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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the pros and cons of service standardization (vs customization) from the consumer’s perspective, the key factors influencing consumers’ preference for standardized (vs customized) services and the outcomes of service standardization (vs customization).

The authors conducted a qualitative study and two behavioral experiments to test the hypotheses.

The authors find that the advantages of service customization include greater perceived control and higher consumer satisfaction. The drawbacks of service customization include greater perceived risk. These findings also suggest that consumers’ preference for standardized (vs customized) service depends on their consumption goal. Specifically, consumers with a hedonic goal tend to prefer customized services, while those with a utilitarian goal tend to prefer standardized services. These effects are moderated by their need for uniqueness.

The qualitative and experimental studies in this research reveal the antecedents (utilitarian vs hedonic goal) on consumer preference for service standardization versus customization, as well as the consequences in terms of perceived risk, consumer satisfaction and perceived control. The experimental studies were conducted with Chinese and American consumers, respectively, which lend credence to the robustness of the findings.

Results of the present research provide new insights into service standardization versus customization and have significant practical implications. In particular, service organizations should consider designing the appropriate service mode based on consumers’ characteristics, particularly their consumption goals and their need for uniqueness. If the customers focus on efficiency and functionality, the organization should try to provide standardized services. In contrast, for customers who are seeking fun and a novel experience, the service firm should try to tailor to their hedonic needs.

While previous research identifies “heterogeneity” as a key characteristic of services in general, the present findings qualify this received wisdom. In particular, the authors show that consumers’ preference for service standardization versus customization is a function of their consumption goal and need for uniqueness. Thus, the present findings refine the current understanding of service heterogeneity, which makes a significant contribution to the services marketing literature.

Focusing on firm-initiated brand communities, the purpose of this paper is to systematically examine the influence of brand community rejection on consumer evaluations and document the underlying mechanism involved.

Four empirical studies were conducted to test the proposed hypotheses. Using a similar 2 × 2 study design, different subject samples and different product categories, Studies 1-3 investigated whether a brand community rejection strategy impacted strong brands differently than weak brands. Furthermore, Study 3 measured reactance as a moderator to explore the underlying process of the impact of a brand community rejection strategy on brand evaluations for different types of brands (i.e. strong vs weak). Study 4 used a 2 × 2 × 2 between-subjects design to examine whether justification would eliminate the negative impact of brand community rejection on subsequent brand evaluations for a weak brand.

Across the four studies, the findings consistently suggest that rejection from firm-initiated brand communities harms weak brands but not strong brands. In addition, by incorporating psychological reactance as a moderator of this effect, the authors uncover the process underlying the interaction between brand community rejection and brand strength. Furthermore, the paper examines the reasons that justify rejection to find a solution that eliminates the negative impact of brand community rejection on brand evaluations for weak brands.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research provides the first investigation of the effects of a brand community rejection strategy for different brands. The findings could advance the social exclusion literature and shed new light on brand community research.

This paper aims to optimize the stiffness coefficient of the elastic element for a passive waist assistive exoskeleton (WAE). There is a tradeoff between stiffness coefficient of elastic element of the exoskeleton and work efficiency of the wearer, because elastic element affects original bending motion of the wearer and the force requirement of erector spinae is compensated by the other muscles. However, there is no accepted conclusion on how to determine the proper stiffness coefficient, especially with respected to the effort of groups of muscles, not only erector spinae.

In this study, a consumption indicator based on muscle fatigue of seven muscles is proposed and a Bayesian-based human-in-the-loop optimization approach is adopted to optimize the stiffness coefficient. Pneumatic artificial muscles are used to replace the mechanical elastic part to adjust the assistive force automatically. The proposed optimization method is verified by the way of load-lifting experiments with three different conditions: without exoskeleton, with fixed air pressure and with optimized air pressure. Six subjects participated in the experiment and each experiment is performed in different day.

Compared with No-Exo condition and static assistance condition, the parameter-optimized waist exoskeleton averagely reduces muscle fatigue of the six subjects by 45.30 ± 29.14% and 30.94 ± 30.29%, respectively. The experimental results indicate that the proposed method is effective to reduce muscle fatigue during stoop lifting task.

This paper provides a novel cost function construction method based on muscle fatigue and muscle synergy for passive WAE stiffness optimization.

Internet technology allows millions of people to find high quality medical resources online, with the result that personal healthcare and medical services have become one of the fastest growing markets in China. Data relating to healthcare search behavior may provide insights that could lead to better provision of healthcare services. However, discrepancies often arise between terminologies derived from professional medical domain knowledge and the more colloquial terms that users adopt when searching for information about ailments. This can make it difficult to match healthcare queries with doctors’ keywords in online medical searches. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

To help address this problem, the authors propose a transfer learning using latent factor graph (TLLFG), which can learn the descriptions of ailments used in internet searches and match them to the most appropriate formal medical keywords.

Experiments show that the TLLFG outperforms competing algorithms in incorporating both medical domain knowledge and patient-doctor Q&A data from online services into a unified latent layer capable of bridging the gap between lay enquiries and professionally expressed information sources, and make more accurate analysis of online users’ symptom descriptions. The authors conclude with a brief discussion of some of the ways in which the model may support online applications and connect offline medical services.

