Purpose -To provide marketing and managerial insights to western companies selling denim jeans in China, specifically in Shanghai. Understanding consumers' perceptions of Western-branded jeans in a cultural-specific marketplace is the primary focus. Design/methodology/approach -Combined methods included observation of shoppers wearing jeans in two malls in Shanghai and an anonymous survey. A total of 219 surveys were analyzed and consumer-perceived jeans attributes or related concepts were tabulated. Findings -About one third of the observed shoppers were wearing jeans, which signified a relatively high popularity of jeans as casual wear in Shanghai. The design and fashion of jeans were deemed highly critical but were superseded by comfort and fit. Shanghai consumers distinguished brand origins only between the West and the East instead of by specific countries. Dissatisfaction with price and fit were identified. Research limitations/implications -Questions were designed to screen out respondents who had not purchased and had no desire to purchase western denim jeans brands. Limiting the sample in this way offered some control for behavioral patterns, but conclusions are limited. Practical implications -Content analysis of an open-ended question about consumers' perceptions of western-branded jeans helped discern attributes of jeans that consumers deemed most important. Marketers of western jeans can develop effective marketing strategies in tune with consumer preferences. Originality/value -This paper researched consumers' perceptions of western denim jeans, a type of world dress, in a booming but foreign market in western eyes. The open-ended question solicited consumers' free responses, which in turn helped pin-point attributes of jeans that Chinese consumers value the most.

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This study focuses on perceptions of registered brands sold in Shanghai. Brand identity has been studied in Western settings; this study expands understanding of brand identity from a Chinese perspective. Chinese shoppers in Shanghai shopping malls were asked to compare US and Chinese brands in a survey about their perceptions of product attributes, brand identification and store environment. In the analysis of data, US brands were evaluated more positively than Chinese on attributes of design innovation, workmanship, brand image, service, and display of products, while Chinese brands received more positive marks on fit and price satisfaction. Low brand loyalty among the Chinese shoppers meant that brand image and competition among brands are keen. To remain competitive, US companies which plan to increase their market in China need to pay attention to product quality and how brand identity is interpreted within Chinese culture.

Learning-based computer-generated holography (CGH) provides a rapid hologram generation approach for holographic displays. Supervised training requires a large-scale dataset with target images and corresponding holograms. We propose an autoencoder-based neural network (holoencoder) for phase-only hologram generation. Physical diffraction propagation was incorporated into the autoencoder’s decoding part. The holoencoder can automatically learn the latent encodings of phase-only holograms in an unsupervised manner. The proposed holoencoder was able to generate high-fidelity 4K resolution holograms in 0.15 s. The reconstruction results validate the good generalizability of the holoencoder, and the experiments show fewer speckles in the reconstructed image compared with the existing CGH algorithms.

Lensless imaging eliminates the need for geometric isomorphism between a scene and an image while allowing the construction of compact, lightweight imaging systems. However, a challenging inverse problem remains due to the low reconstructed signal-to-noise ratio. Current implementations require multiple masks or multiple shots to denoise the reconstruction. We propose single-shot lensless imaging with a Fresnel zone aperture and incoherent illumination. By using the Fresnel zone aperture to encode the incoherent rays in wavefront-like form, the captured pattern has the same form as the inline hologram. Since conventional backpropagation reconstruction is troubled by the twin-image problem, we show that the compressive sensing algorithm is effective in removing this twin-image artifact due to the sparsity in natural scenes. The reconstruction with a significantly improved signal-to-noise ratio from a single-shot image promotes a camera architecture that is flat and reliable in its structure and free of the need for strict calibration.

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Quantitative phase imaging (QPI) is a label-free technique providing both morphology and quantitative biophysical information in biomedicine. However, applying such a powerful technique to in vivo pathological diagnosis remains challenging. Multi-core fiber bundles (MCFs) enable ultra-thin probes for in vivo imaging, but current MCF imaging techniques are limited to amplitude imaging modalities. We demonstrate a computational lensless microendoscope that uses an ultra-thin bare MCF to perform quantitative phase imaging with microscale lateral resolution and nanoscale axial sensitivity of the optical path length. The incident complex light field at the measurement side is precisely reconstructed from the far-field speckle pattern at the detection side, enabling digital refocusing in a multi-layer sample without any mechanical movement. The accuracy of the quantitative phase reconstruction is validated by imaging the phase target and hydrogel beads through the MCF. With the proposed imaging modality, three-dimensional imaging of human cancer cells is achieved through the ultra-thin fiber endoscope, promising widespread clinical applications.