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The purpose of this paper is to build a warranty cost model for consumer electronics with short lifecycle and frequently upgraded process in generations. Meanwhile, a new warranty service method of replacing the failed old generation (OG) products by new generation (NG) products is proposed to cease the service capability for the OG products from manufacturers’ viewpoint.

A model is built to find an optimal time to switch to the new warranty service method to minimize the warranty cost of the OG products. The inventory cost of spare parts of OG products for warranty, repair cost and manufacturing cost of NG products are taken into account. Meanwhile, a mixed strategy is studied by providing options to customers for replacing their failed OG products with NG products by paying a discounted price of the OG products. Moreover, numerical experiments are conducted to test the effects of different parameters on the optimal solutions.

Solutions to the proposed model are discussed with analytic method and it is proved that the optimal solution exists in the considered situations. The mixed strategy considering the willingness of customers can result in the reduction of the warranty cost.

This paper analyzes the situation that more than one generations of products are in the marketplace simultaneously. Furthermore, this work makes a useful contribution for manufacturers to decrease their warranty cost by changing the service method, and provides the optimal warranty strategy for manufacturers considering the willingness of customers.

This paper aims to study a dominant e-retailer operating its own e-marketplace (B2C) to host peer competitor as well as acting as a traditional retailer (“dual-format” retailing as in Mantin and Krishnan 2014). The dominant retailer offers a two-part tariff charging scheme to a third-party seller. The seller decides whether to join the e-marketplace. The present paper is interested in addressing the following questions: What is the pricing equilibrium before/after the formation of the e-marketplace? What will be the “optimal” charging scheme? What is the impact on the e-marketplace operator if the third-party seller has the option to become “featured”.

This paper adopts a stylized model to capture the competition between the two retailers and applies game theory to solve the pricing equilibrium. The authors model the dual-format retailing in a two-stage decision: Stage 1, the e-marketplace operator offers a two-part tariff; Stage 2, if the other retailer is participating, they engage in a pricing competition. They assume that the e-marketplace operator is a profit maximizer by choosing its charging scheme subject to the condition that the participating retailer is no worse off.

The authors find that the e-retailer and the third-party seller in the e-marketplace are not always hurt by intensified price competition. They identify conditions under which higher expected prices are charged as a result of agglomeration effect. The authors’ model also provides theoretical evidence on this popular charging scheme, and shows the feasible region in which the e-marketplace operator could allocate the surplus resulted from the formation of the e-marketplace between itself and the participating retailer. Finally, the authors demonstrate that if the third-party seller has the option to become a “featured” retailer (He and Chen, 2006), it can be detrimental to the e-marketplace operator.

This work is different in three ways: First, the authors model an e-marketplace adopting a “dual-format” retailing, facing the trade-off between its direct retailing revenue and the rents collected from the member store, while the literature mainly focuses on e-marketplaces playing the intermediary role. Second, they explicitly model the “market expansion effect” caused by the agglomeration after the formation of the e-marketplace. The present study complements this stream of research by investigating and providing theoretical evidence on the charging scheme popularly adopted by the e-marketplaces and proposes ways to share the surplus to the participating store.

The purpose of this paper is to predict news intent by exploring contextual and temporal features directly mined from a general search engine query log.

First, a ground-truth data set with correctly marked news and non-news queries was built. Second, a detailed analysis of the search goals and topics distribution of news/non-news queries was conducted. Third, three news features, that is, the relationship between entity and contextual words extended from query sessions, topical similarity among clicked results and temporal burst point were obtained. Finally, to understand the utilities of the new features and prior features, extensive prediction experiments on SogouQ (a Chinese search engine query log) were conducted.

News intent can be predicted with high accuracy by using the proposed contextual and temporal features, and the macro average F1 of classification is around 0.8677. Contextual features are more effective than temporal features. All the three new features are useful and significant in improving the accuracy of news intent prediction.

