It's about our values: How founder's stories influence brand authenticity

Companies increasingly share the stories behind their brand's founding to engage consumers. The current studies explore how the motives that underlie business formation in founder's stories influence consumer brand perceptions. Specifically, stories that highlight self‐transcendence (vs. self‐enhancement) founder values enhance the perceived authenticity of the focal brand. We examine narrative co fidelity as a mechanism of narrative persuasion through which the audience judges whether the motives underlying character actions represent “good reasons” for action. Across three studies, we show that the values underlying a founder's motivation to start a business influence the perceived authenticity of the associated brand, and this relationship is mediated by narrative fidelity. Further, reader's personal values moderate the influence of founder's values on narrative fidelity judgments, and the relationship between narrative fidelity and brand authenticity is attenuated by a merger between the original company and another company, demonstrating a boundary condition of the observed relationships.     

利用改进特征金字塔模型的SAR图像多目标船舶检测

深度学习模型中的特征金字塔网络（Feature Pyramid Network，FPN）常被用作合成孔径雷达（Synthetic Aperture Radar，SAR）图像中多目标船舶的检测。针对复杂场景下多目标船舶检测问题，提出了一种基于改进锚点框的FPN模型。首先将特征金字塔模型嵌入传统的RPN（Region Proposal Network）并映射成新的特征空间用于目标检测，然后利用基于形状相似度距离（Shape Similar Distance,SSD）度量的Kmeans聚类算法优化FPN的初始锚点框，并使用SAR船舶数据集测试。实验结果表明，所提算法目标检测精确率达到98.62%，在复杂场景下与YOLO、Faster RCNN、FPN based on VGG/ResNet等模型进行对比，模型准确率提高，整体性能更好。     

Travel information online: navigating correspondents,consensus, and conversation

Travel information exists in paper guides, word of mouth, and countless websites. Organizing a trip has never been more accessible and simultaneously riddled with doubt. Professional journalists produce travel journalism while often anonymous reviewers on TripAdvisor provide their commentaries, and in between, there are blogs, wikis, tourism boards, vendors, and a host of other information sources available. How does the twenty-first-century tourist make sense of all of this information? Through a study of tourists in Paris, this study seeks to understand the methods and strategies that they employ in order to identify trustworthy and useful information. Interviews with a sample of travellers reveal that each person has his/her own unique process guided by their personal motivations, but they also share several practices along the way. This research reveals that tourists ultimately exhibit a multistep process of verification using both professional and non-professional sources. No one type of author or website appears to be a unique or singular influencer when it comes to primary or trustworthy sources. These findings will lead to larger discussions about destination management and transparent practices among information providers.     

A Novel Compact Cat Swarm Optimization Based on Differential Method

ABSTRACT

A compact cat swarm optimization scheme (cCSO) is proposed in this paper, which is designed to solve application domains plagued with limited memory and less-computation power, as a member of cat swarm optimization algorithms (CSO), it composes of two sub-modes, i.e., tracing and seeking modes, so it keeps the same search logic of CSO. On the other hand, cCSO inherits the main feature of compact algorithms, a normal probabilistic model is used to represent the population of solutions instead of processing an actual population, which ensures the cCSO to have the modest memory requirement. The updating vector for the probabilistic model provides a clear moving direction for cats in next step. A cat without historical position and velocity is applied in the algorithm. When the cat is in seeking mode, it employs a differential operator to update the cat’s position, which makes it possible for the cat to have multiple searching directions. Experimental results show that cCSO has pretty performance compared with respect to some population-based testing benchmarks. And it also shows superior performance in convergence rate to some compact optimization algorithms. The case study of gray image segmentation proves that it suits for solving the optimization problem by limited hardware.     

Does the nature of airport terminal service activities matter? Processing and non-processing service quality,passenger affective image and satisfaction

The surge in air transport demand and the increasingly competitive and volatile market dynamics due to airline deregulation are rapidly transforming airports’ character into multi-service firms and destinations. As a result, service performance measurement of significant systems and their consequent impact on airport users are crucial in creating better airport service design, operation and management for sustainable competitive advantage. The present study 1) assesses the applicability of the Airport Indicators of Passenger Experience (AIPEX) model on Shanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG), and 2) tests a theoretical model that explores the direct and indirect relationships among airport service quality, passenger affective image and satisfaction, as well as the moderating mechanism of passenger type (travel purpose) in these associations. The results indicate that, the AIPEX model fits the PVG context for airport service performance assessment. Also, the theoretical model suggests robust direct associations among processing/non-processing domains and passenger satisfaction, as well as the processing domain and passenger affective image, except non-processing domain and passenger affective image relation. Moreover, significant mediating and moderating effects of passenger affective image and travel purpose on the significant positive direct associations are found. Further, implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

