Mass Market Research Articles

Smartly Packaged

Smartly Packaged

How much is enough? Government subsidies in supporting green product development

This paper tackles the problem of a monopolist firm that is considering designing products with environmental qualities while facing significant research and development costs. A mathematical formulation is adopted to model the impact of government subsidy on the firm's choice between mass marketing, where only one standard product serves the entire market, and market segmentation, in which the firm develops ordinary and green products for two market segments. The firm's behavior in reaction to the subsidies is analyzed through a two-stage Stackelberg game. The obtained results reveal that the subsidy level does not affect the relationships between the environmental qualities of the manufactured products under different marketing strategies when the green market is not strong. Our analyses also demonstrate how an optimal subsidy level should be selected to maximize the social welfare, and how this optimal subsidy is impacted by various parameters such as the magnitude of the development cost.

Estimation and impact of GLONASS inter-frequency code bias in single-frequency precise point positioning

The current GLONASS system suffers from the inter-frequency code bias (IFCB) and the inter-frequency phase bias (IFPB) due to its employment of the frequency division multiple access (FDMA) technology. The IFCB affects the code observation’s accuracy and further degrades the positioning accuracy, while the IFPB can be absorbed into the float ambiguity term. With increasing demand on precise point positioning (PPP) in mass market applications using low-cost single-frequency (SF) receivers, the impact of IFCB on SF-PPP with low-cost receivers need to be investigated. In this paper, we propose the use of the University of Calgary (UofC) model to estimate the IFCB in SF-PPP. The feasibility of the proposed approach is first verified using GNSS observations from the IGS stations. Comparing to the traditional SF-PPP model, the UofC model enables more stable IFCB estimations with 80.2% of the maximum changes less than 1.0 ns within one week. Then, the stability of IFCB in the low-cost SF receiver is analyzed with static data collected with u-blox M8T, and the STandard Deviation (STD) of IFCB for each satellite within 5 days is less than 1.5 ns when applying real-time orbit, clock and ionospheric corrections. Further, it’s verified that the power off won’t affect the IFCB’s value significantly in the low-cost receiver. Finally, six different strategies are designed to evaluate the impact of the GLONASS IFCB on SF-PPP. Comparing to those strategies ignoring IFCB, the strategies considering IFCB in SF-PPP can improve the positioning accuracy in both static and kinematic tests.

Review: The Gothic Romance Wave: A Critical History of the Mass Market Novels, 1960-1993, by Lori A. Paige

Review: The Gothic Romance Wave: A Critical History of the Mass Market Novels, 1960-1993, by Lori A. Paige

How to Cross the Chasm for the Electric Vehicle World’s Laggards—A Case Study in Kuwait

Ever since the discovery of oil in 1938, the State of Kuwait has increasingly sought out international brands in the car market due to the high purchasing power of Kuwaiti nationals. However, the makers of electric vehicles (EVs) have not been able to penetrate this market, with the exception of innovators and early adopters. The phenomenon in disruptive innovation theory—called “Crossing the Chasm”—regarding a mass market appeal has not yet occurred in Kuwait. Through deep interviews with 12 Kuwaiti owners of EVs and automotive dealers who sold either EVs or Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs), 10 key reasons for this phenomenon have been previously revealed, which were used to develop an extensive questionnaire. A total of 472 car drivers aged from 18 to 30, identified as the “early majority”, completed the questionnaire to achieve the objective of identifying the factors required to create a mass market for EVs in Kuwait. The results demonstrated that potential customers highly preferred three different types of attributes of EVs: environmental, financial, and technological. There were significant differences in the identified attributes preferred by Kuwaiti individuals for EVs in terms of the number of cars owned and the sector of employment. Moreover, the results of our study indicate that potential customers are very willing to buy EVs in the future, considering both their financial and infrastructure attributes. There were further significant differences in the identified necessary conditions to buy EVs in terms of educational level and monthly income. This study discusses a variety of valuable promotional tactics, which may be implemented in conjunction with public incentives and policy changes in the State of Kuwait. This information is considered useful for marketers and designers who wish to tap into this lucrative market, which is significantly different from that in the global North.

