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This case study applies the scanning of marketing environment (i.e. typology of marketing environments); strategic marketing planning process, involving SWOT analysis, growth strategies; and marketing mix (four ps).

This is modeled as a qualitative study. Primary data were collected through a phone interview with the key informants, and secondary data came from various publications such as government reports, news portals and company websites.

Ghacem was the first cement manufacturing company in Ghana and had enjoyed a monopoly for almost 33 years. The company offered a homogeneous product to an undifferentiated market from 1967 until competition began in 2000. New competitors promote the use of cement grade numbers on their product packaging to signal a better value, which intensified the competition. As the Head of Marketing of the company, Benny was asked to develop a marketing strategy for the company’s newly developed product for the company to remain competitive.

Undergraduate students taking Principles of Marketing.

The purpose of this study is to examine the roles that social cues play in affecting patronage behavior and how consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence would moderate the influence of social cues on store image.

A two (high vs low socially‐oriented in‐store graphics) by two (high vs low personalized customer service) between subject experimental design was conducted to achieve the research objective. A total of 193 surveys were used for data analysis.

Consumers had a more favorable attitude toward merchandise and service quality and felt more aroused or pleased with a store where more social cues were present. They also had a more favorable perception of store image when high‐personalized service was provided. Consumers perceived that they would be more likely to shop in a store that had more in‐store displays of graphics with social meaning. Consumer susceptibility to informational influence (SII) played a moderating role in some cases.

Retail service needs to be reinvented to create excitement. Consumers may use social cues embedded in the store environment as an information source. Sales skills of staff and in‐store graphics should be especially appealing to low‐SII customer.

This study has added to the retail literature by demonstrating that the social cues in store environment can affect consumers' perception of store image and patronage intention. It provides interesting insights on how retailers can use a socially meaningful environment as a source of competitive advantage.

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the progress in grey system research during 2000-2015, so as to present some important new concepts, models, methods and a new framework of grey system theory.

The new thinking, new models and new methods of grey system theory and their applications are presented in this paper. It includes algorithm rules of grey numbers based on the “kernel” and the degree of greyness of grey numbers, the concept of general grey numbers, the synthesis axiom of degree of greyness of grey numbers and their operations; the general form of buffer operators of grey sequence operators; the four basic models of grey model GM(1,1), such as even GM, original difference GM, even difference GM, discrete GM and the suitable sequence type of each basic model, and suitable range of most used grey forecasting models; the similarity degree of grey incidences, the closeness degree of grey incidences and the three-dimensional absolute degree of grey incidence of grey incidence analysis models; the grey cluster model based on center-point and end-point mixed triangular whitenization functions; the multi-attribute intelligent grey target decision model, the two stages decision model with grey synthetic measure of grey decision models; grey game models, grey input-output models of grey combined models; and the problems of robust stability for grey stochastic time-delay systems of neutral type, distributed-delay type and neutral distributed-delay type of grey control, etc. And the new framework of grey system theory is given as well.

The problems which remain for further studying are discussed at the end of each section. The reader could know the general picture of research and developing trend of grey system theory from this paper.

A lot of successful practical applications of the new models to solve various problems have been found in many different areas of natural science, social science and engineering, including spaceflight, civil aviation, information, metallurgy, machinery, petroleum, chemical industry, electrical power, electronics, light industries, energy resources, transportation, medicine, health, agriculture, forestry, geography, hydrology, seismology, meteorology, environment protection, architecture, behavioral science, management science, law, education, military science, etc. These practical applications have brought forward definite and noticeable social and economic benefits. It demonstrates a wide range of applicability of grey system theory, especially in the situation where the available information is incomplete and the collected data are inaccurate.

The reader is given a general picture of grey systems theory as a new model system and a new framework for studying problems where partial information is known; especially for uncertain systems with few data points and poor information. The problems remaining for further studying are identified at the end of each section.

This paper aims to present a kinematics analysis method and statics based control of the continuum robot with mortise and tenon joints to achieve better control performance of the robot.

The kinematics model is derived by the geometric analysis method under the piecewise constant curvature assumption, and the workspace and dexterity of the proposed robot are analyzed to optimize its structure parameters. Moreover, the statics model is established by the principle of virtual work, which is used to analyze the mapping relationship between the bending deformation and the applied forces/torques. To improve the control accuracy of the robot, a model-based controller is put forward.

