Search results

The blogosphere is an active arena for the communication of topic‐area claims by marketer and non‐marketer sources. Determinants of influence in the blogosphere have not been well documented. The purpose of this paper is to investigate trust in bloggers, in a framework involving characteristics of bloggers and blogs and blog reading outcomes.

Blog‐reader perceptions of bloggers and blogs are derived and tested on a sample of blog readers for their effects on trust formation. Tests of mediation examine the role of perceived personal outcomes of blog reading in trust‐formation processes.

Trust formation is predicted by engagement knowledge of the blogger, unique reading experiences, and belief that the blog improved the marketspace. Blogger authoritative knowledge negatively impacted trust intentions. Positive experiences from blog reading mediate relationships between blog and blogger characteristics and intentions to trust.

Blog readers examined in this initial investigation may not be totally representative of the general population of blog readers. Replications with other populations are needed.

The paper's findings suggest knowledge is an essential characteristic of a trustworthy blogger, but knowledge unrelated to everyday information needs holds little perceived value for readers. Firms operating blogs may wish to de‐emphasize their topic‐area authoritative knowledge and project a voice of topic‐area engagement.

The paper identifies salient trust‐related blogger and blog characteristics and provides an indication of a domain‐specific trust‐development process that is applicable to marketer and non‐marketer information sources.

This special volume of Advances in International Marketing is focused on cross-cultural buyer behavior. Specifically, it explores topics that include the impact of new technology on consumer behavior in a global context; the role emotion plays in reactions to advertising and subsequent buyer behavior; and a timely public policy issue: how prescription drug advertising influences consumer behavior in the countries where it is legal. Moreover, new perspectives of culture's impact on buyer behavior are offered. We are delighted to feature the latest research findings and insights on this topic contributed by authoritative colleagues from around the world. It is guest edited by Professors Charles R. Taylor, Villanova University and Doo-Hee Lee of Korea University Business School.

In online social network analysis, the problem of identification and ranking of influential nodes based on their prominence has attracted immense attention from researchers and practitioners. Identification and ranking of influential nodes is a challenging problem using Twitter, as data contains heterogeneous features such as tweets, likes, mentions and retweets. The purpose of this paper is to perform correlation between various features, evaluation metrics, approaches and results to validate selection of features as well as results. In addition, the paper uses well-known techniques to find topical authority and sentiments of influential nodes that help smart city governance and to make importance decisions while understanding the various perceptions of relevant influential nodes.

The tweets fetched using Twitter API are stored in Neo4j to generate graph-based relationships between various features of Twitter data such as followers, mentions and retweets. In this paper, consensus approach based on Twitter data using heterogeneous features has been proposed based on various features such as like, mentions and retweets to generate individual list of top-k influential nodes based on each features.

The heterogeneous features are meant for integrating to accomplish identification and ranking tasks with low computational complexity, i.e. O(n), which is suitable for large-scale online social network with better accuracy than baselines.

Identified influential nodes can act as source in making public decisions and their opinion give insights to urban governance bodies such as municipal corporation as well as similar organization responsible for smart urban governance and smart city development.

This special volume of Advances in International Marketing is focused on international marketing channels. Specifically, it explores substantive issues relating to the role of foreign intermediaries in export channels. Independent distributors or agents are commonly engaged by exporting manufacturers, yet academic research in this area is very limited. We are delighted to feature the latest research findings and insights on this topic contributed by authoritative colleagues from around the world. It is guest edited by Carl Author Solberg of BI Norwegian School of Management.

Previous research has shown that children’s ability to understand mental states is related to their consumer development, yet it is unknown how parents can aid in this process. One possible way that parents may help is using mental state communication (i.e. communication that focuses on beliefs/intention to explain behavior by others). This study aims to examine whether this kind of communication is linked to children’s purchase requests through two potential mediators – active mediation and child socio-cognitive skills (i.e. Theory of Mind).

This study used a survey of 420 American mothers with children between the ages of 3 and 7. Respondents were given 12 scenarios describing typical parent–child interactions focused on discussing mental states and were asked how they would respond. Then, respondents were asked about demographic information, parenting style, mediation style, child socio-cognitive skills and child purchase requests.

Results showed both a direct and indirect negative association between parents’ mental state communication and children’s purchase requests via active advertising mediation. Contrary to expectations, active mediation was negatively associated with mental state communication and positively linked to child purchase requests. Children’s socio-cognitive skills were not associated with either parents’ mental state communication or children’s purchase requests.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first known study that has examined mental state communication of parents as a potential predictor in shaping children’s purchase requests and found that it was negatively associated with it.

The purpose of this paper is to construct the linkage between libraries and up-to-date news. This study developed a system to recommend libraries’ resources to those daily news readers who are interested in the topics of the target news. The analysis of experiments results served as the reference for the development and improvement of linking libraries’ resources with other web resources.

Up-to-date news were gathered through the news feeds to make the integration with the libraries’ records. In task 1, the libraries’ records were linked and recommended to the target libraries’ records which are of the same topics. In task 2, the system aimed to find the relevant libraries’ records for target news. Three recommendation methods were compared in both tasks to find the most effective approach to the system.

Experiment results showed that: at first, in task 1, the system can assign the libraries’ records of the related topics effectively; second, in task 2, the recommending system can obtain a satisfied recall hit rate through human evaluation. Therefore, regarding the popularity of the daily news online, the linkage and recommendation with the libraries’ resources can increase the visibility of the libraries’ resources and eventually promote the information consuming in libraries.

The authors have confirmed, using three matrix factorization methods, that weighted matrix factorization used in the libraries’ records recommendation system, could achieve better performance than the other two. Based on the research, the libraries could incorporate the online news and libraries’ resources in practice.

To increase the visibility and promote information consuming of libraries, this study proposed a novel method to construct the linkage between library and up-to-date news. The results of data analysis indicate that recommendation of libraries resources through the daily news can achieve effective performance. Thus, it can be inferred that the research results of this study are representative and have practical values in real world practice.

Astronomy has experienced a rapid rate of discovery and change in the recent past, particularly because of the space program and general technological development. Through information gathered from artificial satellites, radio astronomy, orbiting observatories, and space probes, astronomy has advanced rapidly since the 1950s. This progress has also affected standard reference sources in the field.

The interrelation between Web publishing and information retrieval technologies is explored. The different elements of the Web have implications for indexing and searching Web pages. There are two main platforms used for searching the Web – directories and search engines – which later became combined to create one‐stop search sites, resulting in the Web business model known as portals. Portalisation gave rise to a second‐generation of firms delivering innovative search technology. Various new approaches to Web indexing and information retrieval are listed. PC‐based search tools incorporate intelligent agents to allow greater manipulation of search strategies and results. Current trends are discussed, in particular the rise of XML, and their implications for the future. It is concluded that the Web is emerging from a nascent stage and is evolving into a more complex, diverse and structured environment.

This chapter reviews significant advances in health sciences librarianship, highlighting developments between 1970 and 2005. During this time Advances in Librarianship published two chapters that dealt with health sciences librarianship. The first appeared in 1971 with volume two. Written by David Bishop (1971), then at the University of Arizona, it focused on developments in the 1960s and provided a review of the MEDLARS (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System) system, the beginnings of the regional medical library (RML) program and advances in library services and information resources. The second chapter devoted to health sciences libraries appeared in the ninth volume of Advances in Librarianship. In it Donald Hendricks (1979) from the University of New Orleans highlighted collaborative programs among health sciences libraries, the growing reliance on computer applications, professional development programs, clinical medical librarian services and the accomplishments of the Medical Library Association (MLA).