Browsing by Subject "Small business"

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Eat or Be Eaten: A Look at Cultural Equity in Small Business Success by College Campuses
(2021-05) Bender, Dane
"What operations, tactics, and strategies that successful small businesses perform produce the most effective and persistent Cultural Equity among new cycles of student populations?" In this paper I will focus on retail and restaurant locations from the intersection of MLK Boulevard and Guadalupe Street to the intersection of Rio Grande Street and 29th Street. For small businesses, this operating environment has immense foot traffic from the 50,000+ students on UT Austin’s campus. Students spend only a few years on campus and then move away, so businesses are presented with a unique challenge of customer churn. Assuming that small businesses do not benefit from pre-existing brand awareness and customer interest that larger chains do among new student populations, word of mouth marketing comes at a premium, minimizing the cost of customer acquisition. Through survey analyses I have found that firms that have survived for a lengthy period in this environment tend to have some measure of Cultural Equity. Here, Cultural Equity for a small business is defined as a composite score of brand awareness percentage, net promoter score, and the likelihood that a customer would take an out-of-town friend to a business’ location. Cultural Equity represents the degree to which a small business is known, recommended by customers, and is shared with out-of-town friends; it is a measure of word of mouth marketing and customer advocacy. In this paper, I focus on understanding how a firm might cultivate Cultural Equity.
How Nonemployer Firms Stage-manage Ad Hoc Collaboration: An Activity Theory Analysis
(Technical Communication Quarterly, 2014-03) Spinuzzi, Clay
Nonemployer firms—firms with no employees—present themselves as larger, more stable firms in order to take on clients’ projects. They then achieve these projects by recruiting subcontractors, guiding the subcontractors’ interactions with clients, and coordinating subcontractors in ways that protect their team performance for the client. Using fourth generation activity theory, I examine how these firms stage-manage their ad-hoc collaborations. I conclude by describing the implications for further developing fourth-generation activity theory to study such instances of knowledge work.
Keeping the lights on : preventing small business displacement in Austin’s East Riverside neighborhood
(2023-04-14) Enders, Katherine; Wegmann, Jake
Small businesses are typically left out of the discourse surrounding gentrification and neighborhood displacement. However, long-term small businesses act as important cultural anchors in their neighborhoods and are a crucial component of a neighborhood’s identity. This study overviews a variety of small business anti-displacement methods that have been used in cities across the United States, such as business improvement districts, legacy business programs, cultural districts, historic preservation practices, commercial land trusts, tax incentives, small business technical assistance programs, and commercial tenant support programs. Austin, Texas has been making headlines the last few years as one of the quickest growing cities in the United States, primarily due to its newfound status as a tech and innovation hub. This paper focuses on Austin’s East Riverside neighborhood, which is poised to undergo rapid gentrification in the coming years due to its proximity to downtown, new light rail infrastructure, and a proposed 10 million square foot mixed-use development. This study seeks to examine small businesses in East Riverside and recommend programs and policies to prevent small business displacement in the coming years. Creating a business improvement district, amending the existing density bonus program in the area to support affordable retail space, using a portion of Project Connect’s anti-displacement funding to support community-led solutions, and planning for small businesses support through the light rail construction process are suggested as the best approaches for preventing small business displacement in the study area.
MetApp : an efficient and cost saving method for small businesses to create iOS applications
(2013-05) McCann, Simon Vincent; Wilcox, Gary B.
Interactions between small businesses and their customers often involve some form of electronic transaction. With the growing proliferation of portable computing, many of these transactions are taking place on a “smart device,” such as an iPhone or iPad. Many businesses will want to create their own custom apps to better serve their customers. Currently this process can be difficult and expensive to do well. This report proposes a method to make app production a little easier and cheaper.
Starting a small engineering consulting firm
(2010-12) Brissette, Christopher Patrick; McCann, Robert Bruce, 1948-; Ambler, Tony
When starting an engineering consulting firm, there are many questions such as, “How do I start a business?”, “How do I handle cash flow?”, “How do I get clients?”, and “How do I market?” among others that need to be answered. Since I am a sole proprietorship engineer, I will first start this paper by constructing a foundation. For a start-up, this foundation is how to get your business started. Then I will explain the business plan. This plan for a business is its structural frame that holds up the company. Finally, I will erect the facade of the business. Just like a building’s façade, marketing strategies are the face of the business and some work well while others fail in their application. At the end, I hope to be able to give a clear understanding of what it takes to start your own engineering consulting firm.
Sunny Paige Design : a case study & analysis
(2013-05) Shadden, Ashlyn Briana; Cunningham, Isabella C. M.; Wilcox, Gary
This case study explores and describes factors involved in the structure and development of small business, Sunny Paige Design. The study's goals were to 1.) document the structure of business progression, and 2.) establish a comprehensive understanding of that structure. The essential purpose of the case study explores the current advertising strategy in order to implement a meticulous business plan that with an emphasis of brand management will reach the intended audience resulting in a positive return on investment. Research conducted for the case study and analysis consisted of guided interviews and observations with the owner, employees and customers. Other data collected were conducted from access to business documents, receipts, transaction history, social media and previous advertisements.