There are a lot of brand experience in Metaverse. For example, we can participate in Samsung Galaxy Fan party, UC Berkeley graduation class, and even Ralph Lauren store in Metaverse. When the consumers experience such events in Metaverse, they have to use their avatar by making a user name. They have the option of using either their real or fictional name in Metaverse. There are two types of avatar in Metaverse. First, they can use actual self-avatar by using their real name. Second, they can create totally new avatars using made up name. The name is one of the symbols of self. Therefore, we can easily predict that consumer experience with avatar will affect the consumer perception differently. Which type of avatar will then enhance the brand engagement? Results show that the consumer experience with avatars affected brand attitudes differently. Also, the consumer's experience with avatars based on their actual images in the Metaverse affected the positive brand attitude. This study suggests that Metaverse avatars can also let people interact with themselves and with each other in parasocial ways. This study examines the role of avatar in virtual world; consumers experience with avatar can provide useful implications in terms of digital transformation.
Expressing political stances is not rare among service providers such as taxi drivers and chefs. For instance, in 2021, a restaurant owner angry at the death of U.S. soldiers during the evacuation of Afghanistan posted a sign on the front door telling Biden supporters to eat elsewhere (Miller 2021). Given findings from research on brand activism, consumers can be expected to have less favorable attitudes toward service providers who are more politically different from them. However, if service providers who are politically opposite are more competent than ones who are politically identical, would consumers still choose politically identical but less competent service providers? To our knowledge, no research has been conducted to examine what factors influence consumers’ choices between more competent but politically opposite service providers and less competent but politically identical service providers. To fill that gap, in our research, we examined the role of consumers’ political ideology (i.e., conservative vs. liberal) in making trade-offs between more competent but politically opposite service providers and less competent but politically identical ones.
This research addresses financial market communication of marketing information (i.e., information related to firms’ organic growth opportunities) through depth interviews (Study 1) and quantitative data on conference calls and stock market reactions (Study 2). The investigation (1) reveals that marketing, despite high potential relevance for financial markets, often plays only a marginal role in firms’ financial market communication and (2) develops a framework for effectively communicating marketing to financial markets.
With the development of WEB 3.0 and the metaverse, the emergence of chat GPT, and AI is attracting attention across all industries. AI technologies such as robotics, advanced analytics, and in-store applications created a sensation in the fashion industry, as well as created an exceptional customer experience. In this study, fashion AI types (e.g. AI models: generative, conversational, AI applications: design, production, sales, retail, marketing) and case analysis (e.g. concepts, characteristics, benefits, risks) are examined. Consumer experiences with fashion AI are also discussed for future research directions. Finally, the Fashion AI research framework and research agenda are discussed for future research.
Customer value co-creation behavior (CVCB) has been regarded as a strong predictor of firm performance in many industries for decades. CVCB—the customer’s direct and indirect contribution of resources to enhance the offering of the focal agent/object—is ubiquitous in service industries. Recently, customer engagement has been identified as a determinant of the value realized by customers and businesses. Customer psychological engagement (CPEngagement) is a multidimensional customer-firm relationship marked by customer satisfaction and emotional connectedness to the firm. Although there is concurrence that customer engagement and CVCB are linked, scholars diverge as to the precise nature of the relationship. Marketing and hospitality literature have not yet developed an integrated model of customer engagement with the digital and physical components of hospitality services. Given the increasing managerial interest in digital customer engagement and value co-creation behaviors, it is essential to enhance our understanding of the interplay between these concepts and their implications for both consumers and businesses. This research investigates the relationship between CPEngagement and value co-creation in the digital and physical aspects of hospitality services.
This study explores the role of the digital communication in determining customers’ e-service agent use behavior and examines whether perceived communicator authority interacts with communication style toward strengthening or weakening future e-service agent use intention. The results of this study provide pioneering evidence on the effects of digital service communication strategies. This study contributes to digital service research by exploring the communication strategies of e-service agents. Results also provide implications for practitioners on how to achieve most out of deploying digital communications in the digital customer service platform.
Metaverse provides technology for people to connect, find communities, and grow businesses. Its sales have seen growth during the COVID-19 pandemic. In an era of metaverse, luxury brands such as Gucci, Ralph Lauren, Burberry, Balenciaga, and Dolce & Gabbana are trying to adapt to new changes. They launched NFT(Non-fungible token) goods, digital fashion, and virtual luxury goods on various metaverse platforms such as Zepeto, Roblox, and Fortnite. For example, Ralph Lauren in Zepeto provides various types of luxury items, immerses in virtual performances, and has a game plot interaction. As people immerse themselves in the Metaverse, they feel happy from various activities—such as watching advertisements, drinking juice, and playing with friends. Thus, what factors should be considered when the luxury brands manage the metaverse?
