Seller List Research Articles

A Gas Cylinder Delivery Service in Oman

Gas is one of the basic requirements that must be available in every home, purchased from gas stations and street vendors. However, issues may arise in reaching gas stations or finding sellers in certain areas when gas is needed urgently. Our project aims to create a desktop application for a gas cylinder delivery service, enhancing the community's experience by facilitating the timely delivery of suitable gas cylinders. The application lists gas cylinder owners in Omani society, providing customer data like name, phone number, city, and governorate. Customers can pay using cash and choose cylinder size and price. The app also determines delivery time based on location. It facilitates communication between buyers and sellers in Arabic and English. The gas cylinder delivery service application requires login information like username, phone number, and city, then opens a location service home page. The home page features an "Order Now" button, allowing users to choose from a list of gas cylinder sellers, specifying size and price. After confirmation, customers can choose payment method, delivery location, and expected delivery time. Then the seller receives an order containing the buyer's data and a gas cylinder, and the application confirms the delivery to the customer after completion. Oman's technological advancements have made society accustomed to mobile phones, software, and applications, making the location of the gas cylinder delivery service to people easier than the traditional method of finding sellers.

Strategic limitation of market accessibility: Search platform design and welfare

This paper explores the relationship between market accessibility and various participants' welfare in an intermediated directed-search market. For a general class of meeting technologies, we provide a necessary and sufficient condition under which efficiency requires imperfect accessibility, such that each seller's listing is only observed by some but not all buyers. We show that the platform optimally implements the efficient outcome, but fully extracts surplus from the transactions it intermediates. We also find that in general, buyers prefer to minimize market accessibility, while sellers prefer a weakly greater accessibility level than that which is socially efficient. The efficiency of imperfect accessibility is robust to the introduction of a second chance for unmatched buyers to search.

Understanding the first-offer conundrum: How buyer offers impact sale price and impasse risk in 26 million eBay negotiations

How low is the ideal first offer? Prior to any negotiation, decision-makers must balance a crucial tradeoff between two opposing effects. While lower first offers benefit buyers by anchoring the price in their favor, an overly ambitious offer increases the impasse risk, thus potentially precluding an agreement altogether. Past research with simulated laboratory or classroom exercises has demonstrated either a first offer's anchoring benefits or its impasse risk detriments, while largely ignoring the other effect. In short, there is no empirical answer to the conundrum of how low an ideal first offer should be. Our results from over 26 million incentivized real-world negotiations on eBay document (a) a linear anchoring effect of buyer offers on sales price, (b) a nonlinear, quartic effect on impasse risk, and (c) specific offer values with particularly low impasse risks but high anchoring benefits. Integrating these findings suggests that the ideal buyer offer lies at 80% of the seller's list price across all products-although this value ranges from 33% to 95% depending on the type of product, demand, and buyers' weighting of price versus impasse risk. We empirically amend the well-known midpoint bias, the assumption that buyer and seller eventually meet in the middle of their opening offers, and find evidence for a "buyer bias." Product demand moderates the (non)linear effects, the ideal buyer offer, and the buyer bias. Finally, we apply machine learning analyses to predict impasses and present a website with customizable first-offer advice configured to different products, prices, and buyers' risk preferences.

Safemedchain — drug counterfeit prevention and recommendation using blockchain and machine learning

