SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Company pages on social media sites like Facebook contain real-time information for brand managers hoping to gauge customer sentiment, but only if they know how to make sense of the raw data. New research from the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business shows how to filter for bias, starting with a three-pronged test to identify and remove fake users.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Are Canada’s oil sands losing their luster? More than a decade ago, big multinational energy companies were flocking to the Western province of Alberta in droves, lured by a wealth of heavy crude in its bitumen-rich sands when oil was trading north of $100 a barrel.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — An abusive boss can make work miserable for anyone, prompting defiant employees to retaliate or flee. New research co-authored by Hui Liao at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business shows a third option.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Public companies — owned by shareholders with stock — have the advantage of being able to easily tap into financial markets when they need money, either by selling more equity as stock or often by issuing portions of their debt as bonds. Private companies — owned by the company’s founders, a management group or private investors such as a private equity group — can also sell off their debt as public bonds.

COLLEGE PARK, Md. (March 13, 2017) — Two influential women in the finance industry will speak 6 p.m. March 27, 2017, at a women’s conference hosted by the Ed Snider Center for Enterprise and Markets at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. The Women’s History Month event, “Women, Leadership & the Workplace: A New Playbook for Success,” is part of the NewDay Leadership Forum sponsored by NewDay USA.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Brands like Nantucket Nectars, Ben & Jerry's, Toms Shoes, Burt's Bees and Lifeway have thrived against bigger, longer-established competitors. They’ve emphasized modest roots and played up virtues like product health benefits and their social consciousness or environmental consciousness.  Appearing resource-modest, but highly moral, they’re tapping into the adage “consumers gravitate to underdogs.”

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Social media users post millions of “likes” and comments every year on brand pages for everything from AAA to Zyrtec. That’s a potentially rich source of information for marketers trying to gauge customer sentiment, but built-in biases create challenges. New research from professor Wendy W. Moe and a colleague at the University of Maryland’s Robert H.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — The car you rented as part of your auto-share club reeked of cigarette smoke and a cross-country roadtrip worth of crumbs littered the seats and floor. There was a slight and mysterious stickiness on the gear shift. It made you wonder: Why are some vehicles in the car-sharing club kept meticulously tidy while others arrive icky?

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — With lenient return policies common, about 9 percent of purchases at brick-and-mortar stores are returned and 25 percent to 30 percent of online orders are sent back yearly in the United States. Where do these items end up? In many cases, the likes of market vendors, wholesale liquidators, eBay Power sellers, and "mom and pop" stores purchase the goods via online auctions and resell the merchandise.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST – Could activism inspired by International Women's Day, such as State Street Global Advisors' placing a statue of a young girl before the iconic charging bull of Wall Street, actually hamper the push to gain more women on U.S. corporate boards?