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The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between big data and supply chain platform in China’s retail industry. With the emergence of big data resources and technologies, the business pattern of new retail advocates the combination of online and offline channels. Supply chain platform plays a key role in the implementation of retail activities, which has gradually become a research hotspot in the cross field of operations management and information system.

Through the method of literature review and case study, this study empirically explores how big data shapes supply chain platform to support new forms of online retail by grounded theory.

The model framework is validated by reliability test and coding method to process survey materials. The results identify the overall antecedents of supply chain platform and reveal positive effects between big data and new retail. The findings help firm managers build a big data-driven supply chain to support new retail.

There are insufficient studies on theoretical frameworks and interaction relationships among big data, supply chain platform and new retail.

The intent of this article is to explore the automobile purchase patterns of Chinese Americans by examining factors driving an intriguing phenomenon – most Chinese Americans prefer Japanese or European brands of automobiles over US brands.

This article uses data from a sample of 150 respondents using a mall‐intercept survey method. Regression, analysis of variance and Chi‐square analysis were employed. The factors examined include country image, informational influence, collectivism/individualism, and brand loyalty.

This study has four findings. In their automobile purchase decision making, Chinese Americans perceive the country image of Japan most favorably, that of US least favorably, and that of Europe in‐between. Country image is important, but it is less so than other extrinsic cues such as price, brand name and service, with reliability and safety being the most important intrinsic cues. Opinions of family and friends are important, second to prior knowledge and information from consumer reports. Chinese Americans' collectivism is positively related to their susceptibility to interpersonal informational influence, yet their individualism is not. Chinese Americans are not brand loyal.

The article helps automobile marketers refine their marketing mix to attract Chinese American buyers. A reliable and safe automobile is the most important factor that affects their purchase decisions. Media advertising and salespeople have only marginal influence. Therefore the advice is to strengthen or improve interpersonal influence.

No prior research has examined the automobile purchase patterns of Chinese Americans, who, in 2006, constituted 1.2 percent of the US population, with appealing demographics to marketers.

As an exploratory study on rural and urban consumers in an emerging market like China, this paper presents empirical evidence about the impacts of economic development on consumer lifestyles. Chinese rural and urban consumers were found to be statistically different in terms of their attitudes toward the whole marketing mix: product price, brand names, promotions and distribution. Possibly as a result of these disparate attitudes, rural and urban consumers were found to use different products to reflect the improvement of their living standards. All of these previous differences might be due to the fact that rural and urban Chinese consumers have different needs, as indicated by the words they chose to describe their ideal image. These lifestyle differences reveal huge marketing potentials for MNCs and other foreign investors, who will ultimately move into China's relatively untapped rural regions for marketing opportunities.

Firms increasingly diversify their technological competencies to achieve different strategic objectives. This study aims to explore the impacts of technological knowledge characteristics on patenting choices for inventions created by subsidiaries in an uncertain and fast changing environment.

The data used in this study are patents granted to the world largest firms by the USPTO for inventions attributable to their subsidiaries in China between 1996 and 2005. In addition, the patent data from State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) of China are used for the matching in terms of filing patent applications in both USA and China for a same piece of technology. A discrete Logit model is used to examine the effects of technological distance and categories on Chinese patent application and international priority.

The findings suggest that firms have priority to seek international patent protection, instead of host country protection, for valuable subsidiary inventions in their background and marginal technological fields. In addition, a firm may seek host country legal protection simultaneously for inventions built upon knowledge from technologically distant fields.

As we are more interested in protecting technological knowledge, the protection of other types of knowledge, such as organizational knowledge, deserves further research attentions. Moreover, future research may expand current study by including small and medium firms, as well as firms in other developing economies.

While the economic and legal environment in China may have evolved since studied period, the results have practical implications for firms in other developing countries that are at an early stage of catching-up or those in a host location featuring a similar uncertain and fast changing environment. In particular, the study suggests that foreign firm managers would have more strategic choices of patenting than local firms in the host country. For strategically important inventions bridging complex knowledge from different technological areas, firms could seek protection in multiple countries simultaneously, including both home country and other major markets. Furthermore, managers could choose whether or not to protect a particular category of technologies in host country depending on value of the technology to the firm and the IPR protection of host country. Finally, the approach of looking at knowledge-level characteristics, which can be easily measured through readily available intra-firm information, provides managers with a practical and useful tool to make these strategic decisions.

This study represents an effort to extend the understanding on how foreign MNCs could generate and appropriate valuable technologies in an uncertain and fast-changing environment. In particular, the authors focus on how MNCs could use different international patenting patterns to benefit from subsidiary inventions. Whereas previous literature mainly focuses on country-level and firm-level determinants, this study approaches the topic through the lens of knowledge-level factors. By studying how knowledge characteristics determine firm strategic behaviors, the authors offer additional justifications of the knowledge-based view of the firm. Meanwhile, the findings enrich our understanding of an important component of MNC’s global strategies in managing their technologies through selectively patenting in different locations. Firms pursue diversified technologies for different strategic objectives. As subsidiary inventions become a very important source of firm competitiveness, MNCs have to face the trade-off between higher patenting costs and the appropriability of subsidiary generated knowledge. The findings suggest that it is not necessary for MNCs to protect all subsidiary inventions in host countries.

