This study was conducted to evaluate the time required to sell Protaetia brevitarsis larvae when larvae fed on three kinds of fermented berries sawdust, such as mulberry, raspberry, and blueberry. The first instar larvae were reared in a plastic container(543x363x188mm) with designated feeds, and investigated the cumulative proportion of larvae more than 2.5g at rearing room regulated at 25±1℃ with 50~60% under 16:8(L:D). When we reared larvae for about 45 days with fermented blueberry sawdust, the cumulative proportion of larvae with more than 2.5g was over 70%. It was about 40 days shorter than fermented oak sawdust. For each group, the average survival rates of larvae at the possible time for sale were 72~93%.

Value creation is the purpose and end result of business relationships. However, there has been little research on the sources of relationship value in cross-border interfirm relationships. This is surprising given that value creation and delivery is arguably a more complex and difficult task in international markets than in domestic ones due to the differences in culture, language, management styles, and economic, social, and legal systems between exchange partners. This study investigates the drivers of relationship value in manufacturer–foreign distributor relationships. The focus is on distributor-perceived relationship value because it is typically the customer firm the final arbiter of value. The study develops a research model that consists of four different groups of predictors of relationship value: (1) exporter capabilities (i.e., marketing and technological); (2) importer capabilities (i.e., market-sensing and customer relationship management); (3) relational factors (i.e., relationship learning and cultural compatibility); and (4) market factors (i.e., competitive intensity and market growth). The identification and specification of these prognostic factors of relationship value formation was based on the review of extant literature and exploratory interviews with import and export managers. The study employs partial least squares-structural equation modeling to test model relationships. The results indicate that exporter marketing and technological capabilities, importer market-sensing and customer relationship management capabilities, relationship learning, cultural compatibility, and market growth are potent determinants of relationship value in manufacturer–foreign distributor relationships, while competitive intensity has no detectable effect. Several managerial implications are extracted from the study, as well as suggestions for future research.

