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The purpose of this paper is to explore how to use social media in e-government to strengthen interactivity between government and the general public.

Categorizing the determinants to interactivity covering depth and breadth into two aspects that are the structural features and the content features, this study employs general linear model and ANOVA method to analyse 14,910 posts belonged to the top list of the 96 most popular government accounts of Sina, one of the largest social media platforms in China.

The main findings of the research are that both variables of the ratio of multimedia elements, and the ratio of external links have positive effects on the breadth of interactivity, while the ratio of multimedia features, and the ratio of originality have significant effects on the depth of interactivity.

The contributions are as follows. First, the authors analyse the properties and the topics of government posts to draw a rich picture of how local governments use the micro-blog as a communications channel to interact with the public. Second, the authors conceptualize the government online interactivity in terms of the breadth and depth. Third, the authors identify factors that will enhance the interactivity from two aspects: structural features and content features. Lastly, the authors offer suggestions to local governments on how to strengthen the e-government interactivity in social media.

The paper examines the cultural differences in consumers' evaluations of vertical brand extensions.

A 2 (extension types: upward, downward) × 2 (nationality: USA, China) × 2 (ownership: owner, non-owner) between-subjects design with thinking styles as a covariate was employed to test consumers' evaluations of vertical brand extensions. A total of 228 subjects from the US and 194 from China participated in the two experimental studies.

The paper finds that consumers prefer downward extensions to upward extensions. Furthermore, Chinese consumers have even more favorable evaluations of downward extension products than do American consumers. In addition, analytic thinkers exhibit a stronger ownership effect than holistic thinkers.

The research contributes to the understanding of culture differences in vertical brand extension evaluations.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the dependence of flexible-electronics properties on the metal conductor parameters, such as the width, thickness, connection length and inner meander radius of the conductor.

This paper uses the finite element method to simulate flexible electronics with a copper conductor attached to polyimide substrate under tension, by using different parameters of the conductor.

By careful variation of copper conductor parameters, the authors obtain an optimized structure that can undergo large deformations with small stress concentrations, lending convenience for packaging.

The authors have developed an optimization method for selecting metal conductor parameters in flexible electronics.

The aim of this research is to examine the application of the stereotype content model (SCM) in the field of marketing from macro (the country of origin), meso- (corporate image) and micro (service providers, brands, advertising and promotions) levels.

This paper collects, reviews and summarizes the relevant literature, and prospects future research directions from three levels on this research topic.

First, the authors contend that competence primacy popularizes in the early work but warmth becomes more influential recently. Second, they identify and discuss two doubts of the SCM in marketing, namely the moral dimension and the link between brands as intentional agents framework (BIAF) and the brand personality theory. Finally, they suggest several research avenues for the use of SCM in marketing research, including research on nation branding, emerging global brands and Confucianist cultures at macro level, artificial intelligence and warmth-as-competence strategy at meso-level, and brand personality and the brand animal logo at micro level.

As an established framework in social psychology, the SCM has been increasingly applied in marketing research and a literature review in this light appears timely. This paper conducts for the first time a comprehensive review of the SCM in the marketing field on three levels, projects promising research directions, and thus contributes to the academia of marketing.

Drawing on engagement theory, this study aims to examine how leader–member relationships, including on-work relationship (leader–member exchange [LMX]) and off-work relationship (leader–member guanxi [LMG]), influence employees’ promotive and prohibitive voice. Furthermore, the study uses procedural justice as the moderator to distinguish the effects of LMG and LMX on employees’ psychological states and voice through a mediated moderation model.

The authors use a sample from a private and local company in Southern China to test their theoretical model.

The study finds that both LMG and LMX have positive effects on employees’ voice behavior through employees’ psychological states (psychological meaningfulness and psychological safety).

In a Chinese context, leaders have a more direct and powerful influence on employees than their counterparts in the Western society. Thus, the findings of LMX and LMG may not be generalizable to a Western context. A possible extension is to examine and compare the effects of social context (e.g., off-work leader–member relationship) on voice between the East and the West.

One important implication is that off-work relationship should be used by managers to encourage employee voice.

