Using Choice-Based Conjoint Analysis in the China Market of Imported Beer

Zhihua Gao,Zhangjian Wu,Feng Gao,Jun Zhang 한국유통과학회 2018 The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business( Vol.9 No.6

Purpose - With the rapid economic development, great changes have happened in the Chinese beer market. The scale of imported beer is increasing. However, the sales of native Chinese beer decrease in recent years. It is because more Chinese customers prefer beer with unique attributes than those with lower prices. In order to take an advantage in this market, practitioners should develop new products to satisfy Chinese customers. Scholars have also focused on beer characteristics to estimate consumers’ behavior for improving the development of beer industry. However, most studies are theoretically centered on marketing strategy management or general understanding of the market. It is not enough for us to explain customers’ consumption patterns. Some empirical research did attempt to find out beer attributes that may influence their choice behavior. However, they failed to verify what can increase customers’ utility through a new product. More importantly, few evidences can be found in the literature. Therefore this study explores the major characteristics of imported beer which may associate with customers’ preferences. Research design, data, and methodology - With the results of literature review and focus group interview, we found out four main imported beer attributes and the levels of each factor. A pre-test is constructed to check the problems in the questionnaire protocol. With the results of pre-test, the revised questionnaire is processed among customers who have purchased and had imported beer in China regions such as Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Guangdong and so on. The choice-based conjoint analysis is applied to analyze the useful data of 205. Results - Results indicate that choice-based conjoint analysis is the effective method to estimate customers’ choice behavior. Results also indicate that country of origin, price, taste, and package affect customers’ preference and the importances of imported beer attributes are significantly different. Conclusions - Country of origin, price, taste, and package are important for customers to make an imported beer choice decision. Marketers should consider these determinants and their importance to develop new products. Moreover, choice-based conjoint analysis should be the useful method for practitioners to develop a new product of imported beer for sustainable business in the competitive industry.

Exergy analysis of a frost-free air source heat pump system

Zhihua Wang,Fenghao Wang,Xiuzhi Gao,Ke Li,Yechun Lou 대한기계학회 2019 JOURNAL OF MECHANICAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY Vol.33 No.5

The main focus of this paper is to analyze the exergetic characteristics of a frost-free air source heat pump (ASHP) integrated with solid dehumidification and phase change heat storage. The exergy loss, exergy loss ratio and exergy efficiency of the system have been calculated to investigate the influence of the operation modes on the system characteristics. In addition, a comprehensive exergy loss ratio is defined to evaluate the system performance. It is concluded that the comprehensive highest exergy loss ratio is obtained as 51.4 % for compressor, followed by the energy storage device (ESD) with 15.8 %, the extra heat exchanger coated with a solid desiccant (EHECSD) with 10.7 %. Also the variation of the exergy loss, exergy loss ratio and exergy efficiency of the system and the key components with the ambient temperature changes from -20 to 5 °C are discussed. This study can provide guidance for optimizing the structure and improving the frost-free ASHP system in the engineering applications.

Variation in organic matter characteristics and mitigation of ultrafiltration membrane fouling by chlorine and UV/chlorine pre-oxidation in secondary effluent treatment

Zhihua Sun,Lei Gao,Dong Wang,Lingjie Liu,Chensheng Qiu,Shaopo Wang 대한환경공학회 2024 Environmental Engineering Research Vol.29 No.5

Membrane fouling caused by effluent organic matter (EfOM) limits its further application in wastewater reuse. In this study, the effect of UV/chlorine pretreatment on membrane fouling was investigated in treating secondary effluent by ultrafiltration (UF) process. The relation between organic matter changes and fouling alleviation after UV/chlorine pretreatment was also studied according to the molecular weight (MW) changes in various resin fractions derived from EfOM. Results showed that UV/chlorine pretreatment effectively alleviated irreversible fouling, whereas chlorine pre-oxidation primarily mitigated reversible fouling. UV/chlorine pre-oxidation reduced 18% of reversible membrane fouling and 38% of irreversible membrane fouling at a chlorine dosage of 8 mg/L, indicating better performance in membrane fouling mitigation than chlorine pre-oxidation. UV/chlorine pre-oxidation also decreased dissolved organic matter in the UF permeate. The hydrophobic acidic (HPO-A) fraction caused dominant membrane fouling, while the hydrophilic (HPI) fraction contained most of high MW organic matter. Pre-oxidation changed the polarity of organic matter in the HPO-A fraction and decomposed the organics of high MW in the HPI fraction, which alleviated membrane fouling. These results showed that UV/chlorine pre-oxidation was a prospective pretreatment process prior to UF in wastewater reclamation.