This paper provides a new and different perspective in recognizing queries with news intent without use of such large corpora as social media (e.g. Wikipedia, Twitter and blogs) and news data sets. The research will be helpful for general-purpose search engines to address search intents for news events. In addition, the authors believe that the approaches described here in this paper are general enough to apply to other verticals with dynamic content and interest, such as blog or financial data.

Comfort foods consumption and linkages to stress coping strategies have received little attention in the business research on food products and services. This paper aims to explore comfort foods consumption among older Americans and how stress-coping strategies are related to their consumption frequency and variety of comfort foods.

Older Americans aged 50–99 years (N = 1,428) in the Health and Retirement Study were surveyed on their frequency and variety of comfort foods consumption and their consumption coping strategies. Data were analyzed and regression models were estimated.

Demographically, baby boomer, male, and non-Hispanic whites reported higher frequency and variety of comfort foods consumption. Comfort foods consumption in frequency and variety was significantly higher (lower) when “eat more” (“use alcohol”) was the endorsed coping strategy.

Research findings furthered research on the consumption of comfort foods among older American adults and added new insights into their coping behavior, both of which may help businesses be more targeted in serving comfort foods to the mature market and the public sector to tailor their services to older adults.

Cooperative driving refers to a notion that intelligent system sharing controlling with human driver and completing driving task together. One of the key technologies is that the intelligent system can identify the driver’s driving intention in real time to implement consistent driving decisions. The purpose of this study is to establish a driver intention prediction model.

The authors used the NIRx device to measure the cerebral cortex activities for identifying the driver’s braking intention. The experiment was carried out in a virtual reality environment. During the experiment, the driving simulator recorded the driving data and the functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) device recorded the changes in hemoglobin concentration in the cerebral cortex. After the experiment, the driver’s braking intention identification model was established through the principal component analysis and back propagation neural network.

The research results showed that the accuracy of the model established in this paper was 80.39 per cent. And, the model could identify the driver’s braking intent prior to his braking operation.

The limitation of this study was that the experimental environment was ideal and did not consider the surrounding traffic. At the same time, other actions of the driver were not taken into account when establishing the braking intention recognition model. Besides, the verification results obtained in this paper could only reflect the results of a few drivers’ identification of braking intention.

This study can be used as a reference for future research on driving intention through fNIRS, and it also has a positive effect on the research of brain-controlled driving. At the same time, it has developed new frontiers for intention recognition of cooperative driving.

This study explores new directions for future brain-controlled driving and wheelchairs.

The driver’s driving intention was predicted through the fNIRS device for the first time.

Influenced by factors such as fluctuations in market supply and demand and the rapid development of new technologies, manufacturing companies are facing greater challenges to transform and upgrade. The existing relevant studies about sustainable innovation capabilities mostly focus on classification of innovation or from a static resource-based view and less on quantitative measurement from a dynamic perspective and inter-organizational relationships. This paper takes a dynamic capabilities and social capital theory, explore the concept and dimensions of sustainable innovation capabilities and then makes development of a new scale.

This paper uses a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies to develop a measure of sustainable innovation capabilities in two studies. Grounded theory methodology is used to explore the concept definition and dimensions of sustainable innovation capabilities. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis are conducted to refine and validate the factor structure, and then the authors developed the sustainable innovation capabilities scale.

The results show that sustainable innovation capabilities composed of ideation capabilities, opportunity capture capabilities, agile learning, creative inheritance and networking capabilities. The sustainable innovation capabilities that firms should possess are reflected at the firm level and inter-organizational relationship level, and the culture-specific dimension of creative inheritance reflects the influence of national and organizational culture.

The research reveals the internal driving force of the manufacturer's sustainable innovation capabilities, as well as the role and uniqueness embodied in the specific culture, providing a new perspective for improving the manufacturer's sustainable innovation capabilities.

This paper aims to analyse how both Lin’s birthplace identity and his Christian identity contributed to his fruitful public career and to ascertain which identity became the most significant.