The authors used an online medical searching application to verify the proposed model. The model can bridge users’ long-tailed description with doctors’ formal medical keywords. Online experiments show that TLLFG can significantly improve the searching experience of both users and medical service providers compared with traditional machine learning methods. The research provides a helpful example of the use of domain knowledge to optimize searching or recommendation experiences.

The authors use transfer learning to map online users’ long-tail queries onto medical domain knowledge, significantly improving the relevance of queries and keywords in a search system reliant on sponsored links.

Although an important facet of modernist architecture in which function plays a prominent role, building flexibility is not entirely a new concept. Its relevance transcends generations, allowing space and structure to evolve through time. This paper investigates the relationship among main building structures, infill elements, and space by studying examples in ancient Chinese architecture. It reveals the role of building owners, users, and craftsmen from a survey of historical documentation. In studying these examples, it is concluded that craftsmen in ancient China were involved not only during the construction phase but throughout the period of use as well. Thus, in select cases, the relationship between craftsmen and owners or users had been preserved for generations. Finally, this paper suggests potential strategies for the building industry and technology in the move towards sustainable development.

To present the state of the arts application of semantic web technologies in web portals and corresponding achievable improvements for identifying the potential improvement made by semantic web technology.

An evaluation scheme is proposed to investigate various web portals that make use of semantic web technologies in order to identify their strengths and weaknesses. This scheme consists of three layers: information access, information processing and grounding technologies. Two academic portals and two commercial portals are selected based on the definition of semantic web portal. Detailed evaluation based on the proposed scheme is conducted on these four select portals.

Semantic web technologies can definitely increase the information consistency and the information processing quality of web portals by using ontologies to model portal structure and consensus knowledge. Furthermore, semantic web services will be acting as the key technologies to lift current portals to next level.

This paper proposes an elaborated evaluation method for investigating various portals. It reveals the current status of semantic web applications in web portals.

This study aims to investigate the impacts of service category (utilitarian vs hedonic) on chosen degree of uniqueness (CDOU) and consumers' willingness to pay more (WTPM), as well as the moderating roles of consumers' narcissism trait (high vs low) and processing mode (rational vs experiential) on the relationship between service category and CDOU.

This study conducts one online experiment-questionnaire study and one between-subject lab experiment to test the hypotheses.

This study finds that consumers are more likely to choose unique choices in hedonic service customization. Consumers' CDOU has a positive effect on their attitudes toward WTPM. In addition, consumers' processing mode moderates the relationship between service category and CDOU.

The findings provide new insights into better understanding the factors affecting the choice of service customization and have significant practical implications. First, consumers' different desire for uniqueness of different service should not be neglected when examining the values of service customization. Second, high-level CDOU is quite prevalent for hedonic (vs utilitarian) service customization, especially for consumers with experiential processing mode.

While previous studies state “need for uniqueness” as a key characteristic of product customization in general, we extend it to intangible service customization and connect it with consumers' WTPM. In addition, the moderating role of individual trait and decision-making processing mode is also checked. Thus, the findings refine the existing understanding of the relationship between uniqueness and service customization.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the 2010 VIVO Conference.

Conference report.

VIVO is an open source, semantic web discovery platform for hosting information about researchers, their interests, activities, and accomplishments. The first annual VIVO Conference brought together a diverse group of researchers, developers, publishers, information system vendors, government agencies, and librarians – all united by the common goal of enabling research discovery and supporting collaboration among researchers.

This conference report is of interest to information professionals in academia, corporate, and governmental information centers and libraries.

This paper proposes an intact framework for building life cycle energy estimation (LCEE), which includes three major energy sources: embodied, operational and mobile.

A systematic review is conducted to summarize the selected 109 studies published during 2012–2021 related to quantifying building energy consumption and its major estimation methodologies, tools and key influence parameters of three energy sources.

Results show that the method limitations and the variety of potential parameters lead to significant energy estimation errors. An in-depth qualitative discussion is conducted to identify research knowledge gaps and future directions.

With societies and economies developing rapidly across the world, a large amount of energy is consumed at an alarming rate. Unfortunately, its huge environmental impacts have forced many countries to take energy issues as urgent social problems to be solved. Even though the construction industry, as the one of most important carbon contributors, has been constantly and academically active, researchers still have not arrived at a clear consensus for system boundaries of life cycle energy. Besides, there is a significant difference between the actual and estimated values in countless current and advanced energy estimation approaches in the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to explore some specific, current social phenomena in China that may influence consumers’ ethical beliefs and practices, focusing on how some top-down, social and political changes could shape consumer behavior that needs to be understood in the Chinese context.

Extensive literature was critically reviewed to explore recent macro-societal reforms in China and their impact on consumers’ (un)ethical practices.

The authors lay out how China, a government-led society, underwent a series of political reforms resulting in demographic shifts that differentiate it from its western, industrialized counterparts. The authors connect these societal changes with Chinese characteristics to consumers’ ethical evaluations, forming a new angle to understand consumer ethics in China. The authors also draw on two empirical examples to illustrate the argument.

While consumer ethics are often explained by either cultural factors or individual variations, the authors discuss how one’s ethical practice is shaped by one’s social position, which is a product of national-level public policy. The discussions have ramifications for the study of consumers’ social class and ethical practices because they take into account the elusive social positions and ambiguous social class consciousness of the Chinese population that have resulted from social mobility. The discussions may give practitioners a better understanding of the ethical rationale behind consumers’ changing lifestyles especially in the Chinese context.