Search results

This research paper aims to understand which factors influence the purchase of private label food products, by measuring the importance of 14 variables for purchasing frequency.

Data were collected through questionnaires to a sample of consumers. They have been analysed according to the extra tree classifier methodology, which allows providing a more reliable classification – compared to previous studies – of factors affecting consumers' choices of private label products.

Results show that consumers' choices related to private label food products are influenced by groups of heterogeneous variables related to their perception on products, satisfaction of post-consumption, store's role and trust built over time by retailers.

Data have been collected through an online survey, which could generate the bias of self-selection; the sampling method is non-probabilistic.

The study provides useful indications on the role of private labels in retailer management policies and on marketing competences and skills that are necessary for managing retailers' assortments.

The existing literature lacks clarity on the factors that influence the frequency of purchasing private label food products. By considering a higher number of variables than previous studies, it has been possible to classify and measure the importance of each variable included in the analysis framework adopted, also in case of correlation between variables.

This longitudinal study aims to analyze the use of websites by a sample of 78 corporations and non‐profits five years apart. In particular, it studies organizational use of interactive and social media features and use of web sites for building relationships with six stakeholder publics.

The authors studied the websites of 78 for‐profit and not‐for‐profit organization seeking to learn how they used this new medium as a communication tool to build and maintain relationships with six key stakeholders: the mass media, consumers, investor/donors, employees, the government, and the community in 2004 and in 2009. They also explored for differences in the way for‐profit corporations and non‐profits used their web sites for relationship building given their different missions and cultures.

First, there was a marked difference in how corporations and non‐profit organizations used their websites. Second, a significant number of organizations used social media applications such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube through their websites in 2009. Third, aside from increased use of social media, in 2009 more organizations used feedback mechanisms such as e‐surveys and e‐polls embedded in their websites, enhancing interactions with a variety of stakeholders. Both corporations and non‐profit organizations generally utilized their websites as information‐dissemination tools, where the information flow is one‐way, although the percentage of both corporations and non profits that used interactive features offered by new media has increased slightly between 2004 and 2009.

This study is among the few that compare web page use by corporations vs non‐profits. A second unique feature of this study is that it is longitudinal in nature, studying web site use five years apart by the same organizations.

With rising income and changing lifestyle, increased disposable income along with rapid urbanization is boosting the country’s biscuit market. The purpose of this paper is to represent the implementation of Kaizen in a biscuit-manufacturing unit of Imperial Tobacco Company (ITC). Although the concept of Kaizen is not a standard practice in India, the company chosen for the case study has a prominence in the Indian market.

The methodologies that have been applied to implement Kaizen in the ITC are discussed. Why-Why techniques, fishbone diagram, failure modes and effects analysis, ABC analysis have been used to study cause and effects.

It was found that the yield was increased from 88.3 to 92.2 percent, which was a significant change, as far as the product line is concerned. The product complaints were reduced to zero with an added increased product quality rating system to 98.2 from the existing rating of 96.7. The product consistency was also improved as an application of Lean in the manufacturing process.

This case study is restricted to the manufacturing sector, especially in the field of biscuit company.

The paper should assist those practitioners and consultants who have the desire to find a better way of Kaizen implementation in small-scale industries of India. The academia can also use this case study for a better understanding of the difference between the theoretical and application aspects of the concept.

This paper is an original contribution in the existing body of literature. It shows the application of Kaizen in the manufacturing sector in India.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the combined effects of different modalities of long-term knowledge accumulation and short-term knowledge searching on the generation of high-impact ideas. The authors aim at providing useful conclusions for academic scholars.

Two dimensions of the cumulative knowledge structures of researchers are measured: knowledge depth and knowledge breadth. The search strategies employed by researchers are classified as local search and distant search. The authors use researchers’ historical publications to measure cumulative knowledge structures. References contained in these publications serve as an indicator of knowledge searching behaviors and are used to measure search strategies. Highly cited papers with random-but-matched papers from the same journal published in the same year are adopted to test the hypotheses.

The knowledge depth of researchers positively predicts the generation of high-impact ideas. Knowledge breadth has a bell-shaped relationship to the generation of high-impact ideas. Two instances of “strategic fit” between the knowledge structures and search strategies of researchers are identified; namely, knowledge breadth combines most effectively with local search, and knowledge depth combines most effectively with distant search in generating high-impact ideas.

