PRODUCTION OF EXTENDED SELF: INTEGRATING LIFE EXPERIENCE IN FASHION DESIGN

Wing-sun Liu,Eric Li,Elita, Yee-nee Lam,Magnum, Man-lok Lam 글로벌지식마케팅경영학회 2014 Global Marketing Conference Vol.2014 No.6

This paper employed the conceptions of “extended self” (Belk, 1988) and expressivism (Taylor, 1989) to demonstrate how local fashion designers in post-colonial Hong Kong express their life experience and cultural identity through their designs. Through conducting long interviews (McCracken, 1988) with five local designers in Hong Kong our findings show that design collections have become an “extended self” for these individuals. The material representation that created by the individual become an inseparable self for the owner. The commercialization of these “extended selves” extends our current conception of self identity in marketing literature.

PRODUCTION OF EXTENDED SELF: INTEGRATING LIFE EXPERIENCE IN FASHION DESIGN

Wing-sun Liu,Eric Li,Elita, Yee-nee Lam,Magnum, Man-lok Lam 글로벌지식마케팅경영학회 2014 Global Marketing Conference Vol.2014 No.7

This paper employed the conceptions of “extended self” (Belk, 1988) and expressivism (Taylor, 1989) to demonstrate how local fashion designers in post-colonial Hong Kong express their life experience and cultural identity through their designs. Through conducting long interviews (McCracken, 1988) with five local designers in Hong Kong our findings show that design collections have become an “extended self” for these individuals. The material representation that created by the individual become an inseparable self for the owner. The commercialization of these “extended selves” extends our current conception of self identity in marketing literature.

CAN BUYING FAKES MAKE YOUA BAD PERSON? THE (RE)SIGNIFICATION OF CONSUMER MORAL IDENTITY THROUGH ENGAGING IN COUNTERFIETING IN HONG KONG

Magnum Lam,Wing-sun Liu,Cliff Liu,Eric Li 글로벌지식마케팅경영학회 2016 Global Marketing Conference Vol.2016 No.7

Over the past two decades, consumer moralism, or moralism about consumption in a broad sense, has received much academic attention in answer to the growing concern for fair-trade, corporate social responsibility, environmental sustainability, and other anti-consumption initiatives and movements (McGregor, 2006; Newholm and Shaw, 2007). This theoretical trajectory not only pay attention to how everyday consumption practice is shaped by and help shape certain sorts of ethical dispositions (Clive et al., 2005), but it also extends to the understanding of the intertwined relationship between morality, consumption, and consumers’ identity narratives (Thompson, 2011). While previous research has focused on understanding moral consumption as a politically and morally motivated collective practice (Luedicke et al., 2010; Thompson, 2007), limited research has been done on revealing how personal moral identity project institutionalize and contest the socio-cultural power structure through ascribing social meanings in consumption practice to legitimatize seemingly unethical behavior in the marketplace (Brace-Govan and Binary, 2010). This research concerned the creation and negotiation of moralistic identities among a group of young consumers in Hong Kong who engaged in counterfeit consumption. We focused on how consumers strategically appropriate moralistic meanings in their everyday counterfeit consumption, in which their identity work utilized these ‘alternative’ market resources to echoed with, or even reproduce, the entrenched Chinses social relationships and marketplace ideological conditions (Giesler and Veresiu, 2014; Luedicke et al., 2010).

Urchin-Like Ni Microspherical Structure with Enhanced Magnetic Loss for Thin Microwave Absorber at Gigahertz

Yuping Sun,Zhengwu Pan,Hongming Long,Siu Wing Or,S. L. Ho,Chao Feng,Xianguo Liu 성균관대학교(자연과학캠퍼스) 성균나노과학기술원 2017 NANO Vol.12 No.3

We describe in this report a wet chemical reduction synthetic strategy for synthesizing urchin-like Ni microspherical structures, in which the nanowires self-assembled by Ni nanoparticles with the size of 5–20 nm are assembled in a radial form from the center to the surface of the spherical oriented arrays. Urchin-like Ni microspherical structures exhibit the strong magnetic natural resonance peak at 7.0 GHz and superior magnetic loss at 2–18 GHz, originated from relatively high anisotropy energy of urchin-like shape. Electromagnetic absorption measurements show that the urchin-like Ni microspherical structures possess outstanding microwave absorption performance at 2–18 GHz. An optimal reflection loss of –21.98 dB can be observed at 17.4 GHz with a matching thickness of 1.4 mm and the effective absorption (below –10 dB, 90% absorption) bandwidth is 5 GHz (12–17 GHz) with a thickness of 1.7 mm. The excellent microwave absorption performance may be attributed to the good impedance, large attenuation constant and novel magnetic loss ability.

把虛의的感情融入到時尙品牌的識別中: 在相互依賴的亞洲情境中理解品牌識別關系

( Man Lok Lam ),( Wing Sun Liu ),( Chester Kin Man To ) 한국마케팅과학회 2011 Journal of Global Fashion Marketing Vol.2 No.3

