Engaging your customers via responding to online product reviews

Given the tremendous impact of online reviews on consumer choice, responding to online word of mouth (WOM) has become an important channel for firms to engage the consumers. This thesis investigates how firms can proactively respond to online product reviews to engage customers and manage customer relationships. In Study One, based upon the data of hotel reviews on Tripadvisor.com, I propose that responding by firms differ in three aspects, namely frequency, speed, and the amount of information, and these metrics exert significant influence on subsequent consumes’ WOM engagement, hotel rankings, and votes of usefulness of the reviews. Moreover, in contrast to responding to positive reviews, responding to negative reviews greatly affects consumption decisions given the negativity bias among consumers. Thus, the subsequent two studies examine whether responding help to alleviate the detrimental impact of negative reviews. Drawing from the literature on crisis management, service failure recovery, Study Two posits that sellers’ responses to negative WOM can be categorized as defensive and accommodative. Further, whether accommodative or defensive responding is more effective depends upon the nature of NWOM, namely regular NWOM or product failure. Based on the results of a between-subject experiment, Study Two provides evidence for the asymmetric impact of accommodative versus defensive responding. When confronting regular NWOM, defensive response outperforms accommodative response or no response, whereas accommodative response is superior to defensive response or no response when coping with a service failure. Further, based on the attribution of negative reviews, a moderated mediation effect is found. To enhance the external validity and robustness of these findings, Study Three provides econometric evidence that the relative effectiveness of accommodative vs defensive response on subsequent consumers’ evaluation of their consumption experience. Upon analyzing the hotels’ responses on Tripadvisor.com, responding can be a double-edged sword in that it works only when seller takes the appropriate responding strategies. In particular, the higher proportion of accommodative responses (defensive responses) for product failure reviews (regular negative reviews), the higher the subsequent consumers’ satisfaction. However, responding can backfire when the proportion of defensive responses (accommodative responses) for product failure (regular negative reviews) is high. To recapitulate, this thesis identifies whether and how online responding influences consumer experiences on social media. These research findings can help firms formulate effective responding strategies to take advantage of social media’s unique ability to engage customers and improve consumer satisfaction and loyalty

Spectroscopic investigation of charge carrier dynamics in carbon nitride photocatalysts

In this thesis, we focus is on the investigation of charge carrier dynamics in carbon nitride materials (PCNs) on time scales ranging from femtoseconds to microseconds by transient absorption and time-resolved emission spectroscopy. This work aims to tackle the major problems that limit the photocatalytic performance of bare PCNs, i.e., insufficient visible-light absorption, rapid charge carrier recombination, low specific surface area and poor dispersion in solvents. Therefore, three carbon nitride examples (R-CNx, {Mo3}-CNx, and K,Na-PHI) are introduced to extend our understanding in four directions:1) the impact of azo-moieties formed after high-temperature heat treatment on charge carrier dynamics; 2) charge carrier dynamics upon the incorporation of cocatalyst; 3) the interplay between surface functional groups and charge carrier dynamics; 4) the variation of charge carrier dynamics in the presence of chemical quenchers

Molecular dynamics predictions of thermal and mechanical properties of thermoset polymer EPON862/DETDA

We use molecular dynamics (MD) to perform an extensive characterization of the thermo-mechanical response of a thermoset polymer composed of epoxy EPON862 and curing agent DETDA. Our simulations, with no adjustable parameters, show that atomistic simulation can capture non-trivial behavior of amorphous thermosets including the role of polymerization degree, thermal history, strain rate and temperature on the glass transition temperature (T(g)) and mechanical response (including ultimate properties) and lead to predictions in quantitative agreement with experiments. We find a significant increase in T(g), Young\u27s modulus and yield stress with degree of polymerization while yield strain is significantly less sensitive to it. For structures cured beyond the gel point (percolation of a 3D network) conversion degree and temperature affect yield stress in a similar way with yield stress linearly dependent on T T(g): however, we find non-linear and non-universal relationship below the gel point. Our results show that a relative small variation in polymerization degree (similar to 5%) can explain the spread in experimental measurements of T(g) and elastic constants available in the literature. (c) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Impulsive Vaccination SEIR Model with Nonlinear Incidence Rate and Time Delay

This paper aims to discuss the delay epidemic model with vertical transmission, constant input, and nonlinear incidence. Some sufficient conditions are given to guarantee the existence and global attractiveness of the infection-free periodic solution and the uniform persistence of the addressed model with time delay. Finally, a numerical example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed results

Optimization of Coastal Cruise Lines in China

The paper analyzes the current state of the Chinese cruise market and presents the idea of building a business model of coastal cruising. The cruise demand of middle-income families, which includes the desired travel days, ports of call, is surveyed. The data of the previous non-cruise travels and the data of future cruises of middle-income families are used to develop a model designed to identify the maximum passenger volume with minimum operating costs while taking cruise itineraries and schedules into account. A matrix coding genetic algorithm was designed to solve the model. The case study found that a voyage of 4.79 days results in equilibrium, that the annual demand is 200,840 passengers, and that the daily voyage cost is 0.843 million Yuan

The Approach to Accelerate Collaborative New Product Development Process through Managing Knowledge Sharing Behaviors

Knowledge sharing plays a critical role in collaborative new product development (Co-NPD) process. Through knowledge sharing, the excessive revenue of participants in Co-NPD can be easily realized. The research literature shows the way actors create a knowledge-sharing environment to create new products is a quality indicator of Co-NPD. This study summarizes which factors influence the knowledge sharing behaviors in Co-NPD, and it analyzes knowledge sharing behaviors among enterprises in Co-NPD process by evolutionary game theory. The conclusion indicates that the initial value and change tendency of revenue function parameters of knowledge sharing in Co-NPD process affects the choice of knowledge sharing strategy. According to the findings, the governance mechanism for promoting knowledge sharing is expounded to create a high performance of new product development collaboratively. The significance of the results is to help all participants achieve the expected maximum utility in the Co-NPD process by knowledge sharing behaviors. Keywords: collaborative new product development; knowledge sharing; evolutionary game theory; governance mechanis