Using article references to measure authors’ knowledge search behaviors may lead to biases. Future research should perform a survey to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the knowledge search behaviors of scholars.

A “T-shaped” knowledge structure in the long run is recommended for maximal generation of high-impact ideas. Researchers who have not adopted this optimal knowledge structure can employ a matched search strategy to leverage their existing knowledge structures.

This paper is among the first to examine the interactive effects between the cumulative knowledge structures and short-term knowledge searching strategies of researchers. The authors have enriched the exploration and exploitation theory by adding the dimension of time into the analysis.

This study aims to explore the impact of ethical leadership on employee creative deviance, with job autonomy as a mediator and creative self-efficacy as a moderator between job autonomy and creative deviance.

A survey was developed based on construct measures from the literature. A total of 316 responses were received from employees of information and communication technology companies located in China's Pearl River Delta.

Both ethical leadership and job autonomy have a positive impact on employee creative deviance; job autonomy plays a mediating role between ethical leadership and creative deviance; creative self-efficacy does not have a significant moderating effect on the job autonomy-creative deviance relationship.

Future studies could explore the potential moderating role of both job autonomy and creative-self efficacy in the link between ethical leadership and creative deviance.

This study recommends that organizations should adopt and promote an ethical leadership approach to manage creative deviance at work. Organizations could explore alternative methods of task completion to support the job autonomy for the employees to mitigate the dilemmas associated with creative deviance.

This is one of few studies that examine the impact of ethical leadership on employee's creative deviance, despite the fact that the influence of ethical leadership on the followers has been extensively examined.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility of an enhanced continuous liquid interface production (CLIP) with a porous track-etched membrane as the oxygen-permeable window, which is prepared by irradiating polyethylene terephthalate membranes with accelerated heavy ions.

Experimental approaches are carried out to characterize printing parameters of resins with different photo-initiator concentrations by a photo-polymerization matrix, to experimentally observe and theoretically fit the oxygen inhibition layer thickness during printing under conditions of pure oxygen and air, respectively, and to demonstrate the enhanced CLIP processes by using pure oxygen and air, respectively.

Owing to the high permeability of track-etched membrane, CLIP process is demonstrated with printing speed up to 800 mm/h in the condition of pure oxygen, which matches well with the theoretically predicted maximum printing speed at difference light expose. Making a trade-off between printing speed and surface quality, maximum printing speed of 470 mm/h is also obtained even using air. As the oxygen inhibition layer created by air is thinner than that by pure oxygen, maximum speed cannot be simply increased by intensifying the light exposure as the case with pure oxygen.

CLIP process is capable of building objects continuously instead of the traditional layer-by-layer manner, which enables tens of times improvement in printing speed. This work presents an enhanced CLIP process by first using a porous track-etched membrane to serve as the oxygen permeable window, in which a record printing speed up to 800 mm/h using pure oxygen is demonstrated. Owing to the high permeability of track-etched membrane, continuous process at a speed of 470 mm/h is also achieved even using air instead of pure oxygen, which is of significance for a compact robust high-speed 3D printer.

The multidimensional complexity of urban settlements is increasing and the problem of spaces and territories brought to the scale of smart cities is a critical global issue. This study aims to analyse the scientific production in the Web of Science (WoS) on the relationship between smart cities and the eight urban dimensions defined by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in the period 1990 to 2021, in order to establish which countries lead the knowledge related to the search for sustainable living conditions for people and how this knowledge contributes to improving stakeholders' decision-making.

The methodological steps followed in the study were: (1) Identification and selection of keywords. (2) Design and application of an algorithm to identify these selected keywords in titles, abstracts and keywords using WoS terms to contrast them. (3) Data processing was performed from Journal Citation Report (JCR) journals during the year 2022.

This study identified the authors, institutions and countries that publish the most globally on the topic of Smart Cities. The acceleration in the integration of new technologies and their impact on population conglomerates and their relationship with urban dimensions were also analysed. The evidence found indicates that the USA and China are leading in this field.

This bibliometric study was designed to analyse a knowledge space not addressed in the scientific literature referred to the relationship between the concept of smart cities and the urban dimensions established by the WEF, the identification of new technologies that are converging to promote developments of new ways of managing urban dimensions and propose new knowledge spaces.