This study aims to combine two fraud-related streams of the literature on guanxi and overconfidence into an integrated framework, which is the fraud triangle, to interpret the mechanism of fraud commission and detection.

A bivariate probit model with Partial Observability (POBi Probit) is applied. Moreover, the POBi Probit model is adjusted to the Chinese context. The China-specific POBi Probit model is constructed using data of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2008 to 2014, with a total of 15,109 firm-year observations.

Overconfidence induces fraud commission and worsens fraud detection; overconfidence mediates the relationship between fraud and guanxi; the “white side” of guanxi comes from alumni networks, while the “dark side” is derived from relatives-based networks; overconfidence induces fraud commission in accounting and disclosure and benefits the detection of disclosure frauds. Guanxi suppresses fraud commission in management and disclosure, however, it worsens fraud detection given fraud in management and disclosure; overconfidence induces fraud commission in both state-owned enterprises (SOE) and non-SOEs, and benefits fraud detection in SOEs. Guanxi suppresses fraud commission and worsens fraud detection in SOEs and city-owned firms.

There are two drawbacks of the partial observable bivariate probit (POBi-Probit) method that must be mentioned here. On one hand, the ex ante variable selection is one of the most difficult parts of applying the POBi-Probit model and different variables are included in different studies. On the other hand, the POBi-Probit model might not converge if too many variables are included. Thus, many widely accepted factors can be included in the model. Thus, this study initially sets the POBi-Probit model based mainly on Khanna et al. (2015) and then adjusts the model for the Chinese context (e. g. considering government ownership) according to Yiu et al. (2018) and Zhang (2018) and the local study of Meng et al. (2019). Considering the observability of fraud, on one hand, the observability of fraud commission is a widely accepted limitation, especially when accounting opacity comes across with regulatory efficiency (Yiu et al. (2018). On the other hand, the observability of relationships is another obstacle to this study. Future studies can go further by revealing the presently unobservable relationships using Big Data technology.

This paper theoretically and practically contributes to the literature on both corporate fraud and corporate governance. Theoretically, by introducing integrated principal-agent resource-reliance theory (IPRT) and upper echelon theory (UET), this paper broadens the framework of fraud triangle theory (FTT) and testifies the availability of the broaden FTT in the transitional and emerging-market context of China. Practically, this paper provides evidence that guanxi and overconfidence are two of the factors affecting corporate fraud. Thus, this paper provides a governance approach opposing corporate fraud in China, which may help the other emerging economies in transition.

In recent years, the frequency of emergencies, such as natural disasters and public health crises, has markedly increased globally. These occurrences have introduced new challenges to national public security systems and emergency management capabilities. Post-disaster humanitarian logistic operations involve the collection of emergency relief resources to mitigate the impact of disasters in affected areas. Effective coordination among governments, enterprises and charities is essential to enhance the efficiency of these operations. This study employs evolutionary game theory to explore the strategic interactions and behavioral patterns among these key stakeholders during the collection of emergency materials.

A tripartite evolutionary game model involving governments, enterprises and charities is developed. Subsequently, to validate the theoretical findings, a scale-free network is constructed for the purpose of numerical simulations. As this network evolves, both the edges between nodes and the strategy choices of the nodes also change. Numerical simulations are conducted using the network to examine the sensitivity of factors influencing strategic choices among game stakeholders.

According to the model simulation results, penalties significantly influence government regulation strength, while enterprise philanthropic behavior is mainly affected by penalties, profit transfer benefits and trust loss. For charities, strategic choices are primarily driven by penalties, tax subsidies, illegal operation benefits and charitable costs. The findings provide a theoretical basis for governments, enterprises and charities to select the sensible strategy.

Our study establishes a dynamic network of edges and nodes evolving over time to analyze the strategic evolutionary paths of governments, enterprises and charities from a micro perspective. The results assist governments, enterprises and charities in making more strategic decisions.

This paper aims to test whether a structured application of persuasion principles might help improve advertising decisions. Evidence-based principles are currently used to improve decisions in other complex situations, such as those faced in engineering and medicine.

Scores were calculated from the ratings of 17 self-trained novices who rated 96 matched pairs of print advertisements for adherence to evidence-based persuasion principles. Predictions from traditional methods – 10,809 unaided judgments from novices and 2,764 judgments from people with some expertise in advertising and 288 copy-testing predictions – provided benchmarks.

A higher adherence-to-principles-score correctly predicted the more effective advertisement for 75 per cent of the pairs. Copy testing was correct for 59 per cent, and expert judgment was correct for 55 per cent. Guessing would provide 50 per cent accurate predictions. Combining judgmental predictions led to substantial improvements in accuracy.

Advertisements for high-involvement utilitarian products were tested on the assumption that persuasion principles would be more effective for such products. The measure of effectiveness that was available –day-after-recall – is a proxy for persuasion or behavioral measures.