黑色叙事对旅游目的地引致形象的影响机制

"讲好故事"已成为塑造和传播国家和地方形象的重要手段。以"讲故事"为手段打造旅游目的地形象是一种国际通行的旅游目的地营销方式。现有旅游目的地叙事研究开展还很不充分,关注的叙事偏重于正面叙事材料,对负面叙事的关注还很不够。文章着眼于黑色叙事对旅游目的地引致形象的影响机制,以德国首都柏林作为研究案例,以著名历史游记《柏林:一座城市的肖像》(Berlin:Imagine a City)中关于柏林的系列黑色叙事和柏林旅游局在微信公众号发布的图片作为实验材料,通过招募志愿者参与包括4个阶段的混合研究设计,验证黑色叙事对柏林旅游目的地形象(认知、情感及意动)的复杂影响。研究的主要理论贡献在于:首先,验证了黑色叙事对旅游目的地形象具有显著影响,实证该影响主要透过"叙事主角-游客-自我形象一致性"这一主线发挥作用,明确了黑色叙事主角形象对黑色叙事引致旅游目的地形象的影响机理,丰富了叙事传输理论相关结论。其次,验证了黑色叙事引致情感形象在黑色叙事影响旅游目的地形象过程中的影响效应,发现黑色叙事引致情感形象(而非认知形象)是黑色叙事最终能够影响游客动机的关键。最后,在黑色叙事这一特定研究情境中,验证了目的地认知形象对"情感形象影响意动形象"具有"增强调节效应",丰富了现有旅游目的地形象"认知-情感-意动"三联结构理论。文章在此基础上提供了相应的管理和营销建议。     

来源国形象、消费者偏见与中国品牌跨国营销——中国电子产品在美国的品牌来源国效应检验

来源国效应对一国产品的海外销售产生着重要影响。本文以在美国销售的中国H公司运动手表作为被试商品,在606份有效样本基础上,通过多元线性回归验证了中国品牌电子产品在美国的来源国效应。通过与其他七个国家进行对比,本文发现,虽然中国在美国消费者心目中的产品国家形象较为正面,但相对中国经济地位和产品质量而言,美国消费者对中国电子产品和中国品牌的“来源国偏见”普遍存在,“Made in China”目前仍是中国品牌在美国营销的不利因素。在以往研究的基础上,本文将来源国效应中的产品国家形象划分为整体绩效形象、整体制度形象和产品类属形象,在此基础上检验了多个消费者因素对来源国效应的调节作用,首次检验了消费者网购依赖度对消费者购买倾向的影响,并且发现消费者产品知识负向调节来源国效应,这一结论可以导出明确的管理启示。本文结论进一步深化了来源国效应相关研究,弥补了发展中国家逆向拓展发达国家市场时来源国效应研究的不足。     

To Trust or Not to Trust? Consumer Responses to Cause-Related Marketing

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to understand if company trustworthiness and the type of cause-related marketing (CRM) campaigns (strategic vs. tactical) affect purchase intention and company image of a yogurt producer, under the control of socially responsible consumer behavior, general trust, income, attitude toward the CRM campaign, and initial company image. The study applies a quantitative (experimentation) research to test the proposed model. MANCOVA was applied with data obtained from 600 respondents who were selected by a two-stage cluster sampling method. The research model is partially supported. Company trustworthiness and CRM type are found to affect only company image and without any interaction effect. Being a highly trustworthy company applying a CRM campaign has more positive influence on company image than a less trustworthy one. Additionally, a strategic CRM campaign creates more positive influence on company image than a tactical one. The findings are further deliberated with the managers of the two selected companies with focus group discussions.     

To look tasty,let's show the ingredients! Effects of ingredient images on implicit tasty–healthy associations for packaged products

This study investigates the effect of ingredient images on implicit tasty–healthy associations for packaged products. An implicit association test (IAT) with 106 respondents reveals the impact of repeating ingredient images on the implicit healthy = tasty intuition; fewer ingredient images are linked to a stronger intuition. This study also considers explicit product packaging preferences and the number of ingredient images depicted. The implicit intuitions affect explicit preferences, such that packages depicting few ingredient images are preferred over those depicting many ingredient images for healthy products, but no significant effects emerge for unhealthy products.     

基于深度学习的跳频信号识别

针对跳频信号分选存在人工提取参数特征具有复杂性的问题，提出了一种基于深度学习的识别方法。首先对跳频信号进行短时傅里叶变换，得到二维的时频矩阵；接着提取信号的轮廓特征，构造三维矩阵作等高线图，并对等高线图进行预处理；最后把预处理后的等高线图输入到卷积神经网络中进行训练、测试，进而实现分类识别。仿真结果表明，在不需要复杂的人工提取参数特征的基础上，在分选率为100〖WT《Times New Roman》〗%〖WTBZ〗时，所提方法经裁剪处理下的信噪比为-15 dB，比支持向量机和传统K-Means聚类算法都低10 dB。实测数据的算法验证表明，所提方法能够将大疆精灵4Pro、hm无人机、司马航模X8HW以及大疆悟2这四类无人机正确分类。