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Purpose This paper aims to bridge the extended reality framework and the luxury hospitality literature by providing insights into how immersive technologies using artificial intelligence (AI) can shape luxury value and consumer differentiation. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted three experimental studies comparing immersive AI versus traditional hospitality across luxury contexts (hotels, restaurants and spas). Study 1 investigates the effect of immersive AI (vs traditional hospitality) on customers’ behavioral intentions and the need for differentiation using virtual-assisted reality. Study 2 tests the underlying mechanism of the need for differentiation and luxury value in an augmented reality context. Study 3 provides additional support for the proposed underlying mechanism using virtual-assisted reality in luxury hospitality. Findings The findings reveal that immersive AI (vs traditional) luxury hospitality reduces customers’ behavioral intentions of using such services and perceived luxury value. Moreover, the findings indicate that the intention to use immersive AI (vs traditional) luxury hospitality services is contingent upon customers’ need for differentiation. Originality/value The findings have important theoretical and managerial implications for immersive technologies in luxury hospitality. They shed light on the dynamics between integrating immersive AI into luxury hospitality and its impact on customers’ differentiation motives and perceived luxury value. The findings reveal the detrimental effect of using immersive AI (vs traditional hospitality) within this context.

All value for a business is created by customers, but the reason any single customer creates value for a business is to meet that particular customer's own individual needs. While it's important to recognize that different customers will create different amounts of value for the enterprise (i.e., some customers are worth more than other customers, a subject we explored in Chapter 05), it's even more important to understand how customers differ in terms of their individual needs, and this is the topic we will tackle in this chapter. Individual customer valuation methods are fairly well established as an important stepping‐stone for managing the customer‐strategy enterprise. Academics and business professionals alike spend much time and energy testing the effectiveness of alternative methods and models. But differentiating customers based on their needs is still a relatively new idea, not so widely practiced by companies in a formal way— not even by those professing to take a customer‐centric approach to business. At its heart, needs differentiation of customers involves using feedback from an identifiable, individual customer to predict that customer's needs better than any competitor can who doesn't have that feedback. In addition to categorizing customers by their value profiles (see Chapter 05), it is vital to categorize customers based on their individually expressed needs, when they are similar. This is the only practical way to set up criteria for treating different customers differently.

Background Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) remains a challenging hematological malignancy, with chemoresistance contributing significantly to treatment failure and relapse. The bone marrow microenvironment, particularly mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), plays a critical role in AML cell survival and drug resistance. Although previous studies have extensively explored the MSCs differentiation, the regulatory role of the adipogenically differentiated MSCs on AML cells during co-culture remains unclear. Methods An indirect co-culture model was established to evaluate the impact of MSCs on the drug sensitivity of AML cells. Based on the comparable chemosensitivity trends observed among THP-1, U937, and HL-60 cells, THP-1 were selected for subsequent experiments due to their stable growth characteristics and well-established utilization. Metabolic alterations between co-cultured and monocultured THP-1 were profiled using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Concurrently, RNA sequencing was conducted to identify differentially expressed genes and enriched signaling pathways between co-cultured and monocultured THP-1. To validate the pathway alterations identified by transcriptomic analysis, the Akt inhibitor MK-2206 was applied, and its effects were evaluated by western blotting and cell viability assays. Results The results demonstrated that AML cells co-cultured with adipogenic MSCs were less sensitive to daunorubicin and cytarabine in both in vitro and in vivo. Subsequent metabolomics analysis revealed significant alternative metabolic processes in AML cells following co-culture, specifically in the glycolysis, glutamine metabolism and lipid metabolism. Further transcriptomic profiling identified key differentially expressed genes and signaling pathways, with PI3K/Akt signaling pathway activation emerging as a contributor to the reduced chemotherapy sensitivity. Furthermore, elevated levels of IL-6 in the co-culture system suggested a role for cytokine-mediated signaling in promoting a protective microenvironment. Conclusions This work demonstrates that the adipogenically differentiated MSCs enhance the survival and chemoresistance of AML cells by modulating metabolic and signaling pathways. It provides integrated insights into the microenvironment-driven mechanisms of AML drug resistance and presents potential therapeutic targets to enhance treatment efficacy.

Purpose While prior control studies typically focus on organizations with an instrumental approach to corporate sustainability, this study concentrates on organizations with an integrative approach, as the latter is needed to address the grand challenge of sustainable development. As such organizations do not single out the financial objective as the dominant one, they pursue a hybrid mission. This study investigates how a control package can be designed that ensures the persistence of such a hybrid mission. Design/methodology/approach A case study is undertaken at a luxury hotel chain in which a financial and an environmental objective are continuously balanced. Self-determination theory is used to substantiate insights into how psychological need-supportive controls can be designed at all organizational levels. Findings This study highlights how controls are not only needed to direct staff behaviour towards the environmental objective but also to ensure that staff at all organizational levels prioritize the objectives in such way that the hybrid mission can be sustained. Besides structural differentiation and centralization of decision-making, the case organization designed need-supportive controls to foster staff's internalization of the environmental objective and value as well as of the integrative approach. Social implications As the need-supportive socialization process fostered staff's integration of the environmental value, this study highlights the transformational potential of controls. Originality/value This study provides a unique account of a control package directing staff behaviour towards the balancing of multiple objectives.

