THREE ESSAYS ON FIRM BEHAVIORS IN ONLINE MARKET PLATFORMS

Across many online market platforms, customer reviews have become a prevailing mechanism to evaluate firms and disseminate information about the quality of their products/services. While prior research has well-documented the impact of such customer-generated information on firm performance such as sales (e.g. Chevalier & Mayzlin 2006, Liu, 2006), understanding how firms react to customer evaluations generates an interesting yet an underexplored topic for research. This dissertation, through three studies, aims to investigate how customer reviews tat are posted on online platforms shape how firms learn, communicate, and compete. Chapter 1 shows that learning from own experience follows an inverted U-shaped curve. This finding indicates that with increase in own experience, firms face lower customer evaluations in the short-run, but in the long-run they eventually improve their performance by reducing their customer dissatisfaction. The study also showed that learning from accumulated experience of similar firms has a U-shaped relationship with customer evaluation, and that the larger the performance gap, the more motivation organizations have to learn in order to stay on par with their competitors in terms of performance. Chapter 2 finds that the proportion of responsive peers (i.e. the extent of peer pressure) is correlated with a focal firm’s responsiveness to its customer reviews. The extent of responsiveness, in turn, has a positive impact on customer review ratings. Moreover, this study finds that firm responsiveness has a weaker effect for branded (relative to independent) firms. The study also shows that firms with more experience in providing response to customers may observe a stronger positive effect vis-à-vis less experienced firms. However, the effect is limited to branded firms which may possess better capability to learn from their experience. Chapter 3 shows that, although online reputation (created by online customer reviews) can partly explain the price competition among firms with similar reputation, the quality and geographical location have more important effect in determining the intensity of price competition among firms. This study also finds that price competition is highly localized with respect to geographical location and quality

Attendees’ Perceptions of Social Impacts and Socially Sensitive Issues for An Air Show Special Event

The purpose of this study is to examine social impacts of a large regional event; the Great New England Air Show (GNEAS). Adopting a well-established social impacts scale, this study measured attendees’ perceptions on all dimensions of social impacts; 1) community cohesiveness; 2) economic benefits; 3) social incentives; and 4) social costs. To further our knowledge on social impact studies, this study connected a notion of individuals’ perception toward socially sensitive issues and used it to create segments among attendees. By comparing mean differences across these groups, this study can provide meaningful implications for local authorities and event planners on what domains of social impacts are needed to please different types of people who are concerned about diverse socially sensitive issues in differing degrees

Propositions for Examining the Seasonality Construct in Tourism Settings

Propositions for Examining the Seasonality Construct in Tourism Settings Abstract The purpose of this conceptual study is to further develop our understanding of the seasonality construct as a predictor of tourist behavior. This study aims to explain and organize the tourism seasonality literature for a more thorough interpretation; examine how seasonality impacts consumer decision making focusing on the use of inbound and outbound marketing; and establish measurement tools that can help link seasonal destination consumer needs with actual behavior and internet search behavior. The contribution of this study is several thoroughly developed propositions to be used as a guide in further seasonality literature focusing on the measurement of the seasonality construct, specifically the tools to be utilized in seasonality empirical research; the types of seasonality as connected to traveler decision-making; the relationship between traveler search behavior, actual behavior, and seasonal changes; and the organization of seasonal terms in relation to seasonal activity

DEVELOPING ANTIMICROBIAL WOUND DRESSINGS MIMICKING HUMAN SKIN FOR EFFICIENT WOUND HEALING

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (CDE-ENG

Comprative Study of suspicion (eliminated the penalty) and its functional implications in criminal jurisprudence