Archival research is the main method used in this paper. The most important archives drawn from are the Daniel Tse Collection in the Special Collection and Archives of the Hong Kong Baptist University Library. Oral history has also been used in this paper to uncover more material that has not yet been discussed in existing scholarly works.

This paper argues that although Lin’s birthplace identity and social networks helped him to start his business career in Nam Pak Hong and develop into a leader in the local Chaozhou communities, these factors were insufficient to his becoming a respectable member of the Chinese elite in post-war Hong Kong. He became well known not because of his leading position in local Chaozhou communities or any great achievement he had obtained in business but because of his contribution to the development of Christian education. These achievements earned him a reputation as a “Christian educator”. Thus Lin’s Christian identity became more important than his birthplace identity in contributing to his successful public career.

This paper has value in showing how Christian influences interacted with various cultural factors in early Hong Kong. It also offers insights into Lin’s life and motivations as well as the history of the institutions he contributed to/founded. It not only furthers our understanding of the Chinese Christian business elite in early Hong Kong but also provides us with insights when further studying this group of people in other British colonies in Asia.

Recent trends of outsourcing in global competition make the firms vulnerable to operational risks. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how firms implement supply chain strategies to reduce operational risks, especially risk exposure involving catastrophic events.

Drawn on risk management and supply chain research, the concepts of operational risk and the underlying demand and supply uncertainties are delineated. Then, based on literature review and numerical demonstrations, the authors evaluate the effectiveness of supply chain strategies in reducing operational risks. The paper examines the benefit of these strategies and illustrate how to setup risk pooling and dual sourcing programs.

Employing the strategies of risk pooling and dual sourcing, an agile and diversified supply chain can be built to cope with the demand or supply uncertainties and in turn reduce the operational risks.

Leaders in any organization should consider operational and supply risk critically when planning their competitive strategy. They could foster creative solutions in supply chain strategies and essentially enhance competitiveness.

The paper highlights the tension between outsourcing trend in pursuit of competitive advantage and risk exposure to catastrophic events. This paper fulfils a practical need for better understanding of how supply chain strategies could be implemented to reduce operational risks.

CIM and BPR are seen as two kinds of means whereby performance can be improved while flexibility is, at the same time, also being enhanced. Highlights similarities as well as differences between BPR and CIM through comparative analysis. Emphasizes that CIM is still an incremental approach to enterprise performance improvement although much information technology is being used, and that radical changes will not be achieved without combining with BPR. Analyzes the effects of BPR on CIM in three aspects: production process, organizational structure and information technology. Proposes that the aims of CIM based on BPR are designing of customer‐oriented production process, creating of teamwork‐centered and flexible organization consisting of some from market‐to‐market process chains and building of distributed, simplified and integrated supporting information system.

The purpose of this paper is to explore different tagging behaviours between Chinese and Americans by analysing the movie tags, and explore the feasibility of applying cultural differences to tag recommendations.

This paper introduced hypotheses based on several well-established psychological theories and tested them with social tags for the same movies generated by Chinese and Americans. And to prove the utility of the cultural factor consideration, this paper conducted a cross-cultural tag recommendation experiment.

The results show that compared with Americans, Chinese users tend to add more tags about movies’ background information (e.g. release year) and global contextual characteristics (e.g. genre); they also prefer to add tags about production countries and factual tags, and cultural factors can be applied for recommending more accurate tags.

Other reasons for tagging differences beyond cultural factors have not be explored. Tags for some sample movies in MovieLens might be unstable, as they had been tagged by a small scale of users; as a result, the tags’ type distribution might be influenced.

The results and conclusion of this study will be beneficial for the cross-cultural applications of social tags and mining users’ interests based on tags.

This paper provided a deeper investigation of the cross-cultural effect in people’s social tagging behaviours from cognitive perspective, and an empirical analysis has been performed to explore proper approaches of incorporating cultural differences for tag recommendation.