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The present research responds to researchers’ calls for more research of consumer animosity on potential boundary conditions (e.g. product categories) and marketing strategies that may mitigate such negative impacts on marketers’ product and/or brand performance, with a special focus on the soft service sector. This paper aims to address the unique characteristics of service internationalization, i.e. cultural embeddedness, hybridized country origins and high consumption visibility, by proposing a social identity signaling model to explain consumer animosity effects in the soft service sector.

Two surveys (Pretest with 240 participants and Study 1 with 351 participants) and one experiment (Study 2 with 731 participants) were conducted to empirically test our hypotheses in the Japanese-Chinese relationship context.

The stronger the national/cultural symbolism and social expressiveness, the stronger the consumer avoidance for the service category. Then the consumer culture positioning strategy that can mitigate an offending country’s cultural symbolism can reduce consumer avoidance.

This research introduces two factors that could affect the negative social identity signaling capacity of service categories in the animosity context: the national/cultural symbolism reflecting an offending country and the social expressiveness communicating social identity. In line with the social identity signaling perspective, the present research specifically uses consumer avoidance as the dependent variable to capture the notion that consumers avoid consuming services because they wish to avoid being associated with an offending country that may threaten their in-group social identities.

This study aims to understand the satisfaction and needs of eastern and western travelers as hotel guest, based on their experiences as seen in guest reviews and review topics.

Considering 2,965 and 1,035 western and eastern traveler reviews, respectively, from 47 countries, obtained from TripAdvisor listed-hotel in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap city in Cambodia, this study investigates the differences in hotel guest satisfaction and needs by using topic modeling (i.e. latent Dirichlet allocation [LDA]).

The results reveal differences in the online preferences, experiences, expectations and behaviors of hotel guests from different cultural backgrounds. Though western and eastern travelers appear to place similar emphasis on service, location, room and destination. The westerners more likely focus on meal and online reservation, whereas the easterners focus on hotel facility.

Reviews were obtained from only two cities in Cambodia, which is not an adequate representation of the diverse travelers visiting the country.

The comparison highlighting the similarities and dissimilarities between western and eastern traveler perspectives enable hoteliers to understand guests’ preferences and their hidden changes in (dis)satisfaction and leverage it to improve hotel service quality, increase occupancy and, thereby, maximize profits.

This study contributes to the literature on hotel guests’ experiences by presenting the difference in perceptions of service experience of western and eastern travelers, through topic modeling.

The purpose of this paper is to create a vision and obtain a consensus on Taiwan's nanotechnology industry in three dimensions (the 2007 situation, the R&D maturation time, and the 2020 scenario). It then seeks to foster a set of development strategies for Taiwan in 2020.

A Delphi‐based foresight study together with an expert discussion meeting has been conducted to obtain a consensus for Taiwan nanotechnology in 2020.

The paper provides the results of the first Delphi‐based survey on Taiwan nanotechnology development. The Nano Bio Medicine domain has greater maturity; the maturation time of most techniques will be 2010‐2015; Nanocomposite Material Technique, Nano Optoelectronic and Optical Communication, and Nano Storage show relatively high competitiveness. Self‐R&D and Technology introduced from overseas are the major development methods in 2020.

The paper is of interest to foresight practitioners and policy makers at the industrial and government levels in Taiwan.

The paper is the first publication to identify Taiwan's 2020 nanotechnology development by Delphi‐based foresight investigation.