Counterfeit drugs are without a doubt becoming a greater hazard to consumers and the pharmaceutical sector. As a result, real-time visibility of drug manufacturing and management is required. The proposed system uses Ethereum blockchain as the main technology. The primary advantage of blockchain technology is that the transactions are maintained in immutable digital ledger format and it may be read easily without jeopardizing the users’ security and privacy. In our proposed system, the admin validates and adds the manufacturers. The manufacturer after registering and logging in can perform tasks like adding the drug and seller list. The seller can place order to the manufacturer which the manufacturer can accept or reject. The seller can update status of order of accepted orders to delivered. The customer can view the order details by entering the serial number on the drug package. Any transaction or exchange that occurs in the network is recorded in the chain. It functions similarly to other networks, but blockchain technology is distinguished by the fact that no data can be removed or altered by anyone in the network. No changes to the network can be made unless it has been validated by all of the network’s authorized users. All the information stored can be read by anybody so to incorporate more security, AES has been used to store data in the blockchain. The use of AES encryption technique distinguishes this system from all the existing implementations. Thus, this makes it easy to trace to the exact point in the supply chain and detect any counterfeit drugs in movement. As an extension to the drug counterfeit prevention system a Drug Recommendation System is also performed using the ensemble model with a combination of Random Forest and Logistic Regression for sentiment analysis training. Furthermore, when compared to the existing Linear SVM model, which has an accuracy of 90.39%, the suggested model has the best accuracy of 93.31%. Using the obtained sentiment for each drug, the drug is predicted accurately for the specified medical condition.

Vardis Fisher: A Mormon Novelist

Vardis Fisher: A Mormon Novelist

고전소설 대중화 양상 연구

First, in the field of related search terms, it is as poor as ‘Chunhyangjeon’ that is directly related to Korean classical novels. Except for educational materials, about 『the classic novel Odyssey』 appears on the first screen, and as for videos, popularized videos do not appear except for educational materials. Related news is also not receiving attention except for distributing press releases. Books related to classical novels also mentioned the degree of publications of institutions that distribute press releases. In particular, from January 1, 2021 to August 16, 2022, there were no books related to classical novels on Kyobo Bookstore’s best seller list. Second, in bookstores, both classical novel theory books and popular books were already missing from bookshelves. It proves that the keyword “classical novel” is gradually being erased from the public’s eyes. In the survey, the degree of overall awareness of classical novels was low. The reading volume of classical novels was very insufficient, and the reading tendency was simple. However, what is hopeful is that there were many demands for popular books and lecture programs related to classical novels. Third, Lim Chi-kyun’s lecture on royal novels during the Joseon Dynasty was very well received by the students and showed very high satisfaction in the satisfaction survey. In the case of videos produced for “the Story of Yedeok Teacher”, they paid more attention to life than the keyword of classical fiction. Fourth, through Lee Hu Nam’s 『Monsters』, there are contents that he learned various classical novels through interesting monster and its image. This directly showed the possibility of character development based on the imageization of classical novels. Through online reactions to Shin Byung-joo and Noh Dae-hwan’s 『History Travel in Classical Fiction』 the positive effect of connecting classical novels to historical and cultural phenomena of the Joseon Dynasty could be confirmed. Through this analysis, there were not many areas where classical fiction majors could directly contribute to popularization. It was found that translating classical novels into modern languages is important, and YouTube video production, publication of a popular book, and operation of lecture programs are the most realistic methods.

Differential Selling Strategies Between Investors and Consumers: Evidence from the Chinese Housing Market

We investigated how real estate selling behaviors and transaction outcomes vary with sellers’ motivations. By exploring a unique dataset of residential sales in Beijing, China, we were able to distinguish between consumer sellers and investor sellers. Consumer sellers engage in chained transactions (i.e., selling one and buying another property in parallel for upsizing their houses through moving to a better location or trading for a larger property). The consumer sellers differ from investor sellers, who sell for cashing out capital gains, in selling strategies due to their liquidity constraints and higher search costs in the chained transactions. Our empirical analyses reveal that, for successful transactions, consumer sellers list and sell their properties at higher prices than investor sellers, all else being equal; however, the price premiums are achieved without longer time on the market due to their strategy of searching more intensively. This article provides additional insights on how real estate sellers’ credit constraints and opportunity costs of searching govern the selling strategies and transaction outcomes of property trading.

