Search results

This study aims to examine whether consumers’ lay theories of emotion play a moderating role between self-threat and their choice of threat-coping strategies (direct resolution and escapism) and product preference.

The present research uses the methods of experimental design and surveys to collect data and verify the hypotheses we assumed.

Study 1 indicates that in self-threatening situations, people who perceive emotions as fleeting (lasting) are more likely to use a threat-coping strategy of direct resolution (escapism). Study 2 demonstrates that people who believe emotions are fleeting are more likely to choose problem-solving products; people who believe emotions are lasting are more likely to choose emotion-enhancing products. Study 3 further demonstrates that the direct resolution (escapism) strategy plays a mediating role between the interaction effect and consumer preference for problem-solving products (emotion-enhancing products). Study 4 replicates the results of Study 2 by incorporating the manipulation of lay theories of emotion transience in a product evaluation context.

A limitation of the present research is that this paper puts focus on exploring the effects of self-view threat (e.g. intelligence and competence) on consumer product preferences. Another issue for future research is the extent to which emotion-transience theories hold for specific emotions. Given that distinct emotions of the same valence differ in their antecedent appraisals and that specific emotion could lead to different subsequent behaviors (Lerner and Keltner, 2000), future research may need to explore the roles of specific negative emotions triggered by self-threat in consumers’ product choosing behaviors. One potential direction for future research is to examine whether the perceived locus of control affects consumers’ choice of threat-coping strategies and product preferences.

Marketers could use product tactics for motivating consumers to restore their self-perceptions on the threatened attributes and address the self-threat, such as product attributes, advertising copy or promotional appeals that insert people who are more motivated to directly resolve the threat. Marketers can nudge consumers toward a direct resolution strategy by posting prompts such as, “I can do it!” For example, the slogan of Nike – “Just do it” and the 2012 award-winning campaign by Nike Spain have told consumers: “If something is burning you up, burn it up by running” (Allard and White, 2015), which suggests that consumers experiencing self-threat may resolve the negative self-discrepancy through the acquisition of the products in the advertisement. Another important implication suggested by the findings is that product consumption can be a way of helping consumers escape from self-threats. For example, the slogan of Coca-Cola – “Taste the feeling” resonates with consumers and stimulates their basic hedonic needs.

First, this research extends previous research by demonstrating that lay theories of emotion serve as a motivator of the selection of threat-coping strategies. Second, this research is conducive for literature to examine how differences in lay theories of emotion affect consumers’ product-choosing behaviors to cope with self-discrepancies. Third, the present research extends the broad marketing literature by differentiating problem-solving products from emotion-enhancing products.

The modern manufacturing industry has put forward higher requirements for the assembly accuracy of components with the development of the industrial technology. For precision assembly, the traditional assembly process study based on tolerance has had difficulty in meeting these requirements. Hence, the distribution of the form errors must be considered. The registration between the two mating surfaces with form errors determines the parts’ assembly position, and is the basis for the prediction and control of the assembly accuracy. This study aims to provide a new surfaces registration method which takes form errors into consideration.

This study presents a new registration approach based on the minimum potential energy. A unique set of contact points on mating surfaces that meet the actual conditions can be obtained and the spatial position of the assembled part is calculated.

The experimental results show that the calculated values are in good agreement with the experimental values. Furthermore, the root mean square error is within 2%, which proves the validity and accuracy of the approach.

This paper provides an effective and new method for precision assembly which takes form errors into consideration. The method can give the optimal solution of the contact points, which is more consistent with the actual assembly situation and provides a basis for predicting assembly accuracy.

For decades, financing constraints have been a major obstacle to corporate performance. Volumes have been written about the probable factors that can help firms alleviate such financial constraints. Nonetheless, empirical evidence concerning the various perspectives on how inventory control may influence financing constraints has been surprisingly scant. Using the resource- and region-based view as theoretical lenses, this study seeks to estimate the relationship between lean inventory, regional financial technology (fintech) and financing constraints.

Utilizing a large-scale sample of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in China's manufacturing sector, the authors empirically test their hypotheses by using hierarchical linear regression models with multiple high-dimensional fixed effects.

Results indicate that firms with higher levels of inventory leanness and those located in more fintech-developed regions are less likely to encounter financing constraints. Furthermore, inventory leanness and regional fintech ecosystem development interact with each other to mitigate financing constraints. Moreover, inventory leanness significantly decreases firms' financing constraints when the regional fintech ecosystem is highly developed.

