The role of brand loyalty and social media in e-commerce interfaces: survey results and implications for user interfaces

This paper explores the role of brand loyalty and social media in e-commerce interfaces. A survey consisting of 118 respondents was contacted to address the questions relating to online shopping and brand loyalty. Link between the frequency of access and time spent on an e-commerce user interface, and brand loyalty, gender and age profile differences, and the role of social media to branding and on-line shopping was analyzed. It was found that online loyalty differs from offline loyalty and loyalty also differed across genders, showing men were more loyal than women when shopping online. Information shared about products on social media by friends and family played an important role in purchase decision making. Website interface and ease of navigation were also key aspects for online shopping. The research concluded with recommendations to create multimodal websites which are more interactive and targeted so customer experience is enhanced and loyalty is achieved through the use of interactivity and social media

Phase Separation and Magnetic Order in K-doped Iron Selenide Superconductor

Alkali-doped iron selenide is the latest member of high Tc superconductor family, and its peculiar characters have immediately attracted extensive attention. We prepared high-quality potassium-doped iron selenide (KxFe2-ySe2) thin films by molecular beam epitaxy and unambiguously demonstrated the existence of phase separation, which is currently under debate, in this material using scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy. The stoichiometric superconducting phase KFe2Se2 contains no iron vacancies, while the insulating phase has a \surd5\times\surd5 vacancy order. The iron vacancies are shown always destructive to superconductivity in KFe2Se2. Our study on the subgap bound states induced by the iron vacancies further reveals a magnetically-related bipartite order in the superconducting phase. These findings not only solve the existing controversies in the atomic and electronic structures in KxFe2-ySe2, but also provide valuable information on understanding the superconductivity and its interplay with magnetism in iron-based superconductors

Consumer perceptions of co-branding alliances: Organizational dissimilarity signals and brand fit

This study explores how consumers evaluate co-branding alliances between dissimilar partner firms. Customers are well aware that different firms are behind a co-branded product and observe the partner firms’ characteristics. Drawing on signaling theory, we assert that consumers use organizational characteristics as signals in their assessment of brand fit and for their purchasing decisions. Some organizational signals are beyond the control of the co-branding partners or at least they cannot alter them on short notice. We use a quasi-experimental design and test how co-branding partner dissimilarity affects brand fit perception. The results show that co-branding partner dissimilarity in terms of firm size, industry scope, and country-of-origin image negatively affects brand fit perception. Firm age dissimilarity does not exert significant influence. Because brand fit generally fosters a benevolent consumer attitude towards a co-branding alliance, the findings suggest that high partner dissimilarity may reduce overall co-branding alliance performance

Down-Regulation of Negative Emotional Processing by Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation: Effects of Personality Characteristics

Evidence from neuroimaging and electrophysiological studies indicates that the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is a core region in emotional processing, particularly during down-regulation of negative emotional conditions. However, emotional regulation is a process subject to major inter-individual differences, some of which may be explained by personality traits. In the present study we used transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the left DLPFC to investigate whether transiently increasing the activity of this region resulted in changes in the ratings of positive, neutral and negative emotional pictures. Results revealed that anodal, but not cathodal, tDCS reduced the perceived degree of emotional valence for negative stimuli, possibly due to an enhancement of cognitive control of emotional expression. We also aimed to determine whether personality traits (extraversion and neuroticism) might condition the impact of tDCS. We found that individuals with higher scores on the introversion personality dimension were more permeable than extraverts to the modulatory effects of the stimulation. The present study underlines the role of the left DLPFC in emotional regulation, and stresses the importance of considering individual personality characteristics as a relevant variable, although replication is needed given the limited sample size of our study

Neuroticism Modifies Psychophysiological Responses to Fearful Films

Background: Neuroticism is a personality component frequently found in anxious and depressive psychiatric disorders. The influence of neuroticism on negative emotions could be due to its action on stimuli related to fear and sadness, but this remains debated. Our goal was thus to better understand the impact of neuroticism through verbal and physiological assessment in response to stimuli inducing fear and sadness as compared to another negative emotion (disgust).¦Methods: Fifteen low neurotic and 18 high neurotic subjects were assessed on an emotional attending task by using film excerpts inducing fear, disgust, and sadness. We recorded skin conductance response (SCR) and corrugator muscle activity (frowning) as indices of emotional expression.¦Results: SCR was larger in high neurotic subjects than in low neurotics for fear relative to sadness and disgust. Moreover, corrugator activity and SCR were larger in high than in low neurotic subjects when fear was induced.¦Conclusion: After decades of evidence that individuals higher in neuroticism experience more intense emotional reactions to even minor stressors, our results indicate that they show greater SCR and expressive reactivity specifically to stimuli evoking fear rather than to those inducing sadness or disgust. Fear processing seems mainly under the influence of neuroticism. This modulation of autonomic activity by neurotics in response to threat/fear may explain their increased vulnerability to anxious psychopathologies such as PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder)