The impact of country of origin on consumers' pricing judgments in ecommerce settings

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of country-of-origin (COO) cues and pricing perspective based on the third-party seller's name, intermediary, on consumers' purchasing decisions on e-commerce sites. A model was proposed to investigate consumers' perception toward sellers' online reputation, the mediating role of trust between the reputation of third-party sellers and attitude toward e-commerce as an intermediary, and attitude toward third-party sellers. In addition, this study also looks at the pricing threshold of consumers who are willing to buy from a third-party seller that has a negative COO cue, which is an area that has received limited attention in e-commerce studies.Design/methodology/approachThe paper opted for an experimental study using survey data gathered from general American consumers. Two studies were conducted. One hundred seventy surveys were gathered for study 1, and 171 surveys were gathered for study 2. The two studies had two product snippets which showed an Amazon product page with a list of third-party sellers. For study 2, all variables were kept the same – reviews and ratings for both products and sellers, delivery time, descriptions, e-commerce as an intermediary and brand of a bag – except for the price.FindingsThe findings showed that consumers' perceived reputation of a third-party seller has a positive impact on their attitude toward the seller and toward the e-commerce intermediary. In addition, the role of a positive COO influences attitudes and intentions. However, this influence is moderated by price when price is noticeably higher when compared to an alternative option provided by a seller from a country with a lower COO evaluation. This study suggests that the benefits of a positive COO diminish when a seller with a lower COO evaluation is able to provide a lower price for the product. In study 1, the results show that positive COO trumps negative COO. In study 2, the result shows that consumers lean toward a lower-price product and disregard their evaluation toward the COO. Furthermore, in study 2, results show that in order for the pricing to offset the negative COO attributes of a third-party seller, the price needs to be within 22–30% lower than the American seller's product pricing.Research limitations/implicationsWith the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalizability for the other markets (e.g. Asian consumer market). Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further.Originality/valueThis study highlights the implications of COO cues such as sellers' names and how they impact consumers' willingness to purchase a product. The second study investigates consumers' willingness to purchase when the pricing for a product sold by a negative COO seller versus a positive COO seller is different in an e-commerce environment. In addition, the second study determines that the role of trust has more impact on consumers' attitude toward a third-party seller than it has on their attitude toward the e-commerce intermediary.

To Judge a Book by its Cover: Religio-Cultural Myth on the Cover of Iranian War Literature

Summary The present study examines two book covers to discover how their telling images and condensed tales of war are related to the books’ interior content. We scrutinize A’zam Hosseini’s Da (2008) and its English translation by Paul Sprachman, One Woman’s War: Da (Mother) (2014). Since Da has been standing in Iranian best sellers list for a decade, it is considered as a paragon of popular national literature. Given the proclivity of books’ designers to exploit marketing strategies on the covers, the study reflects on how they harness the power of those strategies for the greatest ideological gain. We demonstrate how designers utilise paratextual elements as external and commercial mediators of the inside text, thereby conjuring up founding myths of individual and national Iranian identity. It is concluded, against the famous old saying, that a book is designed to be judged by its cover.

Two Enlightenments on Chinese Literature Going Out: By Comparing Wolf Totem With China in Ten Words

China still has a serious cultural deficit in international cultural exchanges, and few contemporary Chinese literature works are successfully translated and communicated in foreign countries. However, both Wolf Totem and China in Ten Words have been on Amazon’s list of best sellers after their English versions were published in the United Kingdom and the United States. Based on comparison between them, this paper aims to find the similarities and differences between Wolf Totem and China in Ten Words , and then get two enlightenments on Chinese literature going out: First, successful translation and communication of Chinese literature works share some similarities. Successfully finding the similarities will be conductive to Chinese literature going out. Second, not all successful translation and communication of Chinese literature can objectively and truly present China to the world, taking China in Ten Words as an example. Therefore, the Chinese government should play a more active role in sending out Chinese literature works which could construct China’s national image.

A Novel Model to Predict a Book's Success in the New York Times Best Sellers List

The popularity of media, such as books and music, has historically been considered difficult to forecast. This popularity is important in determining the success that can be achieved once the media is published. Therefore, we aim to evaluate the extent to which this fact holds true, as we propose that these public opinion trends are quite deterministic in nature. We investigated the important non-textual attributes determining a book’s popularity, including but not limited to a book’s previous ranking in the New York Times Best Sellers list and its popularity in searches. We then constructed two models: a generalized classifier of a successful Best Seller and a predictor of a book’s weekly rank on the New York Times Best Sellers list. The reasonable accuracy of our classification and regression models suggest that book popularity is indeed deterministic. These findings point towards definitive characteristics that can help creators produce successful works.

