Peng Yao, Xiaoyan Li, Fengyang Jin and Yang Li
This paper aims to analyze the morphology transformation on the Cu3Sn grains during the formation of full Cu3Sn solder joints in electronic packaging.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to analyze the morphology transformation on the Cu3Sn grains during the formation of full Cu3Sn solder joints in electronic packaging.
Design/methodology/approach
Because of the infeasibility of analyzing the morphology transformation intuitively, a novel equivalent method is used. The morphology transformation on the Cu3Sn grains, during the formation of full Cu3Sn solder joints, is regarded as equivalent to the morphology transformation on the Cu3Sn grains derived from the Cu/Sn structures with different Sn thickness.
Findings
During soldering, the Cu3Sn grains first grew in the fine equiaxial shape in a ripening process until the critical size. Under the critical size, the Cu3Sn grains were changed from the equiaxial shape to the columnar shape. Moreover, the columnar Cu3Sn grains could be divided into different clusters with different growth directions. With the proceeding of soldering, the columnar Cu3Sn grains continued to grow in a feather of the width growing at a greater extent than the length. With the growth of the columnar Cu3Sn grains, adjacent Cu3Sn grains, within each cluster, merged with each other. Next, the merged columnar Cu3Sn grains, within each cluster, continued to merge with each other. Finally, the columnar Cu3Sn grains, within each cluster, merged into one coarse columnar Cu3Sn grain with the formation of full Cu3Sn solder joints. The detailed mechanism, for the very interesting morphology transformation, has been proposed.
Originality/value
Few researchers focused on the morphology transformation of interfacial phases during the formation of full intermetallic compounds joints. To bridge the research gap, the morphology transformation on the Cu3Sn grains during the formation of full Cu3Sn solder joints has been studied for the first time.
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Peiyi Liang, Feng Yang and Feifei Shan
This paper aims to examine the optimal sourcing strategies and pricing decisions of competing toy manufacturers and to discuss how manufacturers’ decisions are impacted by…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the optimal sourcing strategies and pricing decisions of competing toy manufacturers and to discuss how manufacturers’ decisions are impacted by competition.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors consider a single-period model to characterise the competition between two competing toy manufacturers. Both of them are free to choose between virgin material and recycled material. The authors consider two types of consumers: sensitive consumers who are concerned about product safety and prefer the toy made of virgin material and insensitive consumers who do not care what material is used in the toy. The competing manufacturers play a Cournot competition.
Findings
The results reveal a special case of a win-win situation for both the manufacturer and the consumer. In addition, an increasing number of sensitive consumers does not always raise the price of virgin-material toys.
Practical implications
The authors derive the manufacturer’s equilibrium sourcing strategies, corresponding market-clearing prices and profits obtained.
Originality/value
The paper investigates how toy manufacturers’ optimal sourcing strategies are impacted by competition, considering market segments.
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Xiabing Zheng, Xiao Shi and Feng Yang
This study aims at exploring users' motives to form attachments within the social Q&A community context and identifying the differences between active users and lurkers when…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims at exploring users' motives to form attachments within the social Q&A community context and identifying the differences between active users and lurkers when building emotional attachments. By utilizing the media system dependency (MSD) theory, this study investigates into the driving factors of dependency relations (understanding, orientation and play) to user attachments (i.e. attachment to the social Q&A community, attachment to content creators).
Design/methodology/approach
The research model is empirically validated by an online questionnaire among users of a social Q&A community. Deriving from the actual behavioral data, the authors divide 262 valid responses into 157 active users and 105 lurkers according to whether they post or not. The partial least squares (PLS) method is exploited to analyze the relationships in the model. In addition, the PLS-based multi-group analysis is conducted for comparing active users and lurkers.
Findings
The empirical results confirm that dependency relations (understanding, orientation and play) significantly influence user attachments. Multi-group analysis suggests that the effect of understanding dependency relations on attachment to content creators is stronger for active users than for lurkers. However, the effect of orientation dependency relations on user attachment is significant for lurkers but not significant for active users.
Originality/value
This study enriches the knowledge of the MSD theory by extending it to the social Q&A community setting. Based on the MSD theory, the relationships between three sides of dependency relations and two types of user attachments are hypothesized in the research model. Besides, the impact of user heterogeneity in building user emotional attachment still lacks consideration. This study is one of the first in the field of comparison studies to compare active users and lurkers in such context, providing a novel contribution in understanding the motivations and emotional responses of different users.
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Yijing Xun, Xiabing Zheng, Matthew K.O. Lee and Feng Yang
The health and survival of massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) are of paramount concern to stakeholders. It is essential to understand the usage behaviors of exploitative…
Abstract
Purpose
The health and survival of massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) are of paramount concern to stakeholders. It is essential to understand the usage behaviors of exploitative and exploratory strategies. By combining the typical user experience with psychological mechanisms in MMOGs, this study is devoted to clarifying how technology affordance and digital perfectionistic intention influence reinforcement and variety-seeking orientations of MMOGs use.
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopted a sequential triangulation mixed-methods design to explore how diverse usage behaviors of reinforced and varied use in MMOGs are formed. After proposing the theoretical framework from MMOGs affordance, perfectionistic intentions, and diverse use, empirical evidence was initially collected from representative samples through a survey. Qualitative interviews from players in MMOGs and game industry practitioners are conducted to confirm the results, supplement understanding, and gather insights from diverse backgrounds. The quantitative and qualitative inferences are discussed to validate the research focus.
Findings
Findings from various perspectives suggest that perfectionistic intentions are critical antecedents of different usage behaviors influenced by affordances provided in MMOGs. Goal-driven affordance with reward and competition, interaction affordance, and identity affordance are key MMOGs affordances and could affect perfectionistic intentions differently. People with different perfectionistic intentions, which are the psychological outcome of MMOGs affordances, possess diverse usage behaviors.
Originality/value
This study is the first to consider diverse usage behaviors in virtual worlds such as MMOGs by combining lenses of perfectionistic intentions and technology affordance. Findings from mixed-methods analysis significantly enrich the research on online game usage behavior, offering valuable theoretical and practical implications for studying usage behaviors within the virtual world.
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Abstract
Purpose
Research on the relationship between customer bargaining power and supplier performance in supplier–customer relationships has flourished in recent decades. This study aims to empirically investigate whether product market overlap (PMO) in a supply chain moderates the effect of customer bargaining power on supplier profitability.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses large-scale secondary data from multiple databases. Econometric panel data techniques are used to test the hypotheses.
Findings
The results show that PMO in a supplier–customer relationship and PMO in supplier–supplier relationships both exacerbate the negative effect of the bargaining power of customers on supplier profitability.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the field of supply chain management. This study brings new insights into the ongoing debate surrounding the relationship between customer bargaining power and supplier profitability. The study also contributes to the literature on supply chain networks by showing the impact of indirect supply chain relationships.
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Xianlei Ma, Nico Heerink, Ekko van Ierland, Marrit van den Berg and Xiaoping Shi
The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of perceived land tenure security in China on farmers' decisions to invest in relatively long‐term land quality improvement…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of perceived land tenure security in China on farmers' decisions to invest in relatively long‐term land quality improvement measures, taking into account the potential endogeneity of tenure security.
Design/methodology/approach
Data from a survey held in 2008 and 2010 among 259 households in Minle County, Gansu province, covering the years 2007 and 2009, are used to estimate the factors affecting land levelling investments, irrigation canal investments and perceived land tenure security. The authors use the 2SCML technique and the IVLS method to estimate a selection model and a non‐limited regression model, respectively, and use IVP methods to examine the robustness of the results.
Findings
The authors' results indicate that perceived land tenure security significantly affects self‐governed investments but does not affect individual investments in land quality improvements. In particular, the authors find that households that consider land certificates as important for protecting land rights invest significantly more in irrigation canals construction and maintenance. The authors' results further provide evidence that individual investments in land quality improvement contribute to higher perceived land tenure security.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to the available literature on the relationship between land tenure security and land investments by examining the role of perceived (instead of formal) land tenure security and by making a distinction between individual household investments and self‐governed land investments. The authors' results provide an explanation for the phenomenon that land readjustments still take place in some parts of China, but not in others.
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Ninghua Sun and Lei Zeng
China's economic transition is essentially the process of China's institutional changes. During the changes, the appearance of institutional innovation is not regular; instead, it…
Abstract
Purpose
China's economic transition is essentially the process of China's institutional changes. During the changes, the appearance of institutional innovation is not regular; instead, it is intermittent and random. The purpose of this paper is to show that the fitful appearance of institutional innovation is the root of China's economic growth and fluctuations.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper constructs a real business cycle (RBC) model introducing the institutional factor expressed in the quantitative form under the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) framework by measuring China's institutional changes quantitatively.
Findings
By comparing the characteristics of the actual economic data with those of the simulated economic data, we find that this RBC model can explain 94.44%, 66.07%, 23.46%, 21.03% and 15.45% of the cyclical fluctuations in output, investment, labor, consumption and capital, respectively.
Originality/value
The impulse response analysis finds that the institutional shocks have a relatively long duration, lasting about 30 years, and decline slowly over time, while technological shocks decline relatively fast, lasting approximately ten years.