This study relies on Gustafson’s (2001) self-environment-others framework to investigate Asian millennials’ cosmopolitan discourse in the context of Taiwan night market. In the eyes of Asian millennial cosmopolitans, the local Taiwan night market experience not only represents local consumption pattern, but also reflects the global appropriation of local consumption meaning. Introduction Asian millennials are those who were born in the early 1980s until 2000s. They are the “lucky” generation to grow up in the economic resurrection in Asia. They possess distinguished characteristics from the previous generations (Chu & Welsh, 2015). Therefore, they emerge to become the influential change agents. Their cultural consumption behaviour and preference has significant influence on local cultural experience design. Cosmopolitanism in consumer culture refers to an identity discourse in respond to globalization. Cosmopolitan identity inspires ones to seek personal enrichment through consumption of cultural diversity (Thompson & Tambyah, 1999). The concept of cosmopolitanism can be traced back to two parallel perspectives: Greek Stoicism (Appiah, 2010) and Chinese Confucianism (Chun, 2012). The western cosmopolitanism conceptualizes cosmopolitans as the citizen of cosmos. Showing loyalty toward the worldly community and against the community where ones had been born is the major conduct that these cosmos citizens are oriented toward to (Delanty & He, 2008). In contrast, the eastern cosmopolitanism originates from the concept of Tianxia (天下) (Chun, 2012), which is based on the natural geography, the concept of political control from the central power to all the remote areas, and the concept of ethical conduct within the regime of the common area. Recent research on cosmopolitanism recognizes the possible variations of cosmopolitanism in different cultural context (Chun, 2012), and perpetuates the need to investigate cosmopolitanism as socio-cultural specific forms(Delanty & He, 2008). Enlighted by this notion, this study investigates an alternative form of cosmopolitan discourse specific to the rising Asian millennials, and its implications in local night market culture experience design. Night market as the venue for cultural experience study Night market is a common marketplace in Asia. Over 1,000 years (since Sung Dynasty A.D. 960 – 1279) night market has already existed in China. Night market has dispersed to other Asian countries along with the regional migration of Chinese ethnic group (Pottie-Sherman & Hiebert, 2013). Despite its Chinese origin, night market has evolved to a cosmopolitan consumption space providing local cultural experiences. It was found that there are seven dimensions of cultural experiences (Yu, 2004): night time (Zerubavel, 1985), shi (市/market), xiaochi (小吃/ small food), vending/vendor, temporality, renao (熱鬧/ lively and crowded condition), and renqingwei (人情味 / human touch). Night market provides local experience for global visitors (Chen, Lee, Chang, Hou, & Lin, 2008). Therefore, this study chooses night market as the consumption venue for investigation. Methodology This study relies on Gustafson’s (2001) tri-polar model of self-environment-others to guide the post-structuralist reading of field observation scripts. Self is the agent to interpret the meaning of the place; environment refers to the socio-cultural aspects of the physical place; others refer to the dynamic social aspects in the place. The informants were all Indonesians. The two authors went with two Indonesian MBA graduates to Huayuan Night Market in the first trip. The first author went with six Indonesian MBA students to Dadong Night Market in a second trip. The two night markets visited in this study were Huayuan Night Market (花園夜市) on November 3rd 2016, and Dadong Night Market (大東夜市) on November 22nd 2016. Both of the night markets were located in Tainan, Taiwan. Result In this session, we synthesized the qualitative data, and integrated the result with existing literatures to discuss the characteristics of Asian millennial cosmopolitans. 1. A cosmopolitan identity rooted on confucianism’s tianxia (天下) The notion of tianxia has already emerged starting in Xia Dynasty (Chun, 2012). Tianxia is rooted from Confucius (551 – 479 B.C) from the traditional literature of liyundatong (禮運大同). Since then, the concept has been embedded in the historical development of Chinese geographic expansion experiences, and in the fusion of the invading alien culture in China. The cosmopolitan ideology of tianxia can be found in the night market. Night market is a place that open for all. The visitors were diverse. Not only the local people (the Taiwanese) but also foreign people can enjoy the lively atmosphere of the night market. Those who had money and status also can come to enjoy the night market, not only limited for those in the “low social class”. Even though night market perceived as the marginal place, but in the night market all people are the same. Everyone can enjoy. 