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Strategic management/business policy.

This case study is intended for undergraduate (business administration) level students.

PeakWater is a state-owned water supplier in Peakland. Owing to government restrictions, the water supply maintenance business of the company has to be outsourced to a separate entity, resulting in the establishment of FixIt, a wholly owned subsidiary of PeakWater. FixIt is mainly responsible for maintaining the water pumps, as well as investing in new projects for PeakWater. The lower efficiency and incompetence in investment of FixIt hinders the growth of PeakWater in the long run, and also causes discontent by the citizens. PeakWater's Board is evaluating two proposals submitted by the Group Planning Division.

These are: the nature of private enterprises and its creation of value for public enterprises; the conflicts of interest between private and public enterprises; and the criteria and considerations in the evaluation of corporate strategies.

Teaching notes are available – consult your librarian for access. The teaching notes include a list of supporting materials.

Brand pages are a very popular tool for companies to communicate with consumers in SNSs. Although brand pages could be considered virtual brand communities, they differ in several aspects. Thus, this chapter reviews the literature on brand pages attending to the main differences with other virtual communities, the motivations to join brand pages and its consequences for consumers and brands.

The studies reviewed have allowed us to identify the main characteristics of brand pages as a communication tool, as well as the definition of an important research agenda for this topic.

We have identified the main unique aspects that characterize brand pages as a virtual brand community. The motivations to become members of brand pages are analyzed as well as the positive consequences of these pages on the marketing variables. We also identified the research needs on brand pages.

This chapter can be useful to both, marketers, by showing them how brand pages work and what motivate consumers to join it; and researchers, by showing them the main gaps on brand pages that should be addressed in future studies.

This chapter highlights the role of brand pages as a communication tool. It constitutes an attempt to review the literature and organize knowledge on brand pages. The characteristics of brand pages and virtual brand communities, the motivations to participate, the consequences for the brand and an important research agenda are developed.

This study extends the commitment-trust theory from the perspective of relationship marketing and explores its effect on purchase intention under the moderation of trust by investigating vloggers' relationship marketing in the context of social media.

The study employs a survey investigation with online questionnaires in China, and the hypotheses were tested using multiple regression analyses, with 319 valid consumer responses.

The findings reveal that the extended commitment-trust theory is applicable in the context of social media. Perceived relationship commitment, expertise, physical attractiveness, social attractiveness and self-disclosure play a significant role in predicting purchase intention. Relationship commitment proves to be a mediator between the antecedents and purchase intention. Trust shows a moderating effect on the antecedents and relationship commitment.

The study provides evidence of the importance of the above-mentioned antecedents in influencing viewers' relationship commitment to vloggers in the context of social media. The results contribute to the development of the commitment-trust theory and an understanding of the theory's underlying mechanisms. The result also provides further evidence of the effect of trust on relationship commitment.

The concept and practice of e-services has become essential in business transactions. Yet there are still many organizations that have not developed e-services optimally. This is especially relevant in the context of Indonesian Airline companies. Therefore, many airline customers in Indonesia are still in doubt about it, or even do not use it. To fill this gap, this study attempts to develop a model for e-services adoption and empirically examines the factors influencing the airlines customers in Indonesia in using e-services offered by the Indonesian airline companies. Taking six Indonesian airline companies as a case example, the study investigated the antecedents of e-services usage of Indonesian airlines. This study further examined the impacts of motivation on customers in using e-services in the Indonesian context. Another important aim of this study was to investigate how ages, experiences and geographical areas moderate effects of e-services usage.

The study adopts a positivist research paradigm with a two-phase sequential mixed method design involving qualitative and quantitative approaches. An initial research model was first developed based on an extensive literature review, by combining acceptance and use of information technology theories, expectancy theory and the inter-organizational system motivation models. A qualitative field study via semi-structured interviews was then conducted to explore the present state among 15 respondents. The results of the interviews were analysed using content analysis yielding the final model of e-services usage. Eighteen antecedent factors hypotheses and three moderating factors hypotheses and 52-item questionnaire were developed. A focus group discussion of five respondents and a pilot study of 59 respondents resulted in final version of the questionnaire.

