Meaning In Epic Research Articles

Exploring consumer purchase intention in cross-boundary retail alliances with gamified OMO virtual-physical fusion services

The emergence of digitalisation and COVID-19 have induced notable lifestyle changes. For example, contactless online-offline engagement remains popular even after the reopening of physical venues. This demand has led organisations to advance their technologies via gamification and improve customer experiences and involvement. Hence, this study examined how retail store cross-boundary alliances and gamified marketing methods impact the implementation of online-merge-offline (OMO) virtual-physical fusion services from customers' viewpoints. An evaluation model was developed by integrating Chou's eight-core Octalysis framework for gamification and decision-making approaches. Furthermore, an online survey performed in Taiwan generated 550 valid responses. The empirical data were subsequently analysed with DEMATEL to determine the interconnections among evaluation indicators and construct an influential network relation map (INRM). The indicators' influence weights were ascertained via DANP. Unpredictability (Unp) was ranked first, followed by avoidance (Avo), epic meaning (Epi), scarcity (Sca), empowerment (Emp), social influence (Soc), ownership (Own), and accomplishment (Acc). Both Acc and Unp were the most and least significant factors, respectively. Optimal gamified marketing approaches positively influenced customers' repurchase intentions, shopping experiences, and retail loyalty. Overall, retail stores seeking to apply cross-boundary alliances and gamified marketing methods can benefit from the empirical outcomes to incorporate efficient OMO virtual-physical fusion services.

A game-based learning system based on octalysis gamification framework to promote employees’ Japanese learning

Using digital learning to assist in-service employees in promoting language skills has become an efficient way that can save training costs and profits. However, the employees’ language learning performance often is not as expected due to low learning motivation, willingness, and persistence. Therefore, this study developed a game-based Japanese learning system based on the Octalysis gamification framework proposed by Chou (2016) to facilitate enterprise employees’ learning effectiveness of Japanese as a second language (L2). All the eight core drives of the Octalysis gamification framework were adopted in the design of the learning functions and gamification mechanisms, including “epic meaning and calling,” “development and accomplishment,” “empowerment of creativity and feedback,” “ownership and possession,” “social influence and relatedness,” “scarcity and impatience,” “unpredictability and curiosity,” and “loss and avoidance.” This study used a true experimental design and recruited 54 Taiwanese employees from a Taiwan branch of an international Japanese business company to conduct a two-week experiment. The research participants were randomly assigned as the experimental and control groups respectively, using a Japanese learning system with or without a game-based design to support their Japanese learning. This study confirmed that the game-based Japanese learning system could significantly enhance the learners’ engagement in learning behaviors, learning performance, learning motivation, and immersion experience. In addition, for most learning functions designed by applying the core drives regarded as intrinsic motivators in the Octalysis gamification framework, the more frequently the learners used the functions, the better they performed in learning performance. Moreover, several learning functions designed by employing positive or negative motivators also had significant positive correlations between the number of use and learning performance. This study contributes to the digital game-based language learning field by applying the Octalysis gamification framework to design an effective game-based Japanese learning system for company employees and examine the correlations between the use of the learning functions and learning performance.

User Motivation Level Analysis of SME Collaboration Gamification

One of the problems of SME is the low motivation to collaborate; the lack of research on exploring the motivation to collaborate is an issue that needs to be focused on solving. Objectives. This research aims to explore the level and type of motivation that influences SME's interest in collaborating to provide new insights for SME managers to apply appropriate treatment in developing collaborative activities. This study analyses six octalysis core drives that affect user interest in the use of SME collaboration gamification applications involving 293 SME respondents in the East Java Province. The research method is descriptive and quantitative, using Smart PLS, with a path analysis and analysis model. This study formulates six hypotheses to determine the effect of six core drives on using the collaborative gamification system. The results showed that the four constructs had a p-value less than 0.05 and a T-Statistic value greater than 1.96, while the other two constructs produced the opposite value. This finding reveals that four core drives (Epic Meaning, Development, Social Influence, and Avoidance) affect user interest in using collaborative gamification applications. In contrast, two core drives (Ownership and Unpredictable) do not affect it. The implication of this study is a recommendation for developers of collaboration-gamification systems to consider the results of this hypothesis, especially the role of core-drive catalysis as a reference in revising or developing collaborative gamification systems. Future work could apply the TAM model to analyze the technology acceptance rate of this system.

