An agent-based fuzzy cognitive map approach to the strategic marketing planning for industrial firms

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Industrial Marketing Management. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2013 Elsevier B.V.Industrial marketing planning is a typical example of an unstructured decision making problem due to the large number of variables to consider and the uncertainty imposed on those variables. Although abundant studies identified barriers and facilitators of effective industrial marketing planning in practice, the literature still lacks practical tools and methods that marketing managers can use for the task. This paper applies fuzzy cognitive maps (FCM) to industrial marketing planning. In particular, agent based inference method is proposed to overcome dynamic relationships, time lags, and reusability issues of FCM evaluation. MACOM simulator also is developed to help marketing managers conduct what-if scenarios to see the impacts of possible changes on the variables defined in an FCM that represents industrial marketing planning problem. The simulator is applied to an industrial marketing planning problem for a global software service company in South Korea. This study has practical implication as it supports marketing managers for industrial marketing planning that has large number of variables and their cause–effect relationships. It also contributes to FCM theory by providing an agent based method for the inference of FCM. Finally, MACOM also provides academics in the industrial marketing management discipline with a tool for developing and pre-verifying a conceptual model based on qualitative knowledge of marketing practitioners.Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (Korea

Zombies, Epiphenomenalism and Personal Explanations: A Tension in Moreland's Argument from Consciousness

In his so-called argument from consciousness (AC), J. P. Moreland argues that the phenomenon of consciousness furnishes us with evidence for the existence of God. In defending AC, however, Moreland makes claims that generate an undesirable tension. This tension can be posed as a dilemma based on the contingency of the correlation between mental and physical states. The correlation of mental and physical states is either contingent or necessary. If the correlation is contingent then epiphenomenalism is true. If the correlation is necessary then a theistic explanation for the correlation is forfeit. Both are unwelcome results for A

Culture and Motherhood: Findings from a Qualitative Study of East Asian Mothers in Britain’

This article focuses on the possible impacts of Confucianism on the experiences of middle-class East Asian women with dependent children in Britain. By using the concept of ‘intersectionality’, it aims to understand the ways in which mothering identity intersects with class and East Asian cultural identity in the British context, and how identities emerge through this interaction. The study was based on in-depth interview data collected from 20 first-generation East Asian mothers living in Britain, and suggests that East Asian mothers in this study appear to share a discernible trace of Confucianism, including a strong emphasis on education, alongside a high value placed on seniority, and children as a mother’s possession. These Confucian values were portrayed by the interviewees as salient in constructing their mothering identities. Simultaneously, however, certain aspects of British culture were also perceived to be significant in their mothering, in that they appeared to provide the interviewees with opportunities to question and modify their cultural values

Phase transitions of barotropic flow coupled to a massive rotating sphere - derivation of a fixed point equation by the Bragg method

The kinetic energy of barotropic flow coupled to an infnitely massive rotating sphere by an unresolved complex torque mechanism is approximated by a discrete spin-lattice model of fluid vorticity on a rotating sphere, analogous to a one-step renormalized Ising model on a sphere with global interactions. The constrained energy functional is a function of spin-spin coupling and spin coupling with the rotation of the sphere. A mean field approximation similar to the Curie-Weiss theory, modeled after that used by Bragg and Williams to treat a two dimensional Ising model of ferromagnetism, is used to find the barotropic vorticity states at thermal equilibrium for given temperature and rotational frequency of the sphere. A fixed point equation for the most probable barotropic flow state is one of the main results.Comment: 31 pages, 6 figure

Tongue of the Invisible, WERGO WER68592

CD recording of the live performance at 20th anniversary concert of musikFabrik, WDR, Cologne with Uri Caine (pianist), Omar Ebrahim (baritone), Ensemble musikFabrik conducted by André de Ridder. text by Jonathan Holmes after the poetry of Hafiz. Work in 8 movements. duration: 54:07

Geometry of multi-marginal martingale optimal transportations and duality

The theory of Optimal Transport (OT) and Martingale Optimal Transport (MOT) were inspired by problems in economics and finance and have flourished over the past decades, making significant advances in theory and practice. MOT considers the problem of pricing and hedging of a financial instrument, referred to as an option, assuming its payoff depends on a single asset price. In this paper we introduce Multi-marginal Martingale Optimal Transport (MMOT) problem, which considers the more general and realistic situation in which the option payoff depends on multiple asset prices. We address this problem of pricing and hedging given market information -- described by multi-marginals -- which is an intimately relevant setup in the robust financial framework. We establish that the MMOT problem, as an infinite-dimensional linear programming, admits an optimizer for its dual program. Such existence result of dual optimizers is significant for several reasons: the dual optimizers describe how a person who is liable for an option payoff can formulate optimal hedging portfolios, and more importantly, they can provide crucial information on the geometry of primal optimizers, i.e. the MMOTs. As an illustration, we show that multiple martingales given marginals must exhibit an extremal conditional correlation structure whenever they jointly optimize the expectation of distance-type cost functions.Comment: This article (v3) is a thorough revision of the previous version v