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This paper aims to explore how enterprise microblogging can influence consumer loyalty and thus generate business value for firms. The study aims to expand traditional brand community theory.

The paper is based on brand community theory, social identity theory and usage and gratifications theory. Using a pre-survey of the fans of an enterprise microblog and a random sample survey of such fans on Sina Weibo, the authors tested the structural equation model with LISREL, which includes multiple fit indices.

The paper provides empirical insights about how enterprise microblogging can influence consumer loyalty and thus generate business value for firms. It suggests that consumers’ perceived value could strengthen their microblog identification, which will influence their perceived relationship with the enterprise and its products directly and indirectly through the mediation of enterprise identification. Perceived relationship can further influence purchase and recommendation intentions.

Because of the chosen data collecting approach, the research results may be still subjective. Moreover, the study overlooks the effects of the different types of enterprise microblogging and consumers.

Enterprises should operate their official microblogging from the perspective of maintaining brand community to improve consumer loyalty. They can generate more value for consumers through their microblogging and predict the operating performance by evaluating the degree of consumers’ relationship perception.

This paper considers enterprise microblogging as a new form of virtual brand community and identifies its features, and expands theories of brand community, and social media/IT business value, social identity theory and gratifications theory.

Recently, sharing economy is gradually accepted by people, and it has expanded from life to knowledge. It is important to encourage people to produce high quality content in knowledge sharing area, and knowledge payment is one of the most effective ways to achieve it. Therefore, the knowledge payment has been regarded as a huge business opportunity, and it is of great meaning to study the development trend and feasibility of knowledge payment. This chapter, through big data methods, analyzes the business model of Zhihu (a Chinese platform of knowledge sharing) after it introduced knowledge payment projects, such as Zhihu Live and Pay Consultation. According to data of Zhihu users’ Q&A, concerned fields and others, this chapter tries to outline its user profile to find out the target groups of different topics, the proper form of knowledge payment and the hot topics of Zhihu Live. Through the analysis of knowledge graph, this chapter finds that Zhihu Live is expected to be the mainstream knowledge payment form in the future, and the most potential topics are mainly focused on science, law, and business. Meanwhile, it establishes a pricing model for Zhihu Live, and provides suggestions for the development of knowledge payment.

With the advance of the Silk Road Initiative proposed by China, it has been a focus of China government to develop strategic emerging industries. The development of strategic emerging industries needs the support of competitive intelligence on many aspects such as strategical planning, policy making, industrial structure adjustment, and technology innovation. However, so far there are few studies toward the competitive intelligence systems for strategic emerging industries. In this article, we focus on a number of issues related to the competitive intelligence for strategic emerging industries in China. First, we conduct a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats analysis on the situations of strategic emerging industries in China, based on which the necessity of building a competitive intelligence (CI) service system for strategic emerging industries is discussed. Next, the authors present a framework of a CI service system for strategic emerging industries in China. The principles, components, working process, and product forms are deeply described. The CI service system proposed in this article consists of a cooperation network platform, three layered organizations, and three systems, which integrates organizations, information, people, network, and service platforms into an ecosystem to offer competitive intelligence supports for government, industry, and enterprises. Finally, the authors discuss a case study of the proposed CI service system for the new energy automobile industry.

What’s the flow path of knowledge sharing among members in online health community (OHC)? Exploration of this issue could shed light on mechanisms behind user knowledge sharing and interaction on OHC, but few studies have focused on it. This study is going to address this research gap and to provide richer support for subsequent knowledge management related research.

Based on the core-periphery effect, this study combines content analysis and social network analysis to portray the paths of different types of social support for core and periphery users from social support perspective.

Results reveal that the core users follow a pattern of high-stage and low-stage users with distinct needs, while the path pattern of the edge user group mainly consists support from high-stage to low-stage users. Results show that there is apparent distinction between the paths of emotional and informational support between core and periphery users. For core users, emotional support flows from lower stage users to higher stage users, while informational support follows the opposite direction. For periphery users, the paths of emotional support and informational support are identical, with both flowing from higher stage users to lower stage users.

This study explores the flow paths of information support and emotional support for core and periphery users, and discovers the different patterns of these two types of users, providing theoretical guidance for platform administrators to manage users more efficiently and ensure the sustainable development of the platform.