2. A transient cosmopolitan identity based on mass media, global brand consumption, and tourism international travel The Asian consumer cosmopolitanism mostly spawned from the popular culture disseminated from mass media, global brand consumption, or tourist traveling. People relying on mass media and global brand consumption as venues for exchange of identities, ideas, images, religion, language, music, lifestyle, sport, etc (Huang, 2006). The usage of English as the second language, household living standard, years of schooling, and economics of internalization are the greatest aspect of high level of cosmopolitanism in Asia (Brown & Baogang, 2012). In addition, because of the increasing tourists traveling around the world, the cosmopolitan lifestyle characterizes the Asia millennials as moving out of their locals temporarily. Tourism and international travel are related to lifestyle cosmopolitanism and critical cosmopolitanism. Those characteristics differ from those cosmopolitans of the diaspora moving permanently out of their home countries. Similar to European counterparts with several identities simultaneously (Ong, 1999), however, the Asian millennials’ identities are more transient and fluid. Night market provides a temporary consumption space for the locals to indulge in authentic lower social class experience, and for the foreign visitors to sample local experience. 3. An imagined cosmopolitan identity Because of the low social class, who are the major visitors at night market, have lower disposable income, the visitors of night market choose to consume counterfeits as long as they can be seen as “wealthy class”, which often associated with a cosmopolitan image (Huat, 2004). Counterfeits provide them imagined experience to participate in material consumption beyond their affordable income. The Asian millennials also are capable of relied on the images of lower social class from mass media to appropriate their night market experience, which results in an imagined cosmopolitan experience. The night market is an evidence of a space depicting the imagined cosmopolitan consumption experience. 4. Double marginality The primary marginality comes form night market itself. Night market is perceived as the marginal place since the patronages are mostly from the lower social class in the society (Yu, 1995). Night market is regarded as a place selling the counterfeits and low quality items, which are accessible to those who cannot afford to buy the originals. The secondary marginality comes from the cosmopolitan identity. Cosmopolitans orient their mind to a broader identity like the nation or the world. The cosmopolitans are rootless who do not belong to any one community, and hence, marginal (Merton, 1957). In addition, the Asian cosmopolitans are perceived as marginal in the global cosmopolitan context since they are peripheral to the core of the global or western dominated cosmopolitans. 5. A sense of one community identity The other way to see the Asia cosmopolitanism is based in the civilizational crossfertilization. This civilizational is the result of cross-cultural fertilization as against to separate and autonomous civilizations. The hybrid cultural form of Asia provides fertile ground to develop cosmopolitanism. The Asian millennials emphasize the “we” cosmopolitans as an opposed to “I” cosmopolitans. The Asian millennials went in a group either with friends from the same ethnic background, or with their local Taiwanese friends. Asia profess collectivism, which is tending to strong community orientation (Holbrook & Hirschman, 1982). The Asian cosmopolitans believe that they are in the same state or level of development state or in the same time zone other part of Asian, and later they made the imagined community. They also believe there is a cultural relationship in the various Asian countries (Funabashi, 1992), that is the Confucianism (Delanty & He, 2008). Evidence from night market study showed the strong sense of belonging as a group. When some members from the group were in trouble, someone would offer to be a “savior” to help. 6. Cautious cosmopolitans Although similar to the European counterparts of having a penchant to consume the authentic product or service, looking for variety and the exotic simulation, and relying heavily on the social media, the Asian millennial cosmopolitans tend to show a follower characteristic when exploring new experience. Also, they are mostly like a passive participants or mere observers in the foreign experience. conclusions and implications to cultural experience design This study relies on the framework of self-environment-others (Gustafson, 2001) to investigate Asian millennials’ cosmopolitanism in Taiwan local night market context. This research finds that in addition to the same characteristics of their western counterparts, Asian millennial cosmopolitans exhibit five unique characteristics. Although the local Taiwan night market is expected to render authentic local consumption, it is experienced as an imagined global practice. Or, alternatively, the imagined global culture consumption is experienced as authentic local. While the Aisan millennials eager to experience the local night market cultural authenticity, they also constantly refer to their similar home night market culture meaning framework. For the Asian millennials, the Taiwanese local experience is framed in both an imagined global meaning context, and an authentic other locals, i.e. the idiosyncratic home culture meaning frameworks of the cosmopolitans’. However, the Asian millennial cosmopolitans are capable of appropriating the gaps in these cultural meaning discourses. The appropriation process is where local, and global cultural meaning has the opportunity to be redefined, and reorganized. The implications from this study can be applied to local cultural experience design. The results also provides valuable perspectives for culture institutions, such as night market managing organizations, in their communication strategy to these Asian millennial cosmopolitans.

