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Material extrusion (MEX) 3D printers suffer from an intrinsic limitation of small size of the prints due to its restricted bed dimension. On the other hand, friction stir spot welding (FSSW) is gaining wide interest from automobile, airplane, off-road equipment manufacturers and even consumer electronics. This paper aims to explore the possibility of FSSW on Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene/Polylactic acid 3D-printed components to overcome the bed size limitation of MEX 3D printers.

Four different tool geometries (tapered cylindrical pin with/without concavity, pinless with/without concavity) were used to produce the joints. Three critical process parameters related to FSSW (tool rotational speed, plunge depth and dwell time) and two related to 3D printing (material combination and infill percentages) were investigated and optimized using the Taguchi L27 design of experiments. The influence of each welding parameter on the shear strength was evaluated by analysis of variance.

Results revealed that the infill percentage, a 3D printing parameter, had the maximum effect on the joint strength. The joints displayed pull nugget, cross nugget and substrate failure morphologies. The outcome resulted in the joint efficiency reaching up to 100.3%, better than that obtained by other competitive processes for 3D-printed thermoplastics. The results, when applied to weld a UAV wing, showed good strength and integrity. Further, grafting the joints with nylon micro-particles was also investigated, resulting in a detrimental effect on the strength.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to demonstrate that the welding of dissimilar 3D-printed thermoplastics with/without microparticles is possible by FSSW, whilst the process parameters have a considerable consequence on the bond strength.

The primary objective of this study is to explore consumers' non-adoption intentions towards meta-commerce (or metaverse retailing). Utilizing the Innovation Resistance Theory (IRT) as the theoretical foundation, this study investigates the impact of diverse barriers on non-adoption intentions within the meta-commerce context.

A total of 356 responses were gathered to test the proposed hypotheses. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) with SmartPLS 4 software was used to examine these hypotheses.

The findings of this study show that perceived cyber risk, perceived regulatory uncertainty, perceived switching cost and perceived technical uncertainty are significantly linked to non-adoption intention towards meta-commerce. Furthermore, the study suggests that the moderating influence of technostress on these connections is more pronounced for consumers with high technostress compared to those with low technostress.

This study makes a significant contribution to the current body of literature by providing valuable insights into the fundamental barriers that consumers encounter when contemplating the adoption of meta-commerce. This contribution is particularly noteworthy as it fills a gap in the existing literature, as no prior study has comprehensively examined the primary obstacles that shape consumer intentions towards meta-commerce adoption. This novel perspective offers scholars, businesses and policymakers a foundation for developing strategies to address these barriers effectively.

The impact of frontline robots (FLRs) on customer orientation perceptions remains unclear. This is remarkable because customers may associate FLRs with standardization and cost-cutting, such that they may not fit firms that aim to be customer oriented.

In four experiments, data are collected from customers interacting with frontline employees (FLEs) and FLRs in different settings.

FLEs are perceived as more customer-oriented than FLRs due to higher competence and warmth evaluations. A relational interaction style attenuates the difference in perceived competence between FLRs and FLEs. These agents are also perceived as more similar in competence and warmth when FLRs participate in the customer journey's information and negotiation stages. Switching from FLE to FLR in the journey harms FLR evaluations.

The authors recommend firms to place FLRs only in the negotiation stage or in both the information and negotiation stages of the customer journey. Still then customers should not transition from employees to robots (vice versa does no harm). Firms should ensure that FLRs utilize a relational style when interacting with customers for optimal effects.

The authors bridge the FLR and sales/marketing literature by drawing on social cognition theory. The authors also identify the product categories for which customers are willing to negotiate with an FLR. Broadly speaking, this study’s findings underline that customers perceive robots as having agency (i.e. the mental capacity for acting with intentionality) and, just as humans, can be customer-oriented.

This study aims to provide insight of how conference sessions and poster sessions are relevant to libraries.

Recently attended IFLA and Internationale Funkaussteilung (IFA) and focused the conference report on generative artificial intelligence (AI).

