The Metaverse is a digital space that utilizes the internet and augmented reality to blend real-life and virtual experiences. This emerging environment offers opportunities for individuals to purchase goods and services, enjoy entertainment, and participate in virtual events. By utilizing Direct-to-Avatar (D2A) and Metahuman (D2M) approaches, brands can create more seamless and immersive customer experiences, representing a progression in omnichannel evolution. Despite this growing interest in the Metaverse, there is limited research on how it impacts consumer perceptions. To address this gap, a qualitative study was conducted involving semi-structured interviews with C-level executives in the fashion industry, alongside two experimental studies that examined hypotheses related to the Metaverse experience. The results revealed that customer experiences in the Metaverse enhance perceived seamlessness and customer engagement. These findings can assist managers in identifying innovative ways to improve customer experiences, including developing new paradigms for the phygital world, combining elements of both physical and digital reality, and creating distinctive brand-customer interactions.

The present study aims to categorize common word choice errors in Korean EFL writing and help teachers understand students’ word choice patterns. This study reassures that both L1 and its background cultures affect language learners’ choice of vocabulary in English learning. Korean first-year undergraduate students with low levels of English proficiency participated in this study. The students were required to carry out a writing log, a collection of nine pieces of weekly assignments of paragraph writing during the semester. They were allowed to use any type of automatic translation such as Google Translate or Papago for revision and editing. The errors that the students produced were classified into three categories, and significant findings were obtained regarding lexical errors caused by literal translation, cultural differences, and L1 word order. The findings are interpreted in terms of cultural and linguistic differences between the first and target languages. They can give ideas for teachers to instruct EFL writing strategies on students’ word choice errors.

The present study suggests that science fiction is a beneficial teaching resource to encourage students to develop ethical creativity. Liberal arts education is to cultivate a free and/or flexible thinker and introspect humanity and reading literary texts can help enhance ethicality as well as empathic understanding under the contexts of social acts of human relationships and interactions. Including these two features, science fiction suggests how to cope with two-faced future technology with both benefits and harm for humankind. This quality of science fiction helps students think critically but flexibly so as to make thoughtful choices considering humanity. Lowry's The Giver throws a question on the balance between technology and humanity, showing that memory and emotion are the most fundamental and essential value to be true humans. This study presents the reason why literature is beneficial to construct ethical reasoning by identifying the two key factors – memory and emotion – to understand humans and humanity. Also, the study attempts to share some ideas of how to adopt the text to help students enhance ethical/moral thinking skills, discussing the idea of humanity.

The research is conducted to study how myth tourism story marketing can affect global tourist visiting intention. The exploratory result shows that people intention to visit a myth tourism destination is driven by the curiosity after hearing or reading the story. In several travellers’ forum, people tend to discuss about a place’s story such as in Bali. Meanwhile, interview with a local myth tourism community shows that there are several types of people who want to visit the places such as an adventure seeker, travellers who find it exciting to explore, and also the one who is curious with things related to myth. Therefore, this research aim to focus on West Java myth tourism story marketing as West Java is well- known as its mythical tourism sites spread across the province. As myth is inseparable from cultural symbol, this study also put cultural and psychographic factors into account and expect to see to what extent those factors influence the tourist visiting intention to West Java myth tourism sites. Lifestyle is one of the most common psychographic attributes. Gonzales and Bello (2002) also emphasized that lifestyle is a push-factor for tourists in choosing a destination as tourists seek the experience which can be related to their lifestyle. Loureiro (2014) pointed out that a myth story might not correspond to the actual facts but the originality is provided by the story-teller. In order for the tourist to choose a destination, hence good story-telling that would deliver the value is required. This statement conformed to Park and Njite (2010) who considered story as a form of marketing communication strategy. Furthermore, the story marketing which resonance with the customer values could lead to a purchasing behaviour. (Thomas, 2012). In relation to story marketing, the respondents are asked to select the destination they intent to visit before and after provided with the myth behind those destinations. This research is then analysed using multivariate analysis method, conjoint analysis and multiple linear regression to see which factors influence the tourist visiting intention the most. By understanding important factors influencing tourist visiting intention, it is expected that West Java myth tourism information sites may improve their ability to attract both foreign and domestic tourists through its myth story marketing.

This article investigates the effects of beauty vloggers’ (video bloggers) eWOM and sponsored advertising on followers utilizing Sina Weibo, thereby exploring the concepts of eWOM, opinion leadership, and social status. This exploratory qualitative study found that vlogging differs from traditional blogging in that direct advertising that fosters ease of purchase of a product is appreciated by followers, whilst direct marketing, which in this case refers to simply describing the benefits of products and/or services, is seen as unfavorable. Moreover, this research found a relationship between the influence of vloggers, expertise of followers, the level of detail in adverts, and the level of trust. This provides valuable insights into attitudes and perceptions of followers of beauty vlogs, which can utilized as practical implications to develop targeted advertising strategies for companies seeking to promote their products and brands through third party vlogs.

Hormones play a crucial role in controlling physiological processes, and thus plants grow and develop in response to environmental cues through the interlocked actions of the hormones. Brassinosteroids (BRs) were found as growth-promoting steroid hormones. Rice, as a monocotyledonous model plants and the major staple crop, has been used to study BR action mechanisms. However, many components of BR pathways and the mechanisms of their molecular interactions have yet to be fully understood. Because the use of the BR biosynthetic inhibitor, Brassinazole (Brz), allowed us to identify important components of BR signaling such as the transcription factor BZR1, we decided to employ a similar strategy to identify novel signaling factors using propiconazole (Pcz), a new potent BR inhibitor. We screened a rice T-DNA mutant population which belongs to Dongjin variety and were developed by the Gene An’s group using pGA2715 T-DNA vector. Using Pcz treatments we searched for resistant plants, which were reflected on their lengths of roots and/or leaves. We isolated a total of 17 mutant lines, which are being analyzed phenotypically and at molecular level. So far, we have been able to found various lines presenting high or low yield compared to their wild type counterparts. We have found differences in panicle organization of these mutants. Our current experiments include the confirmation of Pcz resistance of these lines and molecular studies involving BR marker genes to understand the relation among yield and BR action in rice.