In the second phase, the main survey was conducted nationally to collect the research data among Indonesian airline customers who had already used Indonesian airline e-services. A total of 819 valid questionnaires were obtained. The data was then analysed using a partial least square (PLS) based structural equation modelling (SEM) technique to produce the contributions of links in the e-services model (22% of all the variances in e-services usage, 37.8% in intention to use, 46.6% in motivation, 39.2% in outcome expectancy, and 37.7% in effort expectancy). Meanwhile, path coefficients and t-values demonstrated various different influences of antecedent factors towards e-services usage. Additionally, a multi-group analysis based on PLS is employed with mixed results. In the final findings, 14 hypotheses were supported and 7 hypotheses were not supported.

The major findings of this study have confirmed that motivation has the strongest contribution in e-services usage. In addition, motivation affects e-services usage both directly and indirectly through intention-to-use. This study provides contributions to the existing knowledge of e-services models, and practical applications of IT usage. Most importantly, an understanding of antecedents of e-services adoption will provide guidelines for stakeholders in developing better e-services and strategies in order to promote and encourage more customers to use e-services. Finally, the accomplishment of this study can be expanded through possible adaptations in other industries and other geographical contexts.

Maintainability, as an intrinsic property that shows how well a product can be maintained, should be strictly controlled in the design stage. Maintenance space is an important aspect of maintainability and should be verified in the design stage. Methods to verify maintenance space based on expert knowledge or vision cone have been proposed. However, no proper quantitative solutions have been proposed yet to verify maintenance space in the design stage. This paper aims to provide a new method to evaluate quantitatively the maintenance space in a virtual environment by using the swept volume (SV).

An integrated platform for quantitatively evaluating maintenance space in a virtual environment is designed. Virtual reality technology and digital prototype are used to overcome the shortage of physical prototypes in the design stage. SVs are applied to represent the movement of the hand along the entire maintenance process. Maintenance operations are divided into three basic types. Each type of basic operation refers to two quantitative indexes, namely the surface area and the volume of the SV of the maintenance personnel. Data on the indexes are gathered and calculated to evaluate maintenance space.

The proposed methodology can evaluate feasibly and efficiently the maintenance space determined by the layout design of product components in the design stage.

Application of the proposed method can help designers reduce the shortness of maintenance space and improve the design layout of products.

A method to evaluate maintenance space that employs a quantitative combination of virtual environment and swept volume is pressed.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the key determinants of the information value of enterprises’ micro-blogs, drawing on the consumer’s perspective. This paper examines the effects of such information value on consumers’ purchase intention through the building of online brand equity. The paper also investigates how perceived usefulness intervenes in the relationship between micro-blog information value and consumer purchase intention.

The proposed research model is examined empirically using a survey of 315 users of the Sina micro-blog. The statistical analysis applies a method based on variance using partial least squares.

The results show that online retailers’ micro-blog posts, which are characterized by informativeness and persuasiveness as perceived by customers, positively impact online retailers’ brand equity, which in turn influences consumer purchase intention. In addition, perceived information usefulness is found to be an important contextual factor that moderates the relationship between perceived persuasiveness and online retailer brand equity.

This work adds significance to the literature by extending the research on micro-blog marketing and also provides practical recommendations for online retailers on the operation of micro-blogs.

This paper aims to provide an initial determination of the date of construction, locations and a typology of design of the pill‐boxes of the Gin Drinker's Line constructed by the colonial Hong Kong Government.

Post‐war aerial photos taken by the Royal Air Force and R.C. Huntings were examined and site visits made to locate and measure the pill‐boxes. Relevant archive materials were consulted to help interpret findings.

A total of 76 pill‐boxes, most in ruins due to post‐war destruction for obtaining their steel bars, were mapped on a 1:25,000 scale to give a good idea of the nature of the Gin Drinker's Line. The study finds that, of these, 50 have survived. The pill‐boxes predated those built in the UK to anticipate of German landing.

The paper demonstrates how aerial photos can be used for historical research and conservation planning. Though the locations of the pill‐boxes identified are subject to detailed site surveying, the basic pattern of pill‐box distribution has been identified.