Suspicion is an ambiguous concept that prevents execution of criminal sentences and some religious effects of behaviors.In terms of criminal law, is any effective prosecution in the opinion of the judge, which affects the elements of the crime or proofs of evidence in hudud and tazir crimes and causes stopping the execution of the penalty or commutation of sentence. in islamic penal code ratified in 2013,this mechanism is set out in article 120 and 121 but there is no defintion for suspicion and only adresses its examples. after conceptual analysis of the suspicion mode, the basic issue of the writer`s perspective is: which of the effects of suspicion should be applied and what strategies should take in this mode that in addition to accordance with the Shari'a doctrines, ultimately, the damage caused by the functional imbalance in the judical system is reduced. after analyzing the functions in different situations, the result of this research is the recognition of direct interaction between suspicion and functional requirements, such as the princople of individual punishment and targeted attitude toward punishments

A Review on the Life Cycle Assessment of Cellulose: From Properties to the Potential of Making It a Low Carbon Material

The huge plastic production and plastic pollution are considered important global issues due to environmental aspects. One practical and efficient way to address them is to replace fossil-based plastics with natural-based materials, such as cellulose. The applications of different cellulose products have recently received increasing attention because of their desirable properties, such as biodegradability and sustainability. In this regard, the current study initially reviews cellulose products’ properties in three categories, including biopolymers based on the cellulose-derived monomer, cellulose fibers and their derivatives, and nanocellulose. The available life cycle assessments (LCA) for cellulose were comprehensively reviewed and classified at all the stages, including extraction of cellulose in various forms, manufacturing, usage, and disposal. Finally, due to the development of low-carbon materials in recent years and the importance of greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions, the proposed solutions to make cellulose a low carbon material were made. The optimization of the cellulose production process, such as the recovery of excessive solvents and using by-products as inputs for other processes, seem to be the most important step toward making it a low carbon material

Phema: An overview for biomedical applications

10.3390/ijms22126376International Journal of Molecular Sciences2212637

The Life Cycle Assessment for Polylactic Acid (PLA) to Make It a Low-Carbon Material

The massive plastic production worldwide leads to a global concern for the pollution made by the plastic wastes and the environmental issues associated with them. One of the best solutions is replacing the fossil-based plastics with bioplastics. Bioplastics such as polylactic acid (PLA) are biodegradable materials with less greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. PLA is a biopolymer produced from natural resources with good mechanical and chemical properties, therefore, it is used widely in packaging, agriculture, and biomedical industries. PLA products mostly end up in landfills or composting. In this review paper, the existing life cycle assessments (LCA) for PLA were comprehensively reviewed and classified. According to the LCAs, the energy and materials used in the whole life cycle of PLA were reported. Finally, the GHG emissions of PLA in each stage of its life cycle, including feedstock acquisition and conversion, manufacturing of PLA products, the PLA applications, and the end of life (EoL) options, were described. The most energy-intensive stage in the life cycle of PLA is its conversion. By optimizing the conversion process of PLA, it is possible to make it a low-carbon material with less dependence on energy sources

Multifunctional and Self-Healable Intelligent Hydrogels for Cancer Drug Delivery and Promoting Tissue Regeneration In Vivo

Regenerative medicine seeks to assess how materials fundamentally affect cellular functions to improve retaining, restoring, and revitalizing damaged tissues and cancer therapy. As potential candidates in regenerative medicine, hydrogels have attracted much attention due to mimicking of native cell-extracellular matrix (ECM) in cell biology, tissue engineering, and drug screening over the past two decades. In addition, hydrogels with a high capacity for drug loading and sustained release profile are applicable in drug delivery systems. Recently, self-healing supramolecular hydrogels, as a novel class of biomaterials, are being used in preclinical trials with benefits such as biocompatibility, native tissue mimicry, and injectability via a reversible crosslink. Meanwhile, the localized therapeutics agent delivery is beneficial due to the ability to deliver more doses of therapeutic agents to the targeted site and the ability to overcome post-surgical complications, inflammation, and infections. These highly potential materials can help address the limitations of current drug delivery systems and the high clinical demand for customized drug release systems. To this aim, the current review presents the state-of-the-art progress of multifunctional and self-healable hydrogels for a broad range of applications in cancer therapy, tissue engineering, and regenerative medicine