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This paper investigates Chinese agricultural insurance agents willingness to offer (WTO) livestock insurance based on the variations of eight main attributes of livestock insurance.

This study implements discrete choice experiments (DCE) with actual insurance agents who design, sell and operate livestock insurance in China. The choice experiment of this study is based on the D-optimal approach, a six-block design, with 15 cards per block and two choices per card. The sample size was 211. Econometrics results are based on conditional and mixed logit models.

The authors find that the subsidy effect is enormous; a one level increase of subsidy leads to 3.166 times higher probability to offer. This subsidy effect is important as it confirms the endogenous structure between price and quantity in insurance offering, where subsidy does not only incentivize demand but also the supply. Another main factor of insurance investigated is the impact of different coverage types on agents' WTO. The authors find that agents prefer mortality insurance the most, followed by revenue insurance and profit insurance, while Index-Based Livestock Insurance (IBLI) is the least preferred to offer. Agents' knowledge about these newer types of insurance supports their WTO as well; thus, proper education is necessary to promote the more advanced types of livestock insurance.

A limitation is that in the presence of COVID 19, and administrative issues at the local level, the sample was not randomly drawn. Nonetheless, the authors believe that there is enough diversity across participants, insurers and provinces and have done sufficient robustness checks to support results and conclusions.

This study provides further validation for the DCE research method that could potentially be applied to different analyses: using choice experiments to study insurers and reveal their preferences, through combinations of various levels of core attributes for insurance products. The findings and contribution are critical to the reform and improvement of livestock insurance in China and for insurance markets more broadly. The authors find that insurers do not place equal weights or values on insurance product attributes and do not view types of insurance equally. In other words, while farmers may hold different preferences about the type of insurance they demand, the results suggest that insurers also hold preferences in the type of insurance they sell.

So far as the authors are aware, this is the first DCE designed around the supply of insurance products with the subjects being insurance agents, marketers and executives.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a method for identifying business process-relevant contextual information that is likely to impact on the process goal. The ORGANON method describes a semi-structured procedural guide alongside with a set of criteria and a matrix for analyzing ontological transactions, which can be used to identify which context information can be considered relevant to a business process.

The authors report on an evaluation of the ORGANON method through a case study conducted in an organization that works in the social security domain.

The results provide evidences of the feasibility of the method application in this scenario.

Our research contributes to the literature on business processes flexibility, specifically through a proposal for context identification that can be extended to current techniques for business process modeling and in turn forms the basis for existing approaches for making business processes more flexible. The work has implications for the strategic management of organizations, by suggesting a method that provides informational support to decision makers about when, where and why business processes need to be adapted.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the sales volume of a firm and its brand image. Consumers’ self‐perception and perception of brand image, with respect to congruency models, have a strong influence on their behavior in the marketplace. Therefore it is expected that the fluctuations (the authors use fluctuation and variation interchangeably) in image attributes will explain the fluctuations in sales figures. In order to test this hypothesis, consecutive surveys were carried out, on a monthly basis to collect image data. Factor analysis was performed on the image attributes over time and three main image factors were attained. To determine the net effect of image attributes on sales, multiple regression analysis was performed, using the time series data, and all three image factors were found to be significant in the model.

The purpose of this paper is to timely control of a construction collapse accident effectively during its development process by constructing a stage model and then aligning IT with each stage to help provide the information for decision making.

Through comprehensive literature review, this paper first identifies the various IT applications in on-site construction monitoring and analyzes the existed disaster/crisis stage models, also the stage models are compared with the causation models to illustrate the strengths. Then, a three-step methodology was conducted to develop and apply the conceptual framework, including the construction of the four-stage model; the establishment of the conceptual framework of information technology (IT) support for management of construction accidents (ITSMCA); and a building collapse accident used to illustrate the proposed framework.

The accident is divided into four stages, which are incubation stage, outbreak stage, spreading stage and final stage. The real-time staged information to support decision making, such as the contributing factors of on-site workers, materials, equipment and workplace, can be provided by emerging IT. Therefore, IT is aligned with the variations of contributing factors’ attributes in the four stages and ITSMCA is constructed to help accidents management.

The focus of the framework presented in this paper is that the stage model is effective for it catches the variations of the attributes whose values can be provided by IT rather than research on the practical application of the IT system. The construction and application of the IT system will be the research focus in the future.

