Reluctance to use technology-related products: Development of a technophobia scale

Many consumers feel overloaded by the complexity of technology-related products. This renders consumers less open and may even lead to an aversion or anxiety towards this kind of products, so-called technophobia. The prevailing paper aims to establish an instrument which measures technophobia. Following a literature review and in-depth interviews with experts, a scale is developed and tested in seven different countries (U.S., U.K., France, Spain, India, Mexico and Austria, total sample size = 1503 respondents). The three underlying dimensions of the scale, namely, "Personal Failure", "Human vs. Machine Ambiguity" and "Convenience" are discussed and future research avenues to strengthen the cross-national usability of the scale are identified

Ad Hoc Reviewers-Journal of Macromarketing Volume 33, Number 4, December 2013

[No abstract available

The State of Business Education and Research - Perspectives from Educational Leaders around the Globe

(no abstracta available

Verifying Post-Quantum Signatures in 8 kB of RAM

Contains fulltext : 236620.pdf (Author’s version preprint ) (Closed access)PQCrypto 202

A hybrid machine-crowd approach to photo retrieval result diversification

In this paper we address the issue of optimizing the actual social photo retrieval technology in terms of users' requirements. Typical users are interested in taking possession of accurately relevant-to-the-query and non-redundant images so they can build a correct exhaustive perception over the query. We propose to tackle this issue by combining two approaches previously considered non-overlapping: machine image analysis for a pre-filtering of the initial query results followed by crowd-sourcing for a final refinement. In this mechanism, the machine part plays the role of reducing the time and resource consumption allowing better crowd-sourcing results. The machine technique ensures representativeness in images by performing a re-ranking of all images according to the most common image in the initial noisy set; additionally, diversity is ensured by clustering the images and selecting the best ranked images among the most representative in each cluster. Further, the crowd-sourcing part enforces both representativeness and diversity in images, objectives that are, to a certain extent, out of reach by solely the automated machine technique. The mechanism was validated on more than 25,000 photos retrieved from several common social media platforms, proving the efficiency of this approach.</p

Psychic Distance, its Impact and Coping Modes

This paper adopts an interpretative focus in addressing SME decision makers' perceptions of psychic distance. It draws on empirical evidence from British SMEs exporting to Brazil. The study also addresses the hitherto neglected question of how SMEs cope with the difficulties of engaging in international business with psychically distant counties. It discusses the implications of its cognitive approach and findings for further research and conceptual development. Results indicate the relevance of a broad-based multi-dimensional interpretation of psychic distance. Distance dimensions also have a differential impact on doing business with Brazil, although a strong socio-institutional cluster appears. Further exploration of the understandings that SME decision-makers have of psychic distance-related impacts and the possibilities of coping with these, illustrate how they attempt to bridge psychic distance features or adopt avoidance measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR