674 research outputs found
Furious Angels
No full textReunited by tragedy, Andrew and Will are unlikely pawns in a high-stakes game of A.I. and religious fanaticism. Answering a call from beyond the grave they are unwittingly thrown into a vast technological world both deadly and fascinating. This is the breathtaking first book in the series by Irish author Dr Damien Mac Namara
How Is Damien Hirst a Cultural Entrepreneur?
No full textabstract: An on-going academic debate occupying Entrepreneurship researchers for the past several decades is concerned with defining what an entrepreneur is and what an entrepreneur does. The debate also extends to exploring the influence different types of entrepreneurs have on their environment. In the new creative economy, entrepreneurship has become a central issue for the regeneration of urban space. This essay first differentiates between economic and cultural entrepreneurs and second explores what influence cultural entrepreneurs, especially, have on urban developments. By using Damien Hirst as exemplar for the discussion of the entrepreneurial character and spheres of action, the analysis of his career demonstrates how difficult it is in practice to draw a line between artistic, cultural and commercial activities in the creative economy. Hirst’s approach to contemporary conceptual art and his factory-like art production are both controversial and successful as defined by the author. Nevertheless, there seems to be agreement that his entrepreneurial artistic work has had a profound impact on the revitalization of East London and thus can be used as model for urban planners. The author posits that Hirst is a cultural entrepreneur based on this model for creating/regenerating viable economic urban spaces who embraces the blending of the artistic and market spheres
The evaluation of milk brands both in the consumers' minds and the market in China
No full textThe economist has predicted that the consumption of goods and services in China has been steadily increasing every year (Paul Hubbard, Hurley, & Sharma, 2012) and therefore China has become an attractive market for both local and international businesses. Brands are playing an important part in the lives of Chinese consumers. The current study aims at bringing together the concept of brand salience and double jeopardy to understand the brand choices of consumers in China, specifically the choices and evaluations with respect to milk brands.
This research will mainly focus on brand salience and double jeopardy, in the background of consumer based brand equity. Brand salience and double jeopardy are really useful methods of analysing consumer market, especially by using them together. However, they have not drawn proper attention in the past few years. In short, the theory of brand salience helps us to explain which element of the brand attracts consumers to buy. Double jeopardy shows a not well-known but a true fact, which is a smaller/less popular brand has less-loyalty customers, compared to a bigger/more popular brand. These theories can help us look beyond the surface. By using them properly, both poor performing brands and miscategorised brands can be diagnosed. Therefore, this research area needs more research. The result of the research will benefit both academic and commercial domains.
The research methodology consists of both quantitative and qualitative approaches. This paper chose milk brands in China as the research object. The original reason for choosing this topic is that Chinese dairy safety still gets a lot of public attention in the world, even 6 years has passed after the melamine scandal. 7 individual interviews were done to get a broad view, followed by 270 surveys handed out in dozens of cities in China. The findings of the study revealed the existence of brand salience and double jeopardy in the category of milk in China. Suggestions are made for future research, and the managerial implications are discussed
A Macro View on Tourists' Emotional Experiences
No full textThe study aims to explore tourists’ emotional experiences as a process, from an objective perspective. Experience as a subjective-objective phenomenon between the tourist and the world comes from a direct encounter with the environment, places and people. This direct sensory meeting then, through sensory impression of the destination, provokes internal emotional reactions. This perceptual process in tourists’ emotional experiences can be summarized in three steps: (1) stimulus exposure; (2) affective reactions; and (3) meaning-making. This, in turn, triggers different states of well-being, including hedonia and eudaimonia. The research employs Plutchik’s basic emotions model (Plutchik, 1980), Osgood’s semantic differential model (Osgood, Suci, & Tannenbaum, 1957), and self-determination theory (SDT) (R. M. Ryan & Deci, 2000) to represent affective reactions, meaning-making, and eudaimonia, respectively. We divide the study into three sub-studies: the first study explores methodology, the second study explores relationships between affective reactions (step two) and meaning-making (step three), and the third study explores the relationships between meaning-making (step three) and well-being (consequences of experiences).
Despite a general agreement among scholars on the nature of the tourism experience being complex, intersubjective, and multi-faceted, there is little research to address the methodological issues in this area. The first contribution of this thesis is towards an analytical methodology, which applies Web 2.0 and Corpus Linguistics (CL) in the study of tourism experience, as a way forward to explore and test theories. The study firstly seeks to understand the participation of tourists on Web 2.0. With the growing usage of Web 2.0 and tourists’ tendency to document their experiences, there are huge amounts of data available online. CL then helps extract knowledge from the documents that tourists have produced after their experiences.