Pedestrian Augmented Reality Navigator.

Navigation is often regarded as one of the most-exciting use cases for Augmented Reality (AR). Current AR Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs) are rather bulky and cumbersome to use and, therefore, do not offer a satisfactory user experience for the mass market yet. However, the latest-generation smartphones offer AR capabilities out of the box, with sometimes even pre-installed apps. Apple's framework ARKit is available on iOS devices, free to use for developers. Android similarly features a counterpart, ARCore. Both systems work well for small spatially confined applications, but lack global positional awareness. This is a direct result of one limitation in current mobile technology. Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSSs) are relatively inaccurate and often cannot work indoors due to the restriction of the signal to penetrate through solid objects, such as walls. In this paper, we present the Pedestrian Augmented Reality Navigator (PAReNt) iOS app as a solution to this problem. The app implements a data fusion technique to increase accuracy in global positioning and showcases AR navigation as one use case for the improved data. ARKit provides data about the smartphone's motion, which is fused with GNSS data and a Bluetooth indoor positioning system via a Kalman Filter (KF). Four different KFs with different underlying models have been implemented and independently evaluated to find the best filter. The evaluation measures the app's accuracy against a ground truth under controlled circumstances. Two main testing methods were introduced and applied to determine which KF works best. Depending on the evaluation method, this novel approach improved the accuracy by 57% (when GPS and AR were used) or 32% (when Bluetooth and AR were used) over the raw sensor data.

The Duty of Public Relations in Political Marketing

This is a research with the title of )The Duty of Public Relations in Political Marketing(, and it has given importance to identifying the duties which are given more care by the public relations of the political factions for the political marketing of the political factions, this research is an effort to make it clear and learn that the public relations have managed to work for the political factions’ objectives on a high level, and to what extent the political factions have embodied their public relations in the political marketing, the purpose of the research is specifying the level of implementing the public relations duties within the political factions and knowing the mechanism of performing public relations duties for the political marketing of the political factions and showing the issues that create obstacles in front of implementing public relations duties of the political factions, this is a descriptive research, where the researcher relied on the surveying measures through questionnaire forms, the research bodies of the three political factions of ) Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Change bureaus and chambers of )6( Movement(, and the samples of the research is taken from the cadres of cadres with various ranks, and the most important results ١9٨ the political factions whose numbers are that the researcher has come up with in the research, although the public relations have significant roles to realize the goals of the political factions, however; the public relations of the political factions have not been able to work on the social and national feeling of responsibility on the mass. The public relations of the political factions are not working their duties as required, sometimes they work on the duties of )Interpretation, persuasion, evaluation, documentation and facilitation (, although they have given importance to the media within their duties, the public relations in their duties of political marketing on the mass, political institutions and political marketing and the tools of using the means of mass relations and political output, mainly relied on the media duties to convince and attract the mass, little training courses for the cadres of the public relations sections for obtaining appropriate background for practising their professions are important factors which have become obstacles in front of implementing the public relations duties

Crowdfunding sustainable products with the product search matrix: niche markets vs. mass markets

AbstractThis exploratory research aims at analyzing the success factors of environmentally sustainable products in crowdfunding campaigns by considering aspects such as the customer needs to be addressed by those products, the technology of those products, and the market targeted (niche vs. mass market).Original data from creators of environmentally sustainable products in crowdfunding campaigns were collected through a questionnaire and then analyzed with regression analysis and additional descriptive statistics.Results suggest that crowdfunding platforms are not the most appropriate instrument for addressing completely new customer needs with sustainable products nor for developing completely new technologies as the success of such initiatives is quite low. Moreover, results suggest that sustainable products, developed through crowdfunding platforms, targeted at niche markets are more successful in terms of financing than mass market products. In light of the results achieved, the paper formulates managerial suggestions for project creators in terms of paying attention to selecting the appropriate financing channel in light of the product characteristics.

