Theses submitted during 2020 http://dspace.iimk.ac.in:80/xmlui/handle/2259/1050 2026-05-12T13:20:58Z 2026-05-12T13:20:58Z Boby Chaitanya Villari Mohammed Shahid Abdulla Sebastian M. P. Ramaprasath L http://dspace.iimk.ac.in:80/xmlui/handle/2259/1059 2021-03-05T12:12:17Z 2020-02-01T00:00:00Z

Novel multi-armed bandit algorithm for business applications Boby Chaitanya Villari; Mohammed Shahid Abdulla; Sebastian M. P.; Ramaprasath L Business management problems are often characterized by the availability of a large set of decision choices with a need to pick one or more from these choices in order to maximize the payoffs. Such problems present the dilemma on whether to explore the choices for improving the knowledge about the available choices or to exploit the currently available knowledge (on the choices) and pick the best choice based on the same. Since these Explore-Exploit tasks are opposing in nature, the decision maker has to obtain a trade-off between these two tasks. Multi-Armed Bandits (MAB), a family of Machine Learning algorithms, are tailor-made to handle such ExploreExploit problem scenarios. The MAB problem is a sequential decision-making task where the decision maker (agent) decides to choose (pull), at each time step, an action (arm) from a pool of actions - based on some informed choosing strategy (policy). With the aim of maximizing the average payoff from this exercise in the long-run, the agent examines these payoffs to continuously improve the policy and decide on the future selection of arms. Alternatively, the same can be seen as a regret minimization problem where the regret is the difference between the rewards of an oracle policy that chooses the best arm in every time step and the rewards of the Agent’s policy. In literature, it has been shown that in H pulls, O(log H) regret is the lowest possible regret an MAB algorithm can achieve. MABs are studied in various settings and in this research we are interested in Stochastic MAB (SMAB) and Contextual MAB (CMAB). In a Stochastic MAB setting, each arm i ∈ {1, 2, . . . , K} is associated with an unknown probability distribution vi on [0, 1] and rewards of this arm i which are independent and identically distributed (i.i.d) and are assumed to be drawn from that distribution vi . In this thesis, we propose effSAMWMIX, which achieves a logarithmic regret. effSAMWMIX’s performance is compared with Thompson Sampling and KL-UCB algorithms over rewards which follow distributions like Exponential, Poisson, Normal distributions that are (suitably truncated over [0, 1]) along with Bernoulli, Triangular distributions. In addition, we performed experiments on these algorithms over a Synthetic distribution designed to stress test SMAB algorithms. We propose a variant of effSAMWMIX namely NBP-effSAMWMIX to address Online Portfolio Selection Problem (OPSP). OPSP has been tackled previously using a few machine learning approaches, including one that utilizes an SMAB as its decision engine and is referred to in the literature as Naive Bandit Portfolio (NBP) algorithm. An NBP’s performance is expected to vary with the SMAB engine in the algorithm. As of now, only NBP-UCB1, which uses an established MAB algorithm named UCB1 as its kernel, is reported. We compare the performance of NBP-effSAMWMIX vis-à-vis NBP-KLUCB, NBP-TS and NBP-UCB1 algorithms. We tested the algorithms on both simulated and real-world market datasets and report the results. Further, we extend the effSAMWMIX to Ctx-effSAMWMIX, a CMAB which considers the additional contextual information. Availability of contextual information is common in business scenarios like a News Article Recommendations on a news website. These personalized recommendations play a major role in business success which could be a sale or a click on a news article in case of a news website. In News Article Recommendation problem, the aim is to choose a news article from an article list so that the shown article is of interest to target user. We model this problem as a CMAB. We employed an unbiased offline evaluation technique proposed in the literature to empirically test Ctx-effSAMWMIX on Yahoo! Frontpage Today Module User Click Log R6B data set. The performance is measured on Click Through Rate (CTR), a measure that reports the number of clicks each recommended article obtained. Ctx-effSAMWMIX is compared with LinUCB which is cited well in CMAB literature. Abstract from thesis. For full text contact library.

2020-02-01T00:00:00Z Piyush Kumar Sebastian M. P. Anindita Paul Balasubrahmanyam S. http://dspace.iimk.ac.in:80/xmlui/handle/2259/1058 2021-03-05T12:02:41Z 2020-03-01T00:00:00Z

Understanding the predictors of adoption of IoT healthcare services Piyush Kumar; Sebastian M. P.; Anindita Paul; Balasubrahmanyam S. IoT is a world-wide network of interconnected objects uniquely addressable, based on standard communication protocols. IoT in healthcare provides timely and increased, nearly instantaneous communication between physicians, hospitals, vendors, insurance companies and other stakeholders via interconnected devices, wireless networks and related IT companies that provide support for data analytics for alleviating and ameliorating the lives of patients in particular and other stakeholders in general. IoT based healthcare services can be instrumental in saving lives in case of accidents as the golden hour requires communicating to the hospitals regarding the location and nature of the emergency and the patient’s health statistics. IoT, with its interconnected and possible real-time transmission of the health parameters of the patients, can help the patients in case of accidents and other acute health attacks such as stroke and cardiac arrests. Healthcare is an information-intensive industry and healthcare professionals rely on access to comprehensive and accurate information, at the point of care, to make the daily decisions about a person’s care. IoT applied to the healthcare sector (IoT healthcare) promises to bring marked changes in the quality, safety, accountability, and even the way in which healthcare services are delivered. Although still in its initial stages of development, the impact of IoT in healthcare has been significant. Recent studies found that IoT healthcare will add about $117 billion to the global healthcare economy by 2020. IoT devices offer heightened accountability for healthcare providers. They also improve the outcomes and reduce the ballooning costs which are the main aims of health care advocates, policymakers, and insurance companies. Abstract from thesis. For full text contact library.