The unbounded nature of digital innovation requires innovating firms to be agile in the way they manage the processes, governance and outcomes in order to sense and seize the market directly and timely. This study adopts an inter-organizational approach and asks to what extent and in what way does organizational agility impact on innovation performance? This perspective underscores the interdependencies between collaborating partners, which creates a relationship regulating system of workflow to drive value creation in the process of innovation. While the literature has offered a broad conceptual argument for organizational agility in the context of digital innovation, the mechanisms through which value is transformed in the innovation process is still unclear. We contend that an agile innovation process stands on four main cornerstones: (1) joint strategic planning, (2) joint problem solving, (3) joint improvisation and (4) community (market) sensing. The empirical research is set in the video game industry, which is in a largely digitalized and borderless business environment. The data was collected through an interviewer-administered questionnaire. The sampling frame is based on a Swedish trade association database. Usable sample is 113. We performed structural equation modelling to test the hypothesized model, including main and moderation effects, using Mplus. The findings show that while only improvisation has a significantly positive effect on innovation performance, the role of strategic planning and problem solving between two collaborating partners remains unclear. For example, strategic planning has shown to be a negative influence in our empirical research. Problem solving has no effect on innovation performance, but it interacts with community sensing and subsequently facilitates innovation outcome. This highlights the importance of community sensing, which could offer rich, crucial knowledge and resources for problem solving that proves to be effective. The results provide further theoretical arguments for understanding organizational agility and digital innovation, but also raise further questions for future research.
This research presents a conceptual framework for a comprehensive understanding of the causes of user migration from social media networking sites. The results of our survey show that users’ intentions to switch social media platforms are influenced by user satisfaction, alternative attractiveness, peer influence, and perceived switching costs.
Local consumption is considered to have a positive environmental and social impact. A new supply chain strategy has been devised to provide small and medium-sized local farms with enhanced efficiency and accessibility: a bidirectional distribution. Bidirectional distribution is a practice of backhauling local produce on emptied wholesale trucks for redistribution through wholesale markets while employing the existing network of rural stores and wholesale suppliers. Building on the cue utilization theory, this study investigated the effect of product information about bidirectional distribution on consumers’ perceived environmental value, personal well-being value, quality beliefs, and community social and economic value.
As digital technology becomes more prevalent in today’s business environment and interest in digital trust rises, restaurants need to identify whether and how their mobile apps enhance the customer experience, and what features of the apps can strengthen customers’ attachment to them. However, few studies have examined the role of restaurant mobile apps as a catalyst for building customer loyalty. Considering restaurant mobile apps as a means to build a trustworthy relationship between customers and restaurants, this study develops and validates a research framework to measure digital trust between restaurants and customers through restaurant mobile apps. Specifically, due to the lack of measurement constructs for digital trust, a reliable and valid set of measurements that can explain digital trust in relation to restaurant mobile apps is developed and the effects of mobile apps’ digital trust on customers’ trust in a restaurant brand, overall experience, and their continued use intention are assessed.
Despite both travel and work being vital for human functioning, inconsistent views on whether they’re opposing domains, a so-called work-leisure conflict, are documented in tourism and management literature. For example, some researchers argued that leisure activities may damage people’s job performance based on the compensatory reasoning in the short run (e.g., consume time and vigor), while others, in contrast, proposed that leisure and travel may contribute to one’s work efficiency due to recovering from stress, self-development, and so forth. To add more understanding to this dilemma, this research proposes a novel role that tourism memory plays in enhancing people’s creativity at the individual level, a key factor in individual and organizational success. Thus, the proposed effect illustrates that travel might be conducive to job performance in the long run.
This work presents four high-amplitude variable YSOs (≃3 mag at near- or mid-IR wavelengths) arising from the SPICY catalog. Three outbursts show a duration that is longer than 1 year, and are still ongoing. And additional YSO brightened over the last two epochs of NEOWISE observations and the duration of the outburst is thus unclear. Analysis of the spectra of the four sources confirms them as new members of the eruptive variable class. We find two YSOs that can be firmly classified as bona fide FUors and one object that falls in the V1647 Ori-like class. Given the uncertainty in the duration of its outburst, an additional YSO can only be classified as a candidate FUor. Continued monitoring and follow-up of these particular sources is important to better understand the accretion process of YSOs.
