Consumer Receptivity of Foreign Products: The Roles of Country-of-Origin Image, Consumer Ethnocentrism and Animosity

In business, the survival of a manufacturing firm is dependent upon the consumer\u27s acceptance and purchase of its products. Globalization and the accessibility of markets worldwide have expanded the potential customer base from purely domestic to include international customers. It is imperative for marketing managers to accurately assess consumer product perceptions to forecast foreign market entry acceptance and develop some form of competitive advantage that will be sustainable over the long run. Despite the apparent relevance and importance of analyzing consumer product perceptions, there is a lack of research in modeling the relationships between primary antecedents that influence consumers\u27 receptivity toward foreign products. The purpose of this dissertation is three-fold. The first objective is to carry out a thorough review of the extant literature by identifying, prioritizing and categorizing main determinants of consumer perceptions of and willingness to buy foreign products. The second goal is to develop and test a main effects model of these determinants This objective will serve as a replication of past research to provide additional validation of their findings and as an aggregate effort to test these constructs within a complex model. The third objective is to contribute to the understanding of moderated relationships among these determinants by investigating potential interactions that influence consumer perceptions and willingness to buy foreign products. Five main effects and ten interaction effects hypotheses are tested through the use of SEM measurement, path and multiple group analyses. A structural model of effects was developed to explain the consumer\u27s receptivity of foreign products and tested for goodness-of-fit. Upon its validation, the direct and moderated effects proposed by the study were tested within the model. This dissertation contributes to the marketing discipline by examining the nature of the relationships between key determinants affecting foreign product purchase and establishes order effects among these variables. It offers alternative perspectives toward the unique influences of three country-related variables, namely country-of-origin image, consumer ethnocentrism and international animosity. Instead of researching a single country of origin, this study expands the generalizability of its results by providing U.S. consumers\u27 perceptions toward products from three Asian countries that currently differ with regards to their levels of economic development

Designing Improved Sediment Transport Visualizations

Monitoring, or more commonly, modeling of sediment transport in the coastal environment is a critical task with relevance to coastline stability, beach erosion, tracking environmental contaminants, and safety of navigation. Increased intensity and regularity of storms such as Superstorm Sandy heighten the importance of our understanding of sediment transport processes. A weakness of current modeling capabilities is the ability to easily visualize the result in an intuitive manner. Many of the available visualization software packages display only a single variable at once, usually as a two-dimensional, plan-view cross-section. With such limited display capabilities, sophisticated 3D models are undermined in both the interpretation of results and dissemination of information to the public. Here we explore a subset of existing modeling capabilities (specifically, modeling scour around man-made structures) and visualization solutions, examine their shortcomings and present a design for a 4D visualization for sediment transport studies that is based on perceptually-focused data visualization research and recent and ongoing developments in multivariate displays. Vector and scalar fields are co-displayed, yet kept independently identifiable utilizing human perception\u27s separation of color, texture, and motion. Bathymetry, sediment grain-size distribution, and forcing hydrodynamics are a subset of the variables investigated for simultaneous representation. Direct interaction with field data is tested to support rapid validation of sediment transport model results. Our goal is a tight integration of both simulated data and real world observations to support analysis and simulation of the impact of major sediment transport events such as hurricanes. We unite modeled results and field observations within a geodatabase designed as an application schema of the Arc Marine Data Model. Our real-world focus is on the Redbird Artificial Reef Site, roughly 18 nautical miles offshor- Delaware Bay, Delaware, where repeated surveys have identified active scour and bedform migration in 27 m water depth amongst the more than 900 deliberately sunken subway cars and vessels. Coincidently collected high-resolution multibeam bathymetry, backscatter, and side-scan sonar data from surface and autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) systems along with complementary sub-bottom, grab sample, bottom imagery, and wave and current (via ADCP) datasets provide the basis for analysis. This site is particularly attractive due to overlap with the Delaware Bay Operational Forecast System (DBOFS), a model that provides historical and forecast oceanographic data that can be tested in hindcast against significant changes observed at the site during Superstorm Sandy and in predicting future changes through small-scale modeling around the individual reef objects