Precise Point Positioning with Ionospheric-Free Deviation Mask under Ionospheric Scintillation in Equatorial Region

One of the most challenging phenomena threatening the performance of satellite navigation services is ionospheric scintillation, characterized by rapid fluctuation in the amplitude and phase of the received radio signals. Although scintillation in high-latitude regions is mostly caused by refractive effect which can be eliminated by dual-frequency measurements, the non-dispersive diffractive effect experienced in low-latitude region is still hazardous. This paper introduces an improvement into Precise Point Positioning (PPP) using a cycle-slip corrector based on ionosphere-free (IF) combination and a satellite mask based on a recently introduced scintillation index called Sigma-IF for dual-frequency conventional receivers. A comparison with the index from the standard deviation of geometry-free (GF) combination is made and analyzed. A significant improvement in accuracy and continuity of PPP after applying the proposed method is presented in the results obtained from well-known IGS stations. The increasing number of dual-frequency Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSSs) receivers launched into the mass market is a promising enhancement to the integrity of location-based applications.

Analysing the evolution of new energy vehicle consumption market: A “leading” and “following” consumers' perspective

Under the background of “subsidies decline” and “leading” consumers' saturation in China's new energy vehicle (NEV) market, this emerging industry is facing new challenges. Promoting the evolution from a niche market composed of “leading” consumers to a mass market composed of “following” consumers, becomes the key to the sustainable development of China's NEV industry. Based on a “leading” and “following” consumers' perspective, this paper combines experimental research with questionnaire survey, and studies the similarities and differences in the influence of “leading” consumers' purchase advice from three types of communities, including relatives & friends, colleagues, and neighbors, on “following” consumers' NEV purchase intention. This paper also analyses the mediating effect of trust in products and perceived value, as well as the moderating effect of word-of-mouth quality. The results reveal that: (1) “Leading” consumers' purchase advice from both relatives & friends community and colleagues community has a positive impact on “following” consumers' NEV purchase intention, while the impact of purchase advice from neighbors community is not significant. (2) In China, “Leading” consumers' purchase advice has a greater impact in non-promotion and application cities. (3) Trust in products and perceived value play the mediating role and have a chain mediating effect. (4) Word-of-mouth quality has a positive moderating effect, and the moderating effect exists in the first half of the mediation paths, forming the moderated mediation model. Meanwhile, only in the context of high word-of-mouth quality, the impact of “leading” consumers' purchase advice from colleagues community is significant. For sustainable development in the NEV industry, enterprises should implement market segmentation strategy to identify “following” consumers and anchor the non-promotion and application market. Enterprises should also implement viral marketing strategy to improve word-of-mouth quality, and better utilize the impact of “leading” consumers' purchase advice.

Profitability Evaluation of Vehicle-to-Grid-Enabled Frequency Containment Reserve Services into the Business Models of the Core Participants of Electric Vehicle Charging Business Ecosystem

The current paper defines a framework for the introduction of frequency containment reserve (FCR) services, enabled by vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology, into the business model of an entity owning and operating electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure. Moreover, the defined framework can also be extrapolated, with minor adjustments, to the business models of different core participants of the EV charging business ecosystem. This study also investigates the financial factors impacted by this introduction, eventually evaluating its financial profitability under given assumptions and comparing it to the profitability of the traditional business model of an entity owning and operating a unidirectional EV charging infrastructure. The current research shows that offering additional V2G-enabled FCR services can be potentially more profitable than the existing unidirectional approach if the V2G technology reaches its maturity phase with mass market adoption and economies of scale.

Research on Enterprise Marketing Management Innovation Under the Background of Big Data——Taking Harbin Sanxing Culture Communication Co., Ltd. as an Example

In the development of network technology in recent years, the application of big data has gradually become an important development trend in all walks of life, bringing new challenges and opportunities to the development of the cultural industry. As a popular cultural communication company at present, it should be clear how to do a good job in the marketing management innovation strategy of the enterprise in the context of the development of big data. Actively explore to achieve the stable development of the enterprise, such as mass marketing, multi-marketing, etc. that are common in the market today, through data collection and sorting, do a good job in talent training, do a good job in technical research, and further improve the future development of the company every day. This is also in line with the current innovative road of cultural industry marketing development.