This study enriches the antecedents of voice with a new dimension of leader–member relationship, namely, LMG.

For the large-scale power grid monitoring system equipment, its working environment is increasingly complex and the probability of fault or failure of the monitoring system is gradually increasing. This paper proposes a fault classification algorithm based on Gaussian mixture model (GMM), which can complete the automatic classification of fault and the elimination of fault sources in the monitoring system.

The algorithm first defines the GMM and obtains the detection value of the fault classification through a method based on the causal Mason Young Tracy (MYT) decomposition under each normal distribution in the GMM. Then, the weight value of GMM is used to calculate weighted classification value of fault detection and separation, and by comparing the actual control limits with the classification result of GMM, the fault classification results are obtained.

The experiment on the defined non-thermostatic continuous stirred-tank reactor model shows that the algorithm proposed in this paper is superior to the traditional algorithm based on the causal MYT decomposition in fault detection and fault separation.

The proposed algorithm fundamentally solves the problem of fault detection and fault separation in large-scale systems and provides support for troubleshooting and identifying fault sources.

This research is designed to explore Chinese customers' wine purchasing behaviours and to investigate the effect of country‐of‐origin (COO) information on their wine evaluations.

Data were collected from the shopping malls both in Shanghai and Hangzhou, China, using the systematic sampling method. A total 148 usable questionnaires were returned and analysed by SPSS.

The results confirmed that Chinese customers consider COO as the most important factor in their wine evaluation when a single‐cue approach is applied. When a multi‐cue approach is used however the results showed that there was no significant difference in the importance in COO and price as indicators. This research also revealed some salient characteristics of Chinese consumers buying behaviour associated with Chinese culture. When the Chinese are evaluating wine for gift giving and consuming wine in public, they tend to attach more importance to COO than to other variables and are more likely to purchase foreign or imported wine instead of domestic brands.

Only respondents from Shanghai and Hangzhou were chosen, limiting the representativeness of the sample. Future research will be benefited from increased sample size from different geographical regions and by examining the relationship between the consumer demographic characteristics and the COO effects.

The results from this study stand in contrast to previous studies relating to the role of COO in product evaluation. It illustrates the importance of culture in relation to COO.

The purpose of this paper is to examine consumers' perception of brand functions in an emerging market: China. The study also aims to investigate the impact of brand functions on brand loyalty.

A two‐phase study was conducted. The first phase consisted of 15 personal in‐depth interviews while the structured questionnaires were used to collect data in the second stage and a total of 256 consumers participated in this study.

The study finds general support that consumer perceives both utilitarian and expressive functions of the brand. Specifically, the results of the research show that for Chinese consumers, brands accomplish various functions such as “recall of past experiences”, “quality sign” and “identify”. Moreover, “recall of past experiences” is a unique brand function for Chinese consumers and has a positive impact on brand loyalty.

To the authors' knowledge, this paper is the first to shed light on examining consumer perceptions of brand functions in the Chinese market.

Intangible cultural heritage products (ICHP) in this paper refer to the products made with handicrafts listed as intangible cultural heritage. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of consumer cultural identity and consumer knowledge on purchase intentions of ICHP, as well as the role of the perceived scarcity for such effects.

Three between-participants experiments were conducted to investigate the effect of cultural identity on purchase intention of ICHP and the underlying mechanism of the effect.

The results show that cultural identity has a positive influence on ICHP purchase intention, and this effect is stronger for consumers with higher level of consumer knowledge. Furthermore, perceived scarcity underlies such effect, but the scarcity account holds only for handmade ICHP, not for machine-manufactured products.

The current research suggests that ICHP should remain handmade to preserve their scarcity as a distinctive feature. Additionally, business practitioners handling ICHP should target consumers of high cultural identity, and/or provide iconic cues to activate their cultural identity situationally. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of consumer education programs about ICHP-related knowledge in enhancing the cultural identity effect.

This paper explores systematically the conditions and process of consumers' responses toward ICHP for the first time. Besides, it builds on accessibility-diagnosticity framework and provides novel knowledge about the functioning of consumer cultural identity. It also enriches our understanding of perceived scarcity from the supply side.