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The purpose of this paper is to study the “underbanked” – those who already possess bank accounts but are patrons of alternative financial services (AFS) providers at the same time.

Linking the FDIC unbanked/underbanked surveys of nationally represented households with FDIC bank information and local MSA demographics, demographic and economic profiles of the underbanked households are examined, together with the determinants of their choice of nonbank financial services.

The author finds that bank fees are associated with the likelihood for households to obtain AFS, especially nonbank credit. Households’ attitudes and experience with banks are important in the choice of getting AFS. Furthermore, most underbanked households used AFS temporarily, partly reflecting rather informed and calculated financial decisions.

The results from this paper provide implications for different types of AFS users. For example, the use of transactional AFS responds to the availability of online or mobile banking; meanwhile, it is also sensitive to branch closure. Users of nonbank credits are likely to be price savvy, and these products serve as valuable alternatives for short-term financing, especially during unfavorable economic situation.

Better understanding of the underbanked could help banks tailor to existing clients’ needs, for instance, providing innovative short-term credit products for those with little or impaired credit history. The study also helps policy makers re-evaluate banking regulations since the Great Recession. As regulations squeezed bank profits in certain areas and forced banks to consolidate, come alongside higher bank fees, potential branch closure and loss of service, which ultimately forced banked individuals to the less regulated alternative providers.

The analysis utilizes a comprehensive set of variables, from household social-economic characteristics to local banking industry characteristics, together with households’ subjective opinions of their banking institutions. The focus on the underbanked brings attention to this underserved population and discusses areas where banks can improve. The study contributes to the understanding of AFS users, draws implications for regulation toward banking and shadow banking.

Consumers are increasingly using search-based advertising in e-Business platforms to seek their desirable products. Platforms will choose a centralized advertising mechanism (CAM) or decentralized advertising mechanism (DAM) to offer a search advertising service to lower consumer search cost, as represented by using search time length. It is important for the platform to decide how to choose advertising mechanisms, and how to determine the optimal advertising price and search time length. To address these issues, this study aims to develop a theoretical approach under each mechanism to examine the platform’s optimal search-based advertising strategy by considering search cost.

In this study, two models are developed to examine the optimal search-based advertising strategy by considering consumer search cost (i.e. search time length). By comparing the platform’s profits under two models, the optimal advertising strategy, search time length and price are explored.

It is found that when the seller’s reserve benefit is sufficiently large, the platform benefits from choosing the DAM; otherwise, the CAM is a better choice. The advertising service is usually offered with a shorter search time length accompanied by a higher charge, and a longer search time length accompanied by a lower charge. Specifically, when the seller’s reserve benefit is substantially high, a DAM that benefits both the platform and seller is a better choice. This can explain why many platforms offer advertising services with a DAM.

This paper is the first theoretical study on addressing the search-based advertising strategy, especially the choice of advertising mechanisms, in the online advertising context. It is also the first piece of analytical research that considers the effect of consumer search cost on product demand, and then examines the optimal advertising price and search cost (i.e. search time length) for online platforms.

The purpose of this paper is to study the cooperation and pricing strategies for e-commerce platforms when considering seller classification.

E-commerce platforms serve to facilitate trade and generate revenue from the participants. By classifying the sellers in the market into two types (the individual sellers vs the professional sellers), the authors examine how the interaction between the two types of sellers affects the platform’s cooperation and pricing decisions. Specifically, the authors compare two cooperation strategies for the platform: cooperating only with the professional sellers (strategy I); and cooperating with both the two types of sellers (strategy II).

When the platform attractiveness for the professional sellers is high enough, strategy II is absolutely beneficial than strategy I; whereas when the platform attractiveness for the professional sellers is low and the performance requirement of the individual sellers is relatively high, strategy I will be more beneficial.

For a platform choosing strategy II, it should make effort to differentiate between the different types of sellers by the product or service quality.

The paper is among the first to study the cooperation and pricing strategies for the e-commerce platform with seller classification.

This study aims to help businesses cope with consumers' no-show behaviour from a multistage perspective. It specifically identifies no-show reasons at each stage of appointment services and proposes the corresponding coping strategies.

By focusing on an outpatient appointment service, we interviewed 921 no-show patients to extract no-show reasons, invited 18 hospital managers to propose coping strategies for these reasons using a Delphi method and evaluated the proposed strategies based on EDAS (Evaluation based on Distance from Average Solution).

The results reveal ten reasons for no-show behaviour (i.e. system service quality, overuse, did not know the appointment, self-judgment, forget, waiting time, lateness, uncontrollable problems, time conflict and service coordination), which have nine coping strategy themes (i.e. prepayment, system intelligence, target, subjective norm, system integration, ease of navigation, reminder, confirmation and cancellation). We classify the ten reasons and nine themes into scheduling, waiting and execution stages of an appointment service.

This study provides a package of coping strategies for no-show behaviour to deal with no-show reasons at each appointment service stage. It also extends the research in pre-service management through appointment services.

Peer instruction has been widely adopted as an instructional method in higher education. However, due to students' different preconceptions, the authors argued that peer instruction is not a panacea in international business education when students' prior knowledge extensively varies. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In this experimental study, the authors focused on three conditions of an introductory statistics course: individual problem solving, peer instruction, and peer instruction with hints.

The authors have found students in peer instruction with hints class did not only outperform in the final exam, but also achieved the highest frequency of successful conceptual changes in comparison with their counterparts in the other two classes.

Providing instructional hints to improve the effectiveness of peer instruction may shed light on classroom instruction in higher education.

As for international business education, this was a unique exploration to capture students' conceptual changes using clickers. The authors believed this research paper will help the education practitioners to know their business students better.