Over the past decade, consumer researchers have been interested in understanding symbolic relationship between consumers and brands, especially on identity construction (Elliott & Wattanasuwan, 1998; Escalas & Bettman, 2005; Kirmani, 2009) and its implications on brand management (Arvidsson, 2005; Holt, 2002; 2004). Following a cultural-psychological view to study how culture shapes brand-identity relationship, Eckhardt (2000) addresses that little attention have been paid to understand consumer behavior within interdependent cultures when compare with the prolific account of western literatures that reported the consumption behavior with an independent self- construal. This paper strives to address this absence through researching how a group of Chinese youngsters internalize their cultural values with a sense of assumed emotion and developed local specific brand literacy towards fashion brands` perception and consumption. Following Bengtsson and Firat (2006)`s concept of brand literacy, this interpretative research aims to extend our current understanding of symbolic brand consumption and brand-identity relationship in particular to the interdependent Asian context. The literature review discusses previous studies on brand symbolism in formulating brand-identity relationship and how social psychological understanding of interdependent construal of self can be applied to consumer researches. The cultural characteristics of Chinese consumers are also discussed with reference to previous indigenous consumer researches on symbolic brand consumption. As part of a greater project on fashion and brand consumption experience among young Chinese in Guangzhou, 18 Chinese volunteers aged around 20 are recruited from local universities and colleges and become the main research informants. The fieldwork is conducted in Guangzhou. In-depth interviews and participant observations are the main data collection method. Triangulation analysis technique has been adopted to review and cross-check data collected. Our findings and discussions demonstrate different dimensions of assumed emotion (Hu, 1949) among the Chinese youngsters in structuring their brand literacy. We discuss how cultural concern towards their social identities, including as students, sons/daughters, friends, and changing identities expected in the future, may significantly impact the youngsters` fashion and brand value, perception and consumption. Through symbolic consumption, the Chinese youngsters depict a sense of culturally specific fashion and brand knowledge as demonstrated in their fashion choice, taste and consumption, in a way that is culturally appropriate in fitting themselves in a complex social network. Guided by this sense of assumed emotion, Chinese youngsters adopt the signs and meanings embedded in brand names and its associated symbols to engage in the different social situations within their cultural setting. This has resulted in a different construct of brand literacy within the interdependent cultural context. An emergent theme is also found as there is a major difference in fashion brands perceptions and choices between the urbanities (i.e. Guangzhou localities) and peripheries (i.e. outsiders) because of a cultural difference in constructing their cosmopolitan identities (Thompson & Tambyah, 1999). To conclude, this study has contributed to our understanding of brand-identity relationship in the interdependent Asian context. Consumers in the eastern cultures tend to be subjected to integrate a larger socio-cultural context than maintaining individualistic pleasures as in western cultures. A greater concern of understanding the assumed emotion and how consumers asserted their social identities with symbolic fashion and brand consumption would be a key to understand the consumption cultures with interdependent self-construal.

Influence of design, workmanship, and familiarity on perceptions of country-of-origin apparel brands: A study of consumers in the US, China and Japan

Hye-Shin Kim,Eun-Young Shin,An Cheng,Sharron J. Lennon,Wing-sun Liu 한국마케팅과학회 2015 Journal of Global Fashion Marketing Vol.6 No.4

This research examines how consumers (N ¼ 627) from the three largest world economies, the US, China and Japan, perceive two major apparel brand image dimensions (design and workmanship) in conjunction with brand familiarity for country-of-origin (COO) apparel brands. Using the summary construct theory, this study examines how consumers from three major markets perceive COO brands from five different countries (US, France, Italy, Japan and China). Although results showed design and workmanship to have significant influence on consumers’ brand attitude for most COO brands, these two dimensions did not necessarily determine brand attitude for all COO brands. The relationship between brand familiarity and brand attitude was strong for almost all COO brands across the three sample groups. However, consumers from the three markets perceived and evaluated COO brands differently. Only a few cases of interaction between design and workmanship on familiarity were found for the US and Chinese groups. The results offer information to global brands concerning differences in COO brand image perceptions within these respective consumer markets.

U-shaped relationship between urea level and hepaticU-shaped relationship between urea level and hepatic decompensation in chronic liver diseases decompensation in chronic liver diseases

Huapeng Lin,Grace Lai-Hung Wong,Xinrong Zhang,Terry Cheuk-Fung Yip,Ken Liu,Yee Kit Tse,Vicki Wing-Ki Hui,Jimmy Che-To Lai,Henry Lik-Yuen Chan,Vincent Wai-Sun Wong 대한간학회 2022 Clinical and Molecular Hepatology(대한간학회지) Vol.28 No.1

Background/Aims: We aimed to determine the association between blood urea level and incident cirrhosis, hepatic decompensation, and hepatocellular carcinoma in chronic liver disease (CLD) patients. Methods: The association between blood urea level and liver fibrosis/liver-related events were evaluated on continuous scale with restricted cubic spline curves based on generalized additive model or Cox proportional hazards models. Then, the above associations were evaluated by urea level within intervals. Results: Among 4,282 patients who had undergone liver stiffness measurement (LSM) by transient elastography, baseline urea level had a U-shaped association with LSM and hepatic decompensation development after a median follow-up of 5.5 years. Compared to patients with urea of 3.6–9.9 mmol/L, those with urea ≤3.5 mmol/L (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR], 4.15; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.68–10.24) and ≥10 mmol/L (aHR, 5.22; 95% CI, 1.86–14.67) had higher risk of hepatic decompensation. Patients with urea ≤3.5 mmol/L also had higher risk of incident cirrhosis (aHR, 3.24; 95% CI, 1.50–6.98). The association between low urea level and incident cirrhosis and hepatic decompensation was consistently observed in subgroups by age, gender, albumin level, and comorbidities. The U-shaped relationship between urea level and LSM was validated in another population screening study (n=917). Likewise, urea ≤3.5 mmol/L was associated with a higher risk of incident cirrhosis in a territory-wide cohort of 12,476 patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease at a median follow-up of 9.9 years (aHR, 1.27; 95% CI, 1.03–1.57). Conclusions: We identified a U-shaped relationship between the urea level and liver fibrosis/incident cirrhosis/hepatic decompensation in patients with CLD.