University of Northern British Columbia. Business Administration

Consumer behavior signifies the way of people’s purchasing and consuming products and services. It is a hotbed of research which is intensely associated with human psychology and is essential for companies that are trying to sell their products or services to as many consumers as possible. Since various facets of consumers’ lives affect what they purchase and why they purchase, research on consumer behavior resolves the issues of understanding – how individuals respond to advertising and marketing, individuality – if the process can determine consumers’ personalities, social status, decision-making process. Consumer behavior research is important to determine how best to sell products or services by influencing consumers’ fears, their least healthy habits or their worst tendencies. This study has examined the relationship between consumer needs and consumer purchase behavior in terms of consumer choices of Bangladeshi customers for apparel market. Types of consumers’ choices and types of consumers’ needs are associated with each other. Types of needs are the underlying determinant of types of choices to satisfy consumers’ apparel necessity and these three categories of needs, that are recognised to satisfy apparel necessity (i.e. functional needs, social needs and experiential needs), are fulfilled by consumers through three recognised categories of choices (i.e. choice freedom, choice difficulty and choice confidence). Different categories of consumers have different types of needs and they behave differently while purchasing clothes, therefore, this study has figured out how consumers of Bangladesh make their choices according to their needs in apparel purchases. This study also examined how income levels work as a moderator while consumers make decisions. The purpose of this thesis is to shed light on the relationship of the consumers’ needs and choices. The key objective is to investigate how the correlation between consumers’ needs and choices influences the insights of consumers and their decision-making process. This study also inspected the affiliation between the needs and choices for the population with respect to certain key questions. Consequently, it identified a better understanding of the links between needs and choices and set a special consideration of how choices interact with various situations which is very important to sell the apparel products in best way. The study employed a survey research design which is quantitative in nature. Quantitative survey quantifies the problems by generating numerical data which can be converted into functional statistics and it is mostly used to measure attitudes, opinions, behaviors and any other defined variables (DeFranzo, 2011). The data was collected through a structured Likert-scale questionnaire which fulfilled the quantitative research nature. The included questions were related to the types of needs and choices theories, with focus on consumers’ purchase behavior. Therefore, it was able to investigate quantitatively due to the nature of the research. Respondents completed the questionnaire which was administrated via online electronic form through SurveyMonkey. After collecting the data, it ran ordinal regression models on the basis of dependent and independent variables of the questionnaire and that provided a clear indication of consumers’ actual preference structure. This research paper was demonstrated with the broad overview about the consumers’ choices according to the types of their needs. The study found that types of needs are positively associated with types of choices and low-income level and high-income level have decreased and increased impact accordingly with the positive relationships of needs and choices. The findings of the paper offer some valuable considerations for related theories, especially on topic of consumers’ purchase behavior by highlighting the contextual differences between needs and choices and by highlighting the other influencing factors associated with these. It contributes to build up new concepts of consumer purchase behavior theory in terms of branding theory and consumers’ needs and selection process also demonstrates that how types of needs influence consumers’ purchase decision through types of choices. Moreover, new concepts or strategies and psychological explanations of consumers help the managers to sell their products appropriately.

We examine the relationship between stock returns and components of idiosyncratic volatility—two volatility and two covariance terms— derived from the decomposition of stock returns variance. The portfolio analysis result shows that volatility terms are negatively related to expected stock returns. On the contrary, covariance terms have positive relationships with expected stock returns at the portfolio level. These relationships are robust to controlling for risk factors such as size, book-to-market ratio, momentum, volume, and turnover. Furthermore, the results of Fama-MacBeth cross-sectional regression show that only alpha risk can explain variations in stock returns at the firm level. Another finding is that when volatility and covariance terms are excluded from idiosyncratic volatility, the relation between idiosyncratic volatility and stock returns becomes weak at the portfolio level and disappears at the firm level.