The present research contributes to the literature on the interface of supply chain management and financial management. It also provides managerial implications for policymakers and SME stakeholders.

For autonomous vehicles, trajectory prediction of surrounding vehicles is beneficial to improving the situational awareness of dynamic and stochastic traffic environments, which is a crucial and indispensable element to realize highly automated driving.

In this paper, the overall framework consists of two parts: first, a novel driver characteristic and intention estimation (DCIE) model is built to indicate the higher-level information of the vehicle using its low-level motion variables; then, according to the estimation results of the DCIE model, a classified Gaussian process model is established for probabilistic vehicle trajectory prediction under different motion patterns.

The whole method is later applied and analyzed in the highway lane-change scenarios with the parameters of models learned from the public naturalistic driving data set. Compared with other traditional methods, the performance of this proposed approach is proved superior, demonstrated by the higher accuracy in the long prediction horizon and a more reasonable description of uncertainty.

This hierarchical approach is proposed to make trajectory prediction accurately both in the short term and long term, which can also deal with the uncertainties caused by the perception system or indeterminate vehicle behaviors.

The adsorption and acceleration behavior of 3-mercaptopropyl sulfonate (MPS) were investigated by electrochemical tests for microvia filling by copper electroplating.

The synergistic effects of one suppressor of propylene oxide ethylene oxide propylene oxide named PEP and MPS as the accelerator during copper electroplating were also investigated by electrochemical methods such as electrochemical impedance spectroscopy cyclic voltammetric stripping (CVS) and Galvanostatic measurements (GMs).

The research results suggest that the adsorption of MPS onto the Cu-RDE metal surface was a spontaneous process and the adsorbing of MPS on cathode was proposed to physical-chemistry adsorption in the plating formula. There was no potential difference (i.e. ?? = 0) of GMs until MPS was injected into the plating solution suggest that copper deposition is not diffusion-controlled in the presence of PEP–Cl–JGB.

A new composition of plating bath was found to be effective to perform bottom-up copper filling of microvias in the fabrication of PCB in electronic industries. The adsorption of MPS into the Cu-RDE metal surface was a spontaneous process and the adsorbing of MPS on cathode was studied by EIS and the results proposed to physical-chemistry adsorption in the plating formula. An optimal plating solution composed of CuSO4, H2SO4, chloride ions, PEP, MPS and JGB was obtained, and the microvia could be fully filled using the plating formula.

Crowdsourcing refers to a new business model in which enterprises or individuals publish tasks or problems, attracting freelancers or contributors to participate in solving tasks, submitting bids and allowing task seekers to choose the final solution. How to attract more quantity and quality of contributors to submit their solutions through a crowdsourcing platform has become a vital question.

In this study, the authors use web crawling to obtain 43,265 effective tasks in EPWK website (www.epwk.com) to probe how to elevate the quantity and quality of contributors via task reward design. This study uses the hierarchical linear model to probe the research questions.

Results show that, with the increase of task reward, the quantity of contributors goes up first and then goes down (inverted U shape), whereas the quality of contributors goes down first and then goes up (U sharp). Moreover, the authors investigate the moderating effects of another task design attribute, task duration. This study finds that task duration weakens the effect of task reward on the quantity of contributors while strengthening the effects of task reward on the quality of contributors.

First, this study theoretically probes two key aspects of task performance, namely, the quantity and quality of contributors, which expand the scope of task performance evaluation. Second, this study reconciles previous concern about the relationship of task reward and performance, which is different from previous studies that have paid more attention to the single perspective of their relationship. Finally, the authors investigate the moderating effects of task duration, which further uncover the mechanism behind task reward and performance, that is, the quantity and quality of task contributors.

Aiming at the unbalancing problem of the neutral equilibrium characteristic for balance hoist in the loading process, the purpose of this paper is to establish a dynamic equation for multi-body using the Lagrange method. It is not difficult to find that the deformation of the boom system has a great influence on the stability of the whole system, through the simulation analysis of the multi-rigid-body system model.

Aiming at the unbalancing problem of the neutral equilibrium characteristic for balance hoist in the loading process, the dynamic equation for multi-body is established by Lagrange method. It is not difficult to find that the deformation of the boom system has a great influence on the stability of the whole system, through the simulation analysis of the multi-rigid-body system model.

