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(1 - 6 of 6)
- Title
- Consumer Tradeoffs in Material and Experiential Purchases.
- Creator
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Urumutta Hewage, Ganga, He, Xin, Rugar, Yael Zemack -, Wang, Ze, Sivo, Stephen, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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Material and experiential purchases have gained much attention in psychology and consumer behavior alike (Carter and Gilovich 2010; Nicolao, Irwin, and Goodman 2009; Rosenzweig and Gilovich 2012; Tully, Hershfield, and Meyvis 2015). In three essays, I examine the theoretical and practical implications of consumer tradeoffs in this domain. In the first essay, I explore how regulatory focus influences the tradeoffs between material and experiential purchases. Results of five laboratory studies...
Show moreMaterial and experiential purchases have gained much attention in psychology and consumer behavior alike (Carter and Gilovich 2010; Nicolao, Irwin, and Goodman 2009; Rosenzweig and Gilovich 2012; Tully, Hershfield, and Meyvis 2015). In three essays, I examine the theoretical and practical implications of consumer tradeoffs in this domain. In the first essay, I explore how regulatory focus influences the tradeoffs between material and experiential purchases. Results of five laboratory studies and two field studies (using Instagram and Google Trends data) suggest that, as the regulatory focus shifts from prevention to promotion, there is a higher likelihood of choosing experiential purchases and such an effect is driven by focus of attention. The second essay examines how self-construal may shape material-experiential tradeoffs. Results show that independent self-view develops a higher preference towards experiential purchases than interdependent self-view(-)an effect driven by individual's uniqueness consideration. I demonstrate this effect across seven experimental studies and a field study (using United Nations data). I also show that type of decision moderates the results. The third essay investigates how purchase type influences consumers' preference for mystery options. Five lab studies and a field study (using Groupon data) provide evidence that, when making experiential purchases consumers favor mystery options than when making material purchases. Such an effect is driven by the need for excitement. Additionally, moderated by priming of excitement and target of the decision (self vs. other). Together, these three essays contribute to a better understanding of tradeoffs in these two types of purchases. My findings add to the work on regulatory focus, self-construal, and consumer judgements and decision making. I also offer managerial insights to develop effective marketing strategy.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2019
- Identifier
- CFE0007547, ucf:52605
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0007547
- Title
- The Effects of Facial Cues on Consumer Judgment and Decision-Making.
- Creator
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Liu, Fan, He, Xin, Wang, Ze, Mao, Huifang, Sivo, Stephen, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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This dissertation investigates the roles of facial cues in consumer behavior. Specifically, the research examines the effect of facial structural resemblance, facial expressions, and other perceptual cues(-)in both individual and group settings(-)on consumer judgment and decision-making. Essay 1 examines the influence of facial resemblance on consumers' product purchase likelihood. This effect is moderated by consumers' mental construal, such that the effect of increased facial resemblance on...
Show moreThis dissertation investigates the roles of facial cues in consumer behavior. Specifically, the research examines the effect of facial structural resemblance, facial expressions, and other perceptual cues(-)in both individual and group settings(-)on consumer judgment and decision-making. Essay 1 examines the influence of facial resemblance on consumers' product purchase likelihood. This effect is moderated by consumers' mental construal, such that the effect of increased facial resemblance on product purchase likelihood occurs among consumers with high-level construals but not among those with low-level construals. Results of three experimental studies show that increased facial resemblance among team members enhances the perceived entitativity of the group, which in turn leads to more favorable intention of purchasing the product offered by the group. Essay 2 investigates the differential effects of recipients' group entitativity on two types of donation (time vs. money). Through three studies, the research demonstrates that high (versus low) group entitativity among the recipients increases donation of time but decreases donation of money. Such differential effects on donation of time versus money are driven by consumers' emotional or cognitive well-being associated with time or money donations. In essay 3, the effect of smile intensity on customer behavior is shown to be moderated by power and salience of ulterior motive. When employees' ulterior motive is not salient to customers, low-power customers evaluate the employee with intensified smiles more favorably compared to high-power customers. In contrast, when ulterior motive is made salient, high-power rather than low-power customers react more positively to smile intensity. Results show that the interactive effects between smile, power, and ulterior motive are driven by customers' warmth and competence perceptions. Collectively, this dissertation focuses on consumers' face-based judgments of individuals and teams, and investigates how such facial cues might influence consumers' attitude, purchase intention, and prosocial behavior.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2015
- Identifier
- CFE0005828, ucf:50930
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005828
- Title
- Consumer Engagement in Travel-related Social Media.
