Why do fashion brands enter the metaverse when the benefits of using this virtual reality space are not yet clear to the industry? What motivates them to venture into the complex world of digital ...platforms and ecosystems? Do luxury and fast fashion companies share the same motivations for entering the metaverse? These research questions guide the study which seeks to understand the motivational factors driving fashion brands to establish a presence in the metaverse. To achieve our research objective, we employ qualitative research methods and follow a grounded theory approach. Through a content analysis of publicly available website publications containing insights from fashion industry leaders, we identify commonalities and distinctions in the motivational factors leading luxury and fast fashion brands into the metaverse. The study contributes to the theoretical comprehension of the metaverse as a new strategic platform for the fashion industry and highlights practical implications intended to assist industry managers contemplating entry into this virtual reality space.
Morphing anthropomorphism: An update Belk, Russell; Kniazeva, Maria
Journal of global scholars of marketing science,
20/7/3/, Letnik:
28, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This is an update of a 2010 paper we published on anthropomorphic consumer perception of brands and marketer attempts to humanize brands through packaging. Since that time a great deal of academic ...and business attention to the topic of anthropomorphism has resulted in the related work on brand mascots, brand personality, marketplace mythologies, and anthropomorphism in product design and advertising. In addition, new arenas of anthropomorphism have emerged with developments in projective research methods, digital avatars, robot design, digital self-presentation, and conversational digital assistants like Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri. Such novel directions have prompted new research questions and further studies. This paper offers a brief update of the evolving issues in the co-creation of anthropomorphic objects and brand interpretations by consumers, designers, roboticists, engineers, and marketers.
The designer face as a new consumer commodity is a focus of this work. By venturing into the global marketplace of elective plastic surgery, the authors aim to develop a concept of the face in the ...consumer behavior discipline. “What is the face?” – is the fundamental research question. What makes the face the site of voluntary alteration? How do marketing forces drive the mainstream embrace of surgical correction of facial features as a commercial commodity, similar to shoes? This study takes place in South Korea, a nation that places a strong metaphorical value on the face and has historically developed the honor-centered concept of “saving face” as a guiding principle of life. Specifically study examines the normative function of advertising as presented in street billboards. Results show a transition occurring for the face's major functions and highlight emerging newer functions - the face as a mask and the face as fashion.
Purpose
– The paper aims to understand how Eastern spiritual and Western secular traditions coexist in the US commercial marketplace and what lessons spiritual messages of Eastern wisdom offer ...Western consumers.
Design/methodology/approach
– The paper uses qualitative methods by engaging in close reading and analysis of the narratives on food and drink packages that have a direct reference to Eastern spirituality in the form of symbolic Eastern vocabulary and images.
Findings
– The paper proposes that artful sacralization of the spiritual to brand the mundane is an additional mode of cultural production used by marketers, and that this proposed mode extends the two modes (sacralization of the mundane and commodification of the spiritual) reported in previous studies.
Research limitations/implications
– The relationship between Eastern spirituality and Western commercialism deserves more in-depth studies. For example, how does the Western treatment of Eastern spirituality affect its perceived authenticity and purity? Finally, what do the newly wise Westerners do with mastery of an Eastern science of life?
Practical implications
– This work finds Western supermarkets to be emerging channels of Eastern spirituality. The author argues that narratives on food and drink packages perform as carriers of Eastern wisdom.
Social implications
– The author also finds that the borrowed spiritual wisdom of the East has yet to be reconciled with the prevailing secular norms of Western society.
Originality/value
– This has been the first known academic attempt to explore the spiritual connotation of the labels on branded food and drink packages sold in Western supermarkets.
Antiferroelectric (AFE) materials are interesting due to recent discoveries of new prospective applications, although the mechanisms of the phase transitions that are at the heart of these ...applications remain incompletely understood. This work is devoted to the study of a single crystal of a model AFE, lead hafnate, by X-ray diffraction with in situ application of an electric field to trigger the transition to a polar phase. Two consecutive experiments were carried out on a 35 µm thick plate with 110 surface normal orientation over a field range from 0 to 330 kV cm −1 and back. A sharp drop in the intensity of R - and Σ-type reflections around 225 kV cm −1 was registered, with almost complete disappearance after 250 kV cm −1 . This is compatible with a field-induced phase transition from the AFE to the R 3 m polar phase, which was suggested earlier on the basis of non-diffraction characterizations. X-ray diffraction reveals that the AFE domains with displacements parallel to the field direction react much more smoothly to the field, gradually reducing the AFE order at very small fields instead of holding it almost constant up to the critical field value, which is naturally expected. This expectation is fulfilled for domains with other orientations, but only for the first switching cycle; in the second switching cycle the AFE order already shows a notable decrease at subcritical fields. It is suggested that these observations could be linked with the antiphase domain wall population being affected by the field, which is consistent with the observation of diffuse rods between the Γ and Σ points. Another remarkable observation is the much smoother recovery of the AFE phase compared with its sharp disappearance at the critical field.
Domain configuration in epitaxial antiferroelectric films has been studied by X‐ray nanoscopy, with the extraction of information about the domain sizes beyond the beam‐size limit. The objective of ...this article is to understand how film thickness (the cases of 50 and 1000 nm are explored) and temperature (20 and 200°C) affect the nanodomain configuration of PbZrO3/SrRuO3/SrTiO3 thin films. It is found that the majority of antiferroelectric domains in both films are too small to be directly mappable, because many of them are simultaneously illuminated by the nanobeam (60 × 100 nm) most of the time. Nevertheless, these small sizes can be studied by analysing the diffraction peak width, which is, in the simplest approximation, inversely proportional to the domain size. With this approach it is identified that the characteristic (most probable) domain size does not depend on the film thickness and is ∼13 nm, while the scarcer larger domains do depend on it. An increase of the temperature to 200°C (just below the nominal antiferroelectric‐to‐cubic transition temperature) results in a slight increase in the characteristic size. These results are compared with those in ferroelectric films, where domain sizes are pronouncedly thickness dependent, and the relevant methodological question on the possibility of neglecting the interference of X‐ray waves scattered by different nanodomains in the nanodomain assembly is also discussed.
A new X‐ray based method for studying nanodomain configuration in ferroic materials in the form of thin films is proposed, and its efficiency on classical functional antiferroelectric material PbZrO3 is demonstrated.
Domain configuration in epitaxial antiferroelectric films has been studied by X-ray nanoscopy, with the extraction of information about the domain sizes beyond the beam-size limit. The objective of ...this article is to understand how film thickness (the cases of 50 and 1000 nm are explored) and temperature (20 and 200°C) affect the nanodomain configuration of PbZrO
3
/SrRuO
3
/SrTiO
3
thin films. It is found that the majority of antiferroelectric domains in both films are too small to be directly mappable, because many of them are simultaneously illuminated by the nanobeam (60 × 100 nm) most of the time. Nevertheless, these small sizes can be studied by analysing the diffraction peak width, which is, in the simplest approximation, inversely proportional to the domain size. With this approach it is identified that the characteristic (most probable) domain size does not depend on the film thickness and is ∼13 nm, while the scarcer larger domains do depend on it. An increase of the temperature to 200°C (just below the nominal antiferroelectric-to-cubic transition temperature) results in a slight increase in the characteristic size. These results are compared with those in ferroelectric films, where domain sizes are pronouncedly thickness dependent, and the relevant methodological question on the possibility of neglecting the interference of X-ray waves scattered by different nanodomains in the nanodomain assembly is also discussed.
PDF