Personal, Socio-Economic and Psychological Characteristics of Crossbred Cattle Owners of Surat District in South Gujarat

A study was conducted to know the personal, socio-economic and psychological characteristics of crossbred cattle owners of Surat district in south Gujarat. A sample of 120 respondents was selected for the study. The findings of the study revealed that majority of the respondents belonged to middle age group and were educated up to primary level. In the study area, most of the crossbred cattle owners were engaged in animal husbandry and agriculture as their main occupation and had medium dairy farming experience. More than half of the crossbred cattle owners were untrained and belonged to medium annual income category. Majority of the crossbred cattle owners owned medium sized herd. Majority of the respondents had medium level of extension contact, organisational participation, mass media exposure, risk orientation, innovation proneness, economic motivation and market orientation.

Why comply? Risk and efficacy perceptions drive compliance in mass marketing scams

ABSTRACT Using a mix-method design, we examined participants’ willingness to respond to mass marketing scams (MMS). In Experiment 1, we examined the effect of age (young versus older) and letter style (“hot” versus “cold”) on the intention to respond. The intention of responding was negatively associated with risk (p < .001) and having at least a high school education was positively associated with perception of benefits (b = .684, p < .001). In Experiment 2, we examined reward sensitivity on the intention to respond by manipulating reward amounts (low versus high) and the presence of an activation fee. The presence of an activation fee decreased intent to contact, but percentages remained high (25.75%). Analyses of qualitative data indicated that risk and benefit were both predicted by perceived self-efficacy. The results indicate that consumers’ beliefs about their ability to control the outcomes of future interactions affected how they behaved when provided with MMS materials.

Optimization study of media creation ideas based on the new media environment

Nowadays, new media are being used in more and more fields, most notably in the communication industry, with endless online media and ever-evolving cell phone terminals appearing in our lives all the time and becoming an essential part of our lives. Under the influence of this background, the creation and dissemination of art have gradually become dependent on new media and have begun a profound transformation. On the one hand, the new media has promoted the circulation of art, making the originally niche art categories to the mass market; on the other hand, the expanding market and audience also play an important role in influencing art creation. Therefore, the creative thinking of art creators nowadays will also change accordingly with the change of the background of the times.

Analyzing Brand Awareness Strategies on Social Media in the Luxury Market: The Case of Italian Fashion on Instagram

The rapid proliferation of social media has been redefining every facet of the old marketing and customer engagement tactics, not only for low-end and mass-market products but also for luxury brands. In this context, brands are dealing with the challenge of maintaining a balance between using mass marketing strategies concurrent with accentuating the exclusivity of their offerings. Social media can be considered beneficial if brands employ it to reach the right audience and use the right platform and incorporating the right content. In this work, we propose a sector-specific, integrated, and holistic investigation of the social media strategies of luxury brands together with the impact they generate in terms of the engagement level of the users as an indicator of their success. We provide empirical validation of the methods used in the Italian market of the luxury fashion sector, providing a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the content shared on social media, considering the type, timing, and modality of the sharing. We evaluate consumer-brand engagement in different contexts, including important live events in the field.

MARKETING SIGNIFICANCE OF LOCAL TRADITIONAL FOOD IN THE TOURIST HOSPITALITY OFFER

The global population is projected to reach nearly 10 billion by 2050, increasing the need for food from a variety of sources, and the preservation and sustainability of food crops and feed is more important than ever before. However, today suffi cient food supply is limited to existing resources. Additionally, the food expected to be needed by 2050 is only discussed in the context of quantity needed, not the quality and types that such increased demand will require. This will put enormous pressure on global economic systems, especially given the economic shift in consumption patterns that are slowly but surely moving towards the mass market. It is a fact that global requirements for food quality and hygiene, as well as technological advances, have helped in the distribution of a larger amount of food - from basic food components to quality meat, fi sh and poultry, to the convenience of snacks and drinks. The growing shift towards healthy, functional and/or organic foods consumed by consumers in many countries, and the increasing demand for traditional and ethnic foods outside their region, may be the driving force for innovating new approaches to feeding the growing world population in the future. In this context, governments, research institutions and the global food industry, especially those focused on ethnic and traditional food gathering and food production, are likely to develop strategies that will target more people