Strengthening women empowerment through i-docs: Alternative forms of participation and civic engagement in the feminist movement

The main objective of this research is to explore how i-docs motivate and drive citizen engagement in a manner that sustains and reinforces the sense of belonging to the feminist movement. Drawing upon the eight core drives represented by each side of the Octalysis methodology, the purpose of this study is to identify the motivational elements that push citizens to participate in feminist causes and to be concerned about different feminist issues. Using a quantitative methodology, our sample comprises three feminist documentaries that enable different levels of interaction and participation: She Is Beautiful When She Is Angry, as a closed i-doc; En la brecha, as a semi-closed i-doc; and Las sinsombrero, as a semi-open i-doc. The results show that the most powerful motivational element in the three i-docs is the ‘epic meaning and calling’ core drive.

A long herding trip. Amarsana Ulzytuev

Devoted to Amarsana Ulzytuev, one of the most fascinating contemporary poets, A. Uvitsky’s article examines his work in the contexts of modern Russian and the little researched Buryat poetry and looks at the results of his pet project – to establish anaphora as the regular accentual rhyme for Russian poetry. The author admits that Ulzytuev’s idea to introduce the regular anaphoric sound to Russian poetry, as detailed in his books Anaphoras [Anafory] (2013) and New Anaphoras [Novye anafory] (2016), is theoretically viable. But more than its ongoing implementation, he is interested in Ulzytuev’s creative evolution: the poet’s oeuvre is typified by a natural combination of two poetic cultures – one Russo-European and the other Buryat- Mongolian, according to P. Basinsky. In Uvitsky’s view, the archaic manner of the Buryat-Mongolian poetics, realized through the use of anaphora, among other things, is not inconsistent with the deep and sophisticated European poetics, with an epic meaning expanded and enhanced by the poetic sound championed by Ulzytuev.

ХАРЧОВИЙ КОД ДАВНЬОЇ УКРАЇНСЬКОЇ ЛІТЕРАТУРНОЇ ПАРОДІЇ

This article considers food images as a means of comic literary play and explains its functioning principles in the parodies of the XVIII century. Study performs the motive analysis comparing old Ukrainian literature material, resembling folkloric pieces and West-European medieval parody texts, which are much similar to samples of baroque vernacular writing. The analysis implies scholarly concepts connected with literary and cultural understanding of the role and meaning of the parody and literary mockery. The article also provides an explanation of the food images semantic variety in the parodies and its relation to ritual feasting patterns. The comic potential of food elements is explored through functional analysis of incongruous situations, as well as methods of contrast, exaggeration and lucid displacement. The food code of the parody rests upon the comic replacement of the exclusive sacral or epic meaning with daily and casual acts of eating, feeding or cooking. Such incompatibility is embodied in a wide range of images, for instance «Christmas as a sausage festival», «feast of saints», «The boozers’ Mass», «praise to the tavern», «dumplings-martyrs», «edible weapons» and so on. In spite of their comic properties these topsy-turvy images reveal profound link between acts of eating and sacral ceremonies, between food and understanding of divine. Such humorous plays also very wittily and accurately show a culinary transformation as the sacred history of suffering. To conclude, the detailed semantic and functional analysis of food image has brought to light the fundamental properties of a parody literature, which aims not at criticizing or mocking by imitation, but at confirmation and helping to comprehend. It is also assumed that similar humorous food motives in Ukrainian baroque and West-European medieval literary traditions could prove the presence of a general food code of the parody.