Benefit salience and consumers' selective attention to product features.

Although attention is a key construct in models of marketing communication and consumer choice, its selective nature has rarely been examined in common time-pressured conditions. We focus on the role of benefit salience, that is, the readiness with which particular benefits are brought to mind by consumers in relation to a given product category. Study I demonstrated that when product feature information was presented rapidly, individuals for whom the benefit of personalised customer service had high habitual salience displayed selective attention as evidenced by elevated recall and recognition of a target feature (a bank's ''friendly employees''). Also, as expected, individual differences in habitual benefit salience affected judgements of the target product. Study 2 showed that when subjects were additionally informed about a specific product usage situation, selective attention was primarily influenced by the relevance of the target feature to benefits made salient by the usage situation; individual differences played a less important role. Discussion emphasises theoretical aspects of the findings as well as managerial implications with respect to person-situation approaches to benefit segmentation. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.attention; benefit segmentation; individual construct accessibility; usage context; involvement; segmentation; substitution; experiences; memory; recall; choice; link;

The influence of consumers' goals on selective attention to product features.

Although attention is a key construct in models of marketing communications and consumer choice, its selective nature has rarely been examined in the time-pressured conditions that consumers face everyday. We investigate how consumers' goals influence selective attention to product features under such conditions. Specifically, we focus on the role of goal salience, that is, the readiness with which particular goals (e.g., personalized customer service) are brought to mind by consumers in relation to a given product category (e.g., banks). Study1 demonstrated that when product feature information was presented rapidly, individuals for whom the goal of personalized customer service had high chronic or habitual salience displayed selective attention in terms of their elevated recall of a target feature (a bank's 'friendly employees'). Also, as expected, individual differences in chronic goal salience affected judgments of the target product. Study2 showed that when subjects were additionally informed about a specific product usage situation (e.g., being new in town or experiencing difficulty in balancing a checkbook), selective attention was no longer affected by individuals' chronic tendencies. Instead, both feature recall and judgments were influenced by the relevance of the target feature to the goals made salient by the situational context. Discussion emphasizes the theoretical and managerial implications of the findings regarding the role of goal salience in selective attention to product features.Product;

Marginality of bulk-edge correspondence for single-valley Hamiltonians

We study the correspondence between the non-trivial topological properties associated with the individual valleys of gapped bilayer graphene (BLG), as a prototypical multi-valley system, and the gapless modes at its edges and other interfaces. We find that the exact connection between the valley-specific Hall conductivity and the number of gapless edge modes does not hold in general, but is dependent on the boundary conditions, even in the absence of intervalley coupling. This non-universality is attributed to the absence of a well-defined topological invariant within a given valley of BLG; yet, a more general topological invariant may be defined in certain cases, which explains the distinction between the BLG-vacuum and BLG-BLG interfaces.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Local Buckling of Composite Laminated Cylindrical Shells with Oblique Edges under External Pressure: Asymptotic and Finite Element Simulations

The problem of local buckling ofa thin composite laminated cylindrical shell under external pressure is studied. Each layer of the shell is assumed to be isotropic. The special case of the shell being non-circular and/or having no plane edges is considered here. Presupposing that buckling takes place in the neighborhood of some so-called “weakest” generator, the asymptotic Tovstik’s method is appliedfinding the critical pressure and the elgenmodes. As an example, buckling of a three-layered circular thin cylinder with a sloped edge is investigated. Besides the asymptotic approach the finite element simulation is applied to facilitate the estimation of the range to which the results obtained can be applied

Finite-Volume Form Factors in Semiclassical Approximation

A semiclassical approach is used to obtain Lorentz covariant expressions for the form factors between the kink states of a quantum field theory with degenerate vacua. Implemented on a cylinder geometry it provides an estimate of the spectral representation of correlation functions in a finite volume. Illustrative examples of the applicability of the method are provided by the Sine-Gordon and the broken \phi^4 theories in 1+1 dimensions.Comment: 17 pages, latex, 1 figur

POTENTIAL CONTRIBUTION OF ENERGETIC USEFUL DOMESTIC WASTE TO THE ENERGY SUPPLY OF LITHUANIA

The energy potential of domestic waste in Lithuania is 1411 GWh annually. In the case of the introduction of an extensive material recycling of the domestic waste, this amount would be reduced to 727 GWh per annual. Two variants of thermal waste treatment processes were taken into consideration: incineration by great furnaces and gasification followed by the incineration in gas power plants. The calculation of the necessary capacities for the thermal treatment of the domestic waste of every district is based on the annual availability of the plants of 75 %. Finally 4 scenarios arise, considering both the incineration on grate furnaces and the gasification in combination with the current energy potential of domestic waste and the potential after the introduction of extensive material recycling possible in the future

Effect of nonequilibrium phonons on hot-electron spin relaxation in n-type GaAs quantum wells

We have studied the effect of nonequilibrium longitudinal optical phonons on hot-electron spin relaxation in $n$-type GaAs quantum wells. The longitudinal optical phonons, due to the finite relaxation rate, are driven to nonequilibrium states by electrons under an in-plane electric field. The nonequilibrium phonons then in turn influence the electron spin relaxation properties via modifying the electron heating and drifting. The spin relaxation time is elongated due to the enhanced electron heating and thus the electron-phonon scattering in the presence of nonequilibrium phonons. The frequency of spin precession, which is roughly proportional to the electron drift velocity, can be either increased (at low electric field and/or high lattice temperature) or decreased (at high electric field and/or low lattice temperature). The nonequilibrium phonon effect is more pronounced when the electron density is high and the impurity density is low.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure