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Retail automotive literature that examines how the distance between a retail automotive facility and the prospective purchaser affects market performance is limited. Primary data for this study indicates that distance and purchase in the retail automotive sector move in opposite directions. This study examines similar goods that have high barriers of entry and proposes other methods of increasing market reach. This is a study of the conditions that affect the market performance for imported luxury vehicles. First, is the effect of distance on purchase decisions. Vehicular sales drop the further away a customer is from a car dealership. We call this phenomenon distance decay. Distance decay is defined as: the interaction between two locations declines as the distance between then increases. Secondly, when similar brands are viewed as substitutes, the consumer will choose the brand with the closest automotive service department to their residence or place of employment. Thirdly, door-to-door selling can decrease distance decay. Lastly, pick-up and delivery service can decrease distance decay. Data from 30,936 prospects and individuals who entered, phoned, or emailed a dealership inquiring about purchasing a new Audi were used in the study. These prospects will be categorized by who intended to buy and who actually purchased a car. In addition to the prospects, data from 6,153 individuals who purchased a new Audi from four Audi dealerships in the greater Philadelphia area and from the framed field experiment were used in the study. These categories will then be further labeled by ZIP code and city to determine the effects of distance. Then, possible solutions will be performed on test groups to determine what alternatives from other industries can be used to improve market performance involving long distances. / Business Administration/Interdisciplinary

Mass loss of alpine glaciers presently account for about half of the cryospheric contribution to the global sea-level rise. Mass balance of alpine glaciers has predominantly been monitored by; (1) glaciological and hydrological methods, and (2) satellite gravimetric methods using data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission. However, the former can be logistically costly and have large extrapolation errors: measurements taken at monthly temporal scales are expensive and have a spatial resolution of roughly one kilometer. The latter provides monthly mass-balance estimates of aggregates of alpine glaciers, although the spatial resolution (~300 km) is far too coarse for assessing individual glaciers’ mass balance. Ground-based, time-lapse microgravity measurements can potentially overcome some of the disadvantages of the glaciological, hydrological, and satellite gravitational methods for assessing mass changes and their spatial distribution on a single glacier. Gravity models were utilized to predict the gravity signals of the summer-time mass balance, changes in the seasonal snow cover outside of the glacier, and the vertical gravity gradient (VGG) needed for the free-air correction on Wolverine Glacier, AK. The modeled gravity signal of the summer-time mass balance (average of -0.237 mGal) is more than an order of magnitude larger than the uncertainty of conventional relative gravimeters (±0.007 mGal). Therefore, modeling predict that the time-lapse gravitational method could detect the summer-time mass balance on Wolverine Glacier. The seasonal snow effect was shown to have the greatest influence (~ -0.15 mGal) on the outer 100 m boundary of the glacier and minimal effect (~ -0.02 mGal) towards the center, both larger than the uncertainty of relative gravimeters. The VGG has a positive deviation, about -0.1 to -0.2 mGal/m, from the normal VGG (-0.309 mGal/m). Thus, seasonal snow effect and VGG need to be correctly accounted for when processing gravity measurements to derive the residual gravity signal of the glacier mass balance. Accurate measurements of elevation changes, seasonal snow depth, and the VGG should be performed in future gravity surveys of glaciers. / Geology

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