People want to watch a sports game which cannot anticipate the result until the end of the game. Sometimes, however, excessive tension of contest lowers the interest of audience. Vast amount of existing researches have focused on finding explanation about what makes a difference of the preference level of suspense among sports fans and where is the optimal level of suspense. We apply Expected Utility Theory and Prospect theory to illustrate the expected utility of sports spectators. According to our findings, if someone someone who is satisfied more when the cheering team wins, he or she may prefer lopsided match than close match. And fans who support winning team, which means team which wins often, prefer lopsided match to close match because they forecast their team will win more than fans who support losing team, which means team which loses often. We manipulate the level of satisfaction when the cheering team wins (S) and subjective forecasted probability of win before the game (Q) of respondents and measure the utility of them toward difference game aspect (P) to verify our hypothesis. This study was carried out to investigate how the satisfaction of sports spectators will change according to the change of the game aspect. In particular, research model was set up using the Expected Utility Theory and Prospect Theory of economics. The use of economics models to explain sports consumer behavior is different from that of previous studies, and consumers' prior expectations can affect the current game viewing based on Prospect Theory is another contribution of this research.

Over time popular media has used the idea of Italian Mafia and the related image of mobsters in TV series, movies, and cartoons. The overall image surrounding Mafia is so powerful that nowadays many people associate the name Mafia to The Godfather movie or other fictional images. In addition to this, there are also businesses that offer products and services branded with names that remind the idea of Mafia, despite, in reality, the Mafia is a violent criminal organisation involved in drug trafficking, human trafficking, murders, etc. However, marketing research has never studied consumers’ attitudes towards the use of these stereotypes in marketing and their willingness to buy products and services that use them. This research tries to fill this gap and, by adopting Forsyth’s (1980) ethical ideologies questions, it studies the links between consumers’ ethical ideologies and: 1) consumers’ attitudes towards these products and services; 2) consumers’ willingness to buy them in order to understand whether there are differences between relativists and ideologists consumers. This research is based on an online survey made up of open and closed-ended questions. Section one of the survey was made up of closed-ended questions aimed at studying ethical ideologies; section two was made up of a mix of open- and closedended questions aimed at understanding the perceptions that respondents had towards the Mafia; their degree of acceptance towards the use of the Mafia for commercial purposes; and their willingness to buy Mafia-inspired products; the last section included some demographic questions. The survey was made available via Qualtrics and respondents were recruited through Prolific. In the end 152 responses from UK participants were collected. Data analysis has not been carried out yet, but it is expected to analyse data through the Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA), a new data analysis technique that is aimed at identifying necessary, but not sufficient conditions within data. In addition to this, analysis of group differences will be carried out through ANOVA, in conjunction with regression analysis. Through this research it is expected to be able to understand whether consumers’ attitudes towards the use of Mafia stereotypes in marketing and their willingness to buy products and services that use these stereotypes differ according to whether consumers are classified as relativists or ideologists. With this study it is expected to analyse an area of consumption that so far has been neglected by research, i.e. consumers’ attitudes and willingness to buy products and services that use Mafia-related stereotypes.

People face various situations that they have to decide whether to buy or not, before uncertainty is resolved. Under the uncertain conditions, it is most crucial part for consumers that they should consider the expected valuation derived from purchasing tickets or services. Thus, it is important to contemplate buyer uncertainty about future valuation. Xie and Shugan presented the relationship between spot price and advance price in a situation that involves uncertainty. Their findings provide the explicit advance pricing strategies that can create profit improvements (Xie & Shugan, 2001). Their findings lay a foundation of this problem, because buyers are almost always not sure about their future valuations for most services (Xie & Shugan, 2001). In addition to these findings, the researchers found that profits under option pricing strategy outperform those from advance pricing strategy (Preethika Sainam, 2010). They introduce the concept of consumer options and analytically prove that consumer options can make more profits and also can protect consumers from the pitfall derived from unwanted outcomes (Preethika Sainam, 2010). In this paper, we want to consider this problem under more complex and real circumstances. We include one more pricing strategy, discounted advance pricing, which is often called early bird pricing. Furthermore, we divide consumers in two types, risk-neutral consumers and risk-averse consumers. We present a simple analytical model in what conditions each pricing strategies can out-perform others based on consumer types and capacity types.

The present study contributes to the international literature on brand personality and congruence. There is still a general lack of clarity regarding the measurement of the self-brand congruity construct. Moreover, in the light of international branding research cross-national validation of this measurement is needed. Previous empirical evidence also suggests a positive relationship between brand-self congruity and consumer-brand relationships (i.e. brand attachment) across nations and cultures, but the strength of these relationships requires deeper investigation. The present study therefore aims to test and validate a personality congruence scale at an international level and to measure the effect of congruence on brand attachment with specific reference to the luxury sector. A survey of nearly 1,500 international luxury customers has been conducted. Results confirm that personality congruence is based upon five dimensions (Prestige/Emotion/Trust/Anxiety/Order). In addition, the results highlight the existence and relative importance of the link between “personality congruence” and “brand attachment”. Finally, findings suggest similarities and differences across countries regarding specific dimensions of congruence scale and the personality congruence and attachment relationship. Both theoretical and managerial implications are provided.

This research provides insight into how socialisation and learning aids consumers to form their ecological self. Past research establishes that ecological self, expressed as environmental identity, positively drives responsible consumption, but there is a lack of understanding of how consumers form their ecological selves and environmental identities. The aim is to provide a broader motivational structure that drives the formation of nature identity and its influence on responsible consumption behaviour. The ethnographic data uncovers the cognitive thoughts, affections, symbolic inferences and nature experiences of participants guiding the formation of the ecological self, attachment to nature and ecological worldviews, which then drives responsible consumption behaviour. The conceptual framework outlines the overall motivation driving ecological self and identifies emotional, religious and spiritual attachments to guide the development of ecocentric, theocentric and transcentric ecological worldviews. This research mainly contributes to theory development and social marketing efforts.

