Influence of higher-order harmonics on the saturation of the tearing mode

The nonlinear saturation of the tearing mode is revisited in slab geometry by taking into account higher-order harmonics in the outer solution. The general formalism for tackling this problem in the case of a vanishing current gradient at the resonant surface is derived. It is shown that, although the higher-order harmonics lead to corrections in the final saturation equation, they are of higher order in the perturbation parameter, which provides a formal proof that the standard one-harmonic approach is asymptotically correct.Comment: Accepted to Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusio

Gender Matters! Analyzing Global Cultural Gender Preferences for Venues Using Social Sensing

Gender differences is a phenomenon around the world actively researched by social scientists. Traditionally, the data used to support such studies is manually obtained, often through surveys with volunteers. However, due to their inherent high costs because of manual steps, such traditional methods do not quickly scale to large-size studies. We here investigate a particular aspect of gender differences: preferences for venues. To that end we explore the use of check-in data collected from Foursquare to estimate cultural gender preferences for venues in the physical world. For that, we first demonstrate that by analyzing the check-in data in various regions of the world we can find significant differences in preferences for specific venues between gender groups. Some of these significant differences reflect well-known cultural patterns. Moreover, we also gathered evidence that our methodology offers useful information about gender preference for venues in a given region in the real world. This suggests that gender and venue preferences observed may not be independent. Our results suggests that our proposed methodology could be a promising tool to support studies on gender preferences for venues at different spatial granularities around the world, being faster and cheaper than traditional methods, besides quickly capturing changes in the real world

Shall we adopt the information about firms in facebook?

The adoption of information in Facebook is a subject of growing interest for both researchers and managers. Nevertheless, research in this area is still sparse and even core issues, such as the kinds of information available and how that information influence business relationships and partnerships, are not yet fully defined. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to analyse factors that lead consumers to adopt the information about products/brands. Findings show that timeliness, trustworthiness and importance of the SNS are the strongest drivers to information adoption.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

You are What you Eat (and Drink): Identifying Cultural Boundaries by Analyzing Food & Drink Habits in Foursquare

Food and drink are two of the most basic needs of human beings. However, as society evolved, food and drink became also a strong cultural aspect, being able to describe strong differences among people. Traditional methods used to analyze cross-cultural differences are mainly based on surveys and, for this reason, they are very difficult to represent a significant statistical sample at a global scale. In this paper, we propose a new methodology to identify cultural boundaries and similarities across populations at different scales based on the analysis of Foursquare check-ins. This approach might be useful not only for economic purposes, but also to support existing and novel marketing and social applications. Our methodology consists of the following steps. First, we map food and drink related check-ins extracted from Foursquare into users' cultural preferences. Second, we identify particular individual preferences, such as the taste for a certain type of food or drink, e.g., pizza or sake, as well as temporal habits, such as the time and day of the week when an individual goes to a restaurant or a bar. Third, we show how to analyze this information to assess the cultural distance between two countries, cities or even areas of a city. Fourth, we apply a simple clustering technique, using this cultural distance measure, to draw cultural boundaries across countries, cities and regions.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures, 1 table. Proceedings of 8th AAAI Intl. Conf. on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM 2014

Strategic Planning: a model based on Systems Engineering

This work has the main motivation to propose an approach based on Systems Engineering to expand the scope of Organizational Strategic Planning. The proposed method was idealized considering the approaches of Chiavenato & Sapiro (2003) and Loureiro (1999). It is considered that the proposed method was more adequate than the traditional models previously applied

Advertising and country-of-origin images as sources of brand equity and the moderating role of brand typicality

Purpose: This research has two main purposes: (i) to explore the influence of an individual’s attitude towards advertising and country-of-origin images (brand origin and country of manufacture) on brand equity creation; and (ii) to investigate how brand typicality moderates the effect of brand origin macro image on perceived quality. Design/methodology/approach: The data to test the hypotheses were elicited from a consumer survey in the Greater Lisbon area (305 Portuguese consumers). The product category of smartphones was selected for two main reasons: (i) it has not been extensively analysed in previous studies on the subject of brand equity; (ii) it is a device well-known to Portuguese consumers (particularly in the Greater Lisbon area). Three criteria guided the selection of the brands. The first criterion is to select brands which are well-known to consumers. The second is to choose brands with a distinctive brand origin and a main country of manufacture. The third and final criterion is to consider brands in different positions in the brand ranking. In order to estimate structural path coefficients, R2, Q2, and Bootstrap techniques, the current study employs the Partial Least Squares (PLS) approach. Findings: The results show that individuals' attitudes towards advertisements have a positive impact on brand equity creation, whereas those towards the country of manufacture do not significantly influence brand equity creation. Attitudes towards brand origin only have a partial influence. Brand typicality, however, exerts a significant direct effect on brand equity dimensions and, hence, does not have a significant moderating effect. Research limitations/implications: The authors suggest analysing the influence of country-of-origin on dimensions of brand equity considering consumer segmentation, types of industry and a range of brands, as well as different levels of consumer involvement with the product category. Several brands with the same country-of-origin should be analysed in order to understand whether the effects on brand equity depend on the product category. Although the current study is a first attempt to combine the potential effect of individuals' attitudes towards advertisements and country-of-origin on creating brand equity, further research should examine additional potential antecedents of brand equity. Finally, cross-cultural studies are recommended. Practical implications: Regarding managerial implications, three main aspects should be taken into consideration. First, creative, original and different advertising strategies are more effective than the country-of-origin in creating brand equity and, consequently, in building loyalty among smartphone consumers. Secondly, consumers do not tend to care about the place, country or region where the smartphone is produced, but the image of the country where the brand originated may be important. Finally, managers should be aware that, at least, in the smartphone sector, the way consumers create favourable associations with the brand and typicality, trust the company and consider it good value for money, are more effective in building brand loyalty than the perceived quality of the product/brand. Social implications: Relating to the interrelationship between country-of-origin and brand equity, the results of the current study prove that the effects of country-of-origin are category specific. Therefore, more studies focused on other contexts of products and brands are still needed to know in more detail how country-of-origin exerts an influence on brand equity dimensions. Even within a product category context, the results can depend on individual brands being analysed. Originality/value: To the knowledge of the authors, this study is the first to investigate the dual (simultaneous) effect of individuals’ attitudes towards advertisements and country-of-origin images on brand equity dimensions. Adding to the originality of the paper, the category of smartphone with respect to brand equity has not been extensively analysed in previous studies.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio