El objetivo de esta investigación es analizar como las reseñas en el social media afectan al valor de marca de los hoteles 5 estrellas en el distrito de Miraflores de la ciudad de Lima. El estudio inicia con la investigación en fuentes con la finalidad de definir los conceptos de: social media, reseñas online, turismo, conocimiento de marca, imagen de marca y lealtad de marca; además de conocer el contexto actual del sector hotelero. Después, se enmarca en una investigación que utiliza una metodología mixta (cualitativa y cuantitativa) con un alcance exploratorio y correlacionar. En la fase cualitativa, se realizan entrevistas a profundidad y estructuradas a expertos digitales del social media y branding. Asimismo, usuarios representantes del servicio hotelero. Finalmente, en la fase cuantitativa se aplica un cuestionario a una muestra de 282 personas hospedajes en los 9 hoteles de cinco estrellas de Miraflores. Se obtiene como resultado que efectivamente las reseñas positivas o negativas afectan al valor de marca de los hoteles. Por ello, a mayor experiencia del cliente con las plataformas donde el consumidor participa y crea contenido, esta influirá en sus actitudes hacia valor de marca de los hoteles. Además, influye tanto en su decisión de compra como selección del hotel, dependiendo de las calificaciones anteriores en dichas plataformas. Finalmente, se proponen acciones para los gerentes de los hoteles. / The objective of this research is to analyze how the reviews in the social media affect the brand value of the five stars hotels in the Miraflores district of the city of Lima. The study begins with research in sources with the purpose of defining the concepts of: social media, online reviews, tourism, brand awareness, brand image and brand loyalty; besides knowing the current context of the hotel sector. Later, it is part of a research that uses a mixed methodology (qualitative and quantitative) with an exploratory and correlational scope. In the qualitative phase, in-depth and structured interviews are conducted with digital experts of social media and branding. Also, users representing the hotel service. Finally, in the quantitative phase a questionnaire is applied to a sample of 282 people staying at the 9 five-star hotels in Miraflores. The result is that effectively positive or negative reviews affect the brand value of the hotels. Therefore, the greater the customer experience with the platforms where the consumer participates and creates content, this will influence their attitudes towards the brand value of the hotels. In addition, it influences both your purchase decision and hotel selection, depending on the previous ratings on those platforms. Finally, actions are proposed for hotel managers. / Trabajo de investigación

Ensuring the objectivity of systematic reviews and meta-analyses (SRMA) begins with comprehensive searches into diverse resources mining primary studies. Guidelines for systematic reviews recommend authors to routinely search of trial registries to identify unpublished studies. In this dissertation, I investigated the utilization of ClinicalTrials.gov (CTG), the world’s largest clinical trial registry that contains data from clinical trials of products that are subject to United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulation, as an information resource in SRMAs. First, I examined the use of various information resources including CTG in SRMAs published from 2005-2016, and identified the factors associated with their use. Thereafter, to determine the accuracy of trial safety data reported at CTG, I compared the data at CTG with that in corresponding journal articles and FDA drug reviews. I found that trial safety data at both CTG and articles differed frequently from FDA drug reviews, but the differences were modest in magnitude. Finally, I repeated published meta-analysis (conducted using data from primary study articles) with data at CTG to find that most meta-analysis results were reproduced using CTG data. Taken together, this work suggests that CTG should not only be searched more often to find primary research for systematic reviews, but that data at CTG can also be used to conduct quantitative data synthesis.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The internet is the home for massive volumes of valuable data constantly being created, making it difficult for users to find information relevant to them. In recent times, online users have been relying on the recommendations made by websites to narrow down the options. Online reviews have also become an increasingly important factor in the final choice of a customer. Unfortunately, attackers have found ways to manipulate both reviews and recommendations to mislead users. A Recommendation System is a special type of information filtering system adapted by online vendors to provide suggestions to their customers based on their requirements. Collaborative filtering is one of the most widely used recommendation systems; unfortunately, it is prone to shilling/profile injection attacks. Such attacks alter the recommendation process to promote or demote a particular product. On the other hand, many spammers write deceptive reviews to change the credibility of a product/service. This work aims to address these issues by treating the review manipulation and shilling attack scenarios independently. For the shilling attacks, we build an efficient Reinforcement Learning-based shilling attack method. This method reduces the uncertainty associated with the item selection process and finds the most optimal items to enhance attack reach while treating the recommender system as a black box. Such practical online attacks open new avenues for research in building more robust recommender systems. When it comes to review manipulations, we introduce a method to use a deep structure embedding approach that preserves highly nonlinear structural information and the dynamic aspects of user reviews to identify and cluster the spam users. It is worth mentioning that, in the experiment with real datasets, our method captures about 92\% of all spam reviewers using an unsupervised learning approach.