Speculations on Eudora Welty's Reading of Seven Gothic Tales and Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen

Speculations on Eudora Welty's Reading of Seven Gothic Tales and Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen Pearl Amelia McHaney Eudora Welty reviewed Isak Dinesen's 1957 Last Tales and two scholarly studies of the Danish writer's oeuvre for the New York Times Book Review. She read, and passed on to William Maxwell, Dinesen's essay "On Mottoes of My Life," and she also contributed to a memorial tribute for Dinesen (the pen name of Karen Blixen) in 1965. These commentaries are part of Welty's oeuvre and have been reprinted and made available to readers and scholars. Until 2019, the first known book review that Welty had published was of Marguerite Steedman's But You'll Be Back for the Saturday Review of Literature in 1942. Recently, however, I learned that in 1938 Welty had reviewed Dinesen's memoir Out of Africa in her hometown paper, the Jackson Clarion Ledger.1 In her review, Welty also acknowledges having read Seven Gothic Tales, Dinesen's first book. By 1938, when she first reviewed Dinesen's work, Welty had traveled throughout Mississippi for her five months as a junior publicity agent for the Works Progress Administration and had had one photography exhibit in the Jackson Municipal Art Gallery and two photography exhibits in New York City. She had published eleven short stories in truly "little" magazines and had written and burned the first version of "Petrified Man." Edward O'Brien had reprinted "Lily Daw and the Three Ladies" in his edition of The Best Short Stories of 1938. Welty was eighteen months away from receiving Diarmuid Russell's invitation to be her primary reader and agent. She was years away from writing a novel, and nearly a half-century would pass before she would write her own memoir. To write a book review is to read closely and then to think, almost from afar, of which details and which impressions to gather and share. To review Out of Africa, the second book by Dinesen, Welty begins by commenting that "'Seven Gothic Tales' appeared several years ago under the name Isak Dinesen. It was a widely read book of ornate, metaphysical stories designed carefully and with a sharp obviously feminine humor, to delight and tantalize the reader who likes curious and unreal things" (1). This brief summary of Dinesen's first book illustrates, most importantly, that Welty had read Seven Gothic Tales prior to writing her Out of Africa review, and, in addressing the "reader who likes curious and unreal things," she begins [End Page 125] the habit of reviewing from a reader's perspective—a point of view she maintains in nearly all of her book reviews. The library of books in Welty's home includes the 1934 Random House Modern Library edition of Seven Gothic Tales that reprints the Smith and Haas publication with Dorothy Canfield's introduction. This first collection of Dinesen's tales was an April Book-of-the-Month Club selection and was on the New York Times Best Seller list for April, May, June, and July of 1934. The book is a complex exploration of the Gothic: sudden dark, stormy, windy weather causing drastic consequences; ancient worlds bearing down on the present through elaborate allusions; corporeal ghosts and shadowy people; unexpected, fantastic events; death; strange visages and bodies; and riddles posed to the characters and readers. Dinesen asks, "'What is it,' she said very slowly, in the manner of a sibylla, 'which is bought dearly, offered for nothing, and then most often refused?'" (Seven 115).2 Peter Monro Jack reviewed Seven Gothic Tales in the New York Times Book Review under the headline "A Strange Book for Our Time." Jack found the tales "curious" with an "almost Proustian sensibility that illuminates, by refining, the romantic mood." Citing that Dinesen's "pattern is as flexible as Scheherazade's," Jack asserts that Dinesen's "inventiveness is apparently inexhaustible," and he concludes, "This is a work of the imagination, very subtle and graceful; a rare and curious book, it will be white magic to many and mere mummery to others … though both are in the book, there is more magic than mummery" (6). This evaluation, I believe, would...