- Creator
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Li, Xu, Wang, Youcheng, Robinson, Edward, Kwun, David, Nusair, Khaldoon, He, Xin, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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The term of (")consumer engagement(") is extensively used in the digital era. It is believed that engaged consumers play an important role in products/services referral and recommendation, new product/service development and experience/value co-creation. Although the notion of consumer engagement sounds compelling, it is not fully developed in theory. Different interpretations coexist, resulting in confusion and misuse of the concept. This study attempts to define consumer engagement and...
Show moreThe term of (")consumer engagement(") is extensively used in the digital era. It is believed that engaged consumers play an important role in products/services referral and recommendation, new product/service development and experience/value co-creation. Although the notion of consumer engagement sounds compelling, it is not fully developed in theory. Different interpretations coexist, resulting in confusion and misuse of the concept. This study attempts to define consumer engagement and develop a conceptual framework of consumer engagement, addressing antecedents of consumer engagement in online context. Moreover, some situational and social media usage-related factors are incorporated into the framework. A set of propositions are presented based on literature review and the conceptual framework to illustrate the relationship between consumer engagement and related factors. To provide empirical evidence for the conceptual model, an online survey is conducted. Participants complete the self-administered survey by answering questions concerning their online experience with the travel-related social media website they visit most. Two-step structural equation modeling is employed to analyze the data. The results show that both community experience and community identification have significant and positive relationship with consumer engagement. Community experience is also a strong predictor of community identification. Attitude toward using social media and travel involvement influence the relationship between consumer engagement and its antecedents.With focus on the interactive and experiential nature of consumer engagement, this study expands current understanding of consumer engagement and provides insights for hospitality and tourism businesses regarding how to engage consumers through travel-related social media.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2013
- Identifier
- CFE0004878, ucf:49657
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004878
- Title
- Taming Wild Faces: Web-Scale, Open-Universe Face Identification in Still and Video Imagery.
- Creator
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Ortiz, Enrique, Shah, Mubarak, Sukthankar, Rahul, Da Vitoria Lobo, Niels, Wang, Jun, Li, Xin, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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With the increasing pervasiveness of digital cameras, the Internet, and social networking, there is a growing need to catalog and analyze large collections of photos and videos. In this dissertation, we explore unconstrained still-image and video-based face recognition in real-world scenarios, e.g. social photo sharing and movie trailers, where people of interest are recognized and all others are ignored. In such a scenario, we must obtain high precision in recognizing the known identities,...
Show moreWith the increasing pervasiveness of digital cameras, the Internet, and social networking, there is a growing need to catalog and analyze large collections of photos and videos. In this dissertation, we explore unconstrained still-image and video-based face recognition in real-world scenarios, e.g. social photo sharing and movie trailers, where people of interest are recognized and all others are ignored. In such a scenario, we must obtain high precision in recognizing the known identities, while accurately rejecting those of no interest.Recent advancements in face recognition research has seen Sparse Representation-based Classification (SRC) advance to the forefront of competing methods. However, its drawbacks, slow speed and sensitivity to variations in pose, illumination, and occlusion, have hindered its wide-spread applicability. The contributions of this dissertation are three-fold: 1. For still-image data, we propose a novel Linearly Approximated Sparse Representation-based Classification (LASRC) algorithm that uses linear regression to perform sample selection for l1-minimization, thus harnessing the speed of least-squares and the robustness of SRC. On our large dataset collected from Facebook, LASRC performs equally to standard SRC with a speedup of 100-250x.2. For video, applying the popular l1-minimization for face recognition on a frame-by-frame basis is prohibitively expensive computationally, so we propose a new algorithm Mean Sequence SRC (MSSRC) that performs video face recognition using a joint optimization leveraging all of the available video data and employing the knowledge that the face track frames belong to the same individual. Employing MSSRC results in a speedup of 5x on average over SRC on a frame-by-frame basis.3. Finally, we make the observation that MSSRC sometimes assigns inconsistent identities to the same individual in a scene that could be corrected based on their visual similarity. Therefore, we construct a probabilistic affinity graph combining appearance and co-occurrence similarities to model the relationship between face tracks in a video. Using this relationship graph, we employ random walk analysis to propagate strong class predictions among similar face tracks, while dampening weak predictions. Our method results in a performance gain of 15.8% in average precision over using MSSRC alone.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2014
- Identifier
- CFE0005536, ucf:50313
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005536
- Title
- Printable Carbon Nanotube Based Multifunctional Nanocomposites for Strain Sensing and Self-heating.
- Creator
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Wang, Xin, Gou, Jihua, Challapalli, Suryanarayana, Xu, Yunjun, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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The unique properties of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) represent a potential for developing a piezo-resistive strain sensor and a resistive heating sheet with a smart structure. Conventional fabrication techniques of CNT based nanocomposites such as molding, casting or spray coating lack the ability to control the geometry and properties of fabricated composites. In order to meet the various requirements of strain sensing or self-heating applications, nanocomposites with complex geometry and...
