Constructing Regional Advantage: Does it matter for Czech regions?

Innovation and competitiveness are two concepts which govern the national and regional policies throughout the world. Innovation is the key driver of global economic competitiveness. Regions are considered a key level where innovation processes are shaped, coordinated and governed through localized capabilities. While until recently competitiveness of economies was developed from comparative or competitive advantages, in the era of knowledge economy the new theory of constructed advantage allows for more attention to the role and impact of the public sector and public-private partnership in the economy, based upon the dimensions related and unrelated variety and differentiated knowledge bases. The key to the constructed advantage is regional innovation systems approach. The introduction to the new theory is explained in the paper in the view of European collaborative research project and the first assessment of how policies for constructing regional advantage can work within the environment of specific regions of the Czech Republic is proposed.Regional innovation system; comparative, competitive and constructed advantage; related and unrelated varieties; differentiated knowledge bases

Neural correlates for price involvement in purchase decisions with regards to fast-moving-consumer-goods

Some customers are loyal to their favorite brands, others easily switch between them. A new technique is available to assess differences in brand related behavior. We assume that price and brand-conscious participants show nearly the same activations in emotionally associated brain areas. Price-conscious participants also show an activation of cognitive associated regions. We employed functional magnet resonance imaging during a preference judgment task for fast mov-ing consumer goods. We discuss the results with differences in product and price specific in-volvement and advance that involvement of price-conscious participants is higher because of a higher price interest.internet Neuro market research, Involvement, Price Interest, Reward Circuitry

Neural correlates for price involvement in purchase decisions with regards to fast-moving-consumer-goods

Some customers are loyal to their favorite brands, others easily switch between them. A new technique is available to assess differences in brand related behavior. We assume that price and brand-conscious participants show nearly the same activations in emotionally associated brain areas. Price-conscious participants also show an activation of cognitive associated regions. We employed functional magnet resonance imaging during a preference judgment task for fast mov-ing consumer goods. We discuss the results with differences in product and price specific in-volvement and advance that involvement of price-conscious participants is higher because of a higher price interest

Chemical composition and biological stability of pyrogenic C from a natural fire

2 pages, 1 figure, 3 references.-- Comunicación oral presentada en la Session 1. Pyrogenic C: Dstribution and Stability, en European Science Foundation-Exploratory Workshop, celebrado del 5-7 de noviembre 2013, en Sevilla, España.The work presented here is a synthesis of an article series conducted on natural charcoal in the environment (Alexis et al., 2007, Alexis et al. 2010, Alexis et al., 2012). The objective was to characterize the alteration of OM resulting from thermal alteration and to follow the fate of the produced pyrogenic C in soil.Peer reviewe

Personal involvement is related to increased search motivation and associated with activity in left BA44 - a pilot study

Numerous studies explore consumer perception of brands in a more or less passive way. This may still be representative for many situations or decisions we make each day. Nevertheless, sometimes we often actively search for and use information to make informed and reasoned choices, thus implying a rational and thinking consumer. Researchers suggested describing this distinction as low relative to high involvement consumer behavior. Although the involvement concept has been widely used to explain consumer behavior, behavioral and neural correlates of this concept are poorly understood. The current study aims to describe a behavioral measure that is associated with high involvement, the length of search behavior. A second aim of this study was to explore brain activations associated with involvement by employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We presented participants information cues for different products and told them that they had to answer questions with respect to these products at the end of the experiment. Participants were free to stop the information search if they think they gathered enough information or to continue with collecting information. Behavioral results confirmed our hypothesis of a relationship between searching behavior and personal involvement by demonstrating that the length of search correlated significantly with the degree of personal involvement of the participants. fMRI data revealed that personal involvement was associated with activation in BA44. Since this brain region is known to be involved in semantic memory, the results of this pilot study suggest that high involvement consumer behavior may be linked to cognitive load and attention towards a product