Consumer Willingness to Pay and Marketing Opportunities for "Quality Guaranteed Tree-Ripened Peaches" in New York State

This study identifies consumer characteristics associated with willingness to pay a higher price for quality guaranteed tree-ripened peaches, with a focus on evaluating factors important to consumers when making decisions to purchase tree-ripened peaches. Telephone interviews were conducted with consumers in New York State in summer, 2002. Seventy-eight percent of the 258 survey respondents reported that they were willing to pay a higher price. A logistical regression model of willingness to pay was estimated. The empirical results indicated that willingness to pay was positively affected by the existence of previous experiences in purchasing tree-ripened peaches and by consumer dissatisfaction with peaches consumed in the past. An analysis of consumer experiences and consumer dissatisfaction showed that consumers in the two identified segments had mutually exclusive characteristics that present marketing opportunities for high quality New York-grown peaches.Consumer/Household Economics,

IT Capability of Domestic Research Review

Information technology (IT) investment does not necessarily bring a corresponding value returns for enterprises, and the thing that can help enterprises to gain the core competitiveness is IT capability. Based on 78 articles related literature from CSSCI, we found that: 1) We have fruitful achievement, but the quality and quantity need to be increased; 2) Existing literature use a variety of methods in research, but we should pay more attention to empirical research especially case study and secondary data research; 3) we need to strengthen the research of before aspect, especially in combination with characteristics of Chinese enterprises and the enterprise\u27s situation characteristic so as to reveal the logic of thinking in Chinese enterprise; 4) effective local cooperation study is not enough, especially the need to strengthen the cooperation between native scholars and cross-regional cooperation research across institutions

Ostrowski Type Inequalities in the Grushin Plane

Motivated by the work of B.-S. Lian and Q.-H. Yang (2010) we proved an Ostrowski inequality associated with Carnot-Carathéodory distance in the Grushin plane. The procedure is based on a representation formula. Using the same representation formula, we prove some Hardy type inequalities associated with Carnot-Carathéodory distance in the Grushin plane

Molecular Cloning of phd1 and Comparative Analysis of phd1, 2, and 3 Expression in Xenopus laevis

Intensive gene targeting studies in mice have revealed that prolyl hydroxylase domain proteins (PHDs) play important roles in murine embryonic development; however, the expression patterns and function of these genes during embryogenesis of other vertebrates remain largely unknown. Here we report the molecular cloning of phd1 and systematic analysis of phd1, phd2, and phd3 expression in embryos as well as adult tissues of Xenopus laevis. All three phds are maternally provided during Xenopus early development. The spatial expression patterns of phds genes in Xenopus embryos appear to define a distinct synexpression group. Frog phd2 and phd3 showed complementary expression in adult tissues with phd2 transcription levels being high in the eye, brain, and intestine, but low in the liver, pancreas, and kidney. On the contrary, expression levels of phd3 are high in the liver, pancreas, and kidney, but low in the eye, brain, and intestine. All three phds are highly expressed in testes, ovary, gall bladder, and spleen. Among three phds, phd3 showed strongest expression in heart

Calcineurin B-Like Proteins CBL4 and CBL10 Mediate Two Independent Salt Tolerance Pathways in Arabidopsis.

In Arabidopsis, the salt overly sensitive (SOS) pathway, consisting of calcineurin B-like protein 4 (CBL4/SOS3), CBL-interacting protein kinase 24 (CIPK24/SOS2) and SOS1, has been well defined as a crucial mechanism to control cellular ion homoeostasis by extruding Na+ to the extracellular space, thus conferring salt tolerance in plants. CBL10 also plays a critical role in salt tolerance possibly by the activation of Na+ compartmentation into the vacuole. However, the functional relationship of the SOS and CBL10-regulated processes remains unclear. Here, we analyzed the genetic interaction between CBL4 and CBL10 and found that the cbl4 cbl10 double mutant was dramatically more sensitive to salt as compared to the cbl4 and cbl10 single mutants, suggesting that CBL4 and CBL10 each directs a different salt-tolerance pathway. Furthermore, the cbl4 cbl10 and cipk24 cbl10 double mutants were more sensitive than the cipk24 single mutant, suggesting that CBL10 directs a process involving CIPK24 and other partners different from the SOS pathway. Although the cbl4 cbl10, cipk24 cbl10, and sos1 cbl10 double mutants showed comparable salt-sensitive phenotype to sos1 at the whole plant level, they all accumulated much lower Na+ as compared to sos1 under high salt conditions, suggesting that CBL10 regulates additional unknown transport processes that play distinct roles from the SOS1 in Na+ homeostasis