This paper reports on a study designed to examine teachers' craft knowledge of their practice of 'inclusion' in terms of what they do, why and how. The research approach offers an important alternative to studies of students with 'additional needs' and the search to articulate the specialist knowledge and skill required to teach them. Through classroom observations and interviews with 11 teachers of students across the full age range in two Scottish primary schools, we investigated how teachers make meaning of the concept of inclusion in their practice by exploring theoretical assumptions drawn from the literature about inclusive pedagogy. The analysis enabled us to identify practical examples of inclusive pedagogy that met the standard of extending what is generally available to everybody, as opposed to providing for all by differentiating for some. Examples of the inclusive pedagogical approach are provided.

In the domain of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, the family still presents an untapped resource for promoting students’ motivation and achievement. Based on the premises of the Eccles’ model of parental socialization and the expectancy-value theory, this paper provides a comprehensive review of the literature on the socializing influence of parental beliefs in the STEM educational domain. More specifically, we discuss the role of parents’ values and self-efficacy in STEM, parents’ perception of children’s ability in STEM, and parents’ expectations for children’s STEM achievement. Reviewed studies show that all of these beliefs have a potential in explaining variations in students’ achievement motivation, performance, and career choices related to STEM. Parents’ child-specific beliefs and messages have shown to be the crucial socializing factors in this area. We further integrate and discuss the research findings on the gender differentiation in parents’ child-specific beliefs in STEM, possible explanations of this differentiation, and its importance for students’ gender-role socialization in STEM. The review also points out that the behavioral mechanisms through which parents may convey their STEM-related beliefs to their children are still unclear, presumably since the quality of parent–child interaction in STEM is often overlooked by researchers. Lastly, we present parent-oriented interventions aimed at fostering parents’ self-efficacy and utility value in STEM and at changing stereotypical images of STEM careers and STEM professionals. Based on this comprehensive review, methodological and conceptual implications for future research are discussed and improvements for parental intervention programs are proposed.

This study proposes a need-driven framework for the modular design of functional armchairs for young adults living alone. It aims to establish a systematic linkage among user-need priorities, functional organization, and product architecture generation. User needs were collected through observations, interviews, and questionnaires, leading to the identification of 15 core functions. These functions were transformed into 11 functional modules using function–structure mapping, correlation assessment, and hierarchical clustering. AHP was applied to determine evaluation weights, and TOPSIS was used to compare design alternatives. The results show that the optimized solution better aligns with user expectations in both functionality and experience. The study contributes a need-to-module translation mechanism that positions modularization as an intermediate decision layer between need prioritization and product implementation. This framework establishes a traceable pathway linking user needs, module generation, and design evaluation, offering methodological support for complex product design.

Product designers need to fully understand consumers’ emotional preferences and responses for product forms to improve products. However, users and designers have different understandings and concepts in the product evaluation process, which will lead to cognitive asymmetry in the product design and evaluating process. This phenomenon prevents designers to grasp users’ needs, increasing the risk of product development failure. To this end, this paper proposes a product evaluation method that combines natural language processing techniques and fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making into a new integrated way to reduce the cognitive difference between users and designers, so as to solve the problem of cognitive asymmetry. This was done firstly by obtaining the review data of products from users on the Internet, based on a web crawler, and then constructing word vectors based on natural language processing techniques to realize the parametric expression of the Kansei image. Secondly, by using a statistical method to extract the product scheme that meets the preferences of users and designers, and then quantifying the relationship between the product form and Kansei image based on a grey relational analysis (GRA). Finally, by calculating the indicator weight based on the Entropy method and using the fuzzy TOPSIS method to explore the prioritization of the product design alternatives in view of the Kansei needs of users. Taking the smart capsule coffee machine as an example, the feasibility and effectiveness of this method are verified. In particular, the method proposed in this research can not only enable different cognitive subjects to achieve cognitive symmetry, but also filter out product forms that meet the cognitive needs of users. Moreover, this study provides a theoretical basis and practical significance for reducing the cognitive differences between cognitive subjects in the whole process of product design, and provides a systematic framework for the industry to effectively connect customer needs and product design decisions. At the same time, this study has introduced a new method for Kansei engineering.

This article examines the distribution of parks in Baltimore, Maryland, as an environmental justice issue. In addition to established methods for measuring distribution of and access to parks, we employ a novel park service area approach that uses Thiessen polygons and dasymetric reapportioning of census data to measure potential park congestion as an equity outcome measure. We find that a higher proportion of African Americans have access to parks within walking distance, defined as 400 meters or less, than whites, but whites have access to more acreage of parks within walking distance than blacks. A needs-based assessment shows that areas with the highest need have the best access to parks but also have access to less acreage of parks compared to low-need areas. Park service areas that are predominantly black have higher park congestion than areas that are predominantly white, although differences are less apparent at the city level than at the metropolitan level. Following Iris Young and others, we argue that conceptions of justice must move beyond distributive justice and address the social and institutional mechanisms that generate inequities. For Baltimore, we examine how segregation ordinances, racial covenants, improvement associations, the Home Owners Loan Corporation, and the Parks and Recreation Board created separate black spaces historically underserved with parks. These mechanisms ultimately fueled middle-class flight and suburbanization and black inheritance of much of Baltimore's space, including its parks. If justice demands just distribution justly achieved, the present-day pattern of parks in Baltimore should be interpreted as environmental injustice.

This study aimed to explore the mental health needs of women residing in domestic violence shelters; more specifically, we aimed to identify commonalities and differences among their mental health needs. For this purpose, qualitative and quantitative data was collected from 35 women from a Midwestern domestic violence shelter. Hierarchical clustering was applied to quantitative data, and the analysis indicated a three-cluster solution. Data from the qualitative analysis also supported the differentiation of women into three distinct groups, which were interpreted as: (A) ready to change, (B) focused on negative symptoms, and (C) focused on feelings of guilt and self-blame.