Digitalisation is a key driver of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0) to better understand the opportunities and challenges pertaining to digital transformation; organisations adopt different approaches to dealing with digitisation. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the impact of Industry 4.0 on the procurement process re-engineering and its role within the area of supply chain management. Additionally, the research will examine barriers and challenges involved in the digitalisation of procurement and supply chains and how to overcome them. According to the findings, digitalisation of the procurement process can have several advantages, such as supporting complex decision-making processes and administrative tasks, focusing on strategic decisions and activities, transforming procurement into a strategic interface to support organisational efficiency, effectiveness and profitability and fostering the development of new business models. Furthermore, the study highlighted various influencing factors, challenges and the role of stakeholders impacting the digitalisation of procurement functions and supply chains.

This study aims to explore the degree of Chinese consumers' trust and confidence in the Chinese dairy products supply chain and the relationships between trust and overall confidence in dairy products safety and quality.

This study collected data from 1,278 respondents by field survey from five provinces of China. The data were analyzed using ordered logit model.

This study shows the following results: (1) Chinese consumer confidence in domestic dairy products and trust in actors of the dairy chain are at a moderate-to-low level. (2) Government regulators are considered to take the most responsibility, with both an optimism-enhancing and a pessimism-reducing effect (the former effect is greater), while perceived trust in dairy farmers and retailers has little effect. (3) Perceived care has both an optimism-enhancing and a pessimism-reducing effect, and the former effect is stronger. Competence and openness have an optimism-enhancing effect and a pessimism-reducing effect, respectively. (4) The importance of the three dimensions of trust related to optimism-increasing and pessimism-reduction is limited, except in the case of government regulators.

This study contributes to a better understanding of consumer trust in food safety and also help demonstrate to the actors and institutions involved in the dairy supply chain the best way to improve the performance of their duties to meet the consumers' needs for safe and quality dairy products.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new group decision‐making approach, which can only use simple mathematical calculations to perform a group decision‐making task.

The large column and large row (LCLR) method is designed and applied.

The paper finds four propositions to support LCLR methods to be a simple and effectual means for group decision making.

The aggregated matrix constructed in LCLR methods should be generated from non‐contradictory circles.

Effective group decision‐making results can be obtained by easily used methods, not necessarily by using complex mathematics technology to conduct the task.

The new approach based on LCLR methods proposed in this paper may be one of the most easily used and effective means for group decision making.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a potential nanoparticles lubricant additive for solving the problem of the insolubility and stable dispersity; the complex nanoparticles with core-shell structures are less studied in the field. Therefore, this paper determines novel complex nanoparticles and their tribological properties.

According to the conventional preparation method, the complex nanoparticle styrene/calcium borate (PS/O-CaB) was synthesized. The microstructures of the as-obtained samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction infrared spectroscopy and thermogravimetric analysis. Tribological properties of PS/O-CaB used as lubricating oil additive were evaluated on four-ball tribometer. The worn surface of the steel ball was investigated by a three-dimensional non-contact surface profilometer and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS).

The results of the structure characteristic indicate two different crystalline forms, namely, Ca₂B₆O₁₁ and Ca₂B₂O₅, and the average size of calcium borate nanoparticles in PS/O-CaB is about 20-40 nm. Moreover, the good tribological properties are due to a wear resistance film containing both depositions and the tribochemical reaction products which comprise B2O3, FeB and Fe2O3.

Novel complex nanoparticles with core-shell structure (PS/O-CaB) were successfully prepared. Moreover, the PS/O-CaB shows excellent tribological capacity such as load-carrying, friction-reducing and antiwear property.

With the holistic approaches of Industry 4.0, products, services, standards, and application techniques have been improved. This digitalization era has not only impacted the production and service dynamics, but also added advanced dimensions to logistics and supply chain management. According to the current world standards, consumer behavior makes the logistics and supply chain processes more challenging. Especially during the COVID-19 outbreak, logistics and supply chain operations became more crucial for the firms, as most consumers have tended toward online shopping while they are in lockdown. Therefore, the competitive environment today enables firms to adapt the technologies and approaches of Logistics 4.0 and smart/digital supply chain, as they must respond to consumers' demands quickly. Moreover, firms need to have strong relations with their supply chain partners via these technologies. The technologies such as the Internet of Things (IOT), cyber-physical system, Big Data, and cloud computing help to change the fundamentals of logistics and supply chain and improve processes for all industries. This study aims to analyze the transformation of traditional logistics and supply chain activities into Logistics 4.0 and smart/digital supply chain. Primarily, we hope to analyze the existing studies by investigating the concept of Logistics 4.0 within Industry 4.0 dynamics. As firms develop their logistics operations, their supply chain processes will be shaped by the technologies and applications, and this situation also leads us to find out the importance of smart or digital supply chain operations. Discussing the potentials of smart or digital supply chain also lets us to reveal how companies handle their logistics operations during the COVID-19 period.