Limnological, Ichthyological, and Parasitological Investigations on Arkansas Reservoris in Relation to Water Quality

Lake Fort Smith, a 525 acre (212 ha) reservoir, was impounded in 1936 as a water supply for the city of Fort Smith. The reservoir is located on Clear Creek (Frog Bayou), a tributary of the Arkansas River, in the Boston Mountains 28 miles (45 km) northeast of the city of Fort Smith in Crawford County, Arkansas. A map and morphometric characteristics of Lake Fort Smith are given in Fig. 1 and Table I (Hoffman, 1951; Nelson, 1952). In 1956 Lake Shepherd Springs, a 750 acre (304 ha) impoundment, was created one mile upstream of Lake Fort Smith (Rorie, 1961). Both lakes have a shale substrate and are subject to periods of high turbidity. The 2 two lakes have a water shed of 65 square mile area (168 km ) of mountainous oak-hickory forest. Lake Shepherd Springs has not acted as a settling basin for sediments; thus, the upper portion of Lake Fort Smith has numerous shallow areas with a mud bottom supporting various submergent and emergent aquatic plants. The lower portion of the lake has a rocky, shale substrate with only limited emergent vegetation

Theoretical Development and Empirical Testing of a Model of Organizational Effectiveness among Selected Supermarkets in the State of Oklahoma

Business Administratio

Black Faculty in Predominantly White Schools of Social Work: A Qualitative Assessment

The researchers conducted a national survey of Black faculty members at predominantly white schools of social work. Two basic questions guided the search effort: (1) What are the principal roles and responsibilities of Black faculty? and (2) To what extent do Black faculty members perceive themselves as receiving sufficient professional satisfaction, respect, and support? Analysis of questionnaire responses indicated significant differences in the responses among Black faculty based on factors such as sex, academic rank, and tenure

A Qualitative Look at Black Female Social Work Educators

This article reports the finding of a research effort which attempted to assess the qualitative experience of black female faculty in schools of social work. The data reported is part of a larger data set collected on social work faculty as a whole. The authors report some basic demographics on black females, but focus mainly on the roles that these women perform in schools of social work and how satisfied they are in these positions. It appears that significant numbers of black female faculty members are on soft money with fewer teaching Social Policy and Administration courses than might be expected. As a group these females are less satisfied with their academic positions than are their black male counterparts. However, when degree held is controlled for, it is black females without the doctorate who are significantly less satisfied than men. No such relationship was found to exist for males. Finally, the authors attempted, via a regression model, to assess which group of relevant others, faculty, administrators or students, as a function of their interactions, contributed most significantly to the satisfaction levels of black female faculty. Results from these analyses suggest that with respect to intespersonal interactions, white faculty have the greatest affect on the reported job satisfaction levels of black females

Managers’ Perceived Risk, Experiential Knowledge, Marketing Capability and International Performance: A Study of Chinese International Enterprises

Mass globalization and rampant softening of local economic conditions has made international expansion the inevitable choice for many maturing enterprises. It is therefore critical for international enterprises to understand dynamic and complex market variables when considering how to acquire competitive advantages. This study finds that the marketing capabilities constructed and fostered by Chinese international enterprises can positively affect international performance. In addition, managers’ perceived risks and experiential knowledge of the international markets have a positive influence on the formation of the enterprise’s marketing capabilities. Another important finding suggests that managers’ experiential knowledge positively influences the firm’s international performance

A Comparison Study using Stegexpose for Steganalysis.

Article originally published in International Journal of Knowledge EngineeringSteganography is the art of hiding secret message in innocent digital data files. Steganalysis aims to expose the existence of steganograms. While internet applications and social media has grown tremendously in recent years, the use of social media is increasingly being used by cybercriminals as well as terrorists as a means of command and control communication including taking advantage of steganography for covert communication. In this paper, we investigate open source steganography/steganalysis software and test StegExpose for steganalysis. Our experimental results show that the capability of stegExpose is very limited.Sam Houston State University (SHSU) Office of Research and Sponsored Programs, SHSU Department of Computer Science