Customers’ opinions on social network platforms are known to influence peer behaviour (Bai, 2011; Eirinaki, Pisal, & Singh, 2012). Customers are also known to be more engaged in sharing their experiences by writing online reviews and recommendations that may be useful to others (Cantallops & Salvi, 2014; Tang & Guo, 2015; Xu & Li, 2016). Actually, user-generated content (UGC) on social network platforms has emerged as an important source for understanding and managing consumers’ expectations, particularly using automated and semi-automated knowledge extraction techniques from text such as text mining and sentiment analysis (Zhang, Zeng, Li, Wang, & Zuo, 2009). This research analyses dimensions of online customer engagement and associated concepts in customers’ reviews through (i) a global sentiment analysis using positive, neutral and negative sentiments and (ii) a topic-sentiment analysis to capture latent topics in online reviews. Furthermore, it examines what influences customers to contribute their online reviews, beyond the features of each focal company or brand. The research methodology is based on a text mining approach, using the MeaningCloud tool. The study focuses on Yelp.com reviews and includes a random sample of 15,000 unique reviews of restaurants, hotels and nightlife entertainment in eleven cities in the USA. An innovative customer engagement dictionary is created, based on previously validated scales using known dimensions of engagement, experience, emotions and brand advocacy, and extended using WordNet 2.1 lexical database. The research findings reveal a high impact of the engagement cognitive processing dimension and hedonic experience on customers’ review endeavour. The study results further indicate that customers seem to be more engaged in positively advocating a company/brand than the contrary. The findings will help social network managers to reinforce their platforms.

We carry out a study of Sub-Millimeter Galaxies (SMGs) in the AKARI NEP-Deep field using the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) SCUBA-2 850 μm source catalog, released as part of the SCUBA-2 Cosmology Legacy Survey (S2CLS) program. The SCUBA-2 850 μm map has a root mean square (rms) noise of 1.2 mJy beam−1 and covers an area of 0.60 degree2. We find four SMGs which have counterparts to Herschel sources with spectroscopic redshifts in the literature. In addition, three dust obscured galaxies (DOGs) detected in Herschel bands are selected as a comparison sample. We derive IR luminosities of SMGs using the CIGALE code, which are similar to those of high redshift SMGs from previous studies. The contribution of AGN to the total IR luminosity in SMGs (2%–11%) is smaller than the lower limit for the one in DOGs (19%–35%), which is consistent with the expectation from the evolutionary scenario of massive galaxies. We search for SMGs in overdense regions as protocluster candidates and investigate four regions, including candidates around three DOGs. Finally, we argue that follow-up spectroscopic observation for the NEP-Deep field will provide crucial information to understand the role of SMGs in the evolution of massive galaxies.

We investigated the effects of two Brucella proteins expressed in a pMAL expression system, RocF and EF-Ts, as subunit vaccines on immune modulation and protective efficacy using a mouse model. Mice vaccinated with MBP-RocF and MBP-EF-Ts displayed increased production of TNF, IFN-, MCP-1, IL-10 and IL-6, and TNF and MCP-1, respectively. Furthermore, mice vaccinated with MBP-EF-Ts showed decreased induction of IFN- and Th2-related cytokines, IL-10 and IL-6. Higher proportions of CD4+ and CD8+ T cells were observed in the blood of mice vaccinated with MBP-RocF than in the PBS-vaccinated group, although the increases were not significant. Furthermore, significantly reduced Brucella proliferation in the spleens of the MBP-RocF and MBP-EF-Ts groups were observed, but inflammation of these organs was not attenuated. Overall, these results indicate that RocF and EF-Ts could be potential subunit vaccine candidates against animal brucellosis.

We assessed the effects of combining bio-char with straw residue mulching on the loss of soil soluble nutrients and citrus yield in sloping land. The two-year study showed that straw residue mulching (ST) and bio-char application combined with straw residue (ST+BC) can significantly reduce soil soluble nutrient loss when compared with the control treatment (CK). The comparative volume of the soil surface runoff after each of the treatments was as follows: CK > ST > ST + BC. Compared with the CK, the runoff volume of the ST was reduced by 13.6 % and 8.5 % in 2014 and 2015, respectively. Compared with the CK, combining bio-char with the ST application reduced the loss of soluble nitrogen and improved the soil total nitrogen content reaching a significant level in 2015. It dramatically increased the soil organic matter content over the two year period (36.3% in 2014, 50.6% in 2015) as well as the carbon/nitrogen ratio (C/N) (16.6% in 2014 and 39.3% in 2015). Straw mulching combined with bio-char showed a trend for increasing the citrus yield.