The second and the third studies then, apply the methodology to study tourists’ emotional experiences. The results provide objective insight into the process of tourists’ emotional experiences across several destination countries; New Zealand, France and a global sample that is comprised of 10 countries together. The findings show how holiday tourism exhibits unequal balances of positive and negative emotions. Management of both positive and negative experiences will, therefore, provide a better overall experience. The study provides directions towards improving experiences within and between modes of meanings. Moreover, the study encourages the development of emotion-based destination scales. The results generalise the differences between hedonia and eudaimonia across samples depending on the meaning-making step. They also demonstrate the experiences with the highest and lowest levels of well-being and ill-being
Consumer Culture in China: Consumption Face
No full text“Face” in China is one of the country’s most traditional social and cultural factors. Generally, “Face” in Chinese social life represents the image of a person’s social self (through the thesis I will use Face with a capitalised F to represent this specific concept). Many studies have indicated that in China Face influences consumption, and specifically, relates it to conspicuous consumption (Bao, Zhou, & Su, 2003; J. J. Li & Su, 2007; Monkhouse, Bradley R, & Stephan, 2012; N. Wong, Y. & Ahuvia, 1998). However, Chinese Face is a very general concept. This thesis specifically classifies which type of Chinese Face particularly influences consumption among other types: moral Face (Lien), social Face (Mien-tzu), renqing Face and interaction Face. These are types of Face that are referred to in existing studies and research. I name the type of Face that relates to consumption, “Consumption Face”.
The aim of my study is to clarify the influence and role of Consumption Face on Chinese consumption patterns, the mechanism by which these patterns take place, and also consider how they will develop in future. I review the geopolitical nature of China as well as Chinese culture from ideology to values and norms, and in particular, the socio-political changes that occurred after the establishment of the Peoples Republic of China as background regarding the formation of Face and the place of consumption in current Chinese life.
The recent rapid development of consumption in China and social needs in modern China increase the importance of identifying and conceptualising Consumption Face. This is from the basis that Chinese tend to strive for self-actualisation by using consumption to signal their social status and wealth. To do this on the basis of a broad literature review, this thesis aims to define Consumption Face and to develop a three-dimensional construct of it as a foundation for further analysis.
Following the trend of globalisation and commercialisation after the late-1970s when China opened its economy, Chinese people were considered, or hypothesised by Western scholars and others, to be more Westernised. Young Chinese especially are now considered to be more individualistic, and thus less influenced by Face than was the situation in the former traditional collectivistic Chinese society. To study the influence of Consumption Face on consumption now and in the future, I conducted a series of studies to answer two questions:
1. To what extent does Consumption Face influence purchase decisions between different categories of products and brands?
2. To what extent does the influence of Consumption Face on purchase decisions differ between young consumers and preceding generations?
To do this, I developed a Consumption Face Influence (CFI) measurement. I used this measurement construct to test different age cohorts for their consumption behaviour in regard to the purchase of luxuries and necessities. This test crossed the contexts of public consumption and private consumption. The test was also applied to measure CFI across the contexts of product categories and brands. The findings do not support the hypothesis that young Chinese consumers are less influenced by Consumption Face than their parents and older generations. CFI was even stronger for young Chinese than for their preceding generation for luxury consumption. The results also reveal that the dominant motivation for Chinese conspicuous consumption is not conspicuousness, but instead conformity. Simply using theories formulated by Western scholars to understand Chinese consumer behaviour may be misleading. Consequently, from a practical perspective, trading with China, doing business with Chinese, and undertaking marketing targeted at China, could and should engage and apply knowledge of Chinese consumption behaviour and understand behaviour related to Face.
This thesis contributes to marketing literature by identifying and conceptualising a new type of social influence toward consumption patterns which is becoming vital in China but which tends to be overlooked due to its implicit attribute. My research verifies that Consumption Face exists and profoundly influences the purchasing behaviour of young modern Chinese. It also contributes to the Face research field by classifying different types of Face for future relevant research to help specify their research scope, and by adding one more conceptualisation to the theory: Consumption Face. The conceptualisation of Consumption Face provides a new tool to investigate and analyse Chinese marketing phenomena, both as applied by them and applied to them, within substantial and sound interpretive dimensions. The tool could complement relevant research that applies Western developed concepts. This thesis suggests a developed measurement set of CFI that can help further research in the future; not only the research of Chinese in China, but also research applying to Chinese immigrants in overseas countries as well as to cross-cultural studies applied to other ethnicities
Consumer response to Genetically Modified Salmon: A study on benefit importance in the adoption process
No full textGenetic modification (GM) can provide benefits for consumers, producers, and the environment; however, general opposition towards the use of GM in food continues, especially GM-animals. This opposition seems to be a consequence of the lack of perceived consumer benefits.