This paper is written as a follow-up observations to reinterpret the radial velocity (RV) of HD 36384, where the existence of planetary systems is known to be ambiguous. In giants, it is, in general, difficult to distinguish the signals of planetary companions from those of stellar activities. Thus, known exoplanetary giant hosts are relatively rare. We, for many years, have obtained RV data in evolved stars using the high-resolution, fiber-fed Bohyunsan Observatory Echelle Spectrograph (BOES) at the Bohyunsan Optical Astronomy Observatory (BOAO). Here, we report the results of RV variations in the M giant HD 36384. We have found two significant periods of 586 d and 490 d. Considering the orbital stability, it is impossible to have two planets at so close orbits. To determine the nature of the RV variability variations, we analyze the HIPPARCOS photometric data, some indicators of stellar activities, and line profiles. A significant period of 580 d was revealed in the HIPPARCOS photometry. H𝛼 EW variations also show a meaningful period of 582 d. Thus, the period of 586 d may be closely related to the rotational modulations and/or stellar pulsations. On the other hand, the other significant period of 490 d is interpreted as the result of the orbiting companion. Our orbital fit suggests that the companion was a planetary mass of 6.6 𝑀J and is located at 1.3 AU from the host.
The GMT-Consortium Large Earth Finder (G-CLEF) is the first instrument for the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT). G-CLEF is a fiber feed, optical band echelle spectrograph that is capable of extremely precise radial velocity measurement. G-CLEF Flexure Control Camera (FCC) is included as a part in G-CLEF Front End Assembly (GCFEA), which monitors the field images focused on a fiber mirror to control the flexure and the focus errors within GCFEA. FCC consists of an optical bench on which five optical components are installed. The order of the optical train is: a collimator, neutral density filters, a focus analyzer, a reimager and a detector (Andor iKon-L 936 CCD camera). The collimator consists of a triplet lens and receives the beam reflected by a fiber mirror. The neutral density filters make it possible a broad range star brightness as a target or a guide. The focus analyzer is used to measure a focus offset. The reimager focuses the beam from the collimator onto the CCD detector focal plane. The detector module includes a linear translator and a field de-rotator. We performed thermoelastic stress analysis for lenses and their mounts to confirm the physical safety of the lens materials. We also conducted the global structure analysis for various gravitational orientations to verify the image stability requirement during the operation of the telescope and the instrument. In this article, we present the opto-mechanical detailed design of G-CLEF FCC and describe the consequence of the numerical finite element analyses for the design.
The main goal of the Korean VLBI Network Calibrator Survey (KVNCS) is to expand the VLBI calibrators catalog for KVN, KaVA(KVN and VERA Array), EAVN(East-Asian VLBINetwork), and other extended regions. The secondKVNCS (KVNCS2) aimed to detect VLBI fringes of new candidates for calibrators in the K band. Out of the 1533 sources whose single-dish flux density in the K band was measured with KVN telescopes (Lee et al. 2017), 556 sources were observed with KVN in the K band. KVNCS2 confirmed the detection of VLBI fringes of 424 calibrator candidates over a single baseline. All detected sources had a high Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) of >25. Finally, KVNCS2 confirmed 347 new candidates as VLBI calibrators in the K band, resulting in a 5% increase in the sky coverage compared to previous studies. The spatial distribution was quasi-uniform across the observable region (Dec. > −32.5◦). In addition, the possibility as calibrator candidates for the detected sources was checked, using an analysis of the flux-flux relationship. Ultimately, the KVNCS catalog will not only become the VLBI calibrator list but is also useful as a database of compact radio sources for astronomical studies.
Background: Mobilization movements was applied with different forces and frequencies for different clinicians. Force transmission varies with frequency. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of frequency- specific application of grade III PA movement on muscle tone and muscle activity around the lumbar vertebrae. Design: A one group pretest-posttest design. Methods: Twenty study subjects applied grades III of PA movement exercise of 0.5 Hz and 1 Hz with a force of 13 N around the 1st and 3rd lumbar vertebrae, and muscle tone and muscle activity were measured and compared before and after. Results: This study showed that 0.5 Hz grade III PA activity exerted an effect on the decrease in muscle tone of the 1st and 3rd right and left lumbar muscles. It was found that 0.5 Hz affected the right side of L1 and 1.0 Hz affected the left side of L1 in near-activity when applying the grade III PA movement by frequency. Conclusion: In the future, it will be necessary to investigate the effect of applying frequency according to various grades of PA movement.
