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This thesis analyzes whether financial news articles can predict the stock prices of companies and the S&P 500 Index. The selected companies for the analysis are Facebook Inc., Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp., Google (Alphabet Inc.), and Amazon.com Inc. This thesis evaluates the predictive power of financial news by comparing the sentiment of financial news articles published on a business day to
the corresponding closing value of stock prices and the S&P 500 Index. For the analysis, financial news from various resources is used for a time period between January 2018 and May 2018. The sentiment of the news articles is analyzed using a lexicon-based approach. Then, regression models are used to predict the stock market. The models used for forecasting the stock prices and the S&P 500 Index
are Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA), Support Vector
Regression (SVR), and Linear Regression (LR). The results of the research in overall indicate that ARIMA performs better for predicting the stock prices and the S&P 500 Index.
The Role of Fintech in Promoting Financial Inclusion in Developing Countries: THE CASE OF MEXICO
(2019)
Financial inclusion is globally on the rise since 2011; however, still, nearly 1.7 billion adults worldwide do not have a bank account at a formal institution (Demirguc- Kunt et al, 2018). Supply, demand and societal factors may lead to barriers to financial inclusion, and accelerate voluntarily and involuntarily exclusions in the developing countries (World Bank, 2008; Beck and De La Torre, 2006; Beck el at, 2008). With the mobile phone technology and advancements in the innovations, the number of participants has increased with the entrance of new challenger i.e. Fintech startups, in the financial services market. The literature reveals that Fintech has a great
potential to broaden access to financial services through lowering costs, reducing information asymmetries, enabling more transparency, increasing competitiveness, etc. This thesis analyzes the role of Fintech in promoting financial inclusion with the case of Mexico, approaching the lack of financial inclusion issue from the perspective of the household. To approach this issue, one of the objectives of this thesis is to investigate the barriers refraining households from accessing and using financial services.
In Mexico, more than half of the adult population do not have a bank account at a formal institution including mobile money account (Demirguc-Kunt et al, 2018). The G20’s financial inclusion indicators revealed that account ownership as well as saving and borrowing at financial institutions has decreased since 2014. The main barriers are the difficulties to use financial services, financial illiteracy and insufficient financial infrastructure leads to barriers to
financial inclusion in Mexico. Ideally, Fintech has a great potential to reduce the barriers to financial inclusion and promote access to and use of financial services for the people who are excluded by traditional financial institutions due to prohibitive prices, lack of documentation, etc. However, Fintech alone is not sufficient to transmit its full potential benefits. Even though Fintech ecosystem is growing rapidly in Mexico, and seen as a potential solution for lack of financial inclusion issue in Mexico, this study reveals that Fintech ecosystem couldn’t achieve its potential in Mexico so far.
Blockchain technology is often associated with Bitcoin, but the technology enables more possibilities, such as smart contract which offers the opportunity to conclude contracts between at least two parties without a central instance e.g. a bank or notary. However, this technology is relatively new and undiscovered. It remains to be clarified whether the technology can establish in the business world. This thesis analyses the feasibility of this approach. Social, legal and technical aspects and their challenges are considered. The aim is to discuss the use of smart contracts, to examine the feasibility of establishing and to give recommendations for further measures. For this, several literatures were read to understand the different aspects and to make an overall assessment. In general, it can be said that time is needed to understand the technology and the resulting new opportunities and thereby to build trust. Finally, it can be argued that in all three aspects changes are needed to discover the full potential of the technology. Data protection should become less stringent to not hinder further progress, technology must continue to research and set standards, and society should be educated to overcome the fear of innovation.
The car seat covers industry is one of the gem markets which have not fully developed due to the lack of product and brand awareness. The aim of this paper is to analyze the market for start-up retail companies and recommend marketing strategies which involve optimization of various online marketing parts to improve the start-up retail companies’ online presence.
In the first part, the market of tailor made car seat covers will be analyzed based on the product awareness, brand awareness, demography, and its position in the market will also be assessed using the theory of marketing that I have learned; Marketing Mix, Porter’s Five Forces and BCG Matrix. The result shows that this market is underdeveloped and shows a promising sign that this market can be profitable if done correctly.
Next, a detailed explanation about the purposes and how does online marketing and its parts function. To write this paper, I analyzed the primary data from the company Lederausstattung which is also the mother company from Seat-Styler and followed it up with secondary sources, from books and internet resources. Only by understanding how they function, then a suitable marketing strategy can be created by the end of the paper.
The result shows that it is possible for small or start-up retail companies to improve their online presence using a limited budget, although the work load can be high, it is still rewarding and worth the extra length. Using this thesis, I hope that the company which deals with customized expensive goods can be benefitted and start online marketing correctly to ensure a sustainable high income.
