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While significant efforts have been made to study auction and logistics theories in the context of perishable supply chain trading (PSCT) over the last few years, the consensus has not yet been reached on how best to examine the impact of physical-internet-enabled auction logistics (AL) decisions and processes on dynamic perishable products transactions. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap by investigating the existing situations and identifying future opportunities for both academic and industrial communities.

The relevant literature was sort out along with three dimensions, namely auction mechanism, level of decision and coordination. The methods of field investigation and focus group discussion were also used to explore the factors influencing AL performance.

A number of key findings presented. First, there is an emerging paradigm shift from offline auction to online auction. Robust and resilient AL are needed to fulfill the massive number of orders from different channels while considering dynamic decisions. Second, three-level decisions in AL have been explicitly classified and defined. Various mathematical techniques used in literature vis-à-vis the contexts of AL were mapped. Third, a coordination mechanism that dynamically balances trade-off between logistics efficiency and transaction price was discussed. Lastly, several opportunities for future research were distinguished with coherent connection of research domains and open questions.

This paper not only summaries key themes of current research dimensions, but also indicates existing deficiencies and potential research directions. The findings can be used as the basis for future research in PSCT and related topics.

The paper aims to study the challenges and solutions of city logistics in the new retail era. The new retail, which is characterized by omni-channel, fragmented orders and decentralized 2C distribution, is becoming the mainstream of the retail industry worldwide. In order to achieve a comprehensive breakthrough in new retail, the change of order fulfillment mode is the most noteworthy issue. The aim of this paper is to design a city logistics operation model for new retail and verify its feasibility and efficiency.

A physical internet (PI) enabled two-tier city logistics solution is proposed by redefining the key facilities in city logistics with the PI concept. A “Container-as-a-Warehouse” operation mode is designed to provide a more flexible store and transfer solution. A mathematical model of the proposed solution is established. An adaptive large neighborhood search (ALNS) is designed based upon an iterative procedure, which ensures consistent and optimal results.

To quantitatively assess the feasibility of the proposed solution, a computational experiment is designed to compare the performance of the proposed model against the conventional two-tier city logistics operation. The effects of geographical location pattern, utilization of PI-hub as well as the fluctuation of customer orders are analyzed. The results show that the PI-enabled city logistics is more advantageous than the conventional solution.

This study does not consider the impact of new technologies in city logistics; for example, the replenishment problem of unmanned vending machines and the charging problem of electric vehicles.

The proposed PI-enabled solution and analysis results in this paper have positive guiding significance for future practical application.

Based on the concept of PI, this paper proposes an innovative and practical operation model to solve the city logistics challenges.

The increasing popularity of ERP solutions has provided dietary supplement manufacturing companies with modules to manage pricing and inventory. However, the decisions made by these modules are often independent and rely on deterministic forecasts. This paper studies a multi-product dietary supplement manufacturing system under stochastic demands. The purpose is to maximize the long-run expected profit by jointly considering pricing and inventory strategies.

The authors investigate both the general cases and three special cases including stable demand, negligible backlog and instantaneous replenishment. A two-stage algorithm named PAS is proposed. In the strategy construction stage, the constructed objective bounds are combined to provide estimates which then help to derive the optimal product prices. In the system operation stage, replenishment decisions are further made based on the prices generated from the previous stage.

It is proved that base-stock policy is optimal for the studied system, and the optimal based-stock level is provided. The global optimal strategies are obtained for three important special cases. For the general case, theoretical objective bounds are established. These bounds provide quick and reliable performance estimates for practical applications.

Very few studies have jointly considered pricing and inventory strategies with uncertainty demands in the dietary supplement industry. The PAS algorithm developed integrates these decisions and consistently generates high-quality solutions even under highly varying demands. Such algorithm could be a valuable add-on to the pricing and inventory management modules in ERP systems.

This paper aims to develop a new robotic ultrasound system for spine imaging with more anthropomorphic scanning manipulation in comparison with previously reported techniques.

The system evaluates the imaging quality of ultrasound (US) B-scans by detecting vertebral landmarks and groups the images with relatively low quality into several sub-optimal types. By imitating the scanning skills of sonographers, the authors defined a set of adjustment strategies for certain sub-optimal types. In this way, the robot can recollect the US images with high quality by adaptively adjusting the pose of the probe like a sonographer.

The results from phantom experiments and in vivo experiments showed that the proposed method could improve the quality of B-scans during the scanning. The 3 D US volume reconstruction has also verified the feasibility of the proposed method.

This paper demonstrates how to adapt a robotic spinal ultrasound scanning using a preliminary anthropomorphic approach.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of creator credibility and backer endorsement on the levels of donation to crowdfunding campaigns in a focal muslim community and to determine the success factors of projects in developing and developed countries.