Titel: Kan jag lita på dig? – En studie om hur demografiska faktorer påverkar förtroendet till Electronic Word of Mouth inom försäljningsbranschen. Nivå: C-uppsats, examensarbete i företagsekonomi Författare: Jonatan Viklund & Robert Sundström Handledare: Jonas Molin & Lars-Johan Åge Datum: 2019-09-07 Syfte: Syftet med studien är att analysera hur förtroendet till eWOM inom försäljningsbranschen påverkas av demografiska aspekter. Metod: Studien använder en kvantitativ forskningsmetod bestående av en survey-undersökning som behandlade 25 frågor inom demografi samt recensioner knutna till fastighetsmäklare. Totalt samlade undersökningen in svar från 100 respondenter varav 93 från dessa kunde användas. Därefter analyserades de insamlade svaren i SPSS där deskriptiv-, korrelations- samt klusteranalys genomfördes. Resultat och slutsats: Resultatet av studien visar att det existerar både skillnader och likheter gällande förtroende i direkt korrelation till demografiska skiljaktigheter. Två av studiens fyra hypoteser verifierades och en verifierades delvis vilket besvarade syftet att förtroende till eWOM skiljer sig mellan demografiska grupper. I regel läser majoriteten av konsumenterna recensioner, yngre generationer upplever ett större förtroende till eWOM och kön eller utbildning har ingen direkt koppling. Uppsatsens bidrag: Studien bidrar till ökad förståelse för hur demografi påverkar förtroendeskapande, i detta fall specificerat till försäljningsbranschen. Studien bekräftar och dementerar även tidigare forskning inom konsumentbeteende och demografiska frågeställningar samt öppnar upp för vidare forskning. Förslag till vidare forskning: Vidare forskning bör fortsätta i våra fotspår men kan göras på högre nivå med större kvantitet av respondenter som återspeglar samhället bättre. Även mer specificerad forskning till individuella demografiska faktorer och även flera faktorers samband till förtroende behövs. Nyckelord: Förtroende, demografi, eWOM, recensioner, försäljning, fastighetsmäklare / Title: Can I trust you? - A study on how demographic factors affect trust in Electronic Word of Mouth in the sales industry Level: Final assignment for a bachelor’s degree in business administration Author: Jonatan Viklund & Robert Sundström Supervisor: Jonas Molin & Lars-Johan Åge Date: 2019-09-07 Aim: The aim of the study is to analyze how trust in eWOM in the sales industry is affected by demographic aspects. Method: The study uses a quantitative research method consisting of a survey which dealt with 25 issues in demography and reviews related to real estate agents. In total, the survey collected responses from 100 respondents where 93 of these could be used. Subsequently, the collected responses were analyzed in SPSS where descriptive, correlation and cluster analysis were performed. Results and conclusion: The results of the study show that there are both differences and similarities in trust in direct correlation to demographic differences. two of the study's four hypotheses were verified alongside one partially verified, which answered the purpose that trust in eWOM differs between demographic groups. As a rule, consumers read reviews, younger generations experience greater trust, and gender or education has no direct link. Contribution: The study contributes to an increased understanding of how demography affects trust, in this case specified to reviews in the sales industry. The study also confirms and denies previous research in consumer behavior and demographic issues. Further Research: Further research should continue in our footsteps but be done at a higher level with respondents who reflect society better. Even more specific research is needed for individual demographic factors and a group of factors correlation with trust. Keywords: Trust, demography, eWOM, reviews, sales, real estate agents

"The purpose of this study, then, is to determine whether or not the monthly selections of The Literary Guild of America are of good enough quality to enable the library staff to accept them as really good choices of current fiction. This paper includes a brief sketch of the history of the Literary Guild which outlines the club's background and selection and distribution policies. Next it presents an examination of each of the twelve titles distributed to Guild members in 1948, followed by a summary of the findings. An annotated bibliography of the titles selected by the Guild in 1947, arranged in order of issuance to members, is appended to this paper"--Introduction. / Typescript. / "August, 1953." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science." / Advisor: Mary Edna Anders, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 53-58).

This study examines the effect of electronic Word-of-Mouth (eWOM) on consumers’ purchasing decision process, more specifically: How does consumer attitudes and purchasing intent toward companies and their products affected by negative eWOM on social media. The study is based on three-component model of attitudes which identifies attitude as the awareness, assessment and readiness to act. The purpose of this study was to examine how negative eWOM on social media affects the consumer’s purchasing decision process. The purpose was to improve understanding of eWOM’s role and influence on the consumer’s attitudes and purchasing intent towards the companies and their products.   The authors conducted semi-structured interviews with 13 individuals aged 18-20. Results indicate that negative customer reviews on social media have a negative influence on consumers attitudes and purchasing intent. The results also show that the effect varies between different product types. The effect may be stronger for expensive and important purchases than for cheap and routine purchases.

