Commerce

Researchers created an algorithm that successfully predicted consumer purchases. The algorithm made use of data from the consumers’ daily activity on social media. Brands could use this to analyze potential customers. The researchers’ method combines powerful statistical modeling techniques with machine learning-based image recognition. Associate Professor Toshihiko Yamasaki and his team from the Graduate School...

Women-only business networks fail to boost female entrepreneurship and instead serve to marginalise further the very people they seek to help. New research from the University of Edinburgh Business School, Lancaster University Management School and Dublin City University Business School, published in the Journal of Economic Geography, found the networks are unable to overcome bigger societal...

In today’s world, most workers are highly specialized, but this specialization can come at a cost – especially for those on the wrong team. New research by Harvard’s Growth Lab uncovers the importance of teams and coworkers when it comes to one’s productivity, earning potential, and stays of employment. The research – recently published in the journal Science...

To get more participants in online auctions and drive up the winning bid prices, two things matter: how long an auction is active and the day of the week it closes, finds researchers from the University Maryland, Stanford University, University of Pennsylvania and Indiana University. Forthcoming as “Managing Market Thickness in Online B2B Markets” in Management...

Power in the workplace does not stop women’s exposure to sexual harassment. On the contrary, women with supervisory positions are harassed more than women employees. These are the results from a new study from the Swedish Institute for Social Research at Stockholm University, which examined the conditions in Sweden, USA and Japan. By analyzing the...

Key Takeaways:   Behavioral targeting of personalized advertising (cookies) doubles online ad prices. Most American consumers choose not to opt-out of targeted online advertising. How long has it been since you logged onto a Web site and you were prompted to decide whether to opt out of “cookies” that the site told you will enhance your...

Not all companies succeed for one reason or another and statistics highlight that every second Finnish company will cease operations within five years of founding. A new study entitled Post-Failure Impression Management: A Typology of Entrepreneurs’ Public Narratives after Business Closure by researchers at the Aalto University School of Business’ department of management studies shows...

Economists working with Professor Marko Sarstedt from Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg are demanding that the same scientific standards be applied to economics and the behavioral sciences in general as are used in the natural sciences. They believe that the inherent uncertainties in measured values must be described and quantified in order to enhance the...

New research from Cass Business School has found that business sustainability strategies can succeed alongside mainstream competitive strategies when managers believe in them. In ‘Toward a Process Theory of Making Sustainability Strategies Legitimate in Action‘, published in the Academy of Management Journal, the researchers found that although managers support sustainability strategies, there can be tensions in...

Imagine standing in the grocery store, looking at a pile of bananas. On your side of the pile, the manager has posted yesterday’s newspaper flyer, showing bananas at 62¢ per pound–so that’s what you pay at the register. But on the other side of the pile, there’s an up-to-the-minute screen showing that the price of...