Southwest Garden Supplies is a garden centre which is undergoing growth in its sales in both of its departments: nursery and bulk garden/landscape materials. With the increasing quantity, and sales of plants, the company requires strategic analysis and recommendations to improve its nursery operations. Some factors which require improvement are: a lack of enough employees, and two, a lack of systematic processes required in the maintenance, and sale of plants. Because only family members work at the nursery, and maintain the rest of the enterprise, there are more tasks which need to be accomplished than there are hands. Southwest Garden Supplies is in the process of hiring new employees, and approximately three new employees shall commence work in the foreseeable future. As of now, tasks like fertilizing, efficient watering, weeding, and pruning are not being executed in a systematic manner. Therefore, a lot of the plants are not optimally maintained. Due to a lack of organization, and time, pricing is a complex matter of hardship. As of now, there are minimal price tags placed on plants. Only the administrator in charge of the nursery knows the prices. Therefore, if she is not around for whatever reason, the remaining staff do not know how to price the plants. During the summer, watering by hand takes a minimum of three hours per day, that too after office hours; meaning the family leaves work close to 9:00pm, only to start again at 7:00am the next morning. This watering process leaves the other tasks of plant maintenance incomplete. As discussed, the nursery division of the garden centre needs to be run optimally. The purpose of this paper is to undertake research on how the nursery can be maintained efficiently, including how plant inventory can be best managed, and how the administration staff can maintain healthy relationships with the new employees. Human resource management will be discussed due to the importance of increased employee loyalty and decreased employee attrition. Results/Recommendations shall be made as to what steps need to be taken in order to streamline the nursery maintenance processes for the staff, and make shopping at Southwest Garden Supplies more fluid, and straightforward.

Recent literature published by some practitioners, consultants, and researchers in the area of Business Process Management (BPM) identified that BPM is a new and emerging field of research and practice. The objective of this paper is to identify the conceptual framework of BPM, identify if connections exist with prior process improvement concepts such as Business Process Re-engineering (BPR), Total Quality Management (TQM) and Business Process Improvement (BPI), and apply BPM in a case study to determine the effectiveness of the current methodology. An extensive literature review was conducted, identifying multiple similarities between BPM and prior process improvement concepts, suggesting an evolving nature of the concept. The BPM methodology was then applied in a controlled case study, identifying a major inefficiency in the methodology. The findings of this paper are useful to researchers, educators, students, and managers to understand the evolution of BPM, and determine how it can be applied.

Business intelligence tools allows for data-driven decision-making within organizations using historical events to predict future trends, which is especially valuable when allocating operational resources. As a research-intensive Canadian university, UNBC has seen a significant increase in activities related to supporting the research enterprise, which requires additional resources (human, capital, financial etc.) in order to effectively and efficiently advance the mission of the research community. As outlined in our Annual University Accountability Report, 2018/19 was an incredibly productive year for research with more than $14 million received in support of research. The University has seen a significant increase in the number and breadth of agencies and organizations funding research at UNBC. The administration of research awards involves both pre-award and post-award processes, which requires responsible allocation of available resources to ensure a sustainable model will be developed to achieve goals outlined by the institution’s strategic priorities and build the foundation to reach our goal of a research enterprise generating $25M in annual research revenue. Therefore, using business intelligence tools to utilize historical data to predict the necessary resourcing needs of the institution will allow UNBC to make strategic investments in research and remain competitive on the provincial, national and international stage. Informed decision-making when investing resources are critical to the success of any business. The goal of my MBA project is to gather critical information to be used in the development a data visualization and forecasting tool that will allow for informed decisions for the allocation of resources necessary to support the research mission at UNBC. The objectives of the MBA project are two-fold, which include the development of the business case for the UNBC data visualization tool (DVT) and also the completion of a design document. The information gathered6 from this project will be used in the future (post-MBA) to develop a data visualization tool that will allow for the on-going monitoring of UNBC’s progress towards putting in place the appropriate resources to reach $25M in annual research revenue. Specifically, the MBA project will consist of completing a comprehensive business case outlining the “business need” and potential solutions. Secondly, the MBA project will consist of developing a “design document” for an eventual tool that will be used to visualize research funding and labor information to inform business decisions for resource planning for the UNBC research enterprise. This design support system will be used by senior leadership within UNBC to effectively and efficiently make decisions to allocate resources.