Today’s world is marked by growing economic ties and an increasing focus on
homogenizing countries and continents – yet at the same time, the gap between rich and
poor countries widens. The expansion of interrelations on political, economic and social levels led to the rise of new free trade agreements covering a developmental component as well, which can be highly influential for the economic situation of a developing country. For that reason, the present paper aims at pointing out the influences of EU trade relations on African communities. In order to do so, general potentials and risks as well as impacts based on a number of studies and figures will be illustrated and the current European Partnership Agreements between the EU and a number of African, Caribbean and Pacific countries will serve as in-depth example for the present research. A comparative analysis between the Caribbean, in which the Agreement has already been implemented since 2008, and the African region will further serve as a basis for future estimations on how European Partnership Agreements will likely impact Africa after their implementation. Besides the potentials that serve as legitimation for implementing free trade agreements with a focus on the developmental aspect for developing countries, the findings reveal a number of risks and challenges that need to be addressed. Furthermore, the paper provides the reader with an assessment of the dependency relation between the EU and Africa as
well as an aggregation of future expectations.
The bargaining process to peace in Colombia and its influence on the country’s tourism and society
(2019)
This thesis contributes to the growing interest of mobile and gait-based authentication. A realworld authentication system needs to ensure performance stability, even if the walking situation of phones holder changes. In this paper we analyze different circumstances of an environmental nature, such as phone placement (pocket position and orientation), clothing (trousers’ type, trouser width, trouser pocket’s distance to the user’s hipbone, shoe and bag), surrounding(location, surface) and walking style (walking speed, direction, group walk). All these labels were recorded by the theme ”A Walk Through Berlin”. 24 participants were equipped with a Samsung Galaxy S7 smartphone and collected their walking behavior at up to three locations in Berlin, Germany in at least two day-independent workshop sessions. Besides data collection, this research addresses limitations in regard to a one-class classification problem. An application should process data directly on the device itself and should not share these sensitive data streams with external parties or servers. We execute feature preprocessing and extraction in sliding
windows and use a one-class Support Vector Machine for user classification. After best feature evaluation, we gain an Equal Error Rate of 21% for model’s total performance, where train and validation set are enrolled on different days.
The Impact of Efficient Transportation Infrastructure on China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)
(2019)
Search Engine Opt imisation, also known as SEO, is one of the online marketing channels t hat, when it is s et u p s uitably, it could continue to pay dividends over time without investment. Recently, SEO teams of some companies keep investigating historical data to predict the future trends of revenue associated with the number of clicks, number of imp ressions, and number of sear ches which is prop osed to help with companies’ quality planning and campaign investment. Some of the challenges experienced by SEO analysts when attempting to forecast the revenue is that there is currently no way to standardize or forecast customers’ behaviour, which means the trends could be different every day, month, and year. In this research, SEO traffic data from one of the online travel a gencies are collected for the purpose of data exploration, analysis and forecasting which are expected to bring business values and give some be neficialinsights. Moreover, different time-series forecasting models are selected to conduct experiments seeking the best fit model for SEO data; Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model is initially performed, followed by Long-Short Term Memory (LSTM) of Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs). As a result, it is proved that ARIMA is yet a classical statistics model but powerful enough for such small-size data, albeit the data is non-stationary and has too much white noise. Me anwhile, the LSTM is a deep learning tool which could deal with different types of data, but still need to be applied with a larger size of data to prove its competence.
Deep Learning, a topic of broad and current interest, has undergone rapid development in the last decade. The performance of the algorithms is already above human level. However, the area of Natural Language Processing is still a great challenge for the researchers. This study aims at exploring the novel ULMFiT method for text classification by applying it to a dataset of scientific articles with advanced rhetorical categories. This classification task is challenging even for humans and it requires a substantial analysis of the texts when conducted by machine learning algorithms. The objective of this attempt is to achieve text classification with minimal preparation. The ULMFiT method is the first successful effort to apply transfer learning to NLP tasks. Its performance will be evaluated on a task that requires a level of understanding beyond the semantic meaning of the text.
The Unhealthy Trade: The Expansion of the Food Industry in Latin America, case study of Mexico
(2019)
The text analyses the global and local inequalities that emerge because of the global food industry. More specifically, it analyzes how the consumption of food has changed affecting the health of the most vulnerable groups of people. In that sense, first, I analyze how the global food industry has expanded generating a health problem of obesity and Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs), especially in the Global South. The result is that global inequalities are wider between Global North and South. This is reflected in higher rates of obesity and NCDs in peripherical countries, while Global North companies have more profits. Second, I analyze how this expansion is impacting local inequalities in Mexico. There, socioeconomic dynamics shape the way that ultra-processed food and drinks are consumed generating differentiated impacts by gender, class, and age. Women, poor people, and children are the most affected. In the end, the expansion of the global food industry has been contributing to reinforce previous inequalities at global and local levels
As an innovative tool, gamification has gained considerable importance in recent years to navigate and find many creative solutions to the problems and challenges faced by existing companies.
