Research into country-of-origin effects has been conducted since the 1960s, and the research focus has gradually shifted from country-of-origin to ideological effects, such as consumer ethnocentrism, animosity, and more recently, consumer cosmopolitanism. From the postwar period to the 1980s, globalization brought a negative consumer attitude toward foreign products, but a positive one among an increasing number of consumers after the mid-1990s, partly due to the prevalence of the internet (Terasaki, 2016a). Even though the exact number is still unknown, cosmopolitan consumers are increasing faster than ever before (Riefler & Diamantopoulos, 2009; Cleveland et al., 2011; Grinstein &Wathieu, 2012). The concept “consumer cosmopolitanism” was first introduced by in Cannon et al. (1994), and since then a number of empirical studies have been conducted using the Cannon, Yoon, McGowan & Yaprak’s Cosmopolitanism (CYMYC) scale. Although consumer cosmopolitanism has become a popular theme in international marketing (Terasaki, 2016b), little research has been conducted examining the antecedents for cosmopolitan consumers (Riefler & Diamantopoulos, 2009). Our study fills this important gap in the emerging literature, using sequential mixed methods. This is important because we specify where prospective cosmopolitan consumers are, and what elements of products and services, and in some cases advertisements, potentially attract them.

This paper presents the influence of the compositions of sintered Ti-Ni alloys on their thermo-mechanical properties. The Ti-Ni alloys having various compositions from 50at%Ni to 51at%Ni were sintered using elemental Ti and Ni powders by a pulse-current pressure sintering equipment. The deformation resistance in stress-strain curves increased with an increase in Ni content. In the case of Ti-50at%Ni, tensile strength and elongation were more than 500 MPa and 7%, respectively. The increase in Ni content also makes the transformation temperatures lower. The deformation resistance at a test temperature change from 293K and 353K in isothermal tensile test increased with elevating test temperature.