The Four Horsemen of New Atheism: A Select Bibliography

Between 2004 and 2007, four authors – Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens – published books critical of religion and promoting atheism. What set these works apart was that they were all published by major publishers and received critical acclaim. Three of the books would even go on to make the New York Times Best Seller list. Together, the four authors became know as the Four Horsemen of New Atheism. This article presents a brief overview of New Atheism and The Four Horsemen of New Atheism, author biographies, and reviews of the Four Horsemen’s works from 2004–2007, which, collectively, outline the core ideas of the New Atheists.

Gender Composition of Teams and Studios in Video Game Development

Women in video game development face issues such as the pay disparity reported at Rockstar North and the “bro culture” issues reported within Riot Games. Some development roles are rewarded more, whether by pay or creative voice, than others. Although there has been research into gender disparity by roles within other entertainment industries, such as the movie industry, there has yet to be a data-based examination of gender disparity broken down by role within the video game industry. To provide a more nuanced examination of the gender gap that exists in game development, we analyze the gender and roles for 14,265 staff listed in the credits of 27 games produced by seven of the video game publishers most represented in top seller lists to discover how the distribution of women and men varies by role.

Children’s Literature as a Vehicle for Political Socialization: An Examination of Best-Selling Picture Books 2012–2017

Despite the importance of political engagement, the topic has been the subject of little empirical research in developmental psychology, particularly with preadolescent samples. As a commonly available and developmentally appropriate source of media messages, picture books may inform young children about politics and influence their political engagement and aspirations. This study presents a content analysis of all books included on The New York Times best sellers list for children’s picture books from 2012 to 2017. Books were reviewed for depictions of political issues, political processes, political leaders, symbols associated with politics or political leadership, and government employees. Nearly half of the books in the sample included at least one instance of politically relevant content. Relatively few books included depictions of political issues or processes. More books contained depictions of political leaders. Democratic leaders represented were predominantly historical figures, and were largely men and White. Relative to democratic leaders, monarchical leaders were more likely to be girls or women and to be children and were less likely to engage in political processes or decisions. The findings suggest that although many picture books contain some politically relevant content, picture books represent a missed opportunity for many aspects of political socialization.

Infant Formula: An Analysis of the Contents of Plant-Based vs. Whey-Based Formulas (P11-056-19)

Objectives•Assess the nutritional and environmental consistencies and differences between plant-based (soy) infant formulas and whey-based infant formulas•While the nutritional contents are similar, there is significant variability in the levels of heavy metal in soy-based infant formulas than whey-based infant formulas Methods•Clean Label Project utilized the Amazon.com best sellers list to identify and purchase the top selling infant formulas in America from national and local grocers and e-retailers.•Clean Label Project had the products analyzed by an accredited analytical chemistry laboratory for antioxidant activity, nutritional content, and over 130 industrial and environmental contaminants and toxins including heavy metals (lead, cadmium, arsenic, and mercury) and endocrine disruptors (BPA, BPS).•The samples were blinded prior to testing by the laboratory to avoid any real or perceived perception of bias•Analytical chemistry instrumentation including ICP-MS, LCMS-MS, and GCMS•A variety of statistical applications were used to identify data trends Results•The nutritional content was largely consistent•Infant Formulas consistently yielded high test results for antioxidant activity (a product trait not typically marketed in the category)•Soy-based infant formulas had higher quantities of heavy metals than whey-based infant formulas Conclusions•Additional studies are needed to assess the health outcomes from children raised on plant-based vs. dairy-based infant formulas to assess any correlations to the higher quantity of heavy metals•The nutritional benefits of antioxidants in infant formula should be highlighted as a beneficial product attribute by brands Funding SourcesClean Label Project is a 501c3 which gets its funding from donations, it’s Amazon.com affiliate and Smiles beneficiary status, it’s third party certification service offering, and private grants.

Supporting private data on Hyperledger Fabric with secure multiparty computation

Hyperledger Fabric is a “permissioned” blockchain architecture, providing a consistent distributed ledger, shared by a set of “peers” that must all have the same view of its state. For many applications, it is desirable to keep private data on the ledger, but the same-view principle makes it challenging to implement. In this paper, we explore supporting private data on Fabric using secure multiparty computation (MPC). In our solution, peers encrypt their private data before storing it on the chain and use secure MPC whenever such private data are needed in a transaction. We created a demo of our solution, implementing a bidding system where sellers list assets on the ledger with a secret reserve price, and bidders publish their bids on the ledger but keep secret the bidding price. We implemented a smart contract that runs the auction on this secret data, using a simple secure-MPC protocol that was built using the EMP-toolkit library. We identified two basic services that should be added to Hyperledger Fabric to support our solution, inspiring follow-up work to implement and add these services to the Hyperledger Fabric architecture.

