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While computerized tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technologies are highly commendable for their applications and usage, sometimes cases involving facial anatomy restoration may not necessarily require these highly sophisticated technologies. A suitable replacement that is also non‐contact and allows fast image capture is the laser digitizer surface scanner. This scanner takes only seconds to capture an image of the patient’s sound or healthy facial anatomy. By using the captured image data, it is possible, with the help of a surface data modeller rapid prototyping (RP) machine and vacuum casting machine, to manufacture the prosthesis for implant. Presents a novel approach for facial prosthesis fabrication through a case study of a prosthetic ear model using an integrated manufacturing system comprising the laser surface digitizer, surface data modeller, rapid prototyping system and vacuum casting system.

Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.

Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.

Looks at consumer research in Greater China including Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Maps out the contributions within this area and guides future research. Examines the state of the art over the 1979‐97 period, with particular emphasis on the topics that have been researched, the extent of the theory development in the field and the methodologies used in conducting research. Uses content analysis to review 75 relevant articles. Suggests that, while a considerable breadth of topics have been researched, there remains much to be done, there is further room for theoretical development in Chinese consumer behaviour studies; and the methodologies used need improvement and further refinement.

Drawing from social cognitive theory, the purpose of this study is to examine how personal, environmental and behavioral factors can interplay to influence people's use of YouTube as a learning resource.

This study proposed a conceptual model, which was then tested with data collected from a survey with 150 participants who had the experience of using YouTube for learning. The bootstrap method was employed to test the direct and mediation hypotheses in the model.

The results revealed that personal factors, i.e. learning outcome expectations and attitude, had direct effects on using YouTube as a learning resource (person → behavior). The environmental factor, i.e. the sociability of YouTube, influenced the attitude (environment → person), while the behavioral factor, i.e. prior experience of learning on YouTube, affected learning outcome expectations (behavior → person). Moreover, the two personal factors fully mediated the influences of sociability and prior experience on YouTube usage for learning.

The factors and their relationships identified in this study provide important implications for individual learners, platform designers, educators and other stakeholders who encourage the use of YouTube as a learning resource.

This study draws on a comprehensive theoretical perspective (i.e. social cognitive theory) to investigate the interplay of critical components (i.e. individual, environment and behavior) in YouTube's learning ecosystem. Personal factors not only directly influenced the extent to which people use YouTube as a learning resource but also mediated the effects of environmental and behavioral factors on the usage behavior.

The definition of cycle time is the time from the wafer start to the wafer output. It usually takes one or two months to get the product since customer decides to produce it. The cycle time is a critical factor for customer satisfaction because it represents the response time to the market. Long cycle time reflects the ineffective investment for the capital. The cycle time is very important for foundry because long cycle time will cause customer unsatisfied and the order loss. Consequently, all of the foundries put lots of human source in the cycle time improvement. Usually, we make decisions based on the experience in the cycle time management. We have no mechanism or theory for cycle time management. We do work‐in‐process (WIP) management based on turn rate and standard WIP (STD WIP) set by experiences. But the experience didn’t mean the optimal solution, when the situation changed, the cycle time or the standard WIP will also be changed. The experience will not always be applicable. If we only have the experience and no mechanism, management will not be work out. After interview several foundry fab managers, all of the fab can’t reflect the situation. That is, all of them will have an impact period after product mix or utilization varied. In this study, we want to develop a formula for standard WIP and use statistical process control (SPC) concept to set WIP upper/lower limit level. When WIP exceed the limit level, it will trigger action plans to compensate WIP Profile. If WIP Profile balances, we don’t need too much WIP. So WIP level could be reduced and cycle time also could be reduced.

Considering that users’ information privacy concerns may affect the development of e-commerce, the purpose of this paper is to explore what drives internet users’ willingness to provide personal information; further, the paper examines how extrinsic rewards moderate the relationship between users’ information privacy concerns and willingness to provide personal information.

Data collected from 345 valid internet users in the context of electronic commerce were analyzed using the partial least squares approach.

The result showed that agreeableness, risk-taking propensity and experience of privacy invasion were three main antecedents of information privacy concerns among the seven individual factors. Additionally, information privacy concerns did not significantly affect users’ willingness to provide personal information in the privacy calculation mechanism; however, extrinsic rewards directly affected users’ disclosure intention. The authors found that extrinsic rewards had not moderated the relationship between users’ information privacy concerns and their willingness to provide personal information.

This study is an exploratory effort to develop and validate a model for explaining why internet users were willing to provide personal information. The results of this study are helpful to researchers in developing theories of information privacy concerns and to practitioners in promoting internet users’ willingness to provide personal information in an e-commerce context.

This paper aims to analyze the effects of organizational factors on electronic customer relationship management (e-CRM) successful implementation.

Data were collected through a structured questionnaire survey conducted in Vietnam. The dataset consists of 241 valid responses by individuals working at Vietnamese airlines. Correlation analysis and structural equation modeling were used to examine the causal relationships among organizational factors, customer orientation, knowledge management, data quality and CRM strategy.

The result shows that organizational factors have influence on e-CRM success. However, there are other factors needed to be more considered that are customer orientation having the most influence, following by knowledge management and technology. Still other factors have indirect effect on e-CRM success such as data quality and CRM strategy.

This study is among the first to examine an integrated model depicting the direct and indirect effects of organization factors on e-CRM success. From this perspective, this paper provides an improved understanding of how customer orientation and organizational factors, technology and knowledge management influences airlines applying e-CRM. This study also provides several implications for practice. The paper suggests airline providers and marketing managers, especially those in Vietnam, focus more on customer orientation activities. The paper also recommends that airlines should pay attention to its organizational structure in line with its customer-orientation strategy.

Claims that, in Singapore, there is intense competition among local banks, hence increasing emphasis is being placed on offering a high quality customer service. Investigates how customers choose which banks to use, taking into account factors such as non‐verbal communication (including behavioural/interpersonal communication and environmental – deriving meaning from one’s surroundings); convenience; reputation; supply of information; and cosmetic factors such as the bank’s stationery. Uses a verbal questionnaire survey to examine the effect non‐verbal communication has on bank patrons’ attitudes. Evaluates banks’ businesslike approach, competency, friendliness, warmness, environment, electronic tellers, location and queueing. Makes a number of recommendations on how banks can improve their image and the service they offer.

Examines the recent research on advertising in mainland China over the 1979‐1998 period. Suggests that findings show a sustained effort in academic research/publications on advertising in China is in the early stage of its development and whilst many areas have been researched, there are many more yet to be touched. Concludes that the research is seldom based on established theoretical or conceptual framework and the research methods and types of analysis used have not been very advanced when compared to general advertising research.