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This chapter makes two modest contributions by shedding light on the shock propagating role of endogenous firm entry in a more transparent way through the lens of frictionless, flexible-price real business cycle (RBC) model. We find that entry moderates rather than amplifies the shock, as production no longer occurs in a frictionless way but through business formation that consumes time and resources. We also resurrect the ability of the standard RBC model in resolving “productivity-hours worked puzzle” should credit barrier facing entry be formalized in the model.

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, technology is rewriting the way consumers shop as well as the retail operating models. In this context, investment in new technologies is a strategic imperative for retailers striving to remain relevant and profitable. Using Kahn's Retail Success Matrix as the conceptual framework, the aim of the study is to propose a classification of emerging technologies based on their potential for sustaining retailers' competitive strategies.

Following an initial qualitative study based on in-depth interviews and focus groups with 20 retail managers, the authors collected survey data from a sample of 168 retail and technology professionals. To achieve the research objectives, content, descriptive and multiple correspondence factor analyses were carried out.

The data analyses result on a map that plots the technological solutions that retail experts identify as enablers of four key competitive strategies: product superiority, enhanced customer experience, frictionless shopping experience and operational excellence.

This research work provides valuable insight into how retail companies can capitalise on technology to create or reinforce their competitive positioning. The framework acts as a guide for retail companies to assess their technology priorities.

This exploratory empirical study is the result of a collaboration between academic researchers and retail professionals. Thus, it addresses challenges experienced by key stakeholders. The encompassing classification enables a better understanding of the impact of technology on retailers' competitive positioning.

The purpose of this paper is to add to current knowledge of online customer experience (OCE) by examining various drivers and outcomes of online grocery shopping experience that can help researchers and retailers answer the pressing question: “Why do online grocery customers stay or switch?”

This study applied netnography and critical incident analysis to a pool of 1,004 reviews captured from forum and review sites dedicated to online grocery shopping.

Two broad dimensions of OCE, four attributes and 13 factors corresponding to shoppers’ psychological states and their utilitarian and hedonic orientations emerged from the data analysis. The proposed framework, containing these four attributes and corresponding 13 factors, captures the consumers’ intention to stay with the current retailer or switch.

The study contributes to existing knowledge of OCE by providing a dynamic and yet holistic framework that encompasses experiential states and utilitarian or hedonic orientations in an online grocery context. Although its contributions are valuable to both researchers and practitioners, further quantitative analysis is needed to validate the findings.

In addition to providing superior customer experience by implementing the various drivers of OCE identified here, online grocery retailers can use the study findings as a strategic guide toward building a frictionless and pleasurable shopping experience.

The study employs netnography and critical incident technique to identify experiential attributes such as reliability, responsiveness, return and refund, which are unique OCE attributes in online grocery, a relatively unexamined field of retailing.

Finite element (FE) modeling of the human dentate mandible is the method of choice currently used for simulating structural fracture analyses in the mandibular region. A finite element model of a parasymphyseal fracture with an internal rigid fixation plate‐screw system has been developed to compare the effects of including frictionless/frictional contact boundary conditions at the fracture site. It is common practice to ignore contact boundary conditions in FE modeling of mandibular fractures due to the non‐linearities causing increased computational requirements. The stress distributions and displacements of the mandibular fracture region indicate a significant difference resulting from the introduction of realistic contact boundary conditions. These current findings suggest that even though the modeling of extreme situations, i.e. non‐contact modeling of unhealed fractures, may provide insight to non‐union problems, future mandibular fracture models should include frictional contact boundary conditions. This is in order to capture more realistic behavior of the system to be analyzed.

The purpose of this paper is to present a new way to solve numerically a mechanical frictionless contact problem within a context of multiple sampling, frequently used to design robust structures.

This paper proposes to integrate a control-based approach, currently used in automation domain, for the solving of non-linear mechanical problem. More precisely, a fuzzy logic controller is designed to create a link between the normal gaps identified between the bodies and the normal contact pressures applied at the interface.

With this new strategy, the initial non-linear problem can be decomposed into a set of reduced linear problems solved using the finite element method. A projection built from the modal bases of each component in contact is considered to reduce computational time. Moreover, the proposed numerical applications highlight an interesting compromise between computation time and precision of contact data.

Currently, the proposed Fuzzy Logic Controller for Contact method has been developed for a frictionless contact problem in the case of 2D numerical applications. Therefore, as obtained results are very interesting, it will be possible to expand on these works in a future works for more complex problems including friction, 3D model and transient dynamic responses by adding other controllers.

