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Since influencer marketing becomes more sophisticated, it is difficult for brands to manage the strategy and process of this marketing practice. With a practical focus, this study aims at helping marketers cope with the challenge by developing conceptual typologies for influencers and followers and suggesting marketing implications for each type of influencer and follower.

This study subscribes to the perspectives of virtual community and social information processing to develop conceptual typologies for influencers and followers based on their essential characteristics.

Based on levels of expertise and interactivity, influencers can be categorized as broadcasters, leaders, friends and companions. Each type has advantages in certain branding objectives (e.g. increasing awareness, inducing judgments and feelings, building brand and user imagery, encouraging pro-brand behaviors and managing relationships) and is associated with certain marketing limitations (e.g. reach, domain breadth, informational support, brand congruence and relationship management). Based on levels of behavioral engagement and the point of attachment, followers are categorized into spectators, participants, admirers and advocators, with specific marketing communication strategies most effective for each type (e.g. strategies of content, narratives, engagement and co-branding).

The study translates the idea of influencer community into a practically useful framework for practitioners to best leverage influencer marketing and an innovative perspective for scholars to further investigate the phenomenon.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the conditions underpinning the cooperative relationships between family businesses. The role of trust is also explored, given the focus on informal conditions nested within the cooperation between firms.

A case study research method is adopted in this paper. This research is conducted within a cooperative association in Cyprus where 40 retail family businesses trade under the same brand.

The findings suggest that cooperation between family businesses emerges and unfolds as a result of the presence and interrelationships between a number of critical conditions: trust, altruism, collective thinking, stewardship, friendship, and family values congruence. The work illustrates that trust becomes a catalyst to the emergence and maintenance of cooperative relations between family businesses. Trust between family leaders is important in building altruism, collective thinking, and stewardship norms amongst them, and helps in sustaining the cooperation between their respective firms. At the same time, trust (stemming from past friendship and values congruence between diverse family leaders) becomes important in bringing family businesses to cooperate together at first instance. Further, the findings stress the role of critical events and self-interest in moderating the role and influence of trust on the cooperation between family businesses.

This paper contributes to the family business field through new knowledge on the relations between family businesses and the unique conditions that shape their long-term cooperation.

The purpose of this study is to modify guar gum (GG) into guar gum acetate (GGA) and phthaloyl guar gum (PHGG) by transesterification and phthaloylation, respectively.

GG has been modified into GGA through transesterification reaction between GG and vinyl acetate and PHGG through esterification reaction with phthalic anhydride. The modified GG was characterized by solubility test, Fourier-transform infra-red (FTIR) spectroscopy, proton nuclear magnetic resonance (¹H NMR) spectroscopy, X-ray diffractometry (XRD) and thermogravimetric analysis. Swelling properties of GGA and PHGG hydrogels in water were evaluated.

These two types of modified GG have better solubility such as in dimethyl sulfoxide and N,N-dimethylformamide but no true organosolubility was achieved. The modifications were confirmed through FTIR with new absorption peaks at 1,733 cm⁻¹ for GGA and 1,709 cm⁻¹ for PHGG coupled with observed substitution peaks at 1.80 to 2.20 ppm and 7.40 to 7.90 ppm, respectively, from ¹H NMR spectroscopies. XRD revealed both GGA and PHGG are less crystalline than native GG. GGA was found to be more thermally stable than native GG, whereas PHGG was slightly less thermally stable than native GG. The swelling property in distilled water for native GG, PHGG and GGA was 918.43 ± 46.62%, 537.04 ± 2.87% and 393.04 ± 13.42%, respectively.

The GGA and PHGG hydrogels are expected to be useful for biomedical fields such as tissue engineering and drug-delivery.

Modifications of native GG into GGA using vinyl acetate and PHGG using phthalic anhydride are novel.

This paper aims to examine the extent to which Business Intelligence and Big Data feature within academic research in hospitality and tourism published until 2016, by identifying research gaps and future developments and designing an agenda for future research.

The study consists of a systematic quantitative literature review of academic articles indexed on the Scopus and Web of Science databases. The articles were reviewed based on the following features: research topic; conceptual and theoretical characterization; sources of data; type of data and size; data collection methods; data analysis techniques; and data reporting and visualization.

Findings indicate an increase in hospitality and tourism management literature applying analytical techniques to large quantities of data. However, this research field is fairly fragmented in scope and limited in methodologies and displays several gaps. A conceptual framework that helps to identify critical business problems and links the domains of business intelligence and big data to tourism and hospitality management and development is missing. Moreover, epistemological dilemmas and consequences for theory development of big data-driven knowledge are still a terra incognita. Last, despite calls for more integration of management and data science, cross-disciplinary collaborations with computer and data scientists are rather episodic and related to specific types of work and research.

This work is based on academic articles published before 2017; hence, scientific outputs published after the moment of writing have not been included. A rich research agenda is designed.

This study contributes to explore in depth and systematically to what extent hospitality and tourism scholars are aware of and working intendedly on business intelligence and big data. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first systematic literature review within hospitality and tourism research dealing with business intelligence and big data.

A self-adaptive piston is designed for the compressional gas cushion press nanoimprint lithography system. It avoids the lube pollution and high wear of traditional piston.