Sentiment classification is the process of categorizing data into categories based on its polarity with a wide array of applications across several industries. This report examines a combination of two prominent approaches to sentiment classification using a lexicon of weighted words and machine learning respectively. These approaches are compared with the combined hybrid approach in order to give an account of their relative strengths and weaknesses. When run on a set of IMDb movie reviews the results indicate that the hybrid model performs better than the lexicon-based approach, in turn being outperformed by the learning-based approach. However, the gain in convenience brought on by eliminating the need for training data makes the hybrid model an appealing alternative to the other approaches with a slight trade-off in performance. / Att klassificera text i kategorier baserat på känslan de uttrycker är ett aktuellt område idag och kan tillämpas inom många industrier. Rapporten undersöker en kombination av de två framstående tillvägagångssätten till denna typ av klassificering baserade på ett lexikon med definerade ordvikter respektive maskininlärning. Denna hybridlösning jämförs mot de två andra tillvägagångssätten för att framlägga deras relativa styrkor och svagheter. På ett dataset med filmrecensioner från IMDb får maskininlärningsklassificeraren bäst resultat, följt av hybridlösningen och sist den lexikonbaserade lösningen. Trots det kan hybridlösningen vara att föredra i situationer där det är ogenomförbart eller oskäligt att förbereda träningsdata för maskininlärningsklassificeraren, dock med ett visst avkall på prestanda.

Systematic Literature Reviews (SLR) are a powerful research tool to identify and select literature to answer a certain question. However, an approach to extract inherent analytical data in Systematic Literature Reviews’ multi-dimensional datasets was lacking. Previous Systematic Literature Review tools do not incorporate the capability of providing said analytical insight. Therefore, this thesis aims to provide a useful approach comprehending various algorithms and data treatment techniques to provide the user with analytical insight on their data that is not evident in the bare execution of a Systematic Literature Review. For this goal, a literature review has been conducted to find the most relevant techniques to extract data from multi-dimensional data sets and the aforementioned approach has been tested on a survey regarding Self-Adaptive Systems (SAS) using a web-application. As a result, we find out what are the most adequate techniques to incorporate into the approach this thesis will provide.

Abstract The rapid technological developments have changed how companies market themselves and how consumers search for information. Furthermore, the internet provides companies with a variety of channels to share information and products. For a long time, “word of mouth” which consumers recommend via mouth-to-mouth, has been one of the most effective marketing techniques. According to studies, the effect of positive and negative electronic Word of Mouth on consumers differs, with negative electronic Word of Mouth having a greater impact on consumers. Positive electronic word-of-mouth can be beneficial for companies whereas negative can be detrimental. This thesis investigates what companies should do to continue spreading positive eWOM and reduce the negative eWOM. Further, this thesis aims to investigate how the positive and negative eWOM affects a company and what their current strategy is so that a recommended strategy can be built for the companies.  Thus, a qualitative study of six SME companies was designed to understand how eWOM affects companies and how they can reduce the effect of negative eWOM. The data was gathered through online semi-structured interviews, and the findings indicate that companies are affected differently by eWOM due to whether it is a product-based or service-based company. According to the study, two components that all companies lacked were resources and time. Companies should be more visible, have weekly marketing meetings, and a platform for reviews, according to the new strategy. Keywords: electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), Social networks sites (SNS), Valence, Online reviews, impact, and consequences of eWOM

This diploma thesis deals with the fate of Milada Horáková. It focuses on media responses regarding the trial, the film production Milada and the responses to it, the opinions of experts and further portrayal of the fate of the only woman executed in political trials. The first part of the diploma thesis is devoted to the life of Milada Horáková and is set in the context of that period. It also gives a detailed description of the trial preparations and subsequently explains the details of each day prior to the trial with all thirteen defendants. The initial part of the thesis analyzes the contemporary media responses of the three most important daily newspapers of that time, Rudé právo, Svobodné slovo and Lidová demokracie. Finally, the thesis deals with the rehabilitation of Milada Horáková and the responses regarding the matter in the summer of 1968 in the above-mentioned dailies. The second part of the thesis starts with defining the historical biographical motion picture as a genre. Subsequently, it describes the film Milada in detail and it gives a brief overview of the film's director David Mrnka and his opinion on the film. The thesis continues with the analysis of the actual film and its comparison with the actual sequence of events as well as Jan Mudra's documentary The Case of Dr....