Ethnic influence of endorsers and receivers on advertising effectiveness : a case of Asian endorsers and receivers

As the American society has been facing more and more culturally diverse, ethnic minorities have indeed received more and more attention by many marketers and advertisers, particularly Asian-Americans. Because of their affluence and high educational attainment, the Asian-American market has become one of the most attractive and valuable markets since 1990. While Asian-Americans in the US has emerged as an important market, little has been investigated the impact of ethnicity on advertising effectiveness as measured of awareness, attitude toward the ad, attitude toward the brand, and purchase intention with the focus on Asisin-Americans. This study also further investigated whether this impact will be mediated by Asian-Americans\u27 level of acculturation which was identified as either low- or high-acculturated individual in this study. In addition, Asian-Americans are composed of many different nationality group, the differences in the ethnicity among Asian Heritages are explored in this study as well.The three ethnic Asian-American groups chosen in this study wereChinese-, Japanese-, and Korean-Americans. An experimental study using selfadrniiiistrativequestioimaire, including attitude and purchase intention,acculturation, and demographic measures, was conducted in Knoxville and Maryville, Tennessee among three ethnic Asian-American subgroups (N=197),directed equally across ethnic subgroups.The results of interaction effect of individuals\u27 acculturation level and the ethnicity of endorsers indicated that low-acculturated Asian-Americans were more likely to recognized the advertised brand when the advertisement was endorsed by their own ethnic (Asian) models.When furthered investigated the impact of the ethnicity of endorsers and receivers, and their interaction effect in each ethnic Asian-American group,results indicated distinct findings across the three ethnic Asian-Americangroups. The findings also suggested some implications for the areas of marketing and advertising to better understand these three ethnic Asian-American markets and the directions for future research are provided

Assessing the Impact of Brand Extensions on Brand Concept and Brand Equity

The overall purpose of the study is to enrich our understanding of the impact of brand extensions on the parent core brand concept and brand equity in the context of apparel. This study also further examines whether brand extensions have an effect on consumers\u27 post extension evaluations of parent core brand concept and brand equity. Using an experimental study, the results indicate that, regardless of the types of brand extension, consumers are less likely to evaluate parent core brand concept and brand equity favorably after the extension as compared to their initial evaluation of parent core brand concept and brand equity. When further examining whether a vertical extension strategy would create greater dilution effect on the parent core brand concept as compared to a horizontal extension strategy, our results showed that a vertical brand extension tends to produce a negative impact on the parent core brand concept and brand equity

Multi-Objective Scientific-Workflow Scheduling With Data Movement Awareness in Cloud.

Due to serving several purposes simultaneously, running scientific workflows on dynamic environments such as cloud computing, has become multi-objective scheduling. Among these purposes, Cost and Makespan are probably the most two primitive objectives. Another critical factor in a large-scale scientific workflow is tremendous amount of data during execution. Therefore, this work also includes Data Movement as an additional objective as it has a major impact on network utilization and energy consumption in network equipment in cloud data center. In considering these three objectives, this work proposes a framework for scheduling solutions which combines a new nodes clustering technique in Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) model known as Multilevel Dependent Node Clustering (MDNC) and the multiobjective optimization, Extreme Nondominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm-III (E-NSGA-III). E-NSGAIII is the recent extension of Nondominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm (NSGA-III). Five well-known scientific workflows, CyberShake, Epigenomics, LIGO, Montage, and SIPHT are selected as testbeds, while the commonly known Hypervolume is chosen as the performance metric. In this work, MDNC is also experimented with both NSGA-III. Comparison among three approaches, E-NAGA-III alone, E-NAGA-III with Peer-to-Peer clustering and E-NAGA-III with MDNC are carried out. The superiority of the proposed framework among them and its limitation are discussed

Development of active learning management model for active citizenship competencies enhancement in elementary school

The purpose was to develop and study the effectiveness and efficiency of an active learning management model for developing active citizenship competencies for primary school students. The sample group was fifth-grade students at a demonstration school. The research instruments included: a manual for the active learning management model, active learning lesson plans, an active citizenship competencies test, and a satisfaction questionnaire. Statistics for data analysis were percentage, mean, standard deviation, and dependent sample t-test. The research results were: i) A six-step active learning management model was designed for developing active citizenship competencies for primary school students: step 1 situation to the problem, step 2 original knowledge, step 3 collaboration, step 4 information gathering, step 5 active application, and step 6 lead to reflection and assessment. A consistency assessment (item objective congruence (IOC), 5-point scale) of the model by a group of experts resulted in the highest level (mean=4.69, SD=0.47); ii) The efficacy of the active learning management model in developing active citizenship competencies were measured for knowledge, higher-order thinking skills, and attributes. For each of the measured components, the improvement in average score was statistically significant at the 0.05 level; and iii) The satisfaction of students with active learning management was high (mean=4.47, SD=0.74)

