Evaluation strategies of American and Thai consumers

ABSTRACT The effects of two factors (congruity of product information with consumer expectations and perceived risk associated with the product) on strategies used by consumers to evaluate products are tested in the United States and Thailand. When product information does not match expectations, consumers in both cultures increase evaluation effort and shift from using summary representations stored in memory to evaluation based on actual product attributes. Perceived risk also enhances evaluation effort in both cultures, but does not result in a similar shift from category-based to attributebased processing

Theoretical Evaluation of the Detectability of Random Lesions in Bayesian Emission Reconstruction

Detecting cancerous lesion is an important task in positron emission tomography (PET). Bayesian methods based on the maximum a posteriori principle (also called penalized maximum likelihood methods) have been developed to deal with the low signal to noise ratio in the emission data. Similar to the filter cut-off frequency in the filtered backprojection method, the prior parameters in Bayesian reconstruction control the resolution and noise trade-off and hence affect detectability of lesions in reconstructed images. Bayesian reconstructions are difficult to analyze because the resolution and noise properties are nonlinear and object-dependent. Most research has been based on Monte Carlo simulations, which are very time consuming. Building on the recent progress on the theoretical analysis of image properties of statistical reconstructions and the development of numerical observers, here we develop a theoretical approach for fast computation of lesion detectability in Bayesian reconstruction. The results can be used to choose the optimum hyperparameter for the maximum lesion detectability. New in this work is the use of theoretical expressions that explicitly model the statistical variation of the lesion and background without assuming that the object variation is (locally) stationary. The theoretical results are validated using Monte Carlo simulations. The comparisons show good agreement between the theoretical predications and the Monte Carlo results

Exploring the role of acculturation in brand choice: a new perspective for targeting Indians living in the UK

Indians are the largest UK ethnic minority, contributing significantly to the UK economy. Although this group's considerable spending power makes them of interest to marketing practitioners, greater insight into their consumer behaviour is required. An understanding of the influence of cultural factors on preferences and behaviour is a priority. This qualitative article considers how consumer acculturation affects the brand preferences of British Indian consumers. Berry's acculturation taxonomy and Mendoza's Cultural Life Style Inventory underpin the organisation of the data collection. The findings reveal distinctive brand choice patterns for individuals from different acculturation categories. Separated individuals use more of the ethnic brands than host brands; most integrated individuals are familiar with both ethnic and host brands; whereas assimilated individuals have a much narrower brand understanding, being familiar mainly with the host brands. The implications for researchers and practitioners are explored