palythoa caribaeorum: Population Dynamics on Southeast Florida Reefs

The colonial zoanthid Palythoa caribaeorum (Cnidaria, Zoanthidea) (Duchassaing and Michelotti 1861) is a major benthic component of most Caribbean reefs and is an extremely aggressive spatial competitor (Suchanek and Green 1981). This study looks at annual visits to 16 permanent monitoring sites over 3 reef designations (Inshore Ridge Complex, Middle Reef, and Outer Reef) in Broward County, Florida from 2002-2006. The data obtained in this study fills an informational void regarding the role of zoanthids in the southeast Florida reef benthic community. The study was conducted in two parts. Part One used digital imagery analysis to quantify the spatial cover of the Palythoa population present across the study area. The highest percent live cover sites were located in the Inshore Ridge Complex, suggesting that the more dense Palythoa populations are close to shore. Part Two used digital analysis data to determine if it was possible to create a size class transition matrix model that could accurately model the population distribution of such a dynamic organism. To test the accuracy of the model, the predicted population distribution of the model and the actual observed distribution from the digital image analysis were analyzed. A Chi-square test determined that the model successfully predicted size class distribution frequency of all treatments (All Sites, High Cover Sites, Low Cover Sites, and the 3 reef tracts) for all years (2002-2006) with the exception of 3 (Low Cover, Middle Reef, and Outer Reef) of the 6 treatments in 2005. Southeast Florida experienced extremely severe hurricane seasons in 2004 and 2005, and the data suggests that the population distribution at the 3 lower cover (farther from shore) sites were disturbed. Sensitivity and elasticity analyses were run on appropriate results to examine which size class transitions contribute most to population stability. Although it possesses the ability to outgrow stony corals (and almost all other sessile invertebrates), the current study suggests that the Palythoa population in southeast Florida is generally maintaining size rather than over-growing the reef community. With the knowledge gained from this study, we know that it is possible to accurately model the population dynamics present in the southeast Florida Palythoa population