User-generated and brand-generated content as indicators of university brand personality and business strategy

The rising competition and social media usage increased the importance of university brand personality and strategic marketing in higher education. This study explores the interrelationships between brand-generated content (BGC) and user-generated content (UGC) on social media and universities’ competitive strategy and brand personality. BGC that included four universities’ tweets and UGC that consisted of consumer comments were analyzed by content and correspondence analysis in R programming language. The findings indicated that BGC was in alignment with universities’ generic strategies. BGC-UGC dispersions across brand personality were in alignment for the differentiator university, while there was a mismatch between BGC and UGC for low-cost universities. The differentiator university was associated with being prestigious, cosmopolitan, and conscientious, while the low-cost universities were associated with sincerity. The findings supported the applicability of generic business strategies to the higher education context and showed the strategic link between brand personality and the pursued generic strategy.WOS:000777927300001Scopus - Affiliation ID: 60105072Social Sciences Citation IndexQ2 - Q3Article; Early AccessUluslararası işbirliği ile yapılmayan - HAYIRApril2022YÖK - 2021-22Nisa

Antimicrobial, cytotoxic, antiviral wffects, and apectroscopic characterization of metabolites produced by fusarium oxysporum YP9B

The goal of the work is to determine the bioactive pharmaceutical metabolites produced by the Fusarium oxysporum YP9B isolate. Ten new natural compounds were isolated from the ethyl acetate extract of the F. oxysporum YP9B strain. Their structures were elucidated by spectroscopic methods using 1D and 2D NMR, UV, FT-IR, and mass spectra (LC-QTOF MS and GC-FID/MS). Identified compounds were named as; (1-benzyl-2-methoxy-2-oxoethyl)-2-hydroxy-3-methylbutanoate (1), 2-oxo-8-azatricyclo[9.3.1.1(3,7)]-hexadeca-1(15),3(16),4,6,11,13-hexaen-10-one (2), 2,3-dihydroxypropanoic, hexadecanoic anhydride (3a), 2,3-dihydroxypropanoic (9Z)-octadecenoic anhydride (3b), 2,3-dihydroxy-propanoic (9Z,12Z)-octadecadienoic anhydride (3c), 2,3-dihydroxypropanoic (11Z)-octadecenoic anhydride (4a), 2,3-dihydroxypropanoic, (9E,12E)-octadecadienoic anhydride (4b), 3-hydroxy-1,2,6,10-tetramethylundecyl hexzadecanoate (5a), 3-hydroxy-1,2,6,10-tetramethylundecyl (9E)-octadecaenoate (5b), and 3-hydroxy-1,2,6,10-tetramethylundecyl octadecanoate (5c). Antimicrobial activities of the isolates obtained from the YP9B strain were determined. Cytotoxic and antiviral activities were tested for the isolates against VERO, MCF-7, PC-3, and A549. Compounds 5a-c, 1, and 3a-c showed bacteriostatic activity at low concentrations, and 4a-b and 2 were found to be bactericides. MIC and MBC values against Mycobacterium smegmatis for the compounds 5a-c and 1 were determined to be <0.5 mu g/mL and 0.46 mu g/mL, respectively. The experimental result showed that compounds 2, 5a-c and 1 have strong cytotoxic (7.51 +/- 1.38 and 19.13 +/- 0.68 (mu M) IC50) activity. The antiviral activity against HSV type-1 was determined to be 1.25 mu M for compounds 4a-c and 0.312 mu M for compound 1

Afrikanın düşük gelirli toplulukları için yenilikçi ürün geliştirme sürecinde çokuluslu bir şirketteki insan-odaklı tasarımcının rolü.

The importance of the field of design is increasing in the face of complex problems humanity has been facing. Respectively, the orientation of design is shifting from products to strategies that facilitate corporate transformation. In parallel with this transformation, designers take new and diverse roles. However, there is a knowledge gap regarding these roles. This study aims to explore the roles the designer (author) takes in a multinational home appliances company through the innovative product development for the African Bottom/Base-of-the- Pyramid (BoP) communities. Its goal is to propose a model built on research data. The research methodology comprises the designer’s auto-ethnographic inquiry of long-term practice-led research within the new product development case and its analysis with grounded theory. The results show that the designer plays six diverse and contemporary roles throughout the new product development process. These are frame creator, user-researcher, collaboration mediator, creative facilitator, evaluator, and inspirer. Besides, human-centeredness, holistic thinking, change-driven mentality, collaborative mentality, tenacity, and systems thinking emerge as prominent skills. The results and the outcoming model indicate that the designer spreads skills to the entire organization that makes organizational learning possible. The significance of this research comes from shedding light on the contemporary designer roles in the context of innovative product development for a complex problem.Thesis (Ph.D.) -- Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences. Industrial Design

Evaluation of sustainable supplier problem: a hybrid decision making model based on SWARA-WASPAS

Background: The fierce competitive advantage in the global market depends largely on the integration of all supply chain networks. This network facilitates the movement of information and materials through the suppliers and end customers with a focus on planning and managing. This integration can result in the meeting demands of customer orders being affected by the performance of the suppliers. As a result of this integration, it can be considered that the performance of the suppliers is important in fulfilling customer orders on time. Evaluating and selecting suppliers is greatly influencing the performance of the supply network. Methods: Selecting the proper supplier is a multi-criteria decision-making problem which includes both quantitative and qualitative criteria. A two-stage decision making method is proposed in the study under sustainability dimension. First, SWARA method is used to determine the relative importance of criteria and than WASPAS method is used to evaluate and rank the given alternatives. Results: A real-life case study is given for the selected approach. Also, sensitivity analysis is given. This selected alternative confirms the preferences of decision makers as it is a company that operates internationally and has a reputation and awareness in sustainability within its own country. Conclusions: Due to the increase in awareness on sustainability and the resulting regulations, the issue of sustainability in supply chains and sustainable supplier selection has become an important issue for companies. It is aimed to examine the supplier selection of a company in an electronics sector on a "sustainable" basis, considering from economic, environmental and social aspects. In this study, which was carried out to fill the literature gap identified in this field and to propose a systematic approach to sustainable supplier selection, a hybrid method which consists of both SWARA and WASPAS method have been used to evaluate the suppliers under the sustainability dimensions. With the help of a hybrid model, decision makers can manage conflict management of individual challenges using an analytical process

A new approach in assessing slurry filterability

Up to date, sludge filterability has been characterized by the Ruth's classical filtration theory and quantified by the well-known parameter specific cake resistance (SCR). However, the complexity of the actual phenomenon is clearly underestimated by the classical filtration theory and SCR is often not satisfactory in describing filterability. Although many scientific studies were conducted for a better analysis and understanding of the filtration theory, still a practically applicable solution to replace the classical theory for a better description of filterability has not been proposed yet. In the present study, filtration laws proposed by Hermans and Bredee, dating back to 1936, which have been extensively used in the membrane literature for the analysis of fouling phenomenon has been adopted for the analysis of filterability of sludge systems. The results clearly show that this approach is superior to the classical approach in terms of characterizing the filterability of sludge systems and provides a slurry specific characterization parameter to replace the commonly used SCR