Disappointed in the IFLA and IFA conferences and instead find that the email newsletter from Shelly Palmer is much better in keeping up with exponential growth in ChatGPT and other generative AI tools.

This study may provide ideas for libraries to experiment with generative AI tools.

This study is an original report by the authors. All photos were taken by the authors except for a table from the email newsletter of Shelly Palmer, which was included by him from another source.

The rise of the metaverse has brought profound changes to the economic and social operation models and injected new vitality into academic research. Although a large number of studies have emerged, there are few quantitative analyses of development frontiers and trends.

From a bibliometric perspective, this paper selects 183 pieces of metaverse-related literature in the WoS core database since 2000 as the object of analysis. This paper sums up the characteristics of the literature using the methods of descriptive statistical analysis, keywords analysis, thematic evolution analysis and summarizes the core themes and the laws of metaverse development in each stage.

The digital economy vision brought by the metaverse has led to an increasing number of researchers and achievements in this field. But the depth and breadth of research are still insufficient and unevenly distributed in the region, and the cross-fertilization fields need to be expanded. From the industry's point of view, VR games represented by Second Life and My World have contributed to the popularity of the metaverse. As technology progresses, the research hotspots in the field of metaverse gradually develop from conceptual research to artificial intelligence, blockchain, NFT and other technical applications. However, academic research has not yet caught up with the industry's pace and stays more in the concept discussion and preliminary application stage.

A systematic overview of the current status, knowledge structure and hot issues of metaverse research is shown, which provides a thematic axis for this field, enriches and improves the quantitative analysis of its literature and provides a clear picture for researchers to continuously promote the development of this field. At the same time, it is necessary to warn that technological development is a double-edged sword. The process of metaverse development should return to rationality, respect the laws of its development and guarantee the healthy development of the metaverse by strengthening legal regulation and the ethical review of science and technology.

This study explores the sustainable supply chain trade-offs in the electronics industry.

The study employs a social media analytics approach and analyses Twitter posts from August 2017 to December 2021. Thematic analysis is applied to discover the pattern in sustainable supply chain trade-offs based on the consumers' perceptions. In addition, a chi-square test was used to measure whether a relationship exists between product groups and sustainable supply chain perceptions.

The results indicate that environmental practices are the most frequent topic among consumers on social media. Further, although basic sustainable supply chain practices are prioritised in the environmental aspect, advanced sustainable supply chain practices take precedence over basic ones in the social dimension. The result from the chi-square independence test reveals that there is no significant relationship between different products and perceptions of consumers except for economically advanced sustainable supply chain practices.

The main implications of the present study are to offer a fast and efficient method to marketers and companies for discovering customer perceptions. In a way, they can identify where the quality of practices needs to improve in their supply chains to gain customer satisfaction. Additionally, the authors suggest industries declare their trade-off preferences between sustainable supply chain practices transparently.

The findings extend the abundance of sustainable supply chain literature by identifying the sustainable supply chain trade-offs among consumer electronics. Also, the reason for customers' dissatisfaction is provided. In the end, six propositions are presented based on the explorations.

This study aims to examine the effects of perceived product–brand fit and brand type on consumer evaluations of wearable smart masks’ technological, aesthetic and social attributes and how these affect consumers’ attitudes and intentions to use.

Through an experimental approach, a total of 240 US consumers’ evaluations of smart masks are compared according to perceived product–brand fit (high vs low) and brand type (electronics vs fashion).

The results showed that high perceived product–brand fit increases consumers’ evaluations, while brand type did not significantly affect consumers’ evaluations. Among various attributes, social acceptability had the greatest influence on consumers’ attitude and intention to use. Perceived ease of use, however, positively influenced attitude but negatively influenced intention to use.

As consumers’ interest in smart health-care wearables increases and air pollution is a serious issue across countries, research on wearable smart masks is being facilitated. Smart masks refer to the digitalized, reusable wearable masks that provide protection and health-care functions. However, their market penetration is still limited. To close this gap between smart mask technology and the market, this study examines how perceived fit and brand type can be used to enhance consumer evaluations.

