A Cross-cultural Study of Food Purchase Decision in Taiwan and Vietnam

Based on Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, this study is to investigate the effect of culture and demographic variables on the perception of consumer related to buying decision on food. A survey was conducted in Taiwan and Vietnam, including 367 respondents (227 Taiwanese students and 140 Vietnamese students). The findings indicated that Taiwanese students perceive the factors such as price and convenience are more important than Vietnamese student in their food purchase decision on product choices. However, Vietnamese students perceived that health, sensory appeal, and weight control are more important when choosing the food. The results founded that Taiwanese students perceive the factors such as familiarity and promotion are more important than Vietnamese student in food purchase decision about brand choices. Vietnamese students perceived that ethical concern, brand value, and political concern are more important when choosing the brand of food. The findings implied that Vietnamese students, with higher power distance and lower uncertainty avoidance, perceive the factors such as health, sensory appeal, weight control, ethical concern, brand value, and political concern more important in their purchasing decision on food. On the opposite, Taiwanese students, with lower power distance and higher uncertainty avoidance, perceive that price, convenience, familiarity, and promotion are more important in their choice. This result supported that culture has effects on food purchase decision. The results also implied that gender has a significant effect on consumption of food. Female students place more emphasis on sensory appeal, weight control and ethical concern than those of male students in food purchase decision. The findings also provided that students lived in city perceived mood, sensory appeal, familiarity and promotion are more important than those lived in rural when making food purchase decisions

“They have it better there” : Chinese Migrant Teachers’ Beliefs, Imaginaries and Ideologies in Cross-national Comparisons

This paper was written in response to a growing need to address the perceptions and experiences of teachers of migrant background. Based on a critical intercultural theoretical perspective, which moves beyond typical ‘culture shock’ and ‘adaptation’ models of understanding and explaining migrants’ experiences, this paper makes use of the concepts of teacher beliefs, ideologies and imaginaries (Holliday, 2010) in considering how Finland-based Chinese migrant teachers perceive the position of being teachers of Chinese in Finland and Australia. Analysis of data from group discussions during a teacher training workshop indicates that these teachers constructed a “utopia” (Australia) and “dystopia” (Finland) Chinese language teaching, and reveals that multiple factors have influenced these migrant teachers’ perceptions and experiences. Findings provide information for e.g. teacher educators and stakeholders to better understand and support migrant teachers from various linguistic and cultural backgrounds.Peer reviewe

Comparing standard distribution and its Tsallis form of transverse momenta in high energy collisions

In this paper, the experimental (simulated) transverse momentum spectra of negatively charged pions produced at mid-rapidity in central nucleus-nucleus collisions at the Heavy Ion Synchrotron (SIS), Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), and Large Hadron Collider (LHC) energies obtained by different collaborations are selected by us to investigate, where a few simulated data are taken from the results of FOPI Collaboration who uses the IQMD transport code based on Quantum Molecular Dynamics. A two-component standard distribution and the Tsallis form of standard distribution are used to fit these data in the framework of a multisource thermal model. The excitation functions of main parameters in the two distributions are analyzed. In particular, the effective temperatures extracted from the two-component standard distribution and the Tsallis form of standard distribution are obtained, and the relation between the two types of effective temperatures is studied.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figures. Advances in High Energy Physics, accepte