Probabilistic Personalized Recommendation Models For Heterogeneous Social Data

Content recommendation has risen to a new dimension with the advent of platforms like Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, Dailybooth, and Instagram. Although this uproar of data has provided us with a goldmine of real-world information, the problem of information overload has become a major barrier in developing predictive models. Therefore, the objective of this The- sis is to propose various recommendation, prediction and information retrieval models that are capable of leveraging such vast heterogeneous content. More specifically, this Thesis focuses on proposing models based on probabilistic generative frameworks for the following tasks: (a) recommending backers and projects in Kickstarter crowdfunding domain and (b) point of interest recommendation in Foursquare. Through comprehensive set of experiments over a variety of datasets, we show that our models are capable of providing practically useful results for recommendation and information retrieval tasks

Digital user's decision journey

The landscape of the Internet is continually evolving. This creates huge opportunities for different industries to optimize vital channels online, resulting in various-forms of new Internet services. As a result, digital users are interacting with many digital systems and they are exhibiting dynamic behaviors. Their shopping behaviors are drastically different today than it used to be, with offline and online shopping interacting with each other. They have many channels to access online media but their consumption patterns on different channels are quite different. They do philanthropy online to help others but their heterogeneous motivations and different fundraising campaigns leads to distinct path-to-contribution. Understanding the digital user’s decision making process behind their dynamic behaviors is critical as they interact with various digital systems for the firms to improve user experience and improve their bottom line. In this thesis, I study digital users’ decision journeys and the corresponding digital technology firms’ strategies using inter-disciplinary approaches that combine econometrics, economic structural modeling and machine learning. The uncovered decision journey not only offer empirical managerial insights but also provide guideline for introducing intervention to better serve digital users

Varieties of cultural crowdfunding: the relationship between cultural production types and platform choice

Due to the unique nature of the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs), the impact of crowdfunding on them is more significant than on other industries. This study investigates the association between crowdfunding campaigns in four different categories of cultural production and each campaign promoter's decision regarding platform choice (...

Corporate Brand Building in Start-Ups through Equity-Based Crowdfunding: A Case Study of Virtuous Spirits

This study investigates if and how equity-based crowdfunding can benefit a start-up’s corporate brand building process. Building the corporate brand can play a significant role for the company’s establishment in the market. Although equity-based crowdfunding has grown exponentially in the Nordics, it has not been covered enough in corporate brand building literature. The scope of this research was to shed light on the yet relatively undiscovered area of equity-based crowdfunding as a corporate brand building tool. A case study approach was chosen in order to produce in-depth information about a start-up’s corporate brand building process. Accordingly, ten semi-structured in-depth interviews with the start-up Virtuous Spirits’ creators, investors, non-investors and the intermediary of the equity-based crowdfunding campaigns were conducted. The results suggest that through equity-based crowdfunding, the start-up can find the right brand ambassadors leading to positive word-of-mouth and feedback which is crucial for its corporate brand building. This is possible due to the pre-targeted audience provided by the intermediary. The importance of the intermediary is further highlighted through its positive effect on the start-up’s credibility. The study therefore concludes in the proposition to use equity-based crowdfunding as a channel of corporate communication, aligning the corporate image with the corporate identity in order to build the start-up’s corporate brand