The economy of China has developed rapidly, and its international status has quickly risen in the past 30 years. China is shifting from a major exporter into a major consumer, becoming an essential part of the international market. However, some global brands make wrong market decisions because of a lack of understanding of Eastern consumer culture.

Based on consumer xenocentrism, this paper helps global enterprises better understand Chinese consumers' psychology in foreign goods, which is conducive to the development of transnational trade. This study proposes a hypothesis model based on previous literature. The authors collected 300 questionnaires from China and tested the model by SPSS24 and AMOS24.

The findings show that curiosity and country of origin positively affect consumer xenocentrism, consumer xenocentrism has a positive impact on word-of-mouth and purchase intention, word-of-mouth plays a mediating role in xenocentrism and purchase intention and social comparison tendency plays a moderating role in consumer xenocentrism and purchase intention. Simultaneously, this paper develops a scale measuring consumer xenocentrism to provide some quantitative support for this research.

The authors propose some suggestions basing on the research of consumer xenocentrism and provide some further directions.

The main goal of the study is to investigate how same-brand slogans simultaneously in use in two emerging markets, namely Turkey and Russia, differ semantically. The study further examines in what ways the industrial competition structure impacts the semantic slogan design within these two contexts.

The study uses the method of semantic explication that is based on a 19-device taxonomy. This method is applied to 56 slogan pairs in the Turkish and Russian languages launched for the same brands/products across 6 industries.

Results indicate that same-brand slogans differ semantically between Turkey and Russia. Moreover, firms tend to conform to a shared semantic pattern within a given industry, largely depending on the industrial competition structure. While strong local competition (as in the electronics and cleaning products industries in Turkey and in the personal care and beverages industries in Russia) leads firms to use self-reference, international competition (as in the automotive, personal care and beverages industries in Turkey and in the electronics and cleaning products industries in Russia) promotes them to use hyperbole in their slogan design.

Adopting a common semantic pattern within an industry may carry the risk of restricting brand differentiation and consumers' sense of novelty. Furthermore, the inclusion of brand names in slogans may make slogans sound assertive and lead consumers to overreact to the brand.

Unlike many studies exploring different-brand slogans through a syntactic or grammatical lens, this study investigates the semantic features of same-brand slogans launched in two emerging market contexts. It adopts a B2B perspective, unlike many extant studies that often focus on a B2C one.

India generates around two million tonnes of e-waste every year, and it is increasing at a very high rate of 30%. However, due to inefficient handling of infrastructure and limited number of collection centres along with the absence of proper incentive structure for producer and recyclers, 95% of e-waste reaches to unorganized sector for disposal. Consumers are not aware of the need of proper e-waste disposal and in absence of proper motivation and they are not inclined towards recycling process. Therefore, this paper aims to identify the best practices of e-waste take adopted all over the world to implement effective policy interventions for e-waste management in India and other emerging economies.

This paper has recommended preventive as well as curative policy interventions on the basis of best e-waste management practices of Germany, Italy and Japan; life cycle assessment of e-waste; and SWOT analysis of Indian electronic product industry.

Preventive measures include a deposit refund scheme wherein a consumer will be responsible for depositing a refundable fees during the purchase of the product. The amount should be arrived at keeping in mind cost involved in handling e-waste and ensure some motivation for the consumers to give back used product. To ensure proper tracking of the product, Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags can be used which will be activated at the time of sale of product and remain so until product reaches some designated recycling space or recycler and consumer is returned back his deposit fee. Subsidy to the producers and recyclers can also be provided by the government to further incentivize the whole process. An example of mobile phones has been used to understand the proposed deposit fees and associated cost structure. Curative measures to reduce the generation of e-waste in long run for managing the discussed issue have also been proposed.

This study is an initiative for proposing and implementing best e-waste take back techniques in a developing economy like India by acquiring learnings from best/advanced economies in terms of e-waste take back.