Trends of daily original blogs (B_t) and daily sales of Sony camera (S_t).

<p>Trends of daily original blogs (B_t) and daily sales of Sony camera (S_t).</p

Cross-correlation coefficients of Y_t and X_t+i.

<p>Cross-correlation coefficients of Y_t and X_t+i.</p

Trends of public mood variable (X_t) and camera sales variable (Y_t).

<p>Trends of public mood variable (X_t) and camera sales variable (Y_t).</p

Public Mood and Consumption Choices: Evidence from Sales of Sony Cameras on Taobao

<div><p>Previous researchers have tried to predict social and economic phenomena with indicators of public mood, which were extracted from online data. This method has been proved to be feasible in many areas such as financial markets, economic operations and even national suicide numbers. However, few previous researches have examined the relationship between public mood and consumption choices at society level. The present study paid attention to the “Diaoyu Island” event, and extracted Chinese public mood data toward Japan from Sina MicroBlog (the biggest social media in China), which demonstrated a significant cross-correlation between the public mood variable and sales of Sony cameras on Taobao (the biggest Chinese e-business company). Afterwards, several candidate predictors of sales were examined and finally three significant stepwise regression models were obtained. Results of models estimation showed that significance (F-statistics), R-square and predictive accuracy (MAPE) all improved due to inclusion of public mood variable. These results indicate that public mood is significantly associated with consumption choices and may be of value in sales forecasting for particular products.</p></div

Estimation of Model 1 and Model 2.

<p>Estimation of Model 1 and Model 2.</p

Partial autocorrelation results of camera sales variable (Y_t).

<p>Partial autocorrelation results of camera sales variable (Y_t).</p

Regression analysis for each public mood variable (X_t-6, X_t-5, X_t-4, X_t-3, X_t-2 and X_t-1) and camera sales variable (Y_t).

<p>independent variable: Y_t</p><p>Regression analysis for each public mood variable (X_t-6, X_t-5, X_t-4, X_t-3, X_t-2 and X_t-1) and camera sales variable (Y_t).</p

Who Are the True Fans? Evidence from an Event-Related Potential Study

<div><p>Fans of celebrities commonly exist in modern society. Researchers from social science have been concerned with this problem for years. Furthermore, such researchers have attempted to measure people’s involvement with celebrities in various ways. However, no study measured the degree of addiction to a specific celebrity at the neurological level. Therefore, the current study employed visually evoked event related potentials (ERPs) to examine people’s attitude toward celebrities by comparing different brain activities of fans and non-fans when they were shown a set of photos. These photos include a specific celebrity, a familiar person, a stranger and a butterfly. Furthermore, to examine the validity of the detected neural index, we also investigated the correlation between brain activity and the score of the Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS), which was a questionnaire used to explore people’s attitude toward celebrities at behavioral level. Two groups of subjects were asked to complete an implicit task, i.e., to press a button when a picture of a butterfly appeared. Results revealed that fans showed significant positive N2 and P300 deflection when viewing the photos of their favorite celebrity, whereas in the non-fan group, the subjects only showed larger P300 amplitude as a response to the celebrity’s photos. Furthermore, a positive correlation between P300 amplitude elicited by the stimuli of a celebrity face and CAS scores was also observed. These findings indicated fan attitude to a specific celebrity can also be observed at the neurological level and suggested the potential utility of using ERP component as an index of fandom involvement.</p></div

P300 results.

<p>Grand average ERP waveforms from channels CPz and Pz, which stand for the selected six electrodes as a function of the three conditions (celebrity, familiar person, and unfamiliar person) for fans (a) and non-fans (b) groups.</p

N2 results.

<p>Grand average ERP waveforms from channels Fz and FCz, which stand for the selected six electrodes as a function of the three conditions (celebrity, familiar person, and unfamiliar person) for fans (a) and non-fans (b) groups.</p