2020-03-01T00:00:00Z Rajeev A. Rupesh Kumar Pati Sidhartha S. Padhi Kausik Gangopadhyay http://dspace.iimk.ac.in:80/xmlui/handle/2259/1057 2021-03-05T11:50:14Z 2020-02-01T00:00:00Z

Sustainable supply chain management: evolution, impact and application Rajeev A.; Rupesh Kumar Pati; Sidhartha S. Padhi; Kausik Gangopadhyay With growing market demand for various products in the latter half of the 20th century, many organizations ventured into risky but, frugally profitable mode of production thus compromising the long term impact on society as well as environment. However, subsequently over a period of time, world has faced some of the most disastrous industrial accidents. This has forced the stakeholders like regulatory authorities, manufacturers, customers, and society, to reconsider economic business model concepts and question the implications of the business on society and environment. Increasing rates of pollution and environmental calamities caused by industrial production have urged several researchers and industry experts to work on Sustainable Production and Consumption issues within the context of Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SSCM). Hence, this study attempts to understand and contribute to the sustainable supply chain literature from three broad perspectives of evolution, impact and application In the first part of the study (Chapter 2), a comprehensive thematic analysis is performed on 1068 studies over the time period 2000-2015, to understand the evolution of sustainability issues by analysing trends over the time, across industries, economies, and use of methodologies during the evolution of SSCM. The study also proposes a conceptual framework to classify various factors along triple bottom line pillars of sustainability issues in the context of supply chains. In-depth study is conducted on 190 articles which focuses on all pillars of sustainability (as per the proposed conceptual framework) on SSCM across different economies to identify publication trend, industry specific studies, and methodological approaches used. It was observed that the studies focusing on all three dimensions of sustainability are comparatively scarce and more focus on industry specific studies is required. The study propose future avenues to extend research in the SSCM domain. In the second part of the study (Chapter 3), a detailed literature review of sustainability research in chemical industry supply chain was done, considering the impact of chemical industries on sustainability. Abstract from the thesis. For full text contact library.

2020-02-01T00:00:00Z Ranjitha G P. Anandakuttan B. Unnithan Keyoor Purani Unnikrishnan K Nair http://dspace.iimk.ac.in:80/xmlui/handle/2259/1056 2021-03-05T11:43:07Z 2020-03-01T00:00:00Z

Consumption as a mechanism to compensate the loss of ownership of self among women after marriage: a life transition perspective Ranjitha G P.; Anandakuttan B. Unnithan; Keyoor Purani; Unnikrishnan K Nair It is not new and startling that Gender has been a point of debate across the globe in multiple setups, personal and professional. The transition a woman undergoes in her entire life has been tied to various consumption patterns and ideal consumption behaviors at every stage of development as a woman. (Kaplan,1987;Bordo,1993; Madaran,2000; Catterall, 2013). Given the developments globally beyond gender, few issues and cases remind us that the cultural and societal embodiment of what constitutes being a women remains a site to be contested. In societies undergoing modernity, how do women use consumption to negotiate the contrasting cultural values of tradition and modernity when their own Selves, bodies and lives are held to be sacred (Agnew, 1997; Mukherjee, 1983; Wadley, 1977)? Women are defined and located through social and moral parameters which serve as prominent markers of control and surveillance over their consumption choices. As Contested by the women who feel they have ownership over their bodies, lives and selves and haw they are perceived, versus how others, typically men, perceived the role of women and their lives. In the middle of this field lies the market, adapting, creating and nurturing change in an effort to open new market segments, opportunities and profit possibilities. Advertisers certainly require an in-depth understanding of how and why consumption systematically changes over consumers’ lifetimes (Harrison et al., 2011). The life cycle constitutes a key advertising concept that helps in exploring changes in consumers over time (Cornwell et al., 2006). As a multidisciplinary concept, the life cycle approach has significantly developed since its introduction in the marketing literature (Baer and Srnka, 2012). Advertisers seek the life cycle concept to study consumer needs and spending patterns. More recently, scholars call for an individual life course perspective in consumer research (Bailey et al, 2010). We observe the direction of empirical and theoretical research flexing from macro to a micro level and the stages of life (Murphy and Staples, 1979; Gilly and Enis, 1982; Du and Kamakura, 2006). And recent life cycle research in marketing has turned to the individual consumer as the level of analysis (Cornwell et al., 2008; Bailey et al., 2010). Advertising research notes that an individual’s identity is challenged during transitions (Epp and Price, 2008; Noble and Walker 1997; Schouten 1991) and that transitions lead to disruptions in consumption (Andreasen 1984; Fellerman and Debevee 1993). Some of these identity disruptions are those that we invite or anticipate, such as marriage. Many scholars address a particular transitional or liminal period in which identity is challenged and marketplace resources as symbolic anchors to a preliminal self and markers of a postliminal self (Belk 1992; Curasi, Price, and Arnould 2004; Lastovicka and Fernandez 2005; Mehta and Belk 1991; Noble and Walker 1997). In addition, researchers have explored various life stages viz., childbirth, motherhood, divorce, adulthood, family identity, retirement etc., in depth conceptually and empirically. Abstract from the thesis. For full text contact library.

2020-03-01T00:00:00Z