This paper examines how to create customers’ advocacy and demonstrates that “Ambassador program” brings out Brand Advocates. Introduction This paper aims to identify how to effectively develop brand advocates from customers. Brand advocates are enthusiastic customers who promote a specific brand (Fuggetta, 2012) and expected to be a powerful marketing force by firms. In marketing literatures, “advocate” has been augured as an ultimate objective (Kotler et al., 2016) or a goal of customer decision journey（Batra and Keller, 2016）. It suggests that the importance of consumer-to-consumer (C-to-C) communication has been increasing. In marketing communication, it is necessary to manage paid/owned/earned media (POEM). Paid media means advertising; owned media are their own media such as shops, DM, and website; and earned media consists of publicity and word-of-mouth (WOM). Though the influence of WOM grabs attention, it is uncontrollable and unmanageable. However, in Japan, some major firms such as Nestle, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Seven-Eleven have adopted a brand new approach called “Ambassador program,” which is a long-term collaboration with customers. Though the activities are different from each company, they commonly involve their customers to create a brand experience (Brakus et al., 2009) and promote advocacy from the participants. In other words, first, they provide brand experience through owned media and then expand it to earned media. This study examines the following key research question: Does the “Ambassador program” bring out a Brand Advocate? NESCAFE Ambassador Program To examine this research question, I selected the case of NESCAFE Ambassador Program, which is the largest in Japan and in the world. The program details are as below: 1. A person who wants to introduce NESCAFE coffee system to his/her office applies as a NESCAFE Ambassador through online application. 2. After an investigation, the person is authorized as a NESCAFE Ambassador. 3. After purchasing a coffee cartridge subscription, the Ambassador and his/her colleague can enjoy this coffee machine free. The program started in 2012 and the number of Ambassador has reached 280,000 until June 2017. The Ambassadors are required to invest time and efforts in collecting money from colleagues to pay for the coffee cartridge, water, cups and so on; however, they voluntarily introduce the system to their office. They seem to be similar to brand advocates and this paper examines the relationship between brand advocates and ambassador program. Method and Data To examine the research question in this study, an online survey was conducted on NESCAFE machine (NESCAFE Barista and NESCAFE Dolce Gust) users (n = 2,000). The respondents consist of 492 NESCAFE ambassadors, 508 ambassador program participants (not the ambassador itself but ambassador’s colleagues), and 1,000 non-program participants (average 42.9 years old, male 61.5％, female 38.6％). The following data were collected through an online questionnaire: (a) The frequency of advocacy in eight different ways; 1: Never 2: Seldom 3: Sometimes 4: Often (b) The level of fandom on a 7-point Likert scale (c) Touch point with the brand; touch points exhibited by Duncan (2005) (22 items, including 13 of pre-purchase information resource), the frequency and period of using NESCAFE machine, and expenditure toward NESCAFE Data analysis was carried out as follows: (1) Extract brand advocates from the respondents by the responses to questions (a) and (b); a person who “often” advocates NESCAFE in any ways in question (a) and also chooses 6 or 7 about the level of fandom in question (b) was regarded as a brand advocate. (2) Multiple regression analysis was used to verify the difference between brand advocates (BAs) and non-BAs. (3) Chi-square test was used to examine the relationship between brand advocates and ambassador program. Result As a result of the questionnaire, 201 BAs were found out from 2,000 respondents (see tables 1 and 2). There are significant differences between BA and non-BA in average age (BA 41.4 y.o., non-BA 43.1 y.o.) （t (1998) = 2.49, p < .05）and gender balance (male: BA 52.7%, non-BA 62.4%) (χ² = 7.16, df = 1, p < .01). The features of brand advocates First, multiple regression was calculated in order to predict being BA on the basis of “the way of advocacy” variables. The results showed that each of the following variable, such as “Have a coffee together at home” (β = 0.31, p < 0.001), posting to the community (β = 0.17, p < 0.001), and face-to-face communication (β = 0.14, p < 0.001) were significant predictors of being a BA (F (3, 1,996) = 237.91, p < 0.001) (Table 3). Consequently, multiple regression analysis was made to predict being a BA on the basis of “touch point” variables. The results showed that multiple prepurchase variables such as face-to-face WOM (β = 0.25, p < 0.001), both in-store (β = 0.10, p < 0.001) and out-of-store trial (β = 0.07, p < 0.001), which means that the respondents had used NESCAFE machine at a friend’s home, the contact rate for the brand such as customer service (β = 0.07, p < 0.001) and financial contribution to the brand such as monthly expenditure (β = 0.08, p < 0.001) were significant predictors of being a BA (F (12, 1,987) = 60.51, p < 0.001) (Table 4). In addition, a BA’s frequency of usage was significantly higher than a non-BA’s (χ² = 148.67, df = 6, p < .001) (Table 6). The relationship between brand advocates and ambassador program Finally, a chi-square test on participation to the ambassador program revealed that it significantly brought out brand advocates (χ² = 67.17, df = 2, p < .001) (Table 5). Interestingly, not only ambassadors themselves but also participants, ambassadors’ colleagues, showed higher rate of being a BA than the nonprogram participants. Conclusion Several important findings are derived from this study. First of all, “Ambassador program” brings out BAs. It makes the participants to take NESCAFE as a dairy habit and then percolate advocacy voluntarily. It is also revealed that BA’s communication is often among peers and face to face. Both academic researchers and managers tend to focus on digital communication; however, this paper showed the importance of offline communication. Furthermore, this study showed that BAs follow the brand’s own media. It means that firms can access BAs through their own media. Based on these findings, this paper recommends to managers that WOM is still not within their control; however, they can increase customers’ advocacy by enhancing their brand experience through their own media; and Ambassador Program is one of the solutions for them.