Background: Proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF) has been proven effective in a myriad of clinical fields as a treatment to restore function in patients with musculoskeletal disorders, damage to the central nervous system, or sports injuries. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of a 2-week PNF exercise intervention on the degree of calcification, pain perception, and shoulder joint function in persons with calcific tendinitis (CT) of the supraspinatus. Design: Matched pairs design. Methods: This study was classified into a PNF group (n=8) and a control group (n=7) through a matched pairs design. Filmed x-rays, Visual Analogue Scale (VAS), Simple Shoulder Test (SST), and Constant-Murley Scale (CMS) were used to assess the long and short axis of calcified deposits, self-awareness of pain, and shoulder joint function of the subjects. 8 participants in the PNF group received a scapular and upper extremity PNF exercise intervention for 30 minutes per session, 10 times/week for 2 weeks while no intervention in the control group. Results: Two-way repeated analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed a significant improvement after the 2-week PNF exercise intervention on calcified deposits, pain, and shoulder joint function (P<.05), whereas no changes in the control. Conclusion: These findings suggest that the intensive 2-week PNF exercise may maximize intervention effects to reduce calcified deposits and pain in a relatively short period time and is effective for restoring shoulder function without combining other treatments or exercises in patients with supraspinatus CT.
Background: Swallowing disorder is a common disease that can cause various complications such as malnutrition, dehydration, aspiration pneumonia, and poor quality of life, and can affect people of all ages, from infants to the elderly. Swallowing disorder rehabilitation is a complex process involving various skills such as exercise, diet modification, and posture adjustment. This study implements a rehab program for swallowing disorders using the Kinesio Tapping technique. Design: Prospective pilot case study. Objectives: To improve laryngeal detachment by providing external support to the muscles involved in swallowing using kinesio taping for conventional complex swallowing disorder rehabilitation. Methods: The study included 16 participants who were diagnosed with swallowing difficulties after a stroke and admitted to a rehabilitation ward in Ulsan. The average age of the participants, consisting of 9 males and 7 females, was 69.0 years (SD=1.23) and 64.0 years (SD=1.45), respectively. The stroke types were hemorrhagic and infarction, with onset periods ranging from 6 to 12 months (SD=1.11) in all participants. Each participant received a video fluoroscopy study (VFSS) for six months using the taping method developed by the research team. Kinesio taping techniques were developed by two professional physical therapists and one occupational therapist based on anatomical movements. Results: Significant differences were observed in self-training on the bed after the rehabilitation program compared to the initial period Kinesio taping can help improve laryngeal dislocation and reduce the risk of aspiration by providing external support to the muscles involved in swallowing. However, the effectiveness and optimal application techniques of kinesio taping in the rehabilitation of swallowing disorders are not yet clear. Conclusion: The results of this study could lead to the development of a new treatment protocol that incorporates kinesio taping as a standard therapy for the rehabilitation of swallowing disorders in bedridden patients.
Selective doping of pyridinic nitrogen in carbon materials has attracted attention due to its significant properties for various applications such as catalysts and electrodes. However, selective doping of pyridinic nitrogen together with controlling skeletal structure is challenging in the absence of catalysts. In this work, four precursors including four fused aromatic rings and pyridinic nitrogen were simply carbonized in the absence of catalysts in order to attain mass synthesis at low cost and a high percentage of pyridinic nitrogen in carbon materials with controlled edges. Among four precursors, dibenzo[f,h] quinoline (DQ) showed an extremely high percentage of pyridinic nitrogen (96 and 86%) after heat treatment at 923 and 973 K, respectively. Experimental spectroscopic analyses combined with calculated spectroscopic analyses using density functional theory calculations unveiled that the C-H next to the pyridinic nitrogen in DQ generated gulf edge structures with controlled pyridinic nitrogen after carbonization. By comparing the reactivities among the four precursors, three main factors required for maintaining the pyridinic nitrogen in carbon materials with controlled edges, such as (1) high thermal stability of the pyridinic nitrogen, (2) the presence of one pyridinic nitrogen in one ring, and (3) the formation of gulf edges including pyridinic nitrogen to protect the pyridinic nitrogen by the C-H groups on the gulf edges, were revealed.