Result shows that different weights have a great influence on the force deformation and vibration of the boom system of balance hoist. With the increase in lifting weight, the force and deformation of the boom system increase; lead to balance hoist unique with characteristics of indifferent equilibrium, proportional amplification, labor-saving operation will be lost, easy to cause the imbalance of balance hoist. Therefore, the appropriate increase in the basic length of the compression bar, reduction in the basic length of the tension rod and the increase stiffness of the boom system can improve the stability of balance hoist, which provides a reference for the optimization and manufacture of the balance hoist structure.

The simulation model was established by analyzing the working principle and the load condition of the balance hoist, and the simulation and dynamic characteristics of three typical working conditions are analyzed by using ADAMS; result shows that different weights have a great influence on the force deformation and vibration of the boom system of balance hoist. With the increase in lifting weight, the force and deformation of a boom system increase, lead to balance hoist unique with characteristics of indifferent equilibrium, proportional amplification, labor-saving operation will be lost, easy to cause the imbalance of balance hoist.

The purpose of this paper is to establish a rigid–flexible coupling model of wind turbine disc brake to simulate the actual working condition of the wind turbine brake and to study the dynamic characteristics of the compensation mechanism under different friction coefficients and braking force. It provides reference for the structure design and optimization of the compensation mechanism (compensation brake wear) in the wind turbine brake.

Based on multi-body contact dynamics theory, the rigid‒flexible coupling dynamic model of wind turbine brakes with compensation mechanism is established, in which the contact process of the components in the compensation mechanism and the phenomenon of rotation and return are described dynamically, and the rotation angle of the compensation nut and the axial displacement response of the compensation screw are calculated under different parameters.

The analysis results show that the braking reliability of the brake compensation mechanism can be effectively improved by increasing the friction coefficient of threads or increasing the friction of push rod contact surface; increasing the braking force can also improve the reliability of brake compensation mechanism, but when the braking force comes over a critical value, the effect of braking force on the reliability of the brake is very small. The braking test verifies the effectiveness of the simulation results.

Analyzing the influence of compensation mechanism on braking reliability in the braking process is of great practical significance for improving the braking efficiency and process safety of wind turbine brake.

This paper aims to carry out assembly variation analysis for mechanisms with compliant joints by considering deformations induced by manufactured deviations. Such an analysis procedure extends the application area of direct linearization method (DLM) to compliant mechanisms and also illustrates the dimensional interaction within multi-loop compliant structures.

By applying DLM to both geometrical equations and Lagrange’s equations of the second kind, an analytical deviation modeling method for mechanisms with compliant joints are proposed and further used for statistical assembly variation analysis. The precision of this method is verified by comparing it with finite element simulation and traditional DLM.

A new modeling method is proposed to represent kinematic relationships between joint deformations and parts/components deviations. Based on a case evaluation, the computational efficiency is improved greatly while the modeling accuracy is maintained at more than 94% rate comparing with the benchmark finite element simulation.

The Equilibrium Equations of Incremental Forces derived from Lagrange’s equations are proposed to quantitatively represent the relationships between manufactured deviations and assembly deformations. The present method extends the application area of DLM to compliant structures, such as automobile suspension systems and some Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the influence mechanism of the word-of-mouth reputation of influencers.

This study explored word-of-mouth reputation from four characteristics of information source of influencers: credibility, professionalism, interactivity and attractiveness. The grounded theory was used to extract the characteristic indicators of influencers and used questionnaire surveys to obtain 218 valid samples. The fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) was used for the configuration analysis.

The results revealed the following: (1) a causal asymmetric correlation exists between the driving mechanism of high word-of-mouth reputation and non-high word-of-mouth reputation; (2) influencers matching high word-of-mouth reputation comprises potential, developmental and almighty types, whereas live streaming influencer matching non-high word-of-mouth reputation comprises elementary and groping types; and (3) all factors must be combined to play a role, and neutral permutations of two solutions were found among the three overall solutions to attain high word-of-mouth reputation; (4) the combination of high user activity and high exposure is the core configuration that results in high word-of-mouth reputation.

This study provides recommendation for consumers, live streamers, brand and e-commerce platform on how to promote the sustainable and healthy development of influencer marketing.

This study focused on elucidating how the characteristics of information source affect the word-of-mouth reputation of influencers and have a reference value for the research on word-of-mouth reputation in the context of live commerce.