In conclusion, this paper highlights the interest of studying a contact problem by considering automation approaches and defines the basis of future multidisciplinary works.

The global slack hypothesis is central to the discussion of the trade-offs that monetary policy faces in an increasingly more integrated world. The workhorse New Open Economy Macro (NOEM) model of Martínez-García and Wynne (2010), which fleshes out this hypothesis, shows how expected future local inflation and global slack affect current local inflation. In this chapter, I propose the use of the orthogonalization method of Aoki (1981) and Fukuda (1993) on the workhorse NOEM model to further decompose local inflation into a global component and an inflation differential component. I find that the log-linearized rational expectations model of Martínez-García and Wynne (2010) can be solved with two separate subsystems to describe each of these two components of inflation.

I estimate the full NOEM model with Bayesian techniques using data for the United States and an aggregate of its 38 largest trading partners from 1980Q1 until 2011Q4. The Bayesian estimation recognizes the parameter uncertainty surrounding the model and calls on the data (inflation and output) to discipline the parameterization. My findings show that the strength of the international spillovers through trade – even in the absence of common shocks – is reflected in the response of global inflation and is incorporated into local inflation dynamics. Furthermore, I find that key features of the economy can have different impacts on global and local inflation – in particular, I show that the parameters that determine the import share and the price-elasticity of trade matter in explaining the inflation differential component but not the global component of inflation.

The purpose of this paper is to present and analyze the iterative rules determining the impulsive behavior of a rigid disk having a single or possibly multiple frictionless impact with two walls forming a corner.

In the first part, two theoretical iterative rules are presented for the cases of ideal impact and Newtonian frictionless impact with global dissipation index. In the second part, a numerical version of both the theoretical algorithms is presented.

The termination analysis of the algorithms differentiates the two cases: in the ideal case, it is shown that the algorithm always terminates and the disk exits from the corner after a finite number of steps independently of the initial impact velocity of the disk and the angle formed by the walls; in the non-idealcase, although is not proved that the disk exits from the corner in a finite number of steps, it is shown that its velocity decreases to zero, so that the termination of the algorithm can be fixed through an “almost at rest” condition. It is shown that the stable version of the algorithm is more robust than the theoretical ones with respect to noisy initial data and floating point arithmetic computation. The outputs of the stable and theoretical versions of the algorithms are compared, showing that they are similar, even if not coincident, outputs. Moreover, the outputs of the stable version of the algorithm in some meaningful cases are graphically presented and discussed.

The paper clarifies the applicability of theoretical methods presented in Pasquero (2018) by analyzing the paradigmatic case of the disk in the corner.

Shopping motivation is one of the key constructs of research on shopping behavior and exhibits a high relevance for formulating retail marketing strategies. Previous studies of shopping behavior as well as research in the areas of psychology and organizational behavior point towards a need to investigate the hierarchical nature of shopping motivation. The present study intends to take the first steps towards the development of a hierarchical theory of shopping motivation.

Means‐end chain theory is adopted to explore the hierarchical nature of shopping motivation. A total of 40 in‐depths interviews with apparel shoppers were conducted using the laddering technique. Results are depicted in three hierarchical value maps.

Evidence is provided relating to the social, experiential, and utilitarian aspects of shopping as represented by four dominant motivational patterns referring to the issues of shopping pleasure, frictionless shopping, value seeking, and quality seeking. Concrete retail attributes are presented which allow retailers to correspond to these motivations.

The paper identifies the need to introduce a hierarchical perspective to provide an increased understanding of consumers' shopping motivation. First, empirical evidence is provided regarding how consumers' cognitive structures relating to the benefits of shopping are hierarchically organized.

Contact problems are among the most difficult ones in mechanics. Due to its practical importance, the problem has been receiving extensive research work over the years. The finite element method has been widely used to solve contact problems with various grades of complexity. Great progress has been made on both theoretical studies and engineering applications. This paper reviews some of the main developments in contact theories and finite element solution techniques for static contact problems. Classical and variational formulations of the problem are first given and then finite element solution techniques are reviewed. Available constraint methods, friction laws and contact searching algorithms are also briefly described. At the end of the paper, a bibliography is included, listing about seven hundred papers which are related to static contact problems and have been published in various journals and conference proceedings from 1976.