This research adopts a quantitative approach, utilizing 223 crowdfunding projects from LaunchGood to examine the expected connections. The crowdfunding projects in the distinctive data set (Ramadan) are similar, permitting exploration of the role of creator credibility and backer endorsement in a unique context of religious-based crowdfunding activity.

Creators’ credibility and backers’ endorsements are decisive factors in crowdfunding success. Results from an additional test related to location (developing and developed countries) suggest that creators’ credibility is more important than backers’ endorsements, especially in developing countries.

The projects used in the data set are homogenous and take place in a specific context. The limited number of available observations influences the testing function and capacity of the models and variables. Further, the investigation is related to a specific community, so might not be applicable to all communities.

Potential supporters from the community are vital for the success of crowdfunding projects. This study informs campaign efforts in a religious community by stressing the importance of creators’ credibility and backers’ endorsements. The study also sheds light on factors that affect crowdfunding success in developing and developed countries.

This study helps to explain successful crowdfunding practices in donation-based crowdfunding projects within a religious community context. Results improve scholars’ ability to comprehend individuals’ supporting behavior, providing empirical evidence of creators’ credibility and backers’ endorsement on project success. The study also addresses the determinants of crowdfunding success in developing and developed countries.

This paper aims to employ data envelopment analysis (DEA) models to evaluate the efficiency level and the change of efficiency of the hotel industry in major Chinese cities from 2001 to 2011. The study also aims to investigate the determinants of this efficiency.

The DEA models were used to calibrate the scores of technical efficiency, pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency in each city, and the Malmquist productivity index was introduced to trace the efficiency change. Furthermore, the panel Tobit and linear regression models were applied to look into various factors contributing to efficiency scores.

The inefficiency of the hotel industry generally comes from the pure technical inefficiency. Moreover, the efficiency of the hotel industry has been considerably improved over the research period due to the change in technical efficiency. In addition, it was found that political hierarchy, degree of openness and level of tourism dependence help explain the cross-city differences in efficiency scores, whereas ownership structure dominantly contributes to the improvement of efficiency over time.

The benchmark analysis of efficiency is of great importance to cities with an unproductive hotel industry, as it helps them make critical adjustments towards the efficiency frontier.

This study represents one of the first studies to rigorously and systematically investigate the efficiency and efficiency change of the hotel industry in major Chinese cities and identify the possible factors explaining the efficiency score.

The purpose of this study is to explore how digital transformation helps enterprises achieve high-quality development, including the mediating mechanism of information transparency, innovation capacity and financial stability, the moderating role of financing constraints and government subsidies, and the heterogeneous effects of property rights, size and growth.

This study conducts two-way fixed-effect model using 780 samples of China's Shanghai-Shenzhen A-share listed companies from 2012 to 2019.

The results show that digital transformation can effectively improve the total factor productivity (TFP) of enterprises through the triple channels of information transparency, innovation capability and financial stability. Meanwhile, financing constraints significantly inhibited the contribution of digital transformation to TFP, while government subsidies significantly increased the contribution of digital transformation to TFP. In addition, state-owned enterprises (SOEs), large enterprises and high-growth enterprises are more able to achieve high-quality development by increasing their digital transformation.

In the process of implementing digital transformation, companies should actively improve information transparency, financial stability and innovation capabilities, and choose differentiated paths based on intrinsic characteristics such as property rights, scale and growth. At the same time, the government should actively improve not only the digital institutional environment but also the financial policy and credit system.

This study enriches the theoretical research framework of digital transformation and high-quality development by identifying the channel mechanisms and boundary conditions through which digital transformation affects high-quality development and expands the consequences of digital transformation and the antecedents of high-quality development.

With the development of small towns in China, the country pays more and more attention to the protection of landscape resources. It is an urgent problem that is how to protect landscape resources and ecological environment while developing economic industry in small towns. Establishing an ecotourism evaluation model can provide valuable reference for ecotourism planning, development protection and sustainable development of small towns.

This paper uses the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to construct the ecotourism evaluation system that accords with the characteristics of small towns. A judgment matrix is constructed to determine specific indicators and factor values based on expert survey results. Based on the AHP theory and considering 4 aspects, construction conditions of featured small towns, ecological and environmental conditions, ecotourism resources endowment and development conditions and tourism capacity. In addition, 16 factor evaluations were selected, evaluation model of ecotourism resources were built and each evaluation index value was confirmed by adopting expert's advice.

Ecological environment, socioeconomic, uniqueness, esthetic ornamental value, small-scale industry scale, type and development level, type and scale, tourism talent level, therapeutic and leisure value were the indispensable components of evaluation of ecotourism resources in featured small towns.

The ideas of ecological environment development are rooted in the hearts of the people with the development of times. The model in this research is pertinent, typical and universal to some extent. Thus it is worth popularizing and applying.