Country of origin effect on products from Mainland China in Hong Kong

This study examines the effect of the country of origin cue on Hong Kong consumers’ purchasing of products from the two countries—China and Japan. The research findings suggest that the country of origin and brand image are the important evaluative criteria for Hong Kong consumer. There are three main objectives in the report. First is to explore the overall image of Mainland Chinese products in Hong Kong market. The other is to assess the impact of the country of origin on Mainland Chinese products in Hong Kong market. Last, we make some suggestions for improving the image of Mainland Chinese products in Hong Kong market. The literature review and survey give the picture of the image of Mainland Chinese products in other markets. Overall, Mainland Chinese products have a negative image in those markets. The country of origin effect influences the country image so much, there has a negative image towards China. Hong Kong people view Mainland Chinese products as old-fashioned, cheap and unattractive. To alleviate that, the Chinese businesses could improve their marketing strategies in Hong Kong, especially the marketing mix. They could change the product designs and packages with good brand names, put more emphasis on promotions and advertising, and improving the advertisements to adapt to the tastes of Hong Kong consumers. In addition, they could increase the number of retail channels that are more convenient for consumers to get information and easier to find the products. The low price of China brand products in Hong Kong gives people “cheap” and “low-class” impression. So, Mainland Chinese firms should raise the quality of products in order to set a higher price in Hong Kong market

Framing a Foreign God: The Tamamushi Shrine and the Opportunites of Buddhism in Early Japan

The beginning of Buddhism in Japan has long been narrated through a list of pivotal events recounted in later historical records. Centered on the court as the driving force behind the promulgation of Buddhism, such accounts often gloss over the multitude of micro-narratives and social actors involved. This dissertation charts an alternative framework by reassessing textual records in the light of material evidence from the sixth and early seventh centuries, with specific focus on the Tamamushi Shrine. Commissioned during the reign of Suiko (554-628; r. 593-628), the shrine has often been interpreted either as a private devotional object for the female ruler or a model for transferring architectural knowledge from continental Asia to Japan. However, a close examination of the shrine calls into questions such readings and challenges art-historical discourses that presume that the spread of Buddhist art in East Asia was spatiotemporally unilinear and continuous. Through reference to the stylistic and iconographic eclecticism evident in the Tamamushi Shrine, this study argues that Buddhism was reconfigured along with other religious practices in early Japan to align with Suiko’s political visions. Furthermore, the technical intricacies underlying the shrine’s production also call attention to the social aspirations of the immigrant professionals involved, and the largely decentralized pattern of Buddhist diffusion in this period. Taken together, by delineating the multitude of cultural undercurrents embedded in the Tamamushi Shrine, this dissertation reframes Buddhist art as a nexus through which religious worldviews, political visions, and social relationships were negotiated and expressed in early Japan.PHDHistory of ArtUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146084/1/gchanart_1.pd

砕け散る現実 : 土門拳の写真集『室生寺』（1954）で上演された仏教美術

Against the backdrop of the immediate postwar, photographer Domon Ken (1909–1990) embarked on a journey to the Murōji Temple in Nara Prefecture to capture its Buddhist treasures. The body of work was published in his photobook Murōji (1954), and has often been interpreted as a nostalgic spectacle that romanticizes Japan’s Buddhist heritage for mass consumption. Yet, a close examination of the images and their arrangement in the photobook reveals Domon’s indifference to reconstructing an accessible past. Contrary to the resurgence of Zen Buddhism in the 1950s, Domon’s project absconded from any politicized attempt that sought to authenticate the “tradition” or spiritual “essence” of Japan. While beholders are granted with unprecedented proximity to the icons, Domon’s interest in tactility and his manipulation of scale paradoxically render these statues illegible and unfamiliar. Equally significant is his juxtaposition of legible and abstract close-ups, which shatters the past into incongruent fragments. The photobook Murōji thereby raises questions that continue to resonate today: what is the role of documentary photography in postwar Japanese culture? In what ways can photography function as a metaphorical ground upon which competing ideas of nation, cultural memory, and subjectivity are mediated

The effectiveness of using a bilingualized dictionary for determining noun countability and article selection