This paper presents a stage model of a building collapse accident and gives a comprehensive conceptual framework of ITSMCA, which align the IT with different stages of the collapse accident. The ITSMCA proposes a feasible ideology and practical method for real-time management of the collapse accident during the process.

The effectiveness of the whole product development process is limited by the quantity and quality of new ideas uncovered. New idea inputs surface haphazardly when no systematic procedure exists to uncover them. As a consequence, the unorganised company may find itself developing products of only marginal promise. A systematic approach to comparative product ideas is especially important in industries with short product life cycles, such as the packaged drug business. An “inventory” of new product ideas is needed to produce a series of overlapping profit waves to insure growth and a regular cash flow. The high mortality rate of product ideas also argues for having a large pool of ideas to draw on.

This paper aims to explore the link between business model decisions and customer value creation for mobile services.

An empirical survey was conducted of 54 service provider professionals across six mobile services.

The paper reveals that there is a categorization of mobile services according to extrinsic and intrinsic effects on end‐user values. Mobile specificity is found to be the most influential business model option. The research model was found to be adequate for empirical studies.

This is an explorative study.

The findings of this study can be used by service providers of mobile services to choose options that improve the customer value of a service.

This paper is a new economic study of the link between a business model and performance based on end‐user values. It is of value for service providers and researchers.

Providing the services which customers need and want is vital for assuring necessary product and distribution support in a marketing channel. This paper illustrates a method of identifying those customer service needs and aligning suppliers' customer service activities to meet those needs.

Indicates the ways in which manufacturers can overcome resistance to new products and states that, in response to the risk which most consumer perceive in spending large amounts of money on an unfamiliar product, manufacturers tend to keep to new product ranges which are, apparently, similar to existing products. Emphasises that prior to purchase consumers must evaluate a possible purchase to decide whether it can generate satisfaction at least as large as the price demanded for it. Concludes that herein is offered a structure against which particular problems caused by bias and inaccurate perception by consumers, of the underlying characteristics of new products can be evaluated.

The paper aims to measure the degree of influence that attributes such as price, origin, type and production system have on Spanish consumers when purchasing cheese, while also analysing various cheese differentiation strategies.

The methodology consisted in a survey of 420 Madrid (Spain) cheese consumers during the month of December 2006, whose preferences were determined through several multivariate techniques.

The first result derived from this paper is the negative influence of the organic production system attribute on the cheese consumer preference structure. Therefore, this attribute becomes an inadequate differentiation strategy for cheese, while origin is the most adequate differentiation. In this sense, three consumer segments are identified: the first, shops for cheese mainly by type, the second, by a combination of origin, type and price and the third, by an origin of cheese. In this sense, except for the first segment, where competition by a type of cheese from other places could endanger the local market, possible strategies would be to continue emphasizing origin in a traditional approach.

The paper highlights organic differentiation in products already differentiated and accepted by the consumer does not always contribute additional utility to the consumer. It does not matter whether this differentiation and acceptance comes from origin and/or traditional production, as is the case of Manchego cheese.

This study seeks to investigate the comparative effects of local and imported coagulants on tofu yield and quality.

Soymilk was extracted from soybean variety, TGX‐923‐24 using cold water extraction method. The milk extract was coagulated to tofu using fermented maize liquor (FML), Alum solution (AS), lime‐juice (LJ), lime solution (LS), Calotropis procera stem extract (BSE) and calcium sulphate solution (CSS) fresh yields of tofu ranged from 318 to 380 per 200 g of bean, moisture content 60 to 72 per cent and protein 51 to 62 per cent. Yield of tofu coagulated with CSS was the highest (p < 0.05). Tofu coagulated with LS, AS, and FML gave similar yields which was significantly (p < 0.05) higher than LJ and BSE coagulated tofu. The moisture content ranged from 60 to 72 per cent.

LS coagulated tofu had highest moisture content (p < 0.001) while AS coagulated tofu gave the lowest moisture content (p < 0.001). Protein content was significantly highest in LS coagulated tofu and closely followed by the value for FML coagulated tofu (p < 0.001). Sensory scores for both fresh and fried tofu showed that FML coagulated tofu was the most preferred by tasters in all parameters tested.

Fermented maize liquor is recommended for use in tofu production where available, based on its comparative yield, protein content and the superior acceptability attributes of tofu produced from it. The production of tofu using FML as coagulant could be easily achieved from an enterprise that only involves low capital input, thus making tofu a cheap and affordable source of protein for combating protein malnutrition.