This research investigates the role clearly stated consumer benefits may play in the adoption process of GM-salmon. AquaBounty Technologies have developed a transgenic salmon, which is likely to be available for consumption in the next couple of years. Their technology enables the GM-salmon to grow twice as fast as conventional salmon year round, thereby decreasing the production cycles and feed usage. These advantages will presumably lead to a lower market price for the GM-salmon. The benefit one product holds over another is seen as its relative advantage; the benefits used in this study are a price advantage and increased nutritional values.
To study the effect of benefits on consumer acceptance, best-worst scaling was used to gather stated preferences (SP), i.e. intentions, while a field choice experiment was used to gather revealed preferences (RP), i.e. actual purchasing behaviour. These methods were chosen due to the hypothetical nature of SP; the field choice experiment could validate the results from best-worst scaling. Therefore, this methodology sets out to test the validity of best-worst scaling and to examine whether consumers acted as they intended since consumers do not always act as they say they will when it comes to adopting an innovation. Additionally, a food neophobia scale (FNS) was included to measure the effect consumers’ preference for novel foods may have on their willingness to try GM-salmon.
A fish shop in Norway provided the venue for gathering SPs through a questionnaire and RPs by placing salmon mislabelled as GM on sale alongside conventional salmon. The price benefit was varied by + 15% and – 15% relative to the median price of salmon (118 NOK a kg), and the nutritional benefit was stated as double omega 3 values. The four different types of salmon on display in the field choice experiment or presented in the best-worst scaling were as follows: Conventional Atlantic salmon, Atlantic salmon with double omega 3, Atlantic GM-salmon, and Atlantic GM-salmon with double omega 3.
The results were analysed using a Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE), thus creating representative market shares from both methods for each salmon variation. These market shares showed a clear preference for conventional Atlantic salmon compared to GM salmon; however with the added benefit of double omega 3 and a price advantage, GM-salmon showed a substantial increase in market share. In addition, consumers with less neophobic traits, and therefore greater willingness to accept novel foods, were more accepting of GM-salmon. Therefore, consumers’ willingness to accept novel foods is associated with a willingness to accept GM-salmon. In conclusion, best-worst scaling showed similar results as did the field choice experiment, thus stated preferences matched revealed preferences rather well; consumer acceptance of GM-salmon is highly dependent on perceived consumer benefits; without them this product will be “dead in the water” in the Norwegian market.
Keywords: Genetically modified food, stated preferences, revealed preferences, diffusion of innovations, benefit
Psychic distance in consumer goods importers’ selection of new international suppliers
No full textPsychic distance (PD) has been a popular topic in internationalisation research; however, it has not been studied in an importing context. This research sought to answer these questions: Does PD affect import buyers’ selection of new suppliers, and why (or why not)? What are the components of import buyers’ PD? What is the importance of types of PD components relative to each other? What is the importance of PD relative to other country factors? The study relied on the Uppsala Internationalisation Process Model (Johanson & Wiedersheim-Paul, 1975; Johanson & Vahlne, 1977) and its underlying Behavioural Theory of the Firm (Cyert & March, 1963). Semi-structured interviews were conducted face to face with 49 buyers who are in charge of importing food and non-food consumer goods for retail and non-retail firms in the United States, Australia and New Zealand. Data was analysed thematically on NVivo, using mainly template analysis but also degrees-of-freedom analysis. Findings indicate that: (1) buyers’ selection of foreign country is determined first and foremost by economic factors (price, quality, quantity, etc); (2) PD has a negative moderating effect on buyers’ consideration of a country; (3) the impact of PD and even economic factors is sometimes not very strong because buyers face a very limited number of available, suitable and willing supplier countries that they know, which can be reduced to even a single country for some products; (4) buyers’ PD is composed of cultural, language, administrative, geographic and economic (CLAGE) distance factors, with cultural distance as the most important component, followed by geographic, language, administrative distance and economic distance in that order; and (5) when buyers are not familiar with a country, they have no or little perception of how psychically distant that country is from their home base; this lack of PD magnitude perception seriously impedes their consideration of suppliers from such a country. The research contributes to the Uppsala model and the behavioural theory of the firm by its findings that: (1) PD has negative impact on many import buyers’ supplier selection because in addition to causing perceived difficulty in understanding foreign suppliers, PD sometimes consists of cultural differences that buyers do not tolerate, or PD makes buyers concerned that foreign suppliers may not understand them and their home market very well; (2) buyers are strongly deterred from selecting a supplier country when they are not aware of how psychically distant or proximate that country is from their home country; and (3) buyers’ previous international sourcing experience does not reduce the negative effect of large or unknown PD magnitude on their supplier country selection