In this study, a game toolkit designed by using gamification elements that can potentially serve as a guide to creative ideation is introduced and applied in a data-driven industry. The aim is to
analyze the effects of the specifically designed game toolkit and the applied game elements on creative ideation and the attributes of users in general. The toolkit is explored using insights obtained from the analyses and observation of the behaviors of 16 players during the actual experiments. Furthermore, interviews and online surveys are used to conduct the quantitative and qualitative analyses in order to enhance the game within the scope of Action Design Research.
The toolkit proposed by the researcher is assumed to contribute to the existing literature. It can provide guidance and give valuable suggestions to possible future studies about the creation and
execution of a game toolkit in a field focused on data-driven innovations. Moreover, the results specifically indicate that the game toolkit directly drives creative idea generation while promoting engagement, motivation, and enjoyment as well as altering mindsets and thinking patterns.
Companies, public services and other institutions are increasingly turning to web-based applications, but attacks are increasing in both number and variance.
Previous approaches to avoid attacks by using web application firewalls rely primarily on pattern-based detection. This document evaluates if and which machine learning methods can be used to reliably detect web-based attacks. Classifiers such as Support Vector Machines, Neural Networks, Naïve Bayes, Decision Trees and Logistic Regression are used.
Furthermore possible use cases and visualizations of the decisions are suggested.
Data Protection Law in Turkey and Germany - A Comparative Analysis From Users´ and SMEs´ Perspective
(2019)
Foreign Exchange Trading based on Technical Indicators – a theoretical and practical analysis
(2019)
The Impact of Instagram Influencer Marketing on Influencer Credibility and on Brand Perception
(2019)
Recent economic recession in Russia raises the question whether it
could be a consequence of the Dutch disease. This thesis attempts to
find out if Russia is sick with Dutch disease. The following symptoms of
the disease are derived from the theoretical model by Corden and
Neary (1982): (A) the appreciation of the real exchange rate; (B) the
contraction of tradable sector and the growth of non-tradable sector; (C)
the overall increase of real wages in the economy. The symptoms are
empirically investigated through analysing the statistical data from
Rosstat and other databases. The results of analysis show that all
examined symptoms of Dutch disease are present in Russia. However,
some of these symptoms could be explained by other factors like rise in
productivity or ‘de-shadowization’ of wages, which could have induced
the same effects on the economy. Nevertheless, all facts indicate a high
risk of Dutch disease presence in Russia. Therefore, the government
and the Bank of Russia should implement the appropriate fiscal and
monetary policies such as expansion of the size of sovereign
stabilization fund and the improvement of its governance as well as
introduction of smart inflation targeting approach.
The e-commerce continues to grow. New, innovative and more flexible delivery offers are part of a competitive environment in the business to customer sector. Thereby, the focus is often set on the speed of a delivery. How quickly do online companies have to deliver their products in order to meet customers’ expectations? Does same day delivery represent a demanded service in future?
The aim of this work is to figure out the importance of a same day delivery for the future German e-commerce. Firstly, the author explains the theoretical background on distribution logistics, its linkage to marketing and the concept of same day delivery.
Moreover, customer expectations of delivery forms have been analysed with the aid of an online survey. Those results have been contrasted with estimations of experts in the sector. This theoretical and empirical background leads to conclusive results. Same day delivery represents these days and will in future a niche market. Until now, this concept has not been an essential and demanded delivery form for the mainstream. Nevertheless, it can be used as a marketing tool in order to promote certain product groups within peak seasons.
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION OF WORK: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF POLITICAL APPROACHES IN FINLAND AND GERMANY
(2019)
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is perceived, and by some even portrayed, as the enabler to tackle the world’s biggest problems such as hunger, poverty or climate change. While progress is made in some areas, other issues become more severe. The concept of CSR is now challenged by a digital revolution. Digitalization is one of the most – if not even the most significant topic of our time. By creating opportunities for new businesses models and value creation while revolutionising communication and information processes, most industries and societies got disrupted already. With digitalization having effects on all three pillars of CSR it could strongly influence its design and efforts, however, it is mostly ignored in the CSR environment so far. Initiatives such as the UN Global Contract or the ISO 26.000 norm do not list digitalization amongst their categories. This research study elucidates the digitalization of CSR. With the help of ten semi-structured expert interviews, the author develops an overview of the current status of digitalizing CSR, the future potential, effects on effectiveness, impact as well as on benefits and risks. The study revealed that a clear distinction between digitization and digitalization of CSR is necessary. Looking at the current state it was disclosed that CSR has become a partially digital topic. However, the study identified the human factor as a strong determinant for further digitalization of CSR. A positive correlation of digitalization and effectiveness was established, while for the correlation of digitalization and impact, no assertion on a general basis was possible. While experts see clear benefits, many risks were established as well, which makes a thorough consideration of specific examples necessary.
