The influence of brand image on Chinese consumers’ decision-making process in the smartphone market

In recent years, the Chinese mobile phone market has grown rapidly, showing the diversification of brands and products. With the increased competition, economic downturn and the reduced frequency of consumers changing mobile phones, mobile phone brands that are not favored by consumers are gradually being eliminated from the market. However, the well-known mobile phone brands have gained the trust of consumers and ushered in rising market share and influence. Therefore, understanding and exploring which dimension in the brand image will promote consumers to buy mobile phones, and how the brand image affects the consumer’s decision-making process is crucial for the company to achieve its development goals and long-term operations. Simultaneously, it can provide theoretical and practical guidance for companies to build a strong brand image. In the past few decades, although brand image and consumer decision-making processes have been hot topics in marketing and have been widely discussed, there is no clear relationship between brand image and consumer decision-making. Therefore, this research is a theoretical exploratory study to explore which dimensions and attributes in the brands image is most influential to the decision-making process of consumers. At the same time, this research is devoted to examining how brand image sways consumer decision-making processes through these attributes. This study uses hermeneutics to explain Chinese consumers’ decision-making process when purchasing mobile phones. Ten in-depth interviews with respondents from the Chinese mobile phone market, each from different occupations and age groups, were conducted. The findings show that Chinese consumers generally choose a well-known brand when purchasing mobile phones. The perceived quality of the product has the most profound influence on the decision-making process of Chinese consumers. Simultaneously, consumer problem identification, information search and evaluation of alternatives, and final purchase decisions may be directly or indirectly influenced by corporate image, shopping environment, shopping experience as well as word of mouth

Influence of Different Phenolic Fractions on Red Wine Astringency Based on Polyphenol/Protein Binding

The presence of phenolic compounds can make a great contribution to the perception of astringency in red wines based on their interactions with proteins. Human salivary protein and bovine serum albumin were used in this study to investigate the relationship between astringency and polyphenol composition.  The interactions between polyphenols and proteins were analysed by means of electrophoresis and fluorescence spectra, and they were further confirmed by sensory analysis. The results indicate that a positive correlation existed among the percentage of polymeric proanthocyanidins and the total phenols.  Additionally, astringent wine was generally identified as having a high percentage of polymeric fragments.  In comparison with other fractions, polymeric fractions exhibited the highest affinity for protein, and thus the highest astringency

Flux regulation through glycolysis and respiration is balanced by inositol pyrophosphates in yeast

Although many prokaryotes have glycolysis alternatives, it\u27s considered as the only energy-generating glucose catabolic pathway in eukaryotes. Here, we managed to create a hybrid-glycolysis yeast. Subsequently, we identified an inositol pyrophosphatase encoded by OCA5 that could regulate glycolysis and respiration by adjusting 5-diphosphoinositol 1,2,3,4,6-pentakisphosphate (5-InsP7) levels. 5-InsP7 levels could regulate the expression of genes involved in glycolysis and respiration, representing a global mechanism that could sense ATP levels and regulate central carbon metabolism. The hybrid-glycolysis yeast did not produce ethanol during growth under excess glucose and could produce 2.68 g/L free fatty acids, which is the highest reported production in shake flask of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. This study demonstrated the significance of hybrid-glycolysis yeast and determined Oca5 as an inositol pyrophosphatase controlling the balance between glycolysis and respiration, which may shed light on the role of inositol pyrophosphates in regulating eukaryotic metabolism

The influence of brand image on Chinese consumers’ decision-making process in the smartphone market

In recent years, the Chinese mobile phone market has grown rapidly, showing the diversification of brands and products. With the increased competition, economic downturn and the reduced frequency of consumers changing mobile phones, mobile phone brands that are not favored by consumers are gradually being eliminated from the market. However, the well-known mobile phone brands have gained the trust of consumers and ushered in rising market share and influence. Therefore, understanding and exploring which dimension in the brand image will promote consumers to buy mobile phones, and how the brand image affects the consumer’s decision-making process is crucial for the company to achieve its development goals and long-term operations. Simultaneously, it can provide theoretical and practical guidance for companies to build a strong brand image. In the past few decades, although brand image and consumer decision-making processes have been hot topics in marketing and have been widely discussed, there is no clear relationship between brand image and consumer decision-making. Therefore, this research is a theoretical exploratory study to explore which dimensions and attributes in the brands image is most influential to the decision-making process of consumers. At the same time, this research is devoted to examining how brand image sways consumer decision-making processes through these attributes. This study uses hermeneutics to explain Chinese consumers’ decision-making process when purchasing mobile phones. Ten in-depth interviews with respondents from the Chinese mobile phone market, each from different occupations and age groups, were conducted. The findings show that Chinese consumers generally choose a well-known brand when purchasing mobile phones. The perceived quality of the product has the most profound influence on the decision-making process of Chinese consumers. Simultaneously, consumer problem identification, information search and evaluation of alternatives, and final purchase decisions may be directly or indirectly influenced by corporate image, shopping environment, shopping experience as well as word of mouth

