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Shopping motivations are considered the primary stimuli for shoppers in the prepurchase stage of the customer journey. This study contributes to the understanding of how cultural factors affect shopping motivation. This study aims to understand the effect of cultural factors on shopping motivations in Eastern culture with Islam religion.

This study is based on the approach of phenomenology, and multiple methods were performed to interpret the phenomenon of shopping motivations. To this aim, 16 observations and 18 in-depth interviews were performed for data collection, and after that, data interpretation was done.

In this study, the motivations fall into product-related and hedonic motivations which are related to shopper psychology, while environmental motivations are culturally dependent. The influence of cultural factors on the individual concept of shopping motivations was identified in this study. Nine subthemes including product selection, product quality, functional, in-store service, convenience, store environment, value shopping, self-gratifications and role-playing were identified in the categories of product-related, environmental and hedonic motivations.

In non-Western countries, the store environment profoundly influences shoppers’ experience. This study clearly illustrates relationships between theory and practice in grocery shopping motivations in a non-Western context. Retailers who are active in eastern Islamic countries should pay attention to the fact that cultural and contextual factors play a significant impact on the shopping motivation and behavior of these shoppers.

In this study, shopping motivations are not fixed in different societies, and cultural and contextual factors play a significant impact in this regard. In other words, shopping motivations are fluid, and cultural factors play a significant role in their formation. This study makes two important contributions: First, cultural motivations are prominent among Muslim shoppers. Among these motivations, shopping environment motivations, including relationships with others and cleanliness, and staff behavior are very significant. These motivations are highly influenced by the culture of the context and we discover which motivations are not related to psychology alone and that the context has a significant influence on their formation. Second, hedonic motivations are also highlighted in the purchase of utilitarian products. In addition to direct effects, such as Islamic regulations on halal foods, Muslims’ religious tenets also have significant indirect effects on their behaviors and motivations.

This paper reports on a quasi-experimental research performed in the field of reading comprehension and translation quality. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the comparative effect of explicit vs implicit reading comprehension skills on translation quality of Iranian translation students at BA level.

The design of this research was quasi-experimental in nature. This design was preferred in this study, as it was impossible to assign random sampling to the subjects and apply a true experimental design. The research in hand was also a comparative group design research in a sense that it was supposed to compare two reading comprehension methods (explicit vs implicit) with different treatments.

In light of this research, some conclusions can be drawn. It can be concluded that there is a positive and direct relationship between reading comprehension and translation, as the first step of translation is to understand the content of the source text (Reid, 1993).

The reading comprehension ability of translation students should be enhanced in their undergraduate classes so that they can better understand the source text and produce a more fluent translation. In order to teach reading comprehension skills, both implicit and explicit techniques can be applied; however, it is better if the subjects receive explicit instruction, as this technique may have more positive results.

Various researchers have explored explicit and implicit instructions on such areas as reading, speaking and listening (see, e.g. Jalilifar and Alipour, 2007; Vahid Dastjerdi and Shirzad, 2010; Negahi and Nouri, 2014; Khanbeiki and Abdolmanafi-Rokni, 2015; Khoii et al., 2015; Mostafavi and Vahdany 2016; Rahimi and Riasati, 2017). Although the results of these studies have shown the positive impacts of both explicit and implicit teaching, explicit has more positive impacts. However, the review of the literature shows that explicit and implicit reading comprehension skills have not been investigated in relation to teaching translation and their possible impacts on translation quality.

A wide band perfect THz absorber is presented in this work. The structure includes two layers of graphene disks on the silicon dioxide dielectric layer while a golden plate is placed at the bottom to act as a fully reflecting mirror against THz waves. According to the simulations, the device is robust enough to show independent operation versus layers thicknesses variations, chemical potentials mismatches and changing of electron relaxation time. The designed THz absorber in this work is an appropriate basic block for several applications in THz optical systems such as sensors, detectors and modulators.

The layers in the proposed device are modeled via passive circuit elements and consequently, the equivalent circuit of the device is calculated. Leveraging the developed equivalent circuit model (ECM) and impedance matching concept, the proposed device is designed to perfect absorption with 4.7 THz bandwidth that possesses over 90% absorption. Ample simulations are performed using MATLAB (ECM) and CST (finite element method) to verify the superior performance of the device. According to the simulations, the device is robust enough to show independent operation versus layers thicknesses variations, chemical potentials mismatches and changing of electron relaxation time.

This work reports a wideband THz absorber, composed of two graphene layers. This paper considers the circuit model representation for two different layers of the device. For a unique structure, a highly tunable response versus chemical potential is obtained. The circuit model approach and impedance matching theory are exploited to reduce computational time regarding conventional approaches.

A wide band absorber in THz band is presented. Leveraging circuit model approach and impedance matching theory, the design procedure is simplified regarding CPU time and memory requirements compared to conventional methods. Detailed calculations and ample simulations verify the performance excellency of the device to absorb THz incident waves in 2–6.5 THz frequencies. Also, the robustness of the device is investigated versus parameters mismatches like layers thicknesses and chemical potentials values. According to the simulations and absorption response, the proposed device is an appropriate block to be used in THz optical systems such as detectors, imaging systems and optical modulators.