Transforming the Reading Experience of Scientific Documents with Polymorphism
No full textDespite the opportunities created by digital reading, documents remain mostly static and mimic paper. Any improvement in the shape or form of documents has to come from authors who contend with current digital formats, workflows, and software and who impose a presentation to readers. Instead, I propose the concept of polymorphic documents which are documents that can change in form to offer better representations of the information they contain. I believe that multiple representations of the same information can help readers, and that any document can be made polymorphic, with no intervention from the original author. This thesis presents four projects investigating what information can be obtained from existing documents, how this information can be better represented, and how these representations can be generated using only the source document. To do so, I draw upon theories showing the benefit of presenting information using multiple representations; the design of interactive systems to support morphing representations; and user studies to evaluate system usability and the benefits of the new representations on reader comprehension
Consumer response to Genetically Modified Salmon: A study on benefit importance in the adoption process
No full textGenetic modification (GM) can provide benefits for consumers, producers, and the environment; however, general opposition towards the use of GM in food continues, especially GM-animals. This opposition seems to be a consequence of the lack of perceived consumer benefits.
This research investigates the role clearly stated consumer benefits may play in the adoption process of GM-salmon. AquaBounty Technologies have developed a transgenic salmon, which is likely to be available for consumption in the next couple of years. Their technology enables the GM-salmon to grow twice as fast as conventional salmon year round, thereby decreasing the production cycles and feed usage. These advantages will presumably lead to a lower market price for the GM-salmon. The benefit one product holds over another is seen as its relative advantage; the benefits used in this study are a price advantage and increased nutritional values.
To study the effect of benefits on consumer acceptance, best-worst scaling was used to gather stated preferences (SP), i.e. intentions, while a field choice experiment was used to gather revealed preferences (RP), i.e. actual purchasing behaviour. These methods were chosen due to the hypothetical nature of SP; the field choice experiment could validate the results from best-worst scaling. Therefore, this methodology sets out to test the validity of best-worst scaling and to examine whether consumers acted as they intended since consumers do not always act as they say they will when it comes to adopting an innovation. Additionally, a food neophobia scale (FNS) was included to measure the effect consumers’ preference for novel foods may have on their willingness to try GM-salmon.
A fish shop in Norway provided the venue for gathering SPs through a questionnaire and RPs by placing salmon mislabelled as GM on sale alongside conventional salmon. The price benefit was varied by + 15% and – 15% relative to the median price of salmon (118 NOK a kg), and the nutritional benefit was stated as double omega 3 values. The four different types of salmon on display in the field choice experiment or presented in the best-worst scaling were as follows: Conventional Atlantic salmon, Atlantic salmon with double omega 3, Atlantic GM-salmon, and Atlantic GM-salmon with double omega 3.
The results were analysed using a Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE), thus creating representative market shares from both methods for each salmon variation. These market shares showed a clear preference for conventional Atlantic salmon compared to GM salmon; however with the added benefit of double omega 3 and a price advantage, GM-salmon showed a substantial increase in market share. In addition, consumers with less neophobic traits, and therefore greater willingness to accept novel foods, were more accepting of GM-salmon. Therefore, consumers’ willingness to accept novel foods is associated with a willingness to accept GM-salmon. In conclusion, best-worst scaling showed similar results as did the field choice experiment, thus stated preferences matched revealed preferences rather well; consumer acceptance of GM-salmon is highly dependent on perceived consumer benefits; without them this product will be “dead in the water” in the Norwegian market.
Keywords: Genetically modified food, stated preferences, revealed preferences, diffusion of innovations, benefit
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Like the living end
No full textSeven-part elegy for David Mather (1954-2010
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