Show moreThe unique properties of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) represent a potential for developing a piezo-resistive strain sensor and a resistive heating sheet with a smart structure. Conventional fabrication techniques of CNT based nanocomposites such as molding, casting or spray coating lack the ability to control the geometry and properties of fabricated composites. In order to meet the various requirements of strain sensing or self-heating applications, nanocomposites with complex geometry and controllable properties are in high demand. Digital printing technique is able to fabricate CNT films with precisely controlled geometry with the help of computer aided design, and their properties could also be controlled by adjusting the printing parameters. The objective of this study is to investigate the printing-structure-property relationship of CNT based multifunctional nanocomposites fabricated by digitally controlled spray deposition process for strain sensing and self-heating. A spray deposition modeling (SDM) printer that uses a 12-array inkjet nozzle attached to an x-y plotter was developed for the fabrication of CNT layers. Most of previously-reported CNT based nanocomposite strain sensors only have limited stretchability and sensitivity for measuring diverse human motions. Additionally, strain sensors fabricated by traditional techniques are only capable of measuring strain in a single direction, but for monitoring human motion with complicated strain condition, strain sensors that can measure strain from multi-direction are favorable. In this dissertation, highly stretchable (in excess of 45% strain) and sensitive (gauge factor of 35.75) strain sensors with tunable strain gauge factors were fabricated by incorporating CNT layers into polymer substrate using SDM printing technique. The cyclic loading-unloading test results revealed that the composite strain sensors exhibited excellent long-term durability. Due to the flexibility of the printing technique, rosette-typed sensors were fabricated to monitor complicated human motions. These superior sensing capabilities of the fabricated nanocomposites offer potential applications in wearable strain sensors. Resistive heating properties of CNT based nanocomposites were also investigated. The electrically resistive heating of these composites can be a desirable stimulus to activate the shape memory effect of polymer matrix. CNT based nanocomposites fabricated by traditional techniques showed a slow heating rate and same shape recovery ratio at different locations in nanocomposites. However, from the practical applications like smart skin or smart tooling perspective, programmable shape recovery ratio at specified locations are desirable. In this dissertation, the CNT based nanocomposites with a fast heating rate and controllable maximum surface temperature were fabricated using SDM technique. The study on the shape memory effect of nanocomposites showed that their shape recoverability was approximately 100% taking 30s under a low voltage of 40V. It is worth noting that through programming the number of printed CNT layers at different locations, the shape recovery rate could be controlled and localized actuation with the desired recovery ratio was achieved. The high efficiency of heating coupling with wide adjustability of surface temperature and shape recovery ratio at specified locations make the fabricated nanocomposites a promising candidate for electrical actuation applications.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2017
- Identifier
- CFE0006819, ucf:52892
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0006819
- Title
- PROCESSING AND CHARACTERIZATION OF MULTIFUNCTIONAL THERMOPLASTIC NANOCOMPOSITE FILMS.
- Creator
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Wang, Xin, Gou, Jihua, Challapalli, Suryanarayana, Xu, Yunjun, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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Nanoparticles reinforced polymer composite films have been widely studied for their enhanced mechanical, electrical and thermal properties compared with host polymer matrix. However, most research was conducted on incorporation of nanoparticles in polymer films to improve single property and there is a lack of research on the multifunctional polymer nanocomposite films. In this work, a scalable and continuous spray deposition process was developed for the production of nanoparticles...
Show moreNanoparticles reinforced polymer composite films have been widely studied for their enhanced mechanical, electrical and thermal properties compared with host polymer matrix. However, most research was conducted on incorporation of nanoparticles in polymer films to improve single property and there is a lack of research on the multifunctional polymer nanocomposite films. In this work, a scalable and continuous spray deposition process was developed for the production of nanoparticles reinforced multifunctional thermoplastic nanocomposite films. This process is capable of making a thin sheet of thermoplastic nanocomposites with high nanoparticle loadings. The smallest thickness can be 40um.The objective of this study is to design and optimize the thermoplastic nanocomposite films by utilizing nanoclay and helical carbon nanotube for multifunctional application: a) high electrical conductivity and thermal stability. Helical carbon nanotube paper based thermoplastic polyurethane nanocomposite films have been studied. The electrical conductivity and thermal stability of nanocomposite films increase a lot due to the incorporation of helical carbon nanotube paper with high electrical and thermal conductivity. The peculiar helical configuration of carbon nanotubes could greatly improve the interfacial bonding between carbon nanotubes and polymer matrix. b)High wear resistance and thermal stability. A nanoclay reinforced thermoplastic polyurethane nanocomposite coating was applied on the surface of leather. Due to the high hardness and thermal stability of nanoclay, the leather coated with nanocomposite film showed an improvement of wear resistance and thermal stability.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2014
- Identifier
- CFE0005734, ucf:50105
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005734