This article discusses the use of a bilingualized dictionary, namely Oxford Advanced Learner's English–Chinese Dictionary 8 (OALECD8), by advanced Hong Kong Cantonese ESL learn-ers in the determination of noun countability and associated article use. A homogenous group of 30 English majors in a local university participated in the study, which consisted of a noun countabil-ity and article selection task without and with the use of the dictionary. The results show that although bilingualized dictionaries are useful in helping learners determine noun countability and associated article use, learners often misinterpret dictionary information and model on inappro-priate structures, resulting in article errors and/or wrong countability judgments. Chinese transla-tions are also sometimes sources of errors. The results of the study provide lexicographers with signposts to the selection of noun information to be included in a learner's dictionary. More explicit information about noun countability and related article use should be provided in a more user-friendly arrangement. ESL teachers are also advised to engage advanced learners in analyses uncovering the different syntactic requirements of equivalent vocabulary items in the target and source languages when using a bilingualized dictionary. Keywords: English Noun Countability, English Article System, Article Selection, Bilingualized Dictionaries, Learners' Dictionaries, Cantonese Esl Learners, Second Language Acquisition, Effectiveness Of Dictionaries 

Improving the estimation of project overheads in construction companies in Hong Kong

Project overheads cover the site cost of administrating a project as a whole, rather than a particular work section. Estimation of these items is one of the routine tasks of all parties including the contractors and project owners. Nevertheless, our understanding of this subject mainly lies on the theoretical level due to the limited empirical study in the past. More importantly, estimation of project overheads demands a lot of expertise but still exhibits a high risk of inaccuracy. Therefore, the aims of this research study are to explore the estimation and expenses of project overheads in practice and to devise an efficient model for project overheads estimation. [Continues.

Examining the neoglottal vibratory pattern of Cantonese tracheoesophageal speakers : a preliminary aerodynamic study using inverse-filtering

The present study examined the neoglottal vibratory pattern of Cantonese tracheoesophageal (TE) speakers by inverse-filtering the airflow signals obtained from eight superior TE speakers during phonation. The syllable /papapa/ was used for obtaining airflow signals, and the acoustic signals of the vowels /i, æ, a, ɔ, u/ were also obtained. Aerodynamic parameters obtained were compared between TE and laryngeal speakers. Results revealed that TE speakers exhibited comparable open quotient and airflow volume values but significantly smaller speed quotient values than laryngeal speakers. The marked difference in inverse-filtered airflow signals between TE and laryngeal speech of Cantonese is believed to be related to the use of different sounding mechanisms between the two speaking methods, and the unique vibratory nature of the neoglottis in TE speech.published_or_final_versionSpeech and Hearing SciencesBachelorBachelor of Science in Speech and Hearing Science

Being Alone or Together:How Frontline Anthropomorphized Robots Affect Solo (vs. Joint) Service Consumption

Solo consumption has become an emerging trend in recent years. However, the service experiences of solo customers with the growing adoption of frontline humanlike robots remain unclear, particularly in direct comparison with joint customers. Building on the literature of anthropomorphism and information processing theory, this study examines whether and how frontline anthropomorphized robots (FAR) might improve the service experiences of solo customers relative to their joint counterparts. Data from four studies, including field and online experiments, reveal that solo customers are more likely than joint customers to perceive FAR as offering rapport but also as being eerie, leading to different service evaluations (both attitudinal and behavioral outcomes). Nevertheless, as parallel mechanisms, these levels of social rapport and eeriness are contingent on features of the FAR, the service delivery process, and customers’ consumption goals. The rapport (eeriness) mechanism is strengthened (weakened) when the robot is of in-group favoritism, the service process deprives customers of control, and customers have a hedonic consumption goal. With the boom in adopting frontline humanlike robots in hospitality services, this study offers managerially relevant implications for serving solo customers as an emerging segment along with the traditional segment of joint customers

Children’s everyday lifeworlds out of school, in Hong Kong, Melbourne, and Singapore: Family, enrichment activities, and local communities

Children’s everyday lives beyond school need to be considered holistically, in a way which moves beyond time use. In this article we draw on our adaptation of Sarah Pink’s (e.g. 2012) video re-enactment methodology for considering children’s out-of-school lifeworlds with Year 4 children (9 and 10 years old) in the global cities of Hong Kong, Melbourne, and Singapore. The data presented and discussed here was part of a larger Global Childhoods Project with children in the three global cities of Melbourne, Hong Kong, and Singapore. We use video re-enactment methodology to ‘think with’, to open up lines of inquiry and create conversations about children’s lives in and between the cities. Through these we consider the specifics of each city context, as well as socioeconomic and sociocultural contexts and factors that may impact differently on children’s everyday lifeworlds out-of-school within the same city. In order to focus the scope of the article, we consider family routines, enrichment activities and local communities, as aspects that we find useful to reflect on when exploring what children’s lives look like, in and across locations. We focus on these as we are interested in how they might add to the complexities of thinking about children in each location. We move between thinking about the re-enactments themselves and broader literature to explore children’s out-of-school lifeworlds in the three cities, painting a picture of children’s lives and considering the contexts which make particular activities and practices possible and desirable