Pretesting advertisements by assessing adherence to evidence-based persuasion principles in a structured way helps in deciding which advertisements would be best to run. That procedure also identifies how to make an advertisement more effective.

This is the first study in marketing, and in advertising specifically, to test the predictive validity of evidence-based principles. In addition, the study provides the first test of the predictive validity of the index method for a marketing problem.

The suppliers of experimental resources required in megaprojects are driven by short-term interests, presuming that participation in the digital platform would only increase their inputs and fail to rapidly expand their revenue, resulting in their insufficient motivation to participate. This paper aims to design effective incentives for these suppliers exhibiting the aforementioned behaviour to drive them to participate and actively share their resources on the platform.

This paper develops incentives for applying the digital platform for experimental resource sharing by using a reverse induction approach to model and solve an incomplete information game. It compares the traditional experiment management mode and the new mode of applying the digital platform, taking the degree of sharing experimental resources on the platform as the variable and constructing three incentive models. By analysing these different degrees of sharing and the different experimental and informatisation capabilities of the suppliers, it could obtain the optimal incentive scheme for changes in sharing behaviour.

The results show that the designed incentives could increase the participation of suppliers in the platform and the number of their shared resources and make the benefits of both the supplier and the demand side reach the optimal state of a win-win situation. However, a higher degree of sharing by suppliers does not yield better results. In addition, the incentive coefficients for this degree should be set based on the suppliers’ different experimental and informatisation capabilities and the ratio of input cost-sharing, so as to avoid blind inputs from both supply and demand.

This study fills the research gap regarding incentives of the digital platform of experimental resource-sharing for megaprojects; it contributes to the body of knowledge by providing a quantitative perspective of understanding the experimental resource-sharing behaviour that motivates the usage of the digital platform. Furthermore, it reveals the incentive mechanism for application in different scenarios, and quantitative analysis is conducted to provide practical insights into promoting the new experiment management mode in megaprojects for more effective incentivisation.

The purpose of this paper is to present a follow-the-leader motion strategy for multi-section continuum robots, which aims to make the robot have the motion ability in a confined environment and avoid a collision.

First, the mechanical design of a multi-section continuum robot is introduced and the forward kinematic model is built. After that, the follow-the-leader motion strategy is proposed and the differential evolution (DE) algorithm for calculating optimal posture parameters is presented. Then simulations and experiments are carried out on a series of predefined paths to analyze the performance of the follow-the-leader motion.

The follow-the-leader motion can be well performed on the continuum robots this study proposes in this research. The experimental results show that the deviation from the path is less than 9.7% and the tip error is no more than 15.6%.

Currently, the follow-the-leader motion is affected by the following factors such as gravity and continuum robot design. Furthermore, the position error is not compensated under open-loop control. In future work, this paper will improve the accuracy of the robot and introduce a closed-loop control strategy to improve the motion accuracy.

The main contribution of this paper is to present an algorithm to generate follow-the-leader motion of the continuum robot based on DE. This method is suitable for solving new arrangements in the process of following a nonlinear path. Then, it is expected to promote the engineering application of the continuum robot.

The purpose of this paper is to present a novel stretch-retractable single section (SRSS) continuum manipulator which owns three degrees of freedom and higher motion range in three-dimension workspace than regular single continuum manipulator. Moreover, the motion accuracy was analyzed based on the kinematic model. In addition, the experiments were carried out for validation of the theory.

A kinematics model of the SRSS continuum manipulator is presented for analysis on bending, rotating and retracting in its workspace. To discuss the motion accuracy of the SRSS continuum manipulator, the dexterity theory was introduced based on the decomposing of the Jacobian matrix. In addition, the accuracy of motion is estimated based on the inverse kinematics and dexterity theory. To verify the presented theory, the motion of free end was tracked by an electromagnetic positioning system. According to the comparison of experimental value and theoretical analysis, the free end error of SRSS continuum manipulator is less than 6.24 per cent in the region with favorable dexterity.

This paper presents a new stretch-retractable continuum manipulator that the structure was composed of several springs as the backbone. Thus, the SRSS continuum manipulator could own wide motion range depending on its retractable structure. Then, the motion accuracy character of the SRSS continuum manipulator in the different regions of its workspace was obtained both theoretically and experimentally. The results show that the high accuracy region distributes in the vicinity of the outer boundary of the workspace. The motion accuracy gradually decreases with the motion position approaching to the center of its workspace.

The presented SRSS continuum manipulator owns three degrees of freedom. The future work would be focused on the two-section structure which will own six degrees of freedom.

In this study, the SRSS continuum manipulator could be extended to six degrees of freedom continuum robot with two sections that is less one section than regular six degrees of freedom with three single section continuum manipulator.

The value of this study is to propose a SRSS continuum manipulator which owns three degrees of freedom and could stretch and retract to expend workspace, for which the accuracy in different regions of the workspace was analyzed and validated based on the kinematics model and experiments. The results could be feasible to plan the motion space of the SRSS continuum manipulator for keeping in suitable accuracy region.