This thesis explores the strategies utilized when branding and marketing an artist. This idea was inspired by how Taylor Swift's Eras Tour has captured headlines consistently for over a year now. This thesis will discuss how aspects of Taylor Swift’s brand - her core values, fan engagement, co-creation, fear of missing out, scarcity appeal, and nostalgia - have promoted her success. The thesis will then consider what marketing and branding elements led to this phenomenon that an aspiring, or developed, artist can learn from and implement in their career.

The use of supplier scorecards has become standard in business environments to measure performance. This need for scorecards has spurred research on the best metrics to include, shown the importance of linking each measure with long-term goals, and explained pitfalls that many scorecards fall into, such as gaming particular metrics. This research contributed to the development of a new monthly scorecard for use at Northrop Grumman in Chandler, AZ, titled the Supplier Performance Visibility report, or SPV. The SPV uses six different metrics to cover many aspects of supplier performance that contribute to the work Northrop Grumman does for its customers. This report analyzes the ways in which the data for the scorecard was collected and the major findings during the five months of initial implementation.

Terrestrial hermit crabs serve an incredibly important ecological role in seed dispersal and as decomposers along coastal shorelines. They have also become quite popular in the commercial pet trade, with one species, Coenobita clypeatus, being particularly favored. Typically, these hermit crabs are easily captured and removed from the wild with little protection in their native ranges. In Hermitage Bay, Tobago, there is little information about the population numbers, composition, shell preference, and substrate preference of C. clypeatus in their native habitat. In this study, we estimated population size, gastropod shell preferences, and substrate preference conditions when clustering. We conducted mark re-capture surveys in March, July, and December 2023 and collected morphological data from captured hermit crabs. Our results indicate that the estimated population was highest in July, with the variation being significant when using the Schnabel mark re-capture estimation formula. The most common overall shell type, Columbella mercatoria (West Indian Dove Shell), was prevalent among the smaller sized, younger hermit crabs; while the larger hermit crabs preferred Cittarium pica (West Indian Top Shell). The most preferred substrate for these terrestrial hermit crabs were areas with a mixture of sand and dirt, with high amounts of vegetation and leaf waste and low amounts of human litter. These results suggest a predominantly young population and that beach cleanups should focus on removing human litter entirely, while leaving leaf waste and other fallen logs and branches and not using the collected decomposing plant matter for bonfires. This can help maintain a healthy hermit crab population that continues to benefit the coastlines in Tobago as well as other ecosystems.

The events industry provides an integral service to society but fails to understand and incorporate the three pillars of sustainability. The purpose of this paper is to identify the cause of the lack of awareness and motivation from event managers to make their events more sustainable. Utilizing both dated and recent research papers to understand the gap of awareness, the data demonstrated that there is not a clear understanding of sustainability from a holistic perspective. The most notable issue was the focus on environmental sustainability and the lack of awareness of social and economic sustainability. This paper analyzes one specific event, the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Scottsdale, Celebrate Youth Gala, and dives deeper into how the event can be made more sustainable. The findings demonstrated that event managers often are unaware of the sustainable options available to them and the costs associated with them. This paper offered recommendations for event managers and started the necessary conversation to create change within the industry.