An Investigation of Socially Responsible Consumers’ Behavior in Thrift Stores

The annual revenue of U.S. thrift stores is estimated to be $12 billion (First Research, 2014). Apparel products represent the majority of the products sold in these stores (Shim, 2010). While sales of apparel at thrift stores increased steadily during the economic downturn that began in 2008 (Tully, 2012), sales are expected to decrease as the economy improves (IBISWorld, 2012). To remain viable, thrift store managers need to have a solid understanding of their core apparel consumers in order to satisfy their needs (Carrigan & De Pelsmacker, 2009)

A Comparative Study between Athletic and Non-Athletic Consumers:Consumer Decision-Making Styles, Shopping Channel Choices, and Purchase Intentions

In 2012, athletic apparel drove sales of more than US $66 billion with a five-year growth rate of over 32% from 2007 to 2012 (Euromonitor, 2013). While there is limited research in this area, Smith (2008) contends that athleticism has become commercialized, influencing consumption of fitness related goods. However, there is not a clear understanding of how consumption differs between athletic and non-athletic consumers. To this end, the purpose of this study is to compare athletic and non-athletic consumers in terms of consumer decision-making styles, shopping channel choices, and purchase intentions of athletic apparel. Furthermore, this study also investigates the interrelationships among consumer decision-making styles, shopping channel choices, and purchase intentions related to athletic apparel

THE EFFECTS OF TYPICALITY AND NOVELTY ON AESTHETIC PREFERENCE: AN INVESTIGATION OF THE MAYA PRINCIPLE

There are numerous design principles that can guide strategic decisions and determine good product design. Despite the interest in the two-factor theories, such as the Most Advanced Yet Acceptable (MAYA) principle, limited studies have examined both typicality and novelty in apparel products. The main objective of this study was to explore via experiments the MAYA principle specific to apparel products. By drawing from the preference-for-prototypes theory and the MAYA principle, in this study the effects of specific aesthetic properties of apparel products on consumer responses are examined

The effects of development and virulence on gene expression in the protozoan parasite Neospora caninum

Neospora caninum is an obligate intracellular protozoan parasite which causes abortion in cattle and neuromuscular disease in dogs. Neosporosis causes substantial economic losses in both dairy and beef cattle industries worldwide. This thesis explores changes in genes and proteins expression associated with development and virulence of N. caninum in order to gain more biological information in this parasite. To achieve the global quantification of genes and proteins expression under different phenotypic conditions, transcriptomics and proteomics approaches are used to investigate these phenomenons. Chapter 2 examines the differential protein expression during tachyzoites-bradyzoites stage conversion using a label-free proteomics approach and finds that the differential protein expression of most apical secretory proteins decrease in abundance in bradyzoites stage. In addition, most of proteins associated with parasite motility were also reduced in abundance in bradyzoites. This indicates that proteins associated with host cell adhesion, invasion and gliding motility are down-regulated in the quiescent cyst-forming stage. Chapter 3 compares the transcriptomic profiles of low- and high-virulence N. caninum using RNA-Seq and finds that protein phosphatase 2C (PP2C) was preferentially expressed in the high-virulence strain, while a group of SRS family proteins was preferentially expressed in low-virulence conditions. This finding suggests that PP2C might play a role in virulence, while a group of SRS proteins might be associated with to limiting N. caninum virulence. Chapter 4 compares protein expression in low- and high-virulence N. caninum strains at three different time points using a label-free quantitative proteomic approach and finds that Rop24 was preferentially expressed in high-virulence N. caninum at all time points. Proteins associated with host cell attachment such as SAG3, TgSRS35A and cathepsin C2 also showed preferentially expression throughout the time course. This finding indicates that Rop24 might be associated with the N. caninum virulence, while the discovery of proteins associated with host cell attachment in low-virulence conditions might suggest that such strains are more efficient in invading host cells than high-virulence strains. Overall, this thesis identifies genes and proteins such as the rhoptry associated proteins PP2C and Rop24, which might be associated with virulence in neosporosis. It also shows that many proteins involved in host cell adhesion, invasion and parasite movement decrease in abundance in the cyst-forming bradyzoite stage. These discoveries enhance our understanding of parasite biology, providing a basis for future research into novel ways to prevent and control the disease by inhibiting parasite survival and transmission