Results of the experiments verify the feasibility of the proposed continuum structure and the correctness of the established model and the control method. The force deviation between the theoretical value and the actual value is relatively small, and the mean value of the deviation between the driving forces is only 0.46 N, which verify the established statics model and the controller.

The proposed model and motion controller can realize its accurate bending control with a few deviations, which can be used as the reference for the motion planning and dynamic model of the continuum robot.

With the growing concern of various sectors of society regarding environmental issues and the promotion of sustainable development, green technology innovation is generally considered to be conducive to the long-term development of enterprises. However, because of the existence of agency problems, managers may have shortsighted behaviors. Then how will managers' shortsighted behaviors affect enterprises' green technology innovation?

This paper uses machine learning-based text analysis methods to construct a manager myopia index based on the data from A-share listed companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges from 2015 to 2020. We examine the impact of manager myopia on green technology innovation in companies.

Our study finds that manager myopia significantly inhibits green technology innovation in companies. However, when multiple large shareholders coexist and the proportion of institutional investors' holdings is high, it can alleviate the inhibitory effect of manager myopia on green innovation. Heterogeneity tests show that the impact of manager myopia on green technology innovation is relatively significant in non-state-owned and manufacturing companies, as well as in the electricity industry. Robustness tests demonstrate that our conclusions remain valid after using propensity score matching to eliminate endogeneity problems.

From the perspective of corporate governance, this paper incorporates managers' shortsightedness, multiple large shareholders and institutional investors' shareholding ratios into the same logical framework, analyzes their internal mechanisms, helps improve corporate governance, enhances green innovation capabilities and has strong implications for the implementation of national innovation-driven development strategies and the achievement of “carbon peak” and “carbon neutrality” targets.

The purpose of this paper is to examine Chinese consumers’ attitudes toward genetically modified (GM) foods and the impact that consumers’ trust in different actors – GM scientists, non-GM scientists or individuals, the government and the media, has on their attitudes.

Consumers in Beijing were surveyed about their attitudes toward GM foods and their trust in different actors. The surveys were conducted from June to July of 2015. The sample size is 1,460 people. Given the potential endogeneity of trust variable, bivariate probit models are employed to estimate the impact of trust in different actors on consumers’ attitudes.

The results show that 55 percent of the Chinese consumers are opposed to GM foods and nearly 60 percent do not trust GM scientists. In total, 42 percent of Chinese consumers trust in the government and 39 percent trust the non-GM scientists or individuals. Around 35 percent of consumers believe the misinformation on GM technology that were provided by the media. Trust in the GM scientists and trust in the government have a significant positive impact on consumers’ acceptance of GM foods while trust in the non-GM scientists or individuals and believing the misinformation have a significant negative effect on the acceptance. Nearly 70 percent of Chinese consumers acquired information about GM food safety from the internet or via WeChat. Consumers who acquired GM technology information from the internet or via WeChat are less likely to embrace GM foods than those who obtain information from other sources.

Consumer trust plays a crucial role to accept biotech products in the market and it is crucial for producers, policy makers and consumers to have faith in new biotech products. The results of this study suggest that the government and GM scientists should make more effort to gain the trust and support of consumers, while the media should provide objective reports on GM products based on scientific evidence.

This study aims to investigate whether firms purchase directors' and officers' liability (D&O) insurance when the country-level economic policy uncertainty (EPU) is high.

This study uses D&O insurance data from Chinese listed firms between 2003 and 2019 to conduct regression analyses to examine the association between D&O insurance and EPU.

The results show that government EPU, despite being an exogenous factor, increases the likelihood of firms' purchasing D&O insurance, and this effect is more pronounced when firms are exposed to great share price crash risk and high litigation risk, suggesting that firms intend to purchase D&O insurance possibly due to the accentuated stock price crash risk and litigation risk associated with EPU. In addition, the results indicate that the effect of EPU on the D&O insurance purchase decision is moderated by the provincial capital market development and internal control quality.

The study highlights the role of uncertain economic policies in shareholder approval of D&O insurance purchases.

The study enriches the literature on the determinants of D&O insurance purchases by documenting novel evidence that country-level EPU is a key institutional factor shaping firms' decisions to purchase D&O insurance.