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Repeat customers play an important role in the restaurant sector. Previous studies have confirmed the positive effect of managerial responses on customer relationship management. However, the practice of managerial response strategies toward repeat customers in the restaurant sector remains unclear. This study aims to explore how social influence and the revisit intention of customers affect the responding behavior of restaurant managers.

This study collects information of 251,944 customer reviews and managerial responses from 1,272 restaurants on Yelp (a leading restaurant review website around the world) and builds four econometric models (with restaurant and month fixed effects) to test the hypotheses empirically.

The empirical results show that restaurant managers are less likely to respond to reviews posted by repeat customers (10% lower than that of new customers). This effect is moderated by customer social influence, which entails that repeat customers with great social influence are more likely to receive managerial responses. Moreover, reviews from repeat customers who have had a longer time since their last consumption are also more likely to receive managerial responses.

The results present implications for restaurant managers in business practice regarding managerial response. Managers should take advantage of platform designs and tools (i.e. customer relationship management programs to keep track of repeat customers) to locate repeat customers and avoid the potential negative effects caused by their selected response strategies.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first attempts to examine empirically how restaurant managers respond to reviews generated by repeat customers in real business practice and reveals what drives such activities from the perspectives of social influence and revisit intention.

Aiming at the key issue of interpersonal interaction process between successors and top management teams in the context of family business trans-generational entrepreneurship, this paper aims to explore the motivation, action and results of interpersonal conflict between these two subjects mentioned above.

This paper uses grounded theoretical research methods based on the research objects of three family businesses with both inheritance and transformation needs.

Motivation difference, mediation mode and relationship utilization, that is, the successor and top management team take the goal-orientation, interest orientation and rational tendency as the starting point for relationship coordination. Then it mediates the interpersonal conflicts through compromise, collaboration and compliance, and ultimately provide successors with resources, opportunities, capabilities and motivation advantages to promote trans-generational entrepreneurship. Second, the path of relationship coordination comes from the background of social embedding, that is, the motivation difference comes from the embedding of motivation seeking, the mediation mode comes from the embedding of mediation elements and the relationship utilization comes from the embedding of relationship optimization. The research conclusions not only provide a theoretical framework for family businesses to solve the problems of interpersonal conflicts faced by family businesses but also have practical guiding significance for the trans-generational entrepreneurship.

There are two theoretical contributions in this study. First, the research starting point of social embeddedness theory from the perspective of interpersonal relationships at the microlevel is revised. Since Granovetter (Granovetter, 1985) put forward the theory of social embeddedness, its research scope has been gradually expanded, but the mainstream research in the past focused on analyzing the social network embeddedness of enterprises to obtain social capital from the macro- and meso-level (Nahapiet and Ghoshal, 1998). In fact, this may deviate from the essential interpretation of Granovetter’s theory of social embeddedness, while this study returns to the study of interpersonal relationships. Second, a theoretical model of relationship coordination for successors and top management team is put forward in general. On the basis of the motivation, action and result of interpersonal interaction between the successor and top management team, the interpersonal coordination action path and embedded logic during trans-generational entrepreneurship of family businesses are revealed, which enriched the research scope of social embedded theory in family business.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the causal effect of high-speed railways (HSRs) and investigate the affecting channels; the second purpose is to examine how HSRs change the distribution of economic activity across cities and sectors.

A difference-in-difference strategy is implemented to estimate the impact of recently built HSRs on local economic performance in China, exploiting the geography and time variations in HSR operations.

Using panel data from China’s City Statistical Yearbook 2001–2019, the authors find that HSRs lead to a significant increase in cities’ gross domestic product (GDP) and GDP per capita, but the authors do not find any significant change in GDP growth. This conclusion still holds true after the authors address the endogeneity problems. A mechanism analysis shows that HSRs improve local economic performance mainly by increasing fixed asset investment. The authors also find that the HSR investment is a policy that favors metropolitan areas due to the larger increase in the GDP for larger cities and with HSRs, the industrial and service sectors will further agglomerate in larger cities.

The authors contribute to the literature in several ways. First, this paper improves the estimation strategy in identifying the HSR impact on the local economic performance. Second, this paper investigates the affecting channels of HSRs. This paper proves that HSRs in China promote the cities’ economic performance mainly by increasing the fixed asset investment. Third, this study provides evidence for the new economic geography models pioneered by Krugman (1991).

In recent years, fresh produce (fresh vegetables and fruit) has been circulated widely via e-commerce in Chinese large cities in the form of fresh produce portfolios (FPPs). The purpose of this paper is to analyze the preferences of Chinese consumers for specific FPP attributes.

A choice experiment approach was used to explore consumer preferences. The authors conducted a means-end-chains evaluation to select the attributes for the choice experiment. The authors used a fractional factorial design and finally obtained 18 choice scenarios. The authors collected 166 effective consumer questionnaires in Beijing.

The authors found that among the four attributes considered, certification and the diversity of the FPP had significant effects on the willingness to pay (WTP) among consumers. Residents had heterogeneous preferences for FPP diversity and certification, but certification was the major concern when considering fresh produce in the FPP. With regard to the WTP for attributes in the portfolio, the WTP values for “green” and “organic” attributes were high, but the WTP for the diversity of FPPs was low.

This study is the first attempt to explore the preferences of Chinese consumers regarding the attributes of FPP in an e-commerce environment.