The right-hemisphere and valence hypotheses: could they both be right (and sometimes left)?

The two halves of the brain are believed to play different roles in emotional processing, but the specific contribution of each hemisphere continues to be debated. The right-hemisphere hypothesis suggests that the right cerebrum is dominant for processing all emotions regardless of affective valence, whereas the valence specific hypothesis posits that the left hemisphere is specialized for processing positive affect while the right hemisphere is specialized for negative affect. Here, healthy participants viewed two split visual-field facial affect perception tasks during functional magnetic resonance imaging, one presenting chimeric happy faces (i.e. half happy/half neutral) and the other presenting identical sad chimera (i.e. half sad/half neutral), each masked immediately by a neutral face. Results suggest that the posterior right hemisphere is generically activated during non-conscious emotional face perception regardless of affective valence, although greater activation is produced by negative facial cues. The posterior left hemisphere was generally less activated by emotional faces, but also appeared to recruit bilateral anterior brain regions in a valence-specific manner. Findings suggest simultaneous operation of aspects of both hypotheses, suggesting that these two rival theories may not actually be in opposition, but may instead reflect different facets of a complex distributed emotion processing system

Is There a Valence-Specific Pattern in Emotional Conflict in Major Depressive Disorder? An Exploratory Psychological Study

Objective: Patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) clinically exhibit a deficit in positive emotional processing and are often distracted by especially negative emotional stimuli. Such emotional-cognitive interference in turn hampers the cognitive abilities of patients in their ongoing task. While the psychological correlates of such emotional conflict have been well identified in healthy subjects, possible alterations of emotional conflict in depressed patients remain to be investigated. We conducted an exploratory psychological study to investigate emotional conflict in MDD. We also distinguished depression-related stimuli from negative stimuli in order to check whether the depression-related distractors will induce enhanced conflict in MDD. Methods: A typical word-face Stroop paradigm was adopted. In order to account for valence-specificities in MDD, we included positive and general negative as well as depression-related words in the study. Results: MDD patients demonstrated a specific pattern of emotional conflict clearly distinguishable from the healthy control group. In MDD, the positive distractor words did not significantly interrupt the processing of the negative target faces, while they did in healthy subjects. On the other hand, the depression-related distractor words induced significant emotional conflict to the positive target faces in MDD patients but not in the healthy control group. Conclusion: Our findings demonstrated for the first time an altered valence-specific pattern in emotional conflict in MD

Effects of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation on Episodic Memory Related to Emotional Visual Stimuli

The present study investigated emotional memory following bilateral transcranial electrical stimulation (direct current of 1 mA, for 20 minutes) over fronto-temporal cortical areas of healthy participants during the encoding of images that differed in affective arousal and valence. The main result was a significant interaction between the side of anodal stimulation and image emotional valence. Specifically, right anodal/left cathodal stimulation selectively facilitated the recall of pleasant images with respect to both unpleasant and neutral images whereas left anodal/right cathodal stimulation selectively facilitated the recall of unpleasant images with respect to both pleasant and neutral images. From a theoretical perspective, this double dissociation between the side of anodal stimulation and the advantage in the memory performance for a specific type of stimulus depending on its pleasantness supported the specific-valence hypothesis of emotional processes, which assumes a specialization of the right hemisphere in processing unpleasant stimuli and a specialization of the left hemisphere in processing pleasant stimuli. From a methodological point of view, first we found tDCS effects strictly dependent on the stimulus category, and second a pattern of results in line with an interfering and inhibitory account of anodal stimulation on memory performance. These findings need to be carefully considered in applied contexts, such as the rehabilitation of altered emotional processing or eye-witness memory, and deserve to be further investigated in order to understand their underlying mechanisms of action