The self-adaptive piston device consists of symmetrical piston bodies, piston rings and other parts. The two piston bodies are linked by a ball-screw. The locking nut adjusts the distance between two piston bodies to avoid the piston rings from being stuck. The piston rings are placed between two piston bodies.

The simulation results based on COMSOL indicate that cylinder vibration caused by self-adaptive piston is 15.9 times smaller than the one caused by a traditional piston.

The self-adaptive piston is superior to the traditional piston in decreasing cylinder vibration.

The purpose of this paper is to present a numerical model to investigate the dynamic behavior and force coefficients of a compact squeeze film damper with dual film clearances adjusted by an elastic ring, known as elastic ring squeeze film damper (ERSFD).

The governing equations of ERSFD as well as the boundary conditions are obtained based on Reynolds equation. A simplified Greenwood–Williamson model is implemented to investigate the contact behavior between the elastic ring and the journal. The interactions between the films and the elastic ring are achieved by block iterative method.

The radial deformation as well as velocity of the elastic ring are captured to illustrate the pressure profiles of the inner and outer films. High-order frequency components related to the number of the boss N are observed on the frequency spectrum of the film force. The force coefficients of the ERSFD are constant for a wider range of non-dimensional whirling radius ε compared with conventional squeeze film damper.

The force coefficients of the ERSFD are obtained by assuming that the journal center moves in a circular centered orbit. High-order frequency components related to the number of bosses N are observed. These findings may provide helpful materials for the application of the ERSFD.

This paper aims to provide discussions of a numerical method for bubbly flows and the interaction between a vortex ring and a bubble plume.

Small bubbles are released into quiescent water from a cylinder tip. They rise under the buoyant force, forming a plume. A vortex ring is launched vertically upward into the bubble plume. The interactions between the vortex ring and the bubble plume are numerically simulated using a semi-Lagrangian–Lagrangian approach composed of a vortex-in-cell method for the fluid phase and a Lagrangian description of the gas phase.

A vortex ring can transport the bubbles surrounding it over a distance significantly depending on the correlative initial position between the bubbles and the core center. The motion of some bubbles is nearly periodic and gradually extinguishes with time. These bubble trajectories are similar to two-dimensional-helix shapes. The vortex is fragmented into multiple regions with high values of Q, the second invariant of velocity gradient tensor, settling at these regional centers. The entrained bubbles excite a growth rate of the vortex ring's azimuthal instability with a formation of the second- and third-harmonic oscillations of modes of 16 and 24, respectively.

A semi-Lagrangian–Lagrangian approach is applied to simulate the interactions between a vortex ring and a bubble plume. The simulations provide the detail features of the interactions.

Gives an in depth view of the strategies pursued by the world’s leading chief executive officers in an attempt to provide guidance to new chief executives of today. Considers the marketing strategies employed, together with the organizational structures used and looks at the universal concepts that can be applied to any product. Uses anecdotal evidence to formulate a number of theories which can be used to compare your company with the best in the world. Presents initial survival strategies and then looks at ways companies can broaden their boundaries through manipulation and choice. Covers a huge variety of case studies and examples together with a substantial question and answer section.

The piston ring-cylinder liner pair is one of the most important tribological systems of an internal combustion engine. The friction loss of the piston ring-cylinder liner pair accounts for the largest portion of total efficiency losses. Therefore, improving the tribological system design of the piston ring-cylinder liner pair can reduce friction losses and bring tremendous economic benefits to society. This paper aims use surface texturing, which is proving to be an effective method, for improving the tribological performance of sliding surfaces.

In this paper, an experimental study using a pin-on-disk tribometer was carried out to evaluate the effects of surface texturing on friction reduction of piston rings under various loads and sliding velocities. Rectangular- and circular-shaped textures with different depths and area densities were produced by a Femtosecond laser. Comparison experiments were conducted with un-textured rings.

The results indicate that the friction performance of the ring surface was significantly improved by surface texturing, and the running-in stage was also shortened. More specifically, it was found that the rectangular-shaped texture had a better effect on friction reduction than the circular-shaped texture. Results also indicate that an optimum texture density existed for the rectangular-shaped texture. Additionally, it was observed that the average friction coefficient reduction of the textured ring decreased with increasing load and increased with increasing sliding velocity.

Consequently, these findings provide a more in-depth understanding of the relationship between micro-textures and tribological properties of piston rings in lubricating sliding.

The rock drill’s drill tail experiences high-frequency fretting simultaneously in the rotational and axial directions. Due to the complex working characteristics and the low viscosity of the water medium, the pure water seal is susceptible to damage and failure. The purpose of this paper is to enhance the water seal’s performance.

The Y-shaped seal ring is modeled and simulated using orthogonal testing. Through analysis of the impact of various seal section parameters on sealing performance, the maximum contact stress and maximum Von Mises stress are selected as indicators of sealing effectiveness.

The maximum contact stress is proportional to lip thickness and chamfer length but inversely proportional to lip length. Meanwhile, the maximum Von Mises stress is directly influenced by lip depth and the included angle of the lip and drill tail but is inversely proportional to the lip thickness. The enhanced Y-shaped water seal sees reductions of 15% and 45% in maximum contact stress and maximum Von Mises stress, respectively.

This paper used analytical method and model that is helpful for design of the water seal’s structure in complex working characteristics and the low viscosity of the water medium.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-11-2023-0366/