The aim of this paper is to present a comprehensive analysis of risk management in East Asia from 1998 to 2021 by using bibliometric methods and tools to explore research trends, hotspots, and directions for future research.

The data source for this paper is the Web of Science Core Collection, and 7,154 publications and related information have been derived. We use recognized bibliometric indicators to evaluate publications and visually analyze them through scientific mapping tools (VOS Viewer and CiteSpace).

The analysis results show that China is the most productive and influential country/region. East Asia countries have strong cooperation with each other and also have cooperation with other countries. The study shows that risk management has been involved in various fields such as credit, supply chain, health emergency and disaster especially in the background of COVID-19. We also found that machine learning, especially deep learning, has been playing an increasingly important role in risk management due to its excellent performance.

This paper focuses on studying risk management in East Asia, exploring its publication's fundamental information, citation and cooperation networks, hotspots, and research trends. It provides some reference value for scholars who are interested or further research in this field.

Mobile payment (m-payment) has existed for over 25 years; however, there is no standard framework to guide scholars and practitioners in advancing m-payment research in the digital accelerated era. With this, this study aims to develop an m-payment framework and to analyse the evolution of m-payment research from 1997 to 2021. These were achieved by identifying the motor themes, basic and transversal themes, the emerging/declining themes and the highly developed but isolated themes. In addition, the publication trends of m-payment research were also identified.

A total of 1,999 articles of m-payment were identified from the Scopus database and 8,125 keywords were grouped into 483 word groups for the co-word analysis. Thematic networks were generated based on density and centrality. Performance analysis was performed on the themes of the four quadrants in the strategic diagrams. The m-payment framework was then developed based on the evolution map and a practical guide was built from the framework.

The m-payment framework consists of four dimensions, namely behaviour, technology, risk, and context. Some themes were declining while at the same time, m-payment remains strongly relevant and can stand the test of time. Several new themes have emerged in the 2013–2021 sub-periods.

This study is limited in that the study only investigates from the context of m-payment.

This study has provided a research framework (i.e. the m-payment framework) with a practical guide for scholars and practitioners to refer to, thus enabling them to embark on future studies without any hassle. The m-payment framework was developed based on empirical data using science mapping analysis of 1,999 articles.

The proposed m-payment research framework contributes towards more understanding of m-payment ten, usage amongst consumers and thus will help to reduce the rate of COVID-19 infection because m-payment is a contactless payment. Hence, the study may help in creating a safer and healthier society amid the unprecedented pandemic.

This study developed the m-payment framework based on empirical co-word analysis. A practical guide to extending the framework is also provided to guide the scholars and practitioners. Moreover, the evolution map for m-payment was created to understand the evolution of m-payment research. Practitioners may conduct market studies to unveil the factors that contribute to consumers' behaviours in m-payment in order to gain more understanding of the reasons behind their behaviours.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and redefine the “classic” roles of shop floor management and quality control circles (QCCs) in Kaizen. In specific, it aims to examine the linkage between shop floor management and QCCs, and test the relationships among shop floor management, QCCs and long-term Kaizen improvement outcomes.

This study employs qualitative method by using a questionnaire to obtain data from 371 respondents in nine Sino-Japanese automotive joint-ventures. The data are analysed with the method of canonical correlation approach.

The study identifies important factors to assist the adoption of shop floor management and QCCs for Kaizen. The analysis on the survey indicates that not all the shop floor management tools could help to identify improvement opportunities. QCCs are effective in addressing large problems and challenging current policies in companies, however, they have low impacts on individual learning.

The data of this study come from nine Sino-Japanese automotive joint ventures. Therefore, the sample selection is limited to these companies. The findings are able to be applied for improving the similar problems which were identified in this study.

The study has the following practical implications, first is small shop floor problems can be identified and solved rapidly and continuously at source by shop floor management. The second one is QCCs, or other similar group-based improvement approaches take long to be fully addressed and implemented. Third, practical solutions can be achieved from small and gradual changes, and they can prevent the results backsliding to the pre-improvement stage. Finally, QCCs are hardly to achieve a better improvement alone. It requires other Kaizen approaches to support.

This study is probably the first to explore and investigate the implementation of the four building block tools of shop floor management in real business practise, and more specific the first to discuss the relationship among shop floor management, QCCs and long-term improvement outcomes based on empirical data from Sino-Japanese automotive joint-ventures.