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The purpose of this paper is an attempt to design a proper incentive coordination mechanism to deal with the channel conflicts between the traditional sales and online direct sales.

With respect to the problems of channel conflicts between the traditional sales and online direct sales, to optimize the sale system and get more profits, considering the influences of consumer network acceptance, the authors establish demand and profit function based on consumer's utility, respectively. What's more, we exploit the game theory to analyze the optional decisions of the supply chain under the incentive coordination condition and no incentive coordination condition, and then we discuss the supply chain's optimal pricing, demand, profit and compensation incentive levels with the different effect of consumer network acceptance.

The level of compensation incentive provided by the manufacturer is influenced by consumer network acceptance and product cost. The lower the consumer network acceptance, the better the compensation incentive coordination effect of manufacturers. Manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers and consumers are all important players in real supply chain relationships. When a manufacturer exists as a dominant role, it should pay full attention to the impact of consumer behavior on supply chain decisions.

The research can clarify the influence and mechanism of consumer behavior on supply chain channel conflict coordination, and deal with channel conflicts.

The proposed incentive coordination can effectively realize supply chain channel conflict resolution, and provide decision-making ideas and methods for manufacturers to develop the supply chain management of online direct sales channels.

This study aims to focus on the clothing recycling supply chain and aims to provide optimal decisions and managerial insights into supply chain strategies, thereby facilitating the sustainable development of the clothing industry.

Based on previous single- and dual-channel studies, game theory was employed to analyze multiple recycling channels. Concurrently, clothing consumer types were integrated into the analytical models to observe their impact on supply chain strategies. Three market scenarios were modeled for comparative analysis, and numerical experiments were conducted.

The intervention of fashion retailers in the clothing recycling market has intensified competition across the entire market. The proportions of various consumer types, their preferences for online platforms and their preference for the retailer’s channel influence the optimal decisions and profits of supply chain members. The diversity of recycling channels may enhance the recycling volume of clothes; however, it should meet certain conditions.

This study extends the existing theory from a channel dimension by exploring multiple channels. Furthermore, by investigating the classifications of clothing consumers and their influence on supply chain strategies, the theory is enhanced from the consumer perspective.

This paper aims to examine how multinational corporations respond to environmental turbulence by adopting a flexible supply chain (SC).

This study adopts a case study in the medical industry to identify effective strategic approaches by taking advantage of new business opportunities and navigating complex business partnerships. This study focuses on medical diagnostic equipment, including computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging and X-ray, that involves the suppliers, channel partners and medical users.

(1) The market turbulence brought the SC leaders to adopt multiple partnership approaches, i.e. funnel-based and area-based partnerships. (2) Adopting a funnel-based partnership allows the SC to seize new market opportunities. Still, it brought a risk element of SC failure from the flawed selection process and professional misconduct. (3) SC leaders adopted flexible partnerships to help address the risk of professional misconduct and select partners for long-term collaboration.

This paper contributes to emergent literature on social exchange theory by exposing the global SC when the SC leaders set up agility approaches. This paper also extends the discussion on the industrial marketing and purchasing theory, which seeks to promote an active buyer–seller relationship.

Based on the idea of part standardisation and product differentiation in lean management, this paper answers the question when integrate firms should choose market foreclosure to maximise profits by studying a two-tier supply chain, which contains three types of firms: suppliers, manufacturers and integrated firms. Moreover, the effect of the substitutability between final products and the competition among firms in the supply chain would be investigated from the perspective of dynamic analysis.

Considering the decision order of integrated firms and manufacturers in the downstream of the supply chain, the authors build three competition models. In each model, integrated firms compete with manufacturers in Bertrand–Nash fashion. And, suppliers compete with each other in Cournot fashion, so do integrated firms and manufacturers. The authors further discuss how the competitive relationship between firms affect the equilibrium result.

Numerical analysis reveals that under other conditions unchanged, the increased competition between downstream firms leads to the rise in the willingness of selling parts for integrated firms, while the increase in the number of suppliers has the opposite effect. In addition, due to the market change before and after the vertical merger, it may lead to the transition from profitable to unprofitable for the vertical merger.

This paper provides a theoretical analysis and managerial implication for integrated firms' market foreclosure decision. From the perspective of dynamic analysis, this paper demonstrates the result of vertical mergers and provides an explanation for the failure of vertical mergers.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and examine the different word-of-mouth (WOM) acceptance and diffusion in social brand communities according to the level of self-monitoring.

A web-based experimental design was used. The design consisted of three-mixed design of 2 (type of social networking sites) × 2 (type of online brand communities) × 2 (self-monitoring). ANOVA analysis was conducted.

