Given the prevalence of social media usage among consumers in China and the rise of social media endorsements, it is important to understand the effects of social media influencers and their product ...endorsements on consumers. The present study explores the effects of self-influencer congruence on brand attitude, brand engagement, and purchase intention in China's dynamic social media context. The perceived motive of social media influencer's endorsement behavior, parasocial identification with social media influencers, and their roles in the endorsement process were examined. The results of this study suggest that a high degree of congruence between the image of a social media influencer and the consumer's ideal self-image leads to effective endorsement outcomes. Parasocial identification was found to mediate the relationship between self-influencer congruence and endorsement outcomes while perceived endorser motive was found to moderate the effects of self-influencer congruence on such outcomes through parasocial identification.
Purpose
Given the thriving attention paid to brand personification in marketing, this paper aims to delve into consumers’ psychological traits that may moderate the positive anthropomorphic effects ...on brand outcomes specific to relationship marketing.
Design/methodology/approach
A theoretical model was proposed based on a review of the extant literature. Study 1 conducted an online survey and used confirmatory factor analysis to validate the constructs significantly correlated with anthropomorphic processing. Two follow-up studies (Study 2a and 2b) using experimental designs were performed to provide evidence substantiating the moderated mediation in the process.
Findings
Based on the results across the three studies, motivational, rather than cognitive, disposition significantly correlates with perceived anthropomorphism and brand relationship outcomes. Need for belonging serves as a sociality moderator in strengthening the mediating effects of perceived anthropomorphism on brand attachment and brand experience, respectively. Parasocial interaction serves as an effectance moderator in augmenting the mediating effects of perceived anthropomorphism on brand attachment.
Research limitations/implications
This research extends and contrasts the theoretical grounding for anthropomorphism as a set of situational consumer perceptions by integrating its boosting factors in social psychology with emerging brand constructs in marketing and consumer behavior research. More studies are encouraged to probe into the complex anthropomorphic phenomenon.
Practical implications
This research sheds light on marketers’ strategic management efforts in implementing brand personification to target a wide range of market segments with diverse psychological disposition.
Originality/value
Conceiving anthropomorphism as an in-process situational output in information processing, this research provides further understanding of the psychological traits that facilitate the construction of consumer-brand relationships through anthropomorphic perceptions in the context of brand personification.
Ovarian clear cell carcinoma (OCCC) is a distinct histotype of ovarian cancer, which usually presages a worse prognosis upon recurrence. Identifying patients at risk for relapse is an unmet need to ...improve outcomes. A retrospective cohort analysis of 195 early‐stage OCCC patients diagnosed between January 2011 and December 2019 at National Taiwan University Hospital was conducted to identify prognostic factors for recurrence, progression‐free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS). Molecular profiling of tumors was performed in a case‐controlled cohort matched for adjuvant therapy for biomarker discovery. Multivariate Cox proportional hazard model revealed that paclitaxel‐based chemotherapy was associated with better PFS than nonpaclitaxel chemotherapy (HR = 0.19, P = .006). The addition of bevacizumab was associated with better PFS, compared to no bevacizumab (HR = 0.09, P = .02). Neither showed significant improvement in OS. Recurrence is associated with an Immune‐Hot tumor feature (P = .03), the CTLA‐4‐high subtype (P = .01) and increased infiltration of immune cells in general. The Immune‐Hot feature (HR = 3.39, P = .005) and the CTLA‐4‐high subtype (HR = 2.13, P = .059) were associated with worse PFS. Immune‐Hot tumor features could prognosticate recurrence in early‐stage OCCC.
What's new?
While adjuvant irradiation can improve progression‐free survival (PFS) in ovarian clear cell carcinoma (OCCC), control of metastatic disease remains a challenge. Especially problematic is the lack of optimal treatment for recurrent OCCC. In the present retrospective analysis, the addition of bevacizumab to paclitaxel‐based chemotherapy was associated with improved PFS in early‐stage OCCC patients. Moreover, molecular profiling revealed correlations between OCCC recurrence and immune‐hot tumor feature, CTLA‐4‐high subtype and increased immune cell infiltration. The findings suggest that immune profiling can help identify OCCC patients who are at risk for relapse and who may benefit from combined paclitaxel‐based chemotherapy and bevacizumab therapy.
Plastic pollution has become a global threat to the marine environment. Many studies have indicated that marine creatures are at risk of plastic ingestion, but relevant studies are still lacking in ...Taiwan. In this study, we quantified plastic debris ingestion by marine fish in the coastal waters of the Hengchun Peninsula, including the Kenting National park, located in southern Taiwan. We also investigated possible biotic and abiotic factors associated with the quantity of ingested plastic by fish. In the 117 fish samples we examined, 94.87% of them had ingested plastic debris, and all of the observed debris was microplastics (<5 mm). The average number of ingested microplastics was 5.6 ± 5.1 pieces per fish (ranged 0–32 pieces per fish). The major type and color of microplastics were fiber (96%) and blue (43%), respectively. The quantity of ingested microplastics was not significantly different between the reef and pelagic fish. However, reef fish from the more populated west and south coast ingested more microplastics than that from the east coast, suggesting that microplastic ingestion by fish is related to human activity. Regarding biotic factors, the size, trophic level, and taxonomic family of the fish were not significantly associated with the number of ingested microplastics. Our results, the first investigation of microplastic ingestion in marine fish of Taiwan, show a high prevalence of microplastic ingestion but no biomagnification of microplastics in the fish. More research is much needed to better characterize the biological and ecological impacts of plastic debris on fish.