Frederick Denny in Islam and the Muslim Community points out that one of the most noteworthy aspects of contemporary Islam is its growing prosperity in Europe, especially in countries of Christian dominance. Most recently, in the wake of rise of ISIS in Syria and influx of Muslim refugees to Europe, a newspaper reports, “There will eventually be more Muslims than Christians in Europe.” The growth of Islam is taking place not just in Europe. It is a worldwide trend, and the Muslim population is rapidly increasing in Korea as well. To better understand how best to meet the challenge of rising Muslim populations, specifically in England and in Korea, this article attempts to develop a Christian Christological response. To that end, the article first explores contemporaryMuslim trends in England and Korea with an eye toward understanding how to communicate the gospel to them effectively. This includes an examination of the Islamic Jesus portrayed in the Qur’an in comparison to Jesus, the Son of God in Christianity. As is known, pivotal to attaining a meaningful Christian-Muslim dialogue, as well as a credible Christian witness to Muslims, is the problem of Christology. Islam has a fairly well-developed Christology. However, the Christian message that “Jesus is the Son of God” is an abomination to the Muslims. Thus, Christians face crucial Christological questions whether they must avoid the term “Son of God” and instead defer to the name “Isa” for Jesus by which Muslims know him. Facing the obstacles in traditional Christian-Muslim dialogue, the article explores how best to stand on common ground with Muslims while satisfactorily and carefully articulating points of distinction, especially regarding the work of Christ. The article concludes by formulating an effective strategy for relating to and reaching Muslims theologically and culturally, while concretely manifesting Christian love in order to be the love of Christ to them and not just talk about it abstractly.

A non-equilibrium powder metallurgy processing such as an MA/SPS (Mechanical Alloying / Spark Plasma Sintering) process is examined in a Ti-48moll%Al. TiAl intermetallic compound is a potential light-weight/high-temperature structural material. One of the major problems, however, limiting the practical use of the material is its poor workability. From this point, the powder metallurgy (PM) processing route has been attractive alternative of the conventional processing for such material The MA/SPS process is able to apply to a LIGA process. Optimization of the pseudo-superplasticity enables to fabricate micro-parts made of fine grained ceramics composites of TiAl by the LIGA process.

SUS316L stainless steel, commercial pure Titanium and Ti-6Al-4V alloy powders applied by Mechanical Milling (MM) process are sintered by Hot Roll Sintering (HRS) process. Microstructure and mechanical properties of those HRS materials is investigated. The microstructures of materials produced by HRS process consist of fine grains and work-hardened structure, that is, the hybrid microstructure. Tensile test of the HRS material demonstrated the good mechanical properties. These results show that the HRS process is very effective to the improvement of mechanical properties in the SUS316L stainless steel, commercial pure Titanium and Ti-6Al-4V alloy.

Recently, automotive engines have changed to the silent chain system in order to reduce noise and to improve reliability. High contact fatigue strength is needed for the sprockets of silent chain system. As a result, a high-contact-fatigue-strength P/M material was developed using the technology of surface rolling, which densifies the surface layer of sintered parts. It was established that the contact fatigue strength of the developed material was a great improvement over that of the conventionally used sintered material.

In this study, nano grain W is fabricated by Severe Plastic Deformation-Powder Metallurgy (SPD-PM) process. W powder and W-Re powder mixtures are processed by SPD-PM process, a Mechanical Milling (MM) process. As results, a nano grain structure, whose grain size is approximately 20nm, is obtained in W powder after MM for 360ks. A nano grain W compact, whose grain size 630nm, has excellent deformability above 1273K. A nano grain W-10Re compact is composed of equiaxed grain, a grain growth is restrained and has low dislocation density after the large deformation; therefore it is considered that W-Re compact shows superplasticity.

The relationship between the powder particle size change and a mechanical property of the Metal Injection Molding (MIM) product was examined in detail. The XRD results indicate that the diffraction peaks of BCC appeared in compacts of powder particle size of 4 to as well as the bulk SUS630. However, the diffraction peaks from both BCC and FCC were observed in the compact with powder size less than . TEM observation revealed that the powder with those BCC/FCC two phase structure have a finely dispersed precipitates. Because the Si is ferrite stabilizing element, decrease of Si composition in the matrix phase by the precipitation resulted in formation of the retained austenite. Therefore, controlling the elements such as Si as well as oxygen decrease is very important to obtain a normal microstructure in ultra-fine powder (<3μm) injection molding.