TEXT ANALYTICS USED TO SEE IF "POKEMON GO" WILL KEEP GOING
Summary of research done by Dr. Jie Zhang and co-authors Dr. Han Li, Dr. Ashish Gupta, and Dr. Nick Flor

Pokemon Go captivated a lot of users when launched in 2016. Pokemon Go is a notable game in technology because it was the first popular augmented reality app game. Using text analytics to analyze thousands of tweets about Pokemon Go, Dr. Jie Zhang and co-authors Dr. Han Li, Dr. Ashish Gupta, and Dr. Nick Flor looked for patterns of positive and negative reactions to the popular phone game. Text analytics gives businesses a new way to learn customers' thoughts and feelings by converting text, such as social media posts, emails, or reviews, into meaningful data. More than ever before, companies can now gain deeper insight into their customers' positive and negative thoughts and feelings.


Does it matter how attractive a salesperson is? Does their personality make a big difference?

It matters quite a lot.

Summary of research done by Dr. Thuy Nguyen and co-authors Dr. Audhesh Paswan and Dr. Alan Dubinsky

What else can make a salesperson effective? How can a company provide resources to its sales force to improve its effectiveness? A recent article by Dr.Thuy Nguyen and co-authors Dr. Audhesh Paswan and Dr. Alan Dubinsky categorized several types of resources available to salespeople, looking at which resources salespeople were likely to use across four types of customers (1) new customers, (2) long-term customers, (3) win-back customers, and (4) short-term customers.


Dr. Adam Lei and his co-authors, Dr. Huiha Li and Dr. Jin Yu, in a recent article in Managerial Finance, took an in-depth look at how dual-class firms compare to single-class firms in terms of their dividend payments and share repurchases.

SO YOU MAY BE ASKING, WHAT IS A DUAL-CLASS FIRM?

A dual-class firm has two classes of common stock shares: (1) superior shares with additional control and voting rights and (2) regular shares, also known as inferior shares, that do not have the same voting rights as superior shares.


Summary of research done by Dr. Garcia-Fuentes, Dr. Yoshi Fukasawa, Connie Vargas and Rodrigo Mireles

Imagine being a farmer and being too poor to afford a tractor.  That’s true for many farmers in Nicaragua, the second poorest country in Latin America, where 42% of the population lives on less than US $1 a day.  Two MSU Texas professors (Dr. Pablo Garcia-Fuentes and the late Dr. Yoshi Fukasawa) and two MSU Texas students (Connie Vargas and Rodrigo Mireles) coauthored the research. Dr. Garcia-Fuentes, Dr. Fukasawa, and Mr. Mireles traveled to Nicaragua to examine how oxen could help alleviate the poverty among farmers.


Summary of research done by Dr. Scott Manley and co-authors Dr. Ralph Williams, Jr., Dr. Joshua Aaron, and Dr. Francis Daniel

There’s an old saying that most small business owners are too busy working “in” their business to work “on” their business.  That means these owners are so busy with daily tasks that they don’t have the time to make plans to improve their business.  An article by Dr. Scott Manley, Lalani Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship and co-authors, Ralph I. Williams Jr., D.B.A., Joshua R. Aaron, Ph.D., and Francis Daniel, Ph.D. give some great advice about how busy small business owners can more effectively improve business performance.