This study combines programming and data mining to analyze consumer reviews extracted from Yelp.com to deconstruct the hotel guest experience and examine its association with satisfaction ratings. The findings show many important factors in customer reviews that carry varying weights and find the meaningful semantic compositions inside the customer reviews. More importantly, our approach makes it possible to use big data analytics to find different perspectives on variables that might not have been studied in the hospitality literature.

This study re-examined the determinants of market value from the perspectives of patent analysis and patent litigation in the American semiconductor industry. We used artificial neural networks to explore the influences of patent counts, defendant counts of patent litigation, and patent share on market value in the American semiconductor industry. The patent data were collected from the United States Patent and Trademark Office, legal data were collected from the database of Westlaw and the financial data were collected from the database of COMPUSTAT. The results show that patent counts and defendant counts of patent litigation have a positive effect on corporate performance in the American semiconductor industry. However, patent share has a negative effect on corporate performance in the American semiconductor industry. Accordingly, we can apply the three indicators, patent counts, defendant counts of patent litigation, and patent share, to assess market value of American semiconductor companies.

In this study, we investigate the impact of academic directors on a firm's performance and decisions in the Taiwan equity market. We find that firms with more independent directors and board size are more likely to appoint academic directors, and academic directors can improve firm performance. The presence of academic directors positively affects firm performance through channels like more capital expenditure and larger R&D expenses. Academic directors with finance and technology backgrounds positively correlate with both Tobin's Q and ROA. Moreover, the appropriate match of expertise between firms and their academic directors contributes to a better performance. However, corporations with academic directors have a higher compensation gap between top managers and employees.