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The purpose of this study is to investigate how exclusivity and rarity (natural versus virtual) influence consumers' perceptions of luxury. Further, it examines whether exclusivity and rarity can function as distinct marketing strategies in today's luxury market environment.

Online questionnaires were administered by adapting developed scales from prior research. Research stimuli were chosen from three luxury categories including bags, wine and cruise. Confirmatory factor analysis and multiple regressions were used to test the hypotheses.

The results confirmed that exclusivity, natural rarity and virtual rarity were perceived as relatively distinct constructs among our sample. Findings also highlighted that perceived natural rarity (PNR) has consistently emerged as a positive and significant contributor to consumers' perceptions of luxury across all three luxury categories. The influence of perceived exclusivity (PE) on perceptions of luxury has also shown to be significant for two product categories (luxury bag and luxury wine), whereas perceived virtual rarity (PVR) did not show any significant effects across all three categories.

The results indicate that consumers perceive natural rarity, virtual rarity and exclusivity as relatively distinctive marketing strategies. This suggests that luxury businesses can adopt each strategy independently to achieve desired marketing outcomes.

This study offers theoretical support for the proposition that exclusivity and rarity may have different functions in luxury marketing implementations. It provides empirical evidence showing the distinctiveness of perceived exclusivity and perceived rarity, which have not be done in previous research.

This paper aims to prepare high corrosion-resistant chromium-free zinc-aluminum (Zn–Al) coatings reinforced with multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and nano-ZnO particle composites.

The morphology, composition and corrosion resistance of the coatings were analyzed by electrochemical tests, water contact angle tests, immersion tests, scanning electron microscopy/energy dispersive spectrometer and X-ray diffraction.

The composite coating with 0.3% MWCNTs and 0.5% nano-ZnO particles demonstrated both high shielding performance and cathodic protection performance, which was attributed to the porosity filling of MWCNTs and nano-ZnO particles together with the electrical connection of MWCNTs between the zinc and aluminum powders.

This work laid an experimental foundation for the preparation and corrosion mechanism of high corrosion-resistant chromium-free Zn–Al coating reinforced with MWCNTs and nano-ZnO particles.

This study examines the impact of formal and informal institutional distances on the foreign ownership strategies of emerging market firms (EMFs).

This is an empirical study relying on two sets of data collected over two time periods, 2006–2008 and 2017–2019, for publicly-listed Chinese companies.

Greater formal institutional distances in the host and home countries make EMFs less likely to use joint ventures (JVs), while greater informal distances make EMFs more likely to use the JVs. When both formal and informal institutional distances are high, the use of JVs is more likely. These results are affected by the goal of the foreign direct investment (FDI) project, with strategic asset-seeking (SAS) FDI projects favoring the use of wholly owned subsidiaries (WOSs).

This study relies on cross-sectional data from publicly-listed Chinese companies, which may limit the generalizability of the findings.

EMFs investing in advanced countries should carefully assess the tradeoffs between transactional cost efficiency and legitimacy in making their foreign ownership decisions. If the goal is to access strategic assets, EMFs should consider WOSs to ensure the transfer of strategic assets and create value for the parent company.

The findings show that formal and informal distances between institutions have different impacts on foreign ownership strategies, providing empirical evidence for the need to balance conflicting cost-efficiency and legitimacy considerations when businesses make such strategic decisions. The authors show how this balance depends on the goal of the FDI project.

It is shown in natural gas proportion mixing experiments that a mixed-source natural gas is the physical combination of end member gas. Both the carbon and hydrogen isotopes in the mixed-source natural gas can be expressed by the weighted average of corresponding components content and isotopes of end member gas. Under certain geological setting, the selection of end member gas is the key to mixed-source ratio calculation. Then, it's better to estimate the mixed-source ratio with δ¹³C₁ and component data according to the weighted average calculation formula. The analysis on natural gas geochemistry characteristics show that the natural gas extracted from Jingbian Gas Field in the Ordos Basin is mainly an upper Paleozoic coal-derived gas. In the analysis of geological conditions for reservoir forming and characteristics of natural gas, natural gas from Longtan 1 Well and Tao 6 Well were selected as the end member gases of lower Paleozoic oil-type gas and upper Paleozoic coal-type gas respectively to calculate the mixed-source ratio of natural gas in Jingbian Gas Field. The ratio of upper Paleozoic coal-derived gas mostly accounts for over 70% and its average ratio reaches 81%. Therefore, the exploration of natural gas of Ordos Basin should be focused on the upper palaeozoic coal source rock, and attention should be paid to the matching of coal source rock in the exploration of weathered crust gas deposit.

Can Chinese social media data (SMD) be used as an alternative to traditional surveys used to understand tourists' visitation of attractions in Chinese cities? The purpose of this paper is to explore this question.

Popular tourism SMD sources in China, such as Ctrip, Weibo and Dazhong Dianping (DZDP), were used as data source, and the relationships between these sources and traditional data sources were studied with statistical methods. Data from Shanghai were used in this study since it is rich in tourism resources and developed in information.

A systematic research method was followed and led to the following conclusions: There were positive correlations for attraction visitation between Chinese SMD and traditional survey data; Chinese SMD source could temporally indicate visits to Shanghai tourist attractions; Ctrip SMD generally performed less well than Weibo or DZDP, and different SMD performed differently depending on the specific attractions and time units in the visitation calculation process; and factors including visitation, distance from the city center and the grade of attractions might affect the prediction performance based on data from the SMD. The findings suggest that Chinese SMD could be used as a cost-efficient and reliable proxy for traditional survey data to predict Chinese attraction visitation.

This study applies and improves the methods of SMD reliability in attraction use studies, supplies the gap for premise, basis and foundation for the large amounts of tourism researches using SMD in China and could promote and inspire more efficient and advanced measures in tourism management and urban development.