Fingerprint Liveness Detection Using Difference Co-occurrence Matrix Based Texture Features

Zhihua Xia,Chengsheng Yuan,Xingming Sun,Rui Lv,Decai Sun,Guangyong Gao 보안공학연구지원센터 2016 International Journal of Multimedia and Ubiquitous Vol.11 No.11

Fingerprint authentication systems have been widely deployed in both civilian and government applications, however, whether fingerprint authentication systems is security or not has been an important issue under fraudulent attempts through artificial spoof fingerprints. In this paper, inspired by popular feature descriptors such as gray level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) and Gradient (difference matrix (DM)), we propose a novel software-based fingerprint liveness detection algorithm called difference co-occurrence matrix (DCM). In doing so, quantization operation is firstly conducted on the images. DMs are constructed by calculating difference matrices of horizontal and vertical pixel values of images; difference co-occurrence arrays are constructed from the difference matrices between adjacent pixels. To reduce the influence of abnormal pixel values, truncation is used for DMs. Then, we compute four parameters (Angular Second Moment, Entropy, Inverse Differential Moment and Correlation) used as feature vectors of fingerprint images. For the first time in the fingerprint liveness detection, we construct eight difference co-occurrence matrices and extract texture features from processed DCMs. Finally, SVM classifier is used to predict classification accuracy. The experimental results reveal that our proposed method can achieve more accurate classification compared with the best algorithms of 2013 Fingerprint Liveness Detection Competition, while being able to recognize spoofed fingerprints with a better degree of accuracy.

Research on RF Tag Performance on Metal Media and Design of Slotting Tag

Yanghua Gao,Zhihua Zhang 보안공학연구지원센터 2013 International Journal of Control and Automation Vol.6 No.6

$\bar{WT}$-Classes of Differential Forms on Riemannian Manifolds

Hongya, Gao,Zhihua, Gu,Yuming, Chu Department of Mathematics 2008 Kyungpook mathematical journal Vol.48 No.1

The purpose of this paper is to study the relations between quasilinear elliptic equations on Riemannian manifolds and differential forms. Two classes of differential forms are introduced and it is shown that some differential expressions are connected in a natural way to quasilinear elliptic equations.

Genome-wide identification, evolution and expression analysis of the FtsH gene during fruit development in pear (Pyrus bretschneideri)

Guo Zhihua,Gao Xin,Cai Huaqing,Yu Lu,Gu Chao,Zhang Shao Ling 한국식물생명공학회 2021 Plant biotechnology reports Vol.15 No.4

Filtration temperature-sensitive H (FtsH) is an ATP-dependent protease family that plays important roles in many aspects of cellular processes and environmental adaption. However, little information is available about the FtsH genes in pear (Pyrus bretschneideri). In this study, 19 PbrFtsH genes were identified and classified into eight groups with several subgroups. The FtsH genes in pear show high sequence and structural conservation in the coding regions, and the majority of the FtsH members were located on the chromosome 3 (three members), chromosome 9 (four members), and chromosome 15 (three members). The WGD/segmenta, dispersed duplication played a major driving force in pear FtsH evolution. A Synteny analy- sis provided deep insight into the evolutionary relationships of PbrFtsH genes. The subcellular localization of the PbrFtsH genes showed them in the mitochondrion or chloroplast. Expression profiles derived from transcriptome data and RT-qPCR analysis revealed distinct expression patterns of PbrFtsH genes in different fruit developmental stages. These results provided valuable information that extends our understanding of the function, evolution and expression profile of the FtsH family during fruit development in pear, and a foundation for the further functional characterization of PbrFtsH genes, which can be applied to pear crop improvement.

Analysis on the influence of type and proportion of aggregates on the performance of PU based polymer concrete

Zhuoyuan Chen,Jianbo Zhao,Peiyang Li,Aizhong Qin,Zhihua Gao,Wenfen Zhao,Shaocan Wang,Guanfeng Lia 한양대학교 청정에너지연구소 2023 Journal of Ceramic Processing Research Vol.24 No.1

In this work, the fabrication and improvement of a lightweight and corrosion-resistant polyurethane (PU) based polymerconcrete are studied. The aggregate in traditional polymer concrete is generally crushed stone. Due to the low bonding strengthbetween polymer matrix and crushed stone, it is easy to fall off between polymer matrix and crushed stone after long-termuse, resulting in the degradation of the performance of polymer concrete. In order to overcome the low bond strength betweencrushed stone and polymer matrix in polymer concrete, modified polyetheramine particles were used to enhance the finalmechanical parameters of PU based polymer concrete. A series of mechanical and environmental tests were carried out, andthe effects of aggregates addition ratio and type on the mechanical properties of polymer concrete were analyzed. Theexperimental results determined the influence mechanism of aggregates proportion and type on the mechanical properties ofpolymer concrete, and obtained the appropriate aggregates type and addition proportion. The current work reveals that usingmodified polyetheramine particles as aggregates of polymer concrete can significantly enhance the bond strength anddurability between polymer matrix and aggregates. The density of this polymer concrete proposed in this paper is about 1.2g/mm3; The density of traditional polymer concrete is about 1.5-1.8 g/mm3, the weight can be reduced by 25%, and there isno problem of falling off between polymer matrix and aggregate.