Search results

This study aims to focus on whether and furthermore how aesthetics-based mystery affects consumers’ responses toward relevant products.

Three experimental studies are reported. In Studies 1–2, smartphone ad flyers varying in mystery and non-mystery styles were adopted. A total of 187 undergraduate participants were recruited in Study 1 and 245 undergraduate participants in Study 2. In Study 3, a total of 193 participants who work in a range of businesses were recruited and wristwatch ad flyers were adopted.

Findings demonstrate that consumers are more willing to pay for products promoted via mystery appeal (versus non-mystery). Such positive impacts occur through consumers’ high-end perceptions of the products. Concrete, rather than abstract, verbal description of quality product features facilitate the impact of mystery appeal on consumer purchase decisions.

The findings advance an extant understanding of mystery appeal in advertising. It is among the first few to demonstrate that high-end product perceptions carry over the positive influence of mystery on consumers. This research is enlightening by suggesting an incongruity effect between pictorial stimuli and verbal information in the advertisement. This study’s scope is limited to visual mystery-evoking stimuli and Chinese participants.

When marketers/advertisers promoting products/brands with high prices, aesthetics-based mystery appeal should be considered as an effective option. This appeal is implicated as effective across gender. Moreover, visual mystery-evoking stimuli, combined with a concrete (not abstract) verbal description of product features should be optimal in promoting products.

The findings contribute to the limited empirical research on the influence processes of aesthetics-based mystery appeal. Different from the intuition, it is suggested that incongruity between visual and verbal stimuli in mystery ads that enhances the positive effect of mystery appeal.

The purpose of this research is to examine the role of worry versus sadness in influencing young consumers’ purchase decisions and to clarify the differences across the worry–consumption versus the sadness–consumption relationships.

Three studies were conducted. Study 1 was a 3 (emotion: worry vs sadness vs neutral) × 2 (brand perceptions: conflicting vs consistent) between-subject design. Study 2 was a 3 (emotion: sadness vs worry vs neutral) × 2 (product type: social status associated vs hedonic) mixed design. Study 3 was a questionnaire survey.

The results demonstrate that worry induces young consumers’ identification with peers, and is more related to youth’s purchase intention for social status associated products rather than hedonic products. Sadness induces young consumers to follow their own perceptions, and is more associated with purchase intention for hedonic rather than social status-associated products. The drivers of purchase behavior for expensive products also differ: worried young consumers’ purchase intention is driven by perceptions of social status value associated with these products, whereas sad consumers’ purchase intention is driven by perceptions of hedonic value.

This research has significant implications for marketing practitioners on strategic marketing and communication to young consumers. It also provides important suggestions to young consumers on how to effectively regulate negative emotions via socially accepted behavior (i.e. purchases).

This research contributes to the extant literature on emotion’s impact on consumer behavior by elaborating carryover effects of emotion varying in the overlooked personal- and social-focus dimension. It also extends the literature on peer influence among young consumers.

This study aims to examine factors affecting Chinese adolescents’ purchase intention for local brands; this study focuses on the effects of perceived social status value and materialistic values.

A theoretical model relating perceived social status value of brands to purchase intention, including materialistic values as a moderator, was developed and tested, using a sample of 587 Chinese adolescent respondents. Another experimental study examined the variability of the moderation of materialistic values across different levels of peer pressure in a product usage occasion.

Perceived social status value associated with local and foreign brands significantly influences purchase intention for local brands. Moreover, influence of perceived social status value of local versus foreign brands on local brand purchase intention is greater for materialistic adolescents. Additionally, the moderation of materialistic values is found in a product usage occasion with high peer pressure, but not in an occasion with low peer pressure.

The findings show that perceived social status value associated with brands shapes purchase intention for local brands. The moderating effect of materialistic values is complex and suggests further research. The study’s scope is limited to Chinese adolescents.

The findings provide understanding of the drivers of purchase intention, and thus serve as a guideline for Chinese firms and foreign marketers seeking to enter the growing Chinese market, as well as consumer educators in China.

This study contributes to the limited empirical research into the factors shaping country-of-origin effects. Moreover, the findings suggest the need to consider the moderating role of materialistic values on purchase intention for local brands.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of the household registration and of employment contract on employee job insecurity in the Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs). The relationships between job satisfaction and the two components of job insecurity are also analysed.

The research uses original data collected through a questionnaire survey in six Chinese SOEs. In all, 309 samples are analysed mainly using hierarchical regression analysis.

The research finds household registration is a predictor of job insecurity while employment contract is not. Job satisfaction is found to be positively related to one of the components of job insecurity: the perceived severity of job loss.

To improve job security of the employees who are in vulnerable positions, improving the equality of social safety net is significant. In China, household registration causes unequal access to social welfare and employment opportunities; improving the equality may be more significant than seeking for permanent employment.

The research suggests two levels of factors influencing job insecurity: the macro-level factors that include the institutional configurations of social safety net; and the micro-level factors that include employment contract. The macro-level factors have fundamental influence while the micro-level factors are more apparent. The micro-level factors may manifest their influence only when the macro-level factors equally cover all the employees. The macro-level factors may also intermediate the relationship between job insecurity and satisfaction.

This paper aims to develop an assembly behaviour dynamic model of reheat stop valve assembly under run‐time situations and combined (assembly error, friction, fluid dynamics and thermal load behaviour) and to carry out assembly process evaluation and optimisation.