What is Australian Popular Fiction?

Australian popular fiction is the most significant growth area in Australian trade publishing since the turn of the twenty-first century, yet it has received little sustained scholarly attention (Fletcher et al. 5). Over the last two decades, the rhetoric of the decline of literary fiction has become a recurring theme in cultural journalism (see, for example, Knox; Mordue; Neill; Sullivan; Williamson). But while the fate of literature prompts elegiac reflection, Australian popular fiction is a success story hidden in plain view. Nationally and internationally, critically and commercially, Australian popular fiction titles have performed strongly over the twenty-first century. For example, in 2010 Peter Temple’s Truth won Australia’s most prestigious literary award, the Miles Franklin, following German, Swedish, US, and UK prizes for this and his earlier novels; in 2015 Australian fantasy writer Angela Slatter won a World Fantasy Award for her short story collection, The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings ; and in 2017 romance novelist Stephanie Laurens appeared on the New York Times Best Seller List for the 38th time with Lord of the Privateers . As we have shown elsewhere, the three major genres of crime, fantasy and romance are not just growing by output, but driving change in the post-digital publishing economy (Driscoll et al., ‘Publishing Ecosystems’). This special issue is part of our larger research agenda to address the gaps in knowledge about this thriving sector of literary culture, both in Australia and internationally.

A Discussion of Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s How Democracies Die

Among the many scholarly attempts to reckon with the causes and consequences of Donald Trump’s rise, few have attracted popular attention on the scale of Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s How Democracies Die. Seldom do books by political scientists make it onto the New York Times best sellers list, but this one has, a testament to its broad influence. Levitsky and Ziblatt situate Trumpism within a broader comparative and historical context in order to assess its similarities to and differences from democratic breakdowns elsewhere, particularly in Europe and Latin America. Their broad argument is that modern slides into authoritarianism are not the result of revolutions or military coups, but rather the consequence of a steady erosion of political norms and the assault on such fundamental democratic institutions as an independent judiciary and a free press. In short, contemporary democracies die not as a result of men with guns attacking from outside the system, but rather because elected leaders from inside that system slowly undermine them. Judged from this standpoint, the authors argue that American democracy is now in real danger, and they offer a range of suggestions for saving it. How convincing is Levitsky and Ziblatt’s analysis of democratic breakdown, and how well does it apply to the American case? How useful are the solutions that they offer for rescuing American democracy? We have asked a range of prominent scholars from across the discipline to consider these questions in the present symposium.

A Discussion of Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s How Democracies Die

Among the many scholarly attempts to reckon with the causes and consequences of Donald Trump’s rise, few have attracted popular attention on the scale of Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s How Democracies Die. Seldom do books by political scientists make it onto the New York Times best sellers list, but this one has, a testament to its broad influence. Levitsky and Ziblatt situate Trumpism within a broader comparative and historical context in order to assess its similarities to and differences from democratic breakdowns elsewhere, particularly in Europe and Latin America. Their broad argument is that modern slides into authoritarianism are not the result of revolutions or military coups, but rather the consequence of a steady erosion of political norms and the assault on such fundamental democratic institutions as an independent judiciary and a free press. In short, contemporary democracies die not as a result of men with guns attacking from outside the system, but rather because elected leaders from inside that system slowly undermine them. Judged from this standpoint, the authors argue that American democracy is now in real danger, and they offer a range of suggestions for saving it. How convincing is Levitsky and Ziblatt’s analysis of democratic breakdown, and how well does it apply to the American case? How useful are the solutions that they offer for rescuing American democracy? We have asked a range of prominent scholars from across the discipline to consider these questions in the present symposium.