•This is the first study to report plastic ingestion by fish in Taiwan.•Prevalence of plastic ingestion was about 95%, and all of the debris was microplastics.•Fibers represented 96% of microplastics found in the analyzed fish.•Number of ingested microplastics is related to coastal human activity.•No biomagnification of microplastics was observed.
Abstract
Uni-modal, not bi-modal, of abnormal grain growth has been observed in (111) oriented and nano-twinned Cu films. Because of the highly anisotropic microstructure, our kinetic analysis and ...calculation showed that it is the mobility which dominates the uni-modal growth, in which the lateral growth rate can be two orders of magnitude higher than the vertical growth rate. As a consequence, the abnormal grain growth has been converted from bi-modal to uni-modal.
The use of ephemeral content – a time-limited feature and function of social media – has been rising rapidly and is the latest marketing and social media buzzword. With insufficient academic ...research, however, the motivations for using ephemeral content and its influences on user engagement remain unclear. Building on the extant literature, this study aims to delve into the power of ephemeral content by identifying its antecedents and consequences in users' decision-making processes. Data from an online questionnaire (N = 303) demonstrated that users adopted ephemeral content based on motivations such as fear of missing out, trust, immediacy, and social pressure to obtain gratification. The results also showed that users' gratification influenced their engagement with ephemeral content and mediated the relationships between motivations and engagement. Most importantly, need for closure moderated the indirect effects of motivations on engagement through gratification. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
•Fear of missing out, trust, and immediacy positively influence gratification obtained from using ephemeral content.•Social pressure negatively influences gratification obtained from using ephemeral content.•Gratification mediates the effect of motivations on engagement with ephemeral content.•Need for closure moderates the indirect effect of motivations on engagement with ephemeral content through gratification.
A grabby substrate: A 3D nanostructured substrate, namely, a silicon‐nanopillar (SiNP) array coated with epithelial‐cell adhesion‐molecule antibody (anti‐EpCAM), shows enhanced local topographic ...interactions between nanoscale cell‐surface components and the substrates surface, resulting in enhanced cell‐capture efficiency when employed to isolate viable cancer cells from whole‐blood samples (see schematic and SEM image of a captured cancer cell).
Laser‐triggered nanobomb: Size‐controlled gold supramolecular nanoparticles (Au‐SNPs) were synthesized from 2 nm gold colloids by a supramolecular self‐assembly approach. These Au‐SNPs exhibited ...significantly enhanced photothermal effects and could be used in conjunction with laser irradiation for the selective destruction of cancer cells (see picture) after the incorporation of a target‐specific ligand.
Purpose Neutrophil serine proteases (NSPs) are implicated in numerous inflammatory diseases. Thus, a robust methodology to monitor and quantify NSPs is important to study disease progression and ...evaluate the effect of pharmacological interventions. A comparison of the various methods used to extract NSPs from neutrophil granulocytes has not been published, providing the impetus to conduct this method optimization and comparison study. Methods Two NSP recovery methodologies were evaluated on samples from five human donors: zymosan stimulation and cell pellet extraction. For the zymosan stimulation method, 1 mL donor blood was added to zymosan and samples were incubated at 37°C for 30 min while shaking. Samples were then centrifuged, and the plasma was collected for quantitation of NSP activity. For the cell pellet extraction procedure, 2 mL whole blood samples were centrifuged into white blood cell pellets following red blood cell lysis. To each pellet, three sequential lysis steps were performed using either 0.05% Nonidet P-40 Substitute (NP40) or 0.02% Triton X-100 lysis buffers under agitation followed by centrifugation. NSP activities were quantified using an exogenous peptide substrate specific to each of the three NSPs being analyzed: neutrophil elastase, cathepsin G, and proteinase 3. Results and discussion The zymosan stimulation method resulted in lower recovery of active NSPs and was unable to stimulate significant release of active cathepsin G. In contrast, the NP40 pellet extraction method showed consistent inter-donor NSP release with greater recoveries of active NSPs than the Triton method or the zymosan stimulation method. Overall, the pellet extraction procedure provided 13.3-fold greater recovery of active neutrophil elastase, 283-fold greater recovery of active cathepsin G, and 2.9-fold greater recovery of active proteinase 3 than the zymosan method. Conclusion The NP40 cell pellet extraction method resulted in greater extraction of active NSPs compared to the other methods investigated here, which may allow for a more accurate and complete biomarker profile when evaluating human clinical samples.
A vacuum-free Cu-to-Cu direct bonding by using (111)-oriented and nanotwinned Cu has been achieved. A fast bonding process occurs in 5 min under a temperature gradient between 450 and 100 °C. It is ...verified by grain growth across the bonded interface. To investigate the grain growth behavior, further annealing in the temperature gradient, as well as in a reversed temperature gradient, was performed. They showed similar recrystallization behavior with de-twinning. To analyze the de-twinning, we recall the classic model of annealing twin formation by Fullman and Fisher as comparison. Our case is opposite to the model of Fullman and Fisher. A mechanism of direct bonding by surface diffusion creep is proposed.
PDF
