Cultural influences on consumers' processing of advertising: A structural equation approach

This study reports a structural equation approach to the cultural differences in consumers' processing of advertising. The study hypothesized a path model for advertising processing and tested it for three different groups: Koreans, Korean‐Americans, and Caucasian‐Americans. The findings revealed that the final path patterns were different according to consumers' cultural background. Even though the influences of ad content were significant across the three different groups, prior attitudes to the brand played a more important role in Koreans' advertising processing than in Caucasian‐Americans' processing. The impact of each demographic variable also varied according to culture. The results were discussed through Hofstede's four cultural dimensions and Hall's dichotomy of high‐context versus low‐context culture.     

An integrated framework for RFID adoption and diffusion with a stage-scale-scope cubicle model: A case of Indonesia

This study presents a comprehensive framework to identify dynamic radio frequency identification (RFID) adoption and diffusion from three different perspectives: stages of adoption, levels of analysis, and domain of issues. The main concern of this study is stages of adoption, which covers three phases in respect of the maturity of the RFID project and the sophistication of business applications and RFID technology. The level of analysis involves different units of analysis beyond the organization level, including the industry- and country-level, which is lacking in the current literature. To understand dimensions of RFID issues, a strategy, technology, organization, people and environment (STOPE) based approach was applied. An extensive review of prior literature was conducted to find various RFID success factors and the Delphi method was applied to find positions of these factors within the framework. Based on the Delphi, some factors belong to early stage of adoption, and some others persist in the later stages of adoption. At the country level, factors such as RFID national policy, R&D policy and income per capita were accepted by most experts at the preliminary and intermediate stage; strategy and environment were accepted as important domains. To find practical implications of the framework, a case study of Indonesia was conducted at each level of analysis. Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was applied to identify most important factors and important domains of issues with respect to the factors from the Delphi results. At country level, RFID policy, vision of leadership and RFID potential market are the most important factors; strategy and environment are the most important domains.     

Learning the methods and the skills of global product realization in an academic virtual enterprise

This paper reports on and draws conclusions about the international course called European Global Product Realization. It was organized to provide university students with knowledge about distributed product development in virtual enterprises. The philosophy of the course is discussed together with its structure, contents, organization, infrastructure, deliverables and the experiences. Necessitated by globalization, the principles of operation of virtual enterprises were used in organizing the course. The knowledge accumulated in global product realization by the participating companies and academic sections provided the basis for the course and for the student projects. The organizers put the students of three European universities into the position of evolving young professionals who act as both knowledge producers and knowledge consumers. The design and engineering students took part in academic lectures and industrial case studies in a virtual classroom and practised collaborative product development in the emulated virtual enterprise. The academic virtual enterprise framework has been confirmed to be a solution for opening the conventional educational institutions. Our future work will concentrate on how to exploit disciplinary and operational research as the engine behind academic learning and teaching.     

Teaching about complex systems is no simple matter: building effective professional development for computer-supported complex systems instruction

The recent next generation science standards in the United States have emphasized learning about complex systems as a core feature of science learning. Over the past 15 years, a number of educational tools and theories have been investigated to help students learn about complex systems; but surprisingly, little research has been devoted to identifying the supports that teachers need to teach about complex systems in the classroom. In this paper, we aim to address this gap in the literature. We describe a 2-year professional development study in which we gathered data on teachers’ abilities and perceptions regarding the delivery of computer-supported complex systems curricula. We present results across the 2 years of the project and demonstrate the need for particular instructional supports to improve implementation efforts, including providing differentiated opportunities to build expertise and addressing teacher beliefs about whether computational-model construction belongs in the science classroom. Results from students’ classroom experiences and learning over the 2 years are offered to further illustrate the impact of these instructional supports.     

Network-adaptive HD MPEG-2 video streaming with cross-layered channel monitoring in WLAN

INTRODUCTION Video streaming service nowadays enjoys ex- plosive adoptions over all kinds of underlying net- works. To enjoy the freedom of tether-less connection over the wireless local area network (WLAN), we need to overcome many challenges of unstable wire- less channel due to fading, interference and so on. The scarce and fluctuating available bandwidth (together with time-varying delays and random/burst losses) can cause the video quality at the streaming client to be seriously deg…     

Dogmatism and Externality in Locus of Control As Related to Counselor Trainee Skill In Facilitative Responding

It was hypothesized in this study that dogmatism and externality in locus of control are inversely related to skill in facilitative responding when the effects of specific counselor training program, number of graduate hours in counseling, age, sex, race, and religious affiliation are controlled. The participants were 215 master's degree candidates majoring in guidance and counseling at three southwestern universities. Dogmatism and externality were measured by the Opinion Scale, and skill in facilitative responding was determined by application of the Gross Rating of Facilitative Interpersonal Functioning Scale to written responses of participants to 16 audiotaped client stimulus statements. Multiple regression and partial correlation techniques were used to test the hypothesis, and the results supported the hypothesis. The authors discuss implications of this study for counselor selection and education.