Findings indicate that the differences in acceptance and diffusion of WOM according to online brand community type, and there was a significant three-way interaction effect. Specifically, people who have high propensity to self-monitor showed greater WOM acceptance in a consumer-driven community in either type of social networking sites while people who have low propensity to self-monitor showed greater WOM diffusion in a consumer-driven community only in interest-based social networking sites.

An important implication is that the social networking sites where brand communities can be placed should be chosen with the full consideration of different desires consumers have in terms of their level of self-monitoring to increase WOM effects.

This paper proposes the self-monitoring tendency as the key factor that predicts WOM effects with revealing the optimal combination of types of social networking sites and online brand communities that is most preferable for consumers with different self-monitoring level.

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.

Collaborative filtering based recommender systems (CF–RS) are widely used to recommend products based on consumers' preference similarity. Recommendations by CF–RS merely provide suggestions as “people who bought this also bought this” while, consumers are unaware about the source of these recommendations. By amalgamating CF–RS with consumers' social network information, e-commerce sites can offer recommendation from social networks of consumers. These social network embedded systems are known as social recommender systems (SRS). The extant literature has researched on the algorithms and implementation of these systems; however, SRS have not been understood from consumers' psychological perspective. This study aims to qualitatively explore consumers' motives to accept SRS in e-commerce websites.

This qualitative study is based on in-depth interviews of frequent online shoppers. SRS are currently not very widespread in the Indian e-commerce space; hence, a vignette was shown to respondents before they responded to the questions. Inductive qualitative content analysis method was used to analyse these interviews.

Three main themes (social-gratification, self-gratification and information-gratification) emerged from the analysis. Out of these, social-gratification acts as an enabler, while self-gratification along with some elements of information-gratification act as inhibitors towards acceptance of social recommendations. Based on these gratifications, we present a conceptual model on consumer's acceptance of social recommendations.

This study is an initial attempt to qualitatively understand consumers' attitudes and acceptance of social recommendations on e-commerce websites, which in itself is a fairly new phenomenon.

Smart card-based E-payment systems are receiving increasing attention as the number of implementations is witnessed on the rise globally. Understanding of user adoption behavior of E-payment systems that employ smart card technology becomes a research area that is of particular value and interest to both IS researchers and professionals. However, research interest focuses mostly on why a smart card-based E-payment system results in a failure or how the system could have grown into a success. This signals the fact that researchers have not had much opportunity to critically review a smart card-based E-payment system that has gained wide support and overcome the hurdle of critical mass adoption. The Octopus in Hong Kong has provided a rare opportunity for investigating smart card-based E-payment system because of its unprecedented success. This research seeks to thoroughly analyze the Octopus from technology adoption behavior perspectives.

Cultural impacts on adoption behavior are one of the key areas that this research posits to investigate. Since the present research is conducted in Hong Kong where a majority of population is Chinese ethnicity and yet is westernized in a number of aspects, assuming that users in Hong Kong are characterized by eastern or western culture is less useful. Explicit cultural characteristics at individual level are tapped into here instead of applying generalization of cultural beliefs to users to more accurately reflect cultural bias. In this vein, the technology acceptance model (TAM) is adapted, extended, and tested for its applicability cross-culturally in Hong Kong on the Octopus. Four cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede are included in this study, namely uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, individualism, and Confucian Dynamism (long-term orientation), to explore their influence on usage behavior through the mediation of perceived usefulness.

TAM is also integrated with the innovation diffusion theory (IDT) to borrow two constructs in relation to innovative characteristics, namely relative advantage and compatibility, in order to enhance the explanatory power of the proposed research model. Besides, the normative accountability of the research model is strengthened by embracing two social influences, namely subjective norm and image. As the last antecedent to perceived usefulness, prior experience serves to bring in the time variation factor to allow level of prior experience to exert both direct and moderating effects on perceived usefulness.

The resulting research model is analyzed by partial least squares (PLS)-based Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach. The research findings reveal that all cultural dimensions demonstrate direct effect on perceived usefulness though the influence of uncertainty avoidance is found marginally significant. Other constructs on innovative characteristics and social influences are validated to be significant as hypothesized. Prior experience does indeed significantly moderate the two influences that perceived usefulness receives from relative advantage and compatibility, respectively. The research model has demonstrated convincing explanatory power and so may be employed for further studies in other contexts. In particular, cultural effects play a key role in contributing to the uniqueness of the model, enabling it to be an effective tool to help critically understand increasingly internationalized IS system development and implementation efforts. This research also suggests several practical implications in view of the findings that could better inform managerial decisions for designing, implementing, or promoting smart card-based E-payment system.