The fluid dynamic behaviour analysis is carried out for the dynamic torque characteristics of reheat stop valve and for the thermal load distribution of the valve shaft‐bush subassembly, which is used for evaluating the thermal deformation of valve shaft by using of finite elements method. The assembly behaviour dynamic model is developed by multibody dynamics theory, which is as the basis of developing virtual prototyping platform for analysing and evaluating the current assembly process.

It is revealed that the deformation (ε) of valve shaft due to the thermal load, and the assembly coaxial error (e) can change the motion clearance remarkably, which lead the dynamic properties and performance of reheat stop valve changed greatly. The current assembly behaviour variable are not optimum and the initial design clearance between valve shaft and bush 4# can be optimised by the developed virtual prototyping platform on the basis of ADAMS® API. The results of evaluation for the assembly behaviour reveal the well dynamic characteristics of reheat stop valve with the optimum assembly behaviour variable. This will be useful for improving the current assembly process of reheat stop valve.

The present assembly behaviour dynamic model based on virtual prototyping for optimum assembly process design uses only single objective optimisation (the most important clearance between valve shaft and bush 4#). For a complete optimum assembly process design has to be carried out with other three clearance variables (the clearance between valve shaft and bush 1#, bush 2# and bush 3#) together.

The present analysis provides some benchmarks for improving the current assembly process. In practice, the assembly coaxial tolerance of valve shaft‐bush subassembly and the initial design clearances must be limited strictly.

This paper provides a methodology for analysis and evaluation of reheat stop valve assembly behaviour with the consideration of combined environmental behaviours. Based on this methodology, it is possible to develop an assembly behaviour dynamic model, and further, to develop a virtual prototyping platform for analysing and evaluating the assembly process which will offer help to designers for improving the reheat stop valve assembly process.

Using the multifunctional friction and wear testing machine independently developed by the research group, the friction and wear tests of different friction conditions (contact pressure and sliding speed) are conducted on the brake materials of high-speed trains with the ambient humidity of 95% and the initial temperature of the disk of 200°C.

Friction and wear.

The test results show that changing the friction conditions has a significant effect on the braking performance of high-speed trains.

YES.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-05-2024-0171/

The purpose of this paper is to employ the Grey-Markov Chain Model for the scale prediction of cultivated land and took an empirical research with the case of Jiangsu province.

Along with China’s industrialization and urbanization accelerated, a large number of cultivated land converse into construction land. The change of utilization of cultivated land concerns national food security and sustainable development of economy and society. Due to the fact that the different investigation methods of arable land usually cause a uncertain. The Grey-Markov model combines the Grey GM(1,1) and Markov chain, with two advantages of dealing with poor information and long-term and volatile series. A numeric example of scale prediction of cultivated land in Jiangsu province is also computed in the third part of the paper.

The results show that the Grey-Markov Chain Model has a higher prediction accuracy compared with GM (1,1), which is a reliable guarantee for the change of cultivated land resources.

The forecast of cultivated land can provide useful information for the general land use planning.

The paper confirmed the feasibility of the Grey-Markov model in scale prediction of cultivated land.

Induction heating as an energy source is a novel, recent method in extrusion-based metal additive manufacturing. The purpose of this paper is to develop an optimized coil for extrusion-based metal wire additive manufacturing. The optimized coil is so designed that uniform temperature distribution can be achieved in the extruder, achieving uniform material deposition in a semi-solid state, which is required for additive manufacturing.

Coil shape optimization is achieved by using arrangement of coil turns as a control variable in the form optimization process, and the objective function is to minimize the gradient in the distribution of the magnetic field to achieve uniform heating in the extruder for maintaining consistent solid and liquid fraction during material deposition. A combination of numerical solutions and geometrical optimization has been used for this study.

Experimental and simulation results reveal that the optimized induction coil produced a more uniform axial temperature distribution in the extruder, which is suitable for maintaining a uniform solid-to-liquid fraction ratio during material deposition.

The author has investigated the use of optimized-shaped induction coils in extrusion-based additive manufacturing. The optimized coil can achieve a more uniform temperature distribution in the extruder in comparison to the standard helical coil used in the existing process, which means optimized coil achieves a more uniform solid-to-liquid ratio during printing in comparison to existing standard coil shapes used for heating extruders and fulfils the requirement of additive manufacturing.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a method that can better evaluate the credit risk (CR) under PPP project finance.

The principle to evaluate the CR of PPP projects is to calculate three critical indicators: the default probability (DP), the recovery rate (RR) and the exposure at default (EAD). The RR is determined by qualitative analysis according to Standard & Poor’s Recovery Scale, and the EAD is estimated by NPV analysis. The estimation of the DP is the focus of CR assessment because the future cash flow is not certain, and there are no trading records and market data that can be used to evaluate the credit condition of PPP projects before financial close. The modified CreditMetrics model and Monte Carlo simulation are applied to evaluate the DP, and the application is illustrated by a PPP project finance case.

First, the proposed method can evaluate the influence of the project’s cash flow uncertainty on the potential loss of the bank. Second, instead of outputting a certain default loss value, the method can derive an interval of the potential loss for the bank. Third, the method can effectively analyze how different repayment schedules and risk preference of banks influence the evaluating result.

The proposed method offers an approach for the bank to value the CR under PPP project finance. The method took into consideration of the uncertainty and other characteristics of PPP project finance, adopted and improved the CreditMetrics model, and provided a possible loss range under different project cash flow volatilities through interval estimation under certain confident level. In addition, the bank’s risk preference is considered in the CR evaluating method proposed in this study where the bank’s risk preference is first investigated in the CR evaluating process of PPP project finance.