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This research explores the purchasing behavioural drivers of young Chinese consumers purchasing foreign clothing brands. The aim is to include a range of drivers identified by different investigations into a single approach, to determine direct and indirect channels by which these drivers influence purchasing behaviour, and their relative importance in quantitative terms.

The methodology is based on an extended version of the theory of planned behaviour that considers hypotheses based on a number of studies revised in the literature review. This theoretical framework was used as the basis for a questionnaire applied to a sample of 362 young Chinese consumers. A Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling approach was used to analyse the collected data.

The results revealed three main channels influencing purchasing behaviour which were shown to share the same root, corresponding to the influences of the social network young consumers belong to. This result suggests that social norms have a key role in explaining young consumers' purchasing behaviour through its impact on their needs for status and social recognition, their attitudes towards foreign cultures and foreign brands, and their beliefs regarding the attributes of foreign clothing.

The work therefore provides companies operating in the foreign clothing market the confidence to devise business strategies that focus on the channel demonstrating the highest influencing power. A strategy likely to have the highest influencing power is one that uses celebrities to promote the reputation of products and reinforce the messages associated with status and social recognition. Reinforcement of these strategies could include secondary strategies linked to the other channels such as the one related to the adoption of foreign cultural symbolism.

In contrast to the majority of related studies, this investigation also explores indirect channels or paths by which a behavioural driver affects the behaviour of young Chinese consumers. In fact, this investigation not only simultaneously identified the different paths influencing young Chinese consumers purchasing behaviour but also quantitatively identified their relative importance.

This paper aims to try to link sustainable development, small business management and strategy setting with corporate foresight. Corporate foresight aims to transfer methodological sound instruments of future and technology analysis to (small) business contexts and can be described as an information‐based communication process aiming in vision‐building on future markets, changes in society and customer needs.

The paper is based on a literature research and on the results of an interdisciplinary expert workshop and is part of an ongoing case study.

The paper finds that sustainable development is widely acknowledged as key concept for humanities future. Sustainability calls for balancing short‐term business interest and long‐term development of both the society and the company itself. Regardless of whether a business manager is committed to an ethical fundament of sustainable development (normative attempt), there is also a rational basis for taking (voluntary) actions for corporate sustainability. Notably, regarding the development of commodity prices in the last years (e.g. steel, copper, coal) or the long‐term preservation of value brands, there is a call for strategic response. Corporate foresight may support this strategy‐setting process.

Although foresight procedures are not new in management literature, there is a lack in implementation in small businesses. The paper presents a step‐by‐step approach on corporate foresight to be adopted in small businesses.

The purpose of this study is to compare the environmental impacts of two additive manufacturing machines to a traditional computer numerical control (CNC) milling machine to determine which method is the most sustainable.

A life-cycle assessment (LCA) was performed, comparing a Haas VF0 CNC mill to two methods of additive manufacturing: a Dimension 1200BST FDM and an Objet Connex 350 “inkjet”/“polyjet”. The LCA’s functional unit was the manufacturing of two specific parts in acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) plastic or similar polymer, as required by the machines. The scope was cradle to grave, including embodied impacts, transportation, energy used during manufacturing, energy used while idling and in standby, material used in final parts, waste material generated, cutting fluid for CNC, and disposal. Several scenarios were considered, all scored using the ReCiPe Endpoint H and IMPACT 2002+ methodologies.

Results showed that the sustainability of additive manufacturing vs CNC machining depends primarily on the per cent utilization of each machine. Higher utilization both reduces idling energy use and amortizes the embodied impacts of each machine. For both three-dimensional (3D) printers, electricity use is always the dominant impact, but for CNC at maximum utilization, material waste became dominant, and cutting fluid was roughly on par with electricity use. At both high and low utilization, the fused deposition modeling (FDM) machine had the lowest ecological impacts per part. The inkjet machine sometimes performed better and sometimes worse than CNC, depending on idle time/energy and on process parameters.

The study only compared additive manufacturing in plastic, and did not include other additive manufacturing technologies, such as selective laser sintering or stereolithography. It also does not include post-processing that might bring the surface finish of FDM parts up to the quality of inkjet or CNC parts.

Designers and engineers seeking to minimize the environmental impacts of their prototypes should share high-utilization machines, and are advised to use FDM machines over CNC mills or polyjet machines if they provide sufficient quality of surface finish.

This is the first paper quantitatively comparing the environmental impacts of additive manufacturing with traditional machining. It also provides a more comprehensive measurement of environmental impacts than most studies of either milling or additive manufacturing alone – it includes not merely CO₂ emissions or waste but also acidification, eutrophication, human toxicity, ecotoxicity and other impact categories. Designers, engineers and job shop managers may use the results to guide sourcing or purchasing decisions related to rapid prototyping.