This is the first attempt to map the Gin Drinker's Line and classify its pill‐boxes. The findings are useful references for the actual conservation of colonial heritage in Hong Kong as part of China, as well as for further inquiry into the military history of the Second World War.

This study aims to examine the relations between teachers' perception of parental involvement and teacher satisfaction. It further aims to investigate how this relationship may be moderated by interpersonal personality traits.

A questionnaire was conducted; participants were 572 classroom teachers who teach at public elementary schools in Taiwan.

Hierarchical regression results indicated that parental involvement at home was considered the most effective factor influencing teachers' satisfaction, followed by teacher‐parent contact. Parental involvement at school was less important. Furthermore, extraversion moderates the relationship partially; teachers low in extraversion perceived home‐based involvement associated with teachers' satisfaction more strongly than those high in extraversion. In contrast, the study found no moderating effect for agreeable teachers.

This article presents an original empirical study that expands the model of parental involvement in order to improve understanding of how teacher's perception of parent involvement is linked to teacher satisfaction.

This study aims to reveal how mobile app stickiness is formed and how the stickiness formation process differs for apps of different social levels.

This study proposed and validated a stickiness formation model following the cognitive–affective–conative framework. Data were collected from surveys of 1,240 mobile app users and analyzed using structural equation modeling. Multigroup analysis was applied to contrast the stickiness formation process among apps of different social levels.

This study revealed a causal link between cognitive, affective and conative factors. It found partial mediation effects of trust in the association between perceptions and satisfaction, and the full mediation role of satisfaction and personal investment (PI) in the effects of subjective norm (SN) on stickiness. The multigroup analysis results suggested that social media affordances benefit stickiness through increased PI and strengthened effects of SN on PI. However, it damages stickiness through increased perceived privacy risk (PPR), decreased trust and strengthened effects of PPR on trust.

This study contributes to both stickiness scholars and practitioners, as it builds a model to understand the stickiness formation process and reveals the effects of the “go social” strategy. The novelty of this study is that it examined social influences, considered privacy issues and revealed two mediation mechanisms. The findings can guide the improvement of mobile app stickiness and the application of the “go social” strategy.

The rapid development of e-commerce has brought not only great convenience to people but a great challenge to online stores. Phenomenon such as out of stock and slow sales has been common in recent years. These issues can be managed only when the occurrence of the sales volume is predicted in advance, and sufficient warnings can be executed in time. Thus, keeping in mind the importance of the sales prediction system, the purpose of this paper is to propose an effective sales prediction model and make digital marketing strategies with the machine learning model.

Based on the consumer purchasing behavior decision theory, we discuss the factors affecting product sales, including external factors, consumer perception, consumer potential purchase behavior and consumer traffic. Then we propose a sales prediction model, M-GNA-XGBOOST, using the time-series prediction that ensures the effective prediction of sales about each product in a short time on online stores based on the sales data in the previous term or month or year. The proposed M-GNA-XGBOOST model serves as an adaptive prediction model, for which the instant factors and the sales data of the previous period are the input, and the optimal computation is based on the proposed methodology. The adaptive prediction using the proposed model is developed based on the LSTM (Long Short-Term Memory), GAN (Generative Adversarial Networks) and XGBOOST (eXtreme Gradient Boosting). The model inherits the advantages among the algorithms with better accuracy and forecasts the sales of each product in the store with instant data characteristics for the first time.

The analysis using Jingdong dataset proves the effectiveness of the proposed prediction method. The effectiveness of the proposed method is enhanced and the accuracy that instant data as input is found to be better compared with the model that lagged data as input. The root means squared error and mean absolute error of the proposed model are found to be around 11.9 and 8.23. According to the sales prediction of each product, the resource can be arranged in advance, and the marketing strategy of product positioning, product display optimization, inventory management and product promotion is designed for online stores.

The paper proposes and implements a new model, M-GNA-XGBOOST, to predict sales of each product for online stores. Our work provides reference and enlightenment for the establishment of accurate sales-based digital marketing strategies for online stores.