This bachelor thesis deals with the topic “Business Strategies in Argentina: a Pharmaceuti-cal Industry Analysis” and carries out a qualitative analysis of the influence of location factors on business strategies. The aim is to answer how location-specific factors of the Argentinian macro- and industry environment have influenced business strategies of phar-maceutical firms in the country and whether a change in location factors also results in a change of business strategies. A closer look has been taken on the period after the Argen-tine crisis of 2001/02 until 2015.
Key findings are that protectionist policies of Kirchnerism have strongly influenced busi-ness strategies of pharmaceutical firms and hence their performance in the country.
There has been a shift towards a stronger performance of local firms over multinationals while more than 60% of the market has been dominated by national firms in 2010. The Generic Law of 2002 has led to many copies in the industry especially performed by na-tional firms copying from MNEs. The industry has further become more important on im-ports while import restrictions imposed by Cristina Fernández de Kirchner have triggered a disinvestment strategy of MNEs and a relocation of their activity to other countries favour-ing national firms. The business environment is highly complex and dynamic in Argentina and requires a constant assessment of external changes and the competition by pharmaceu-tical firms in the country.
However, a strategic consistency and implementation is still missing among the industry and firms have to better define their strategies in the market. The recent governmental change towards a more neo-liberal government leaves more space for an ongoing analysis of how new business environmental conditions will affect pharmaceutical firms in the coming years and whether there might be a return of MNEs to the country.
Consumers in contemporary Western societies live in a world of extraordinary affluence. They are confronted with an abundance of product choice and continuously increasing commercial communication. The behavior and attitude of the economically important millennial generation reflects this prosperity and exuberance more than any other. The biggest and most important challenge for marketers today is to target this demanding and marketing-savvy cohort. While academic literature falls short of proposing strategies targeting millennials, new trends in branding have emerged in practice which focus on counteracting the abundance and obtrusiveness of today’s marketing. Debranding strategies aim to de-corporatize and differentiate a brand by using subtler marketing tactics. While the scope of debranding strategies vary, the holistic approach suggests decreasing the quantity and obtrusiveness of marketing and making a well-made product the core of the brand’s differentiation efforts. This study aims to analyses whether a holistic debranding strategy can be considered as an appropriate tool for brands to differentiate in an oversaturated world and ascertain the components influencing the success of such a strategy. The research objective is to define holistic debranding as an efficient and successful branding strategy to brand to the millennial consumer. The theoretical framework introduces the key factors influencing consumers’ purchase decision making process before elaborating the main characteristics of the millennial consumer behavior with focus on their attitude towards brands. Primary research was conducted in a sequential mixed method approach. Data was collected among millennials in from of a self-administered web-based questionnaire and complementary focus group discussion.
In this research Cash Conversion Cycle was used to examine working capital management in the supply chain of the automotive industry during 2006–2016. The results of this study reveal patterns and trends in working capital developments over time, which can be used for further managerial analyses and strategy planning as for the single company and for the supply chain level. There was no substantial change in the overall cycle time for the whole industry, but rather the changes happened among the supply chain representatives. During the economic downturn bigger companies took over the credit risk and capital costs, by extending their days sales outstanding. Overall trends show strong regional differences in the levels of Cash Conversion Cycle and its elements.
Inlight oftheincreasing importanceof digital andtechnological innovations,
corporations drive innovation initiatives in collaborations with startup through
corporate accelerators. How the corporate accelerator supports both parties
throughout the innovation process in regard to communication and the
exchange of information, has not been fully studied and gives an opportunity for
further analysis. Within t his thesis the supportive work of the corporate
accelerator has been empirically studied with the conduction of three i nterviews
with two experts from corporate accelerators and one startup founder and
provides in-depth insights and perspectives on the respective subject.
This thesis aims to investigate the relationship between opinions of politicians expressed in speeches and politicians’ paid side-activities of politicians, a potential channel of influence for lobbyists. With a focus on methodology development to automatically extract opinions and opinion changes for a specific item on the political agenda, the thesis reveals insights hidden in political speeches. Advancements in text mining present new opportunities to design advanced algorithms to achieve the stated objective. Along the journey of developing the methodology, the richness of used and possible algorithm components is discussed.
The Easterlin Paradox has been referred to in numerous studies over the previous decades, confirming the hypothesis holding that happiness levels of both individuals and societies cannot lastingly increase over time. Since recent years such traditional beliefs have been continuously disparaged in the field of happiness economic, by which new evidence has been produced, supporting the claim that happiness levels does in fact rise, in correspondence to economic growth. The rising role of absolute income in comparison to relative income challenges the importance of the income inequality public debate, contradictorily emphasizing a common global interest in further economic development of all nations.