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Kaiwen Feng, Jinhua Zhang and Huang Yingwei
The purpose of this paper is to draw conclusions about China's agricultural integration (CAI) by looking back its processes stage by stage, discussing the problems related to CAI…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to draw conclusions about China's agricultural integration (CAI) by looking back its processes stage by stage, discussing the problems related to CAI, in order to learn salutary lessons for the future of agricultural development, for the increase in rural income, and especially for the promotion of CAI.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper comprises three stages: analyzing the process of CAI from the household responsibility system, to agricultural industrialization, until the stage of CAI led by farmers' co‐operatives; discussing the related practice together with literature; and historically proving that there is no better way to promote CAI than letting it be led by farmers' co‐operatives.
Findings
The paper finds that, the development of China's agricultural economic organizations is owing to CAI, and can be studied stage by stage; the process of CAI proves that it needs to be promoted as a new style led by farmers' co‐operative in order to increase rural income; literature review also gives eloquent proof of the above viewpoint; agricultural integration led by farmers' co‐operative should be taken as a better way to upgrade CAI and to increase rural income, for it can decrease the benefit disputes that usually happened in the former type of agricultural industrialization.
Originality/value
The obvious value of the paper is to show, by a historical review, a way to promote CAI and to increase farmers' income. A literature review finds these countermeasures comprehensively, historically, and theoretically. The information about CAI will be beneficial for people who are interested in the topic.
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Manman Wang, Sheng Ang, Feng Yang and Jian Song
Implementing effective marketing strategies can reduce consumers' perceived risks and promote the development of the remanufacturing market. The paper aims to explore the impact…
Abstract
Purpose
Implementing effective marketing strategies can reduce consumers' perceived risks and promote the development of the remanufacturing market. The paper aims to explore the impact of two marketing strategies on the remanufacturing decisions of an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and investigates the design of the optimal warranty service (WS) and consumer education (CE) strategies. Moreover, the authors also examine the optimal marketing strategy choices using the three criteria of OEM: profitability, consumer surplus and environmental impact (EI).
Design/methodology/approach
The authors develop a stylized model by game theory, which characterizes how an OEM that produces and sells both new and remanufactured products (RPs) should design the optimal remanufacturing marketing activity, and how to choose between different remanufacturing marketing strategies. Moreover, consumer's utility theory is used to describe consumers' perception of different remanufacturing marketing strategies to derive product demand.
Findings
The results reveal that increasing the warranty and education levels will not always improve the firm's profitability; the result depends heavily on the size of the functionality-oriented consumer (FOC) segment. Remanufacturing marketing strategies might harm the OEM, consumers and environment under certain conditions. Moreover, the optimal marketing strategy selections are jointly influenced by the FOC segment and the new production cost. There exist triple-win regions in which the OEM should not hesitate to perform WS and CE.
Originality/value
Few studies focus on the design and choice of remanufacturing marketing strategies, especially considering the role of consumer perceived behavior. This research contributes the behavioral remanufacturing marketing management and provides managerial implications for the implementation of OEM remanufacturing marketing strategy.
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Manman Wang, Menghan Chen and Feng Yang
This paper investigates how a regulator pursuing social welfare maximization designs an optimal subsidy scheme to stimulate technology innovation in the presence of a consumer…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper investigates how a regulator pursuing social welfare maximization designs an optimal subsidy scheme to stimulate technology innovation in the presence of a consumer green premium. Specifically, the authors solve the following questions: (1) Does the consumers' green premium affect the design of the subsidy scheme? (2) How should the firm choose a green technology innovation strategy under the optimal subsidy scheme? (3) Does technology innovation bring higher social welfare and lower environmental impact?
Design/methodology/approach
The authors first develop a game model to explore the impact of subsidy schemes on social welfare without considering technology innovation. Then the authors investigate two innovation strategies, in-house innovation and external introduction, under the optimal subsidy scheme. Finally, they illustrate the optimal choices of innovation strategy for the firm, consumers and regulators.
Findings
The results reveal that the subsidy scheme will not always increase social welfare, which depends on the environmental improvement coefficient of the unit green level. The optimal subsidy level increases with the green premium, but it is not related to the size of the consumer green segment. Moreover, the success rate of in-house innovation will raise the optimal green level, but the company benefits from an increased success rate of in-house innovation only when the green segment is large enough. The green segment size and external green level jointly determine the choice of technology innovation strategy.
Originality/value
This research is the first to analyze this problem while considering the green demand and subsidy scheme simultaneously as drivers of a firm's technology innovation, thereby providing new managerial implications for decisions by the regulator and firms.