Exploring the role of augmented reality as a new brand advocate

Augmented reality (AR) has proven to be a potential source of disruption in the marketing discipline. Abundant research has attested to AR's potential by exploring the impact of AR attributes on behavioral intentions and users' attitudes. However, AR's potential to spark customer interactions, co-create value, and foster brand advocacy remains poorly understood. This study explores whether and how AR can turn users into brand advocates. Applying structural equation modeling to a sample of 502 AR users, the study finds that AR empowers users during their shopping experience, creating strong brand attachment and engagement and ultimately leading to brand advocacy. This brand-focused study, which goes beyond the technical aspects of AR, is unique and has the potential to inform the strategic decision-making of managers aiming to enhance the customer experience by means of AR implementation.     

Gravitation as a universal force

In his book Philosophie der Raum-Zeit-Lehre (1928) Reichenbach introduced the concept of universal force. Reichenbach's use of this concept was later severely criticized by Grünbaum. In this article it is argued that although Grünbaum's criticism is correct in an important respect, it misses part of Reichenbach's intentions. An attempt is made to clarify and defend Reichenbach's position, and to show that universal force is a useful notion in the physically important case of gravitation.     

Representing Indian Philosophy Through the Nation: an Exploration of the Public Philosopher Radhakrishnan

Several authors working on cross-cultural philosophy underscore that a cross-cultural conversational space, which breaks away from dominant theoretical frameworks, is necessary for a genuine cross-cultural dialog. This paper too seeks to contribute to the development of such a space. To this end, its focus will lie on one salient representation of Indian philosophy in the postcolonial context: the ‘Report of the University Education Commission’ of 1948–1949 (Report 1950). The paper will analyze how this document marries shared values like freedom and equality with the role of philosophy for the Indian nation.     

Cross-cultural generalizability of the Spiritual Transcendence Scale to the Philippines: Spirituality as a human universal

The Spiritual Transcendence Scale (STS) has been developed to operationalize spirituality as an intrinsic source of motivation that impels individuals to create a broad sense of personal meaning for their lives. Spiritual Transcendence is nondenominational in nature and hypothesized to underlie the development of religious sentiments. To further support the universal nature of Spiritual Transcendence, the STS was translated into a native Filipino language, Tagalog. Using two different, varied samples of Filipino adults (N?=?654 and 248, respectively), this study demonstrated that scores on the translated version evidenced acceptable levels of internal consistency, structural validity, and incremental validity over personality in predicting a wide range of psychosocial outcomes, like well-being and interpersonal style. Further analyses also indicated that the Tagalog version of the STS produced comparable means and standard deviations to its English counterpart. The data provided support for the hypothesis that spirituality is a robust, universal human quality because two languages that are etymologically distinct both include terms that describe transcendent experiences. The STS appears to be an empirically robust measure of these qualities that can be useful for researchers interested in establishing cross-cultural linkages in spiritual motivation.     

The Good Behavior Game: a best practice candidate as a universal behavioral vaccine

A behavioral vaccine provides an inoculation against morbidity or mortality, impacting physical, mental, or behavior disorders. An historical example of a behavioral vaccine is antiseptic hand washing to reduce childbed fever. In current society, issues with high levels of morbidity, such as substance abuse, delinquency, youth violence, and other behavioral disorders (multiproblems), cry out for a low-cost, widespread strategy as simple as antiseptic hand washing. Congruent research findings from longitudinal studies, twin studies, and other investigations suggest that a possibility might exist for a behavioral vaccine for multiproblem behavior. A simple behavioral strategy called the Good Behavior Game (GBG), which reinforces inhibition in a group context of elementary school, has substantial previous research to consider its use as a behavioral vaccine. The GBG is not a curriculum but rather a simple behavioral procedure from applied behavior analysis. Approximately 20 independent replications of the GBG across different grade levels, different types of students, different settings, and some with long-term follow-up show strong, consistent impact on impulsive, disruptive behaviors of children and teens as well as reductions in substance use or serious antisocial behaviors. The GBG, named as a best practice for the prevention of substance abuse or violent behavior by a number of federal agencies, is unique because it is the only practice implemented by individual teachers that is documented to have long-term effects. Presently, the GBG is only used in a small number of settings. However, near universal use of the GBG, in major political jurisdictions during the elementary years, could substantially reduce the incidence of substance use, antisocial behavior, and other adverse developmental or social consequences at a very modest cost, with very positive cost-effectiveness ratios.     

Direct behavior rating as a school-based behavior universal screener: Replication across sites

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the utility of Direct Behavior Rating Single Item Scale (DBR–SIS) targets of disruptive, engaged, and respectful behavior within school-based universal screening. Participants included 31 first-, 25 fourth-, and 23 seventh-grade teachers and their 1108 students, sampled from 13 schools across three geographic locations (northeast, southeast, and midwest). Each teacher rated approximately 15 of their students across three measures, including DBR–SIS, the Behavioral and Emotional Screening System (Kamphaus & Reynolds, 2007), and the Student Risk Screening Scale (Drummond, 1994). Moderate to high bivariate correlations and area under the curve statistics supported concurrent validity and diagnostic accuracy of DBR–SIS. Receiver operating characteristic curve analyses indicated that although respectful behavior cut scores recommended for screening remained constant across grade levels, cut scores varied for disruptive behavior and academic engaged behavior. Specific cut scores for first grade included 2 or less for disruptive behavior, 7 or greater for academically engaged behavior, and 9 or greater for respectful behavior. In fourth and seventh grades, cut scores changed to 1 or less for disruptive behavior and 8 or greater for academically engaged behavior, and remained the same for respectful behavior. Findings indicated that disruptive behavior was particularly appropriate for use in screening at first grade, whereas academically engaged behavior was most appropriate at both fourth and seventh grades. Each set of cut scores was associated with acceptable sensitivity (.79–.87), specificity (.71–.82), and negative predictive power (.94–.96), but low positive predictive power (.43–.44). DBR–SIS multiple gating procedures, through which students were only considered at risk overall if they exceeded cut scores on 2 or more DBR–SIS targets, were also determined acceptable in first and seventh grades, as the use of both disruptive behavior and academically engaged behavior in defining risk yielded acceptable conditional probability indices. Overall, the current findings are consistent with previous research, yielding further support for the DBR–SIS as a universal screener. Limitations, implications for practice, and directions for future research are discussed.     

Majorization as a tool for optimizing a class of matrix functions

The problem of minimizing a general matrix, trace function, possibly subject to certain constraints, is approached by means of majorizing this function by one having a simple quadratic shape and whose minimum is easily found. It is shown that the parameter set that minimizes the majorizing function also decreases the matrix trace function, which in turn provides a monotonically convergent algorithm for minimizing the matrix trace function iteratively. Three algorithms based on majorization for solving certain least squares problems are shown to be special cases. In addition, by means of several examples, it is noted how algorithms may be provided for a wide class of statistical optimization tasks for which no satisfactory algorithms seem available.The Netherlands organization for scientific research(NWO) is gratefully acknowledged for funding this project. This research was conducted while the author was supported by a PSYCHON-grant (560-267-011) from this organization. The author is obliged to Jos ten Berge, Willem Heiser, and Wim Krijnen for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.