The purpose of this paper is to study the advance selling strategies for oligopolists when considering the product diffusion effect.

The authors consider a market that composes of two competitive sellers who are different in their reputation. The two firms sell the same product in the market over two periods (i.e. the advance selling season and the regular selling season). Due to the effect of product diffusion, the demand of each firm in the regular selling season is dependent on the two firms’ advance demands.

For the firm with lower reputation, it is beneficial to decrease the advance selling price with the diffusion effect caused by its advance demand. For the firm with higher reputation, it is also beneficial to decrease the advance selling price with the diffusion effect caused by its advance demand if the consumers’ enthusiasm for the product in regular selling season is high enough; otherwise it should not decrease his advance selling price since this practice cannot greatly increase his demand.

The obtained results can provide operational managers in reality with valuable suggestions in making advance selling decisions.

The paper is among the first to investigate the impact of product diffusion effect on a firm’s advance selling strategy in a competitive setting.

This study aims to analyze the shear strength and fracture mechanism of full Cu-Sn IMCs joints with different Cu₃Sn proportion and joints with the conventional interfacial structure in electronic packaging.

The Cu-Sn IMCs joints with different Cu₃Sn proportion were fabricated through soldering Cu-6 μm Sn-Cu sandwich structure under the extended soldering time and suitable pressure. The joints of conventional interfacial structure were fabricated through soldering Cu-100 μm Sn-Cu sandwich structure. After the shear test was conducted, the fracture mechanism of different joints was studied through observing the cross-sectional fracture morphology and top-view fracture morphology of sheared joints.

The strength of joints with the conventional interfacial structure was 26.6 MPa, while the strength of full Cu-Sn IMCs joints with 46.7, 60.6, 76.7 and 100 per cent Cu₃Sn was, respectively, 33.5, 39.7, 45.7 and 57.9 MPa. The detailed reason for the strength of joints showing such regularity was proposed. For the joint of conventional interfacial structure, the microvoids accumulation fracture happened within the Sn solder. However, for the full Cu-Sn IMCs joint with 46.7 per cent Cu₃Sn, the cleavage fracture happened within the Cu6Sn5. As the Cu₃Sn proportion increased to 60.6 per cent, the inter-granular fracture, which resulted in the interfacial delamination of Cu₃Sn and Cu6Sn5, occurred along the Cu₃Sn/Cu6Sn5 interface, while the cleavage fracture happened within the Cu6Sn5. Then, with the Cu₃Sn proportion increasing to 76.7 per cent, the cleavage fracture happened within the Cu6Sn5, while the transgranular fracture happened within the Cu₃Sn. The inter-granular fracture, which led to the interfacial delamination of Cu₃Sn and Cu, happened along the Cu/Cu₃Sn interface. For the full Cu₃Sn joint, the cleavage fracture happened within the Cu₃Sn.

The shear strength and fracture mechanism of full Cu-Sn IMCs joints was systematically studied. A direct comparison regarding the shear strength and fracture mechanism between the full Cu-Sn IMCs joints and joints with the conventional interfacial structure was conducted.

The advancements in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) encourage disruptive transformation in the hospitality industry. Previous discussions predominantly focused on the impact of AI-powered agents on the labor force. This research extends previous studies by investigating the feasibility of GenAI as an information search agent in comparison to the predominant role of search engines.

Based on the Tourist Online Information Search Behavior framework, the authors proposed that consumers’ GenAI adoption may vary upon search purpose (search type), individual differences (travel motive) and situational differences (GenAI task-oriented customization level). Four studies with a total number of 813 participants were conducted.

Taking GenAI over traditional search engines for pre-trip information search significantly increased with a non-decision-based (vs decision-based) purpose. To enhance the adoption of GenAI in its less effective but more important decision-based situations, the authors proposed and confirmed the incremental effect of utilitarian travel motives and task-oriented customization levels.

This study highlights GenAI’s potential as an information communication technology (ICT). This encourages tourism and hospitality businesses to consider integrating GenAI to strengthen ICT services. Moreover, search type, travel motive and task-oriented customization level are important in deploying GenAI for ICT improvement.

This study deepens the understanding of GenAI adoption in the tourism and hospitality sector by elaborating on the GenAI-as-ICT perspective and offers fresh insights into AI for pre-trip or pre-consumption information search.

This paper aims to synthesize benzothiazole-azo disperse dyes which can be applied not only for dyeing and alkaline reduction of polyester fabric in one bath, but also for dyeing and peroxide bleaching of cotton/polyester blend fabric in one bath.

The synthesized benzothiazole-azo disperse dyes were confirmed by proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1H-NMR) spectroscopy, mass spectroscopy (MS) and UV–visible spectrophotometry. The performance on resistance to alkaline treatment and peroxide bleaching was tested by measuring the color strength of polyester fabric dyed with the synthesized benzothiazole-azo disperse dyes under high-temperature and high-pressure conditions.

Increasing the electron-withdrawing ability of the substituents in the diazo component and the electron-donating ability of the substituents in the coupling component resulted in a significant bathochromic shift of the maximum absorption wavelength. Except that the disperse dyes synthesized from the coupling components containing the hydroxyethyl group were unstable in alkaline solution, all others exhibited high resistance to alkaline treatment and peroxide bleaching.

The synthesized benzothiazole-azo disperse dyes provide the opportunities to combine dyeing and alkaline reduction of polyester fabric into one bath, and combine dyeing and peroxide bleaching of cotton/polyester blend fabric into one bath.

The synthesized benzothiazole-azo disperse dyes help to establish short processes of polyester and polyester/cotton blend fabrics so as to reduce energy consumption and raise production efficiency.