Consumer Preferences and Marketing Opportunities for Premium “Tree-Ripened Peaches” in New York State

R.B. 2004-10Fruit growers in New York State are adding alternative fruit crops to their production acreage in an effort to diversify their apple orchards. Peach (Prunus persica L.) is a major crop used for that purpose because of the collaboration between growers and the Cornell Agricultural Experiment Station to develop new varieties that possess higher eating quality and more eye-appealing characteristics for the consumer market and because they are suitable for the growing environment in New York State. The goal of this study is to explore consumer interests in New York-grown premium tree-ripened peaches and develop strategic marketing recommendations on how the New York stone fruit industry can expand markets for these peaches. This research is divided into two parts: a qualitative study (focus group discussion) and a quantitative study (consumer phone survey). The purpose of the focus groups was to obtain in depth responses from consumers on their attitudes and purchase behaviors for fruit, peaches and New York-grown premium tree-ripened peaches. The consumer phone survey was designed to verify results from the focus group discussion among the general population and to determine consumers’ interests and willingness to pay a higher price for “quality-guaranteed premium treeripened peaches.” The focus groups and consumer phone surveys show that consumers, especially frequent fruit shoppers, are generally very interested in good quality peaches as well as “quality-guaranteed premium tree-ripened peaches”. Although it is usually recognized that good quality tree-ripened peaches are available at farm stands or farmers’ markets, they appear to be less available in the supermarkets where respondents in this study typically shop. This presents an opportunity for New York stone fruit growers to supply good and consistent quality fresh peaches through the supermarket channel. Peaches are prized for their juiciness, sweetness, and good flavor. However, consumers are frustrated by the difficulty they perceive in selecting peaches at the proper ripening stage to get the qualities they like. Quality and consistency of the product are key factors for consumer satisfaction, and a high level of satisfaction, in turn, increases consumer demand and repeat purchases for fresh peaches. If quality and consistency exist, consumers seem to be willing to pay higher prices and buy fewer peaches in order to get the product they like. Most consumers in this study recognized New York State as a region where peaches are grown and referred to these peaches as “local” or “homegrown.” Awareness of these shoppers about peaches grown in New York and their “local” nature clearly constitutes an advantage to build on when marketing New York-grown peaches. However, there are challenges when designing a marketing program to receive a premium price for high quality New York-grown tree-ripened peaches. Many consumers could not correctly identify tree-ripened peaches, and some expected a lower price for locally grown products. Moreover, some focus group participants viewed California peaches as larger and Pennsylvania peaches as more flavorful and predictable than New York peaches. iii Therefore, when promoting “quality-guaranteed New York-grown premium tree-ripened peaches” through the supermarkets channel, a good position statement, innovative packaging, and clear labeling at the point of purchase will be the major means of informing and influencing a potential buyer. It should emphasize high quality and be used as boldly and as creatively as possible to justify the higher price and stimulate sales for the “New York-grown qualityguaranteed premium tree-ripened peaches”. Moreover, given the narrow marketing window when fresh New York peaches are available and the excitement the arrival of the peach season appears to generate, both run-of-the-crop and premium varieties can benefit from intensive promotion of their arrival. Results from this study show that demographic factors generally do not affect consumer behavior in terms of purchasing peaches or tree-ripened peaches. Therefore, promotional programs targeting specific consumer groups are not necessary. Generating consumer satisfaction through good and consistent quality products is the key to successfully marketing “New York-grown quality-guaranteed premium tree-ripened peaches.

Training Matters: Unlocking Potentials of Deeper Graph Convolutional Neural Networks

The performance limit of Graph Convolutional Networks (GCNs) and the fact that we cannot stack more of them to increase the performance, which we usually do for other deep learning paradigms, are pervasively thought to be caused by the limitations of the GCN layers, including insufficient expressive power, etc. However, if so, for a fixed architecture, it would be unlikely to lower the training difficulty and to improve performance by changing only the training procedure, which we show in this paper not only possible but possible in several ways. This paper first identify the training difficulty of GCNs from the perspective of graph signal energy loss. More specifically, we find that the loss of energy in the backward pass during training nullifies the learning of the layers closer to the input. Then, we propose several methodologies to mitigate the training problem by slightly modifying the GCN operator, from the energy perspective. After empirical validation, we confirm that these changes of operator lead to significant decrease in the training difficulties and notable performance boost, without changing the composition of parameters. With these, we conclude that the root cause of the problem is more likely the training difficulty than the others