Self-identity and consumption : a study of consumer personality, brand personality, and brand relationship

This thesis investigates the relationship between self-identity and consumption by discussing the conceptual and measurement issues of consumer personality, brand personality, and brand relationship. The investigation is based on the theories of personality, self-identity, and interpersonal relationship. The self-identity theories (Belk 1988; Cooley 1964; James 1890; Mead 1935) suggest that consumers may use brands to construct, maintain, and enhance their self-identities. Drawing from the literature of personality and self-identity, this thesis repositions the concept of personality for the context of consumption and refers it to self-identity (self-perception) rather than behaviour. This repositioning indicates that consumer personality and brand personality can be examined by the same personality concept. On the basis of the self-identity theories, a positive relationship is expected to exist between consumer personality and brand personality. Moreover, the interpersonal relationship theories (Aron et al. 1991; Rodin 1978; Thibaut and Kelley 1959) indicate that the relationship partners become a part of the self-identity in a close relationship. Therefore, it is hypothesised that the closer the brand personality and consumer personality perceived by the consumers (consumer-brand congruence), the better the brand relationship quality. This study applies a quasi-experiment from a field setting to examine the relationship among consumer personality, brand personality, and brand relationship. A 2 (high and low involvement) x 2 (high and low feeling) factorial design is featured to explore the role of involvement and feeling in the relationship of self-identity and consumption. A total number of 468 observations reveals that consumer and brand personality are strongly and positively related. The greater the consumer-brand congruence is, the better the brand relationship. Minimal moderating effects of involvement and feeling to the relationships between consumer personality and brand personality and between consumer-brand congruence and brand relationship quality are observed. These findings suggest that consumers use brands from various product categories in different situations to maintain their self-identities. The study attempts to make contributions on the theoretical, methodological, and managerial levels. Theoretically, it clarifies the concepts of consumer personality and brand personality, and reaffirms the concept of brand relationship. In this way, some measurement issues of self-identity and brand personality are resolved. The findings suggest that brand personality can be used as a tool to investigate global markets and to facilitate market segmentation and communication. Finally, the limitations of the thesis are recognised and directions for future research are offered

Exploring Compressed Image Representation as a Perceptual Proxy: A Study

We propose an end-to-end learned image compression codec wherein the analysis transform is jointly trained with an object classification task. This study affirms that the compressed latent representation can predict human perceptual distance judgments with an accuracy comparable to a custom-tailored DNN-based quality metric. We further investigate various neural encoders and demonstrate the effectiveness of employing the analysis transform as a perceptual loss network for image tasks beyond quality judgments. Our experiments show that the off-the-shelf neural encoder proves proficient in perceptual modeling without needing an additional VGG network. We expect this research to serve as a valuable reference developing of a semantic-aware and coding-efficient neural encoder

Effects of Quality of Financial Statements and CEO Turnover

The purpose of this study is to explore the effect of CEO turnover and CFO turnover on earnings management. In addition, Taiwan’s authorities will require listed companies to complete the establishment of audit committee replacing supervisors in 2022. Corporate governance is not an overnight phenomenon. It has been existing from a long time. It is only that the beginning of 21st century when colossal enterprises started to fall, government across globe started giving it due credit. The present paper is an attempt to trace the history of corporate governance. It starts with discussing various theories which led to the development of such an important concept and then dwells on various models in which economies employ corporate governance in their structure and finally the evolution of corporate governance across globe. The paper sheds light on important committees and reforms which have been the genesis of corporate governance across globe. It undertakes an extensive literature review on different aspects of corporate governance. Corporate governance is a concept which still debatable among experts in describing it. The purpose of this study is to explore how the implementation and principal problems of good corporate governance in the management of current limited liability company

NONCLINICAL FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH TREATMENT WITH PERITONEAL DIALYSIS IN ESRD PATIENTS IN TAIWAN

[[abstract]]Objectives: Less than 10% of end-stage renal disease(ESRD) patients in Taiwan receive peritoneal dialysis (PD),which reveals the situation of underutilization of PD. Wethus aimed to investigate factors associated with treatmentwith PD in ESRD patients in Taiwan.Patients: Patients that were 18 years of age or older andhad been on dialysis for at least 3 months since 2001 wererecruited and interviewed with a structured questionnaire.Results: 98 hemodialysis (HD) and 102 PD patients wererecruited. In univariate analysis, age, sex, level of education,employment status, marital status, traffic time, family support, patient cognition, and receptivity were correlated withtreatment with PD. Multivariate analysis showed that patients that were not married (p = 0.006), that spent moretime traveling to the dialysis clinic (p = 0.006), that werenot emergent at the start of dialysis (p = 0.003), and thathad better family support (p = 0.045), a higher cognitionof dialysis (p = 0.034), and stronger receptivity to dialysis(p < 0.001) were more likely to receive PD.Conclusions: We recommend patients follow the standardprocess to obtain more exhaustive information, consultation, and early referral. In addition, we suggest healthcareproviders remind patients to take into account suchnonclinical factors as family support and patient receptivity when they choose their dialysis modalit

Self-identity and consumption : a study of consumer personality, brand personality, and brand relationship

This thesis investigates the relationship between self-identity and consumption by discussing the conceptual and measurement issues of consumer personality, brand personality, and brand relationship. The investigation is based on the theories of personality, self-identity, and interpersonal relationship. The self-identity theories (Belk 1988; Cooley 1964; James 1890; Mead 1935) suggest that consumers may use brands to construct, maintain, and enhance their self-identities. Drawing from the literature of personality and self-identity, this thesis repositions the concept of personality for the context of consumption and refers it to self-identity (self-perception) rather than behaviour. This repositioning indicates that consumer personality and brand personality can be examined by the same personality concept. On the basis of the self-identity theories, a positive relationship is expected to exist between consumer personality and brand personality. Moreover, the interpersonal relationship theories (Aron et al. 1991; Rodin 1978; Thibaut and Kelley 1959) indicate that the relationship partners become a part of the self-identity in a close relationship. Therefore, it is hypothesised that the closer the brand personality and consumer personality perceived by the consumers (consumer-brand congruence), the better the brand relationship quality. This study applies a quasi-experiment from a field setting to examine the relationship among consumer personality, brand personality, and brand relationship. A 2 (high and low involvement) x 2 (high and low feeling) factorial design is featured to explore the role of involvement and feeling in the relationship of self-identity and consumption. A total number of 468 observations reveals that consumer and brand personality are strongly and positively related. The greater the consumer-brand congruence is, the better the brand relationship. Minimal moderating effects of involvement and feeling to the relationships between consumer personality and brand personality and between consumer-brand congruence and brand relationship quality are observed. These findings suggest that consumers use brands from various product categories in different situations to maintain their self-identities. The study attempts to make contributions on the theoretical, methodological, and managerial levels. Theoretically, it clarifies the concepts of consumer personality and brand personality, and reaffirms the concept of brand relationship. In this way, some measurement issues of self-identity and brand personality are resolved. The findings suggest that brand personality can be used as a tool to investigate global markets and to facilitate market segmentation and communication. Finally, the limitations of the thesis are recognised and directions for future research are offered.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Analysis of the Rice Husk Pyrolysis Products from a Fluidized Bed Reactor

AbstractRice husks are pyrolyzed in a fluidized bed pyrolyzer using glass beads as the fluidizing media. The effects of the rice husk feeding rate and the fluidizing nitrogen gas flow rates on the mass fraction of the produced syngas, bio-oil and char are studied. The highest bio-oil mass fraction in the product is around 30% when the rice husk feeding rate and the fluidizing nitrogen gas flow rate are 10g/min and 40 L/min, respectively. The chars collected at different parts of the system are analyzed by TGA. The results indicate that although the chars have different content of volatiles, they are relatively clean. GC/MS analysing results indicate that the major compounds in the bio-oil are aromatic compounds, including toluene, phenol, furfural, methylphenol, ethylphenol, benzenediol, and etc

Wavelength tunable spectral compression in a dispersion-increasing fiber

Adiabatic soliton spectral compression in a dispersion-increasing fiber is demonstrated both numerically and experimentally. We show a positively-chirped pulse provides better spectral compression in a dispersion-increasing fiber with large anomalous dispersion ramp. An experimental spectral compression ratio of 15.5 is obtained using 350 fs positively-chirped input pulse centered at 1.5 um. A 30 nm wavelength tuning ability is experimentally achieved.Comment: 3 pages, 4 figures. Submitted 4/03/201