Multilevel factors appealing to junk food consumption among school children and adolescents: A systematic review

Junk food consumption (JFC) is increasing and it is common mostly among schoolchildren and adolescents (SCA). The consequences of JFC have become a public health concern. The study aims to explore the factors associated with the JFC among SCA using the socioecological model (SEM). Electronic databases such as PubMed, Google Scholar, ResearchGate, and bibliographic references were used to obtain the related papers following the standard process of identification, screening, eligibility assessment, study quality assessment, and data extraction from the selected articles. Strengthening the reporting of observational studies in the epidemiological (STROBE) checklist was used to assess the quality standards of the papers. Out of the 785 papers, we synthesized the results from 22 quantitative articles based on merits. The findings of the study indicate that JFC behavior among the SCA is influenced by multilevel factors that extend from intrapersonal to public policy through interpersonal, organizational, and community levels. The results of the study suggest that more than two-thirds, more than one-third, near to one-third, and half of them supported with microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, and macrosystem constructs of the SEM respectively. However, age, sex/gender, taste and pleasure of eating junk food, knowledge of junk food and attitude towards dietary choices of the microsystem (individual factors) and mass media exposure and marketing strategies of the macrosystem (public policy factors) remain the most influencing systems. The results indicate that individual and public policy level constructs are important to explaining JFC among the SCA. This implies that the researchers and policymakers need to consider multilevel factors while designing and implementing the school-based nutrition education programme to promote healthy dietary outcomes in the SCA.

Facebook Community is Judgmental: A Symbolic Interaction Perspective on Context Collapse and Identity Construction of Youth on Social Networking Sites

Despite the versatility and longevity of Facebook as a Social Networking Site (SNS) in comparison to Instagram, the Daily Active Users count and the average time spent per day have dropped significantly during the recent past. The observed drop in the popularity of Facebook is confounding from a marketing perspective since Facebook appears to provide more benefits and values than Instagram. Hence, using symbolic interaction as a theoretical lens, in this paper we engage in a discussion on how identity construction complexities on SNSs with greater context collapse, such as Facebook, could contribute to users’ preference for SNSs having smaller communities with less context collapse, such as Instagram. A qualitative study was carried out with the participation of 14 informants in the age group between 18-34 years. The data were collected using semi-structured in-depth interviews which were analyzed using thematic analysis. Findings revealed that the greater context collapse on Facebook has created discomfort for youth in constructing identities. Theoretically, this explains how the unclear, and at times, conflicting ‘universes of discourse’ operating on Facebook impose complexities to navigating user behaviour. Further, the lesser context collapse on Instagram which provides a more cohesive ‘universe of discourse’ allows the youth to construct a more expansive identity that conforms to community norms. This study theoretically accentuates the repercussions of developing and managing undifferentiated SNSs catering to the mass market, which makes it difficult for users to navigate the expectations of diverse audiences.

High-Throughput Virtual Screening of Quinones for Aqueous Redox Flow Batteries: Status and Perspectives

Quinones are one of the most promising and widely investigated classes of redox active materials for organic aqueous redox flow batteries. However, quinone-based flow batteries still lack the necessary performance in terms of metrics, such as specific capacity, power density, and long-term stability, to achieve mass market adoption. These performance metrics are directly related to the physicochemical properties of the quinone molecules, including their equilibrium redox potential, aqueous solubility, and chemical stability. Given the enormous chemical and configurational space of possible quinones and the high tunability of their properties, there has been a recent surge in the use of high-throughput virtual screening (HTVS) for the rational design and discovery of new high-performing molecules. In this review article, HTVS efforts for the computational design and discovery of quinones are reviewed with a special focus on the enumerated space of core quinone motif, the methods and approximations used for the estimation of performance descriptors, and the emergent structure-property relationships. The knowledge and methodological gaps in conventional HTVS efforts are discussed, and strategies for improvement are suggested.