Towards Access Control for Network Coding-Based Named Data Networking

Named Data Networking (NDN) is a content-oriented future Internet architecture, which well suits the increasingly mobile and information-intensive applications that dominate today\u27s Internet. NDN relies on in-network caching to facilitate content delivery. This makes it challenging to enforce access control since the content has been cached in the routers and the content producer has lost the control over it. Due to its salient advantages in content delivery, network coding has been introduced into NDN to improve content delivery effectiveness. In this paper, we design ACNC, the first Access Control solution specifically for Network Coding-based NDN. By combining a novel linear AONT (All Or Nothing Transform) and encryption, we can ensure that only the legitimate user who possesses the authorization key can successfully recover the encoding matrix for network coding, and hence can recover the content being transmitted. In addition, our design has two salient merits: 1) the linear AONT well suits the linear nature of network coding; 2) only one vector of the encoding matrix needs to be encrypted/decrypted, which only incurs small computational overhead. Security analysis and experimental evaluation in ndnSIM show that our design can successfully enforce access control on network coding-based NDN with an acceptable overhead

Enforcing Access Control in Information-Centric Edge Networking

By moving computing resources close to where they are needed (i.e., the network edges), edge computing can significantly reduce burden on the centric cloud data centers. However, extreme scale of on-line big data may impose a significant burden on the network backbones. Information-centric edge networking can address this challenge by incorporating in-network caching into edge networks. This however, opens a door for many new security issues and requires various security defenses. One of those is efficient access control design specifically for information-centric edge networking. In this work, we aim to design an efficient and secure access control scheme for information-centric edge networking. In our design, we propose the confidentiality-enhanced network coding which can ensure that, without having access to the authorization key, the attacker will not be able to obtain the original content. And thanks to the properties of confidentiality-enhanced network coding, highly efficient access control can be realized by encrypting only part of the encoding matrix. In addition, our design can allow efficiently revoking users. Security analysis and experimental evaluation on NS3 demonstrate that our scheme can successfully enforce access control in information-centric edge networking with a small overhead

Convenient isolation of strictinin-rich tea polyphenol from Chinese green tea extract by zirconium phosphate

Zirconium phosphate (ZrP) was prepared and employed to separate strictinin-rich tea polyphenol from Chinese green tea extracts. The influences of ZrP calcination temperatures, green tea extraction conditions, and the amounts of ZrP on the isolation of strictinin-rich tea polyphenol were evaluated; the absorption and desorption dynamics of strictinin on ZrP were also determined. Our results revealed that the HPLC content of strictinin increased from 4.96% in 70% ethanol extract of green tea to 58.2% in isolated strictinin-rich tea polyphenol obtained by ZrP-900 (ZrP calcined at 900°C). Furthermore, the suitable time for both strictinin absorption and desorption was 4 hours at 37°C. The method developed here consisted of easy steps such as ZrP absorption, water washing, and 0.4% phosphoric acid solution desorption, which may facilitate the detection and isolation of strictinin from different samples

High expression of Lewis y antigen and CD44 is correlated with resistance to chemotherapy in epithelial ovarian cancers.

OBJECTIVES:To measure Lewis y antigen and CD44 antigen expression in epithelial ovarian carcinoma and to correlate the levels of these antigens with clinical response to chemotherapy. METHODS:The study cases included 34 cases of ovarian carcinoma with resistance to chemotherapeutic drugs, 6 partially drug-sensitive cases, and 52 drug-sensitive cases (92 total). RESULTS:The rates of expression of Lewis y antigen and CD44 antigen were significantly greater in the drug-resistant group than that in the partially-sensitive or sensitive groups. Surgical stage, residual tumor size and expression of CD44 and Lewis y antigen in ovarian carcinoma tissues were independent risk factors for chemotherapeutic drug resistance. CONCLUSIONS:Over-expression of Lewis y and CD44 antigen are strong risk factors for chemotherapeutic drug resistance in ovarian carcinoma patients

Expression and Significance of CD44, CD47 and c-met in Ovarian Clear Cell Carcinoma

Aims: The aim of the present study is to investigate the differential expression of CD44, CD47 and c-met in ovarian clear cell carcinoma (OCCC), the correlation in their expression and their relationship with the biological behavior of OCCC. Methods: We used immunohistochemistry to examine the expression of CD44, CD47 and c-met in OCCC (86 cases) and investigated the effects of the expression and interaction of these molecules on the development of OCCC. Results: CD44, CD47 and c-met expression was significantly high in OCCC. Expression of CD44 and CD47 correlated with patient surgical stage, chemotherapy resistance and prognosis (all p < 0.05), and expression of c-met correlated with chemotherapy resistance and prognosis (all p < 0.05), but did not correlate with lymph node metastasis (all p > 0.05). The surgical stage, CD44, CD47 and c-met expression were independent risk factors for OCCC prognosis (all p < 0.05). Patients with low levels of CD44, CD47 and c-met showed better survival than those with high levels (all p < 0.05). There was a positive correlation between CD44 (or CD47) and c-met, as well as between CD44 and CD47 (the Spearman correlation coefficient rs was 0.783, 0.776 and 0.835, respectively, all p < 0.01). Additionally, pairwise correlation analysis of these three markers shows that the high expression of CD44/CD47, CD44/c-met and CD47/c-met were correlated with patient surgical stage, chemotherapy resistance and prognosis (all p < 0.05), but did not correlate with lymph node metastasis (all p > 0.05). Conclusions: Expression of CD44, CD47 and c-met was upregulated in OCCC and pairwise correlation. CD44, CD47 and c-met may have synergistic effects on the development of OCCC and are prognostic factors for ovarian cancer