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The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), designed to establish and enforce food-safety standards for foods from domestic and foreign origins, focuses federal regulation on the prevention of food contamination. Many concerns have been expressed about how FSMA-compliance costs will affect the economic viability of very small and small farms, which have higher average compliance costs than do larger farms, thus marginalizing their ability to compete in the marketplace. The purpose of this study is to estimate how FSMA will affect differently sized US and international tomato producers in the fresh-tomato industry. A simulation approach is applied for changes of quantities demanded, revenues, and profits for differently sized farms based on elasticities estimated using a differential approach. Our findings indicate that both domestic and foreign tomato producers with both very small and small farms are expected to see significant losses in profit after the adoption of FSMA. The practical implications of these findings are that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should be aware of, be concerned about, and take into consideration the adverse consequences of their regulatory decisions on food prices, food-industry costs, the structure of the food industry, and product diversity. In essence, the FDA needs to strike a balance between food safety (the primary objective of FSMA) and market performance.

This study explores how firms develop innovation ecosystems through forming alliances with suppliers and the effects on innovation, economics and consumer welfare.

This study develops two game theory models to compare supply chain structures with and without ecosystem alignment. (1) A single supplier provides components to two competing manufacturers (one innovative and one non-innovative). (2) An innovative manufacturer (focal firm) aligns with a supplier that also supplies components to a competing manufacturer.

An ecosystem construction strategy that alliances use to reconfigure coopetitive relationships and ecosystem alignment is identified. A manufacturer aligning with a supplier will strengthen the monopoly of the alignment, which is beneficial to both Allies but always harmful to the competitor. Interestingly, such an ecosystem construction strategy may be beneficial to future innovation, the industry and consumers.

The findings raise several topics that warrant further exploration. For example, scenarios with multiple suppliers were not considered. Furthermore, the implementation of regulatory measures to mitigate the harmful effects of alignment on innovation should be investigated.

This paper provides a guide for enterprises seeking alignment and to the corresponding measures required to stimulate innovation within ecosystems. What’s more, the aligned firm should not always attempt to win the race but should instead take measures to encourage the competitor to share demand information.

Firstly, most research on supply chain management has focused on its economic impacts. There is a lack of research on the influence of ecosystem alignment on the innovation incentives of firms. Furthermore, the literature still lacks evidence of how ecosystem construction strategies can increase consumer welfare. In the present study, the authors model a complex market structure that includes a competitor, which is becoming increasingly common in high-tech markets. Thirdly, this paper is one of the few that examines the impacts of market-structure changes on innovation incentives. Most importantly, this study extends the current literature by studying coopetition in the ecosystem context.

The purpose of this paper is to develop parallel algorithms for moving boundary simulations by local remeshing and compose them to a fully parallel simulation cycle for the solution of problems with engineering interests.

The moving boundary problems are solved by unsteady flow computations coupled with six-degrees-of-freedom equations of rigid body motion. Parallel algorithms are developed for both computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solution and grid deformation steps. Meanwhile, a novel approach is developed for the parallelization of the local remeshing step. It inputs a distributed mesh after deformation, then marks low-quality elements to be deleted on the respective processors. After that, a parallel domain decomposition approach is used to repartition the hole mesh and then to redistribute the resulting sub-meshes onto all available processors. Then remesh individual sub-holes in parallel. Finally, the element redistribution is rebalanced.

If the CFD solver is parallelized while the remaining steps are executed in sequential, the performance bottleneck of such a simulation cycle is observed when the simulation of large-scale problem is executed. The developed parallel simulation cycle, in which all of time-consuming steps have been efficiently parallelized, could overcome these bottlenecks, in terms of both memory consumption and computing efficiency.

A fully parallel approach for moving boundary simulations by local remeshing is developed to solve large-scale problems. In the algorithm level, a novel parallel local remeshing algorithm is present. It repartitions distributed hole elements evenly onto all available processors and ensures the generation of a well-shaped inter-hole boundary always. Therefore, the subsequent remeshing step can fix the inter-hole boundary involves no communications.

The purpose of this study is to use role expectation theory to identify potential determinants of user voting avoidance on mobile social media.

Data were collected through a survey of 602 WeChat users, and the proposed model was analysed using structural equation modelling.

Results indicate that user voting avoidance was positively influenced by unfair competition, perceived inauthenticity, perceived information insecurity, over-consumption of renqing (a unique Chinese human relation) and organisation placement in the context of mobile social media.

This study illustrates mobile user voting avoidance from the perspective of role expectation theory and clarifies the importance of avoidance in current voting research.

Recently, the popularity and growth of social media have boosted the development of social commerce (s-commerce). The purpose of this paper is to investigate consumers’ decisions in s-commerce, for which this study conducted empirical research on WeChat, a very popular social media in China, to validate how guanxi elements (e.g. ganqing, renqing and xinren) affect consumers’ decisions in s-commerce.

To examine the research model, an online survey instrument was developed to gather data. The hypotheses were tested using partial least squares modeling.

The results confirm that guanxi elements are positively related to eWOM sharing intention and social shopping intention. Moreover, these effects are mediated by a sense of belonging.

This study enhances the existing literature by introducing the concept of guanxi elements to the context of s-commerce, and linking the concept of guanxi elements and consumers’ decisions. Moreover, this study improves the theoretical and empirical understanding of guanxi elements by investigating its impact on eWOM sharing intention and social shopping intention. Third, the results confirm that guanxi elements not only influence a sense of belonging but also conjointly impacts eWOM sharing intention and social shopping intention in s-commerce.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of buyer-seller interpersonal interactions on the purchase intention of buyers, incorporating swift guanxi as a mediator.

Based on survey data obtained from 336 Taobao Live users, PLS techniques were used to test hypotheses.

Swift guanxi exists in buyer-seller interactions and matters, as it drives buyers' purchase intention in live stream shopping. Perceived expertise, perceived similarity and perceived likeability are found to be the three essential interpersonal interaction factors promoting the formation of swift guanxi. Perceived familiarity is also found to be significant but to a lesser extent. In addition, all these interpersonal interaction factors are found to significantly affect purchase intention through the mediation of swift guanxi.

Swift guanxi has been less explored in live stream shopping. This study takes the lead in empirically examining the mediating role of swift guanxi in the relationship between interpersonal interaction factors and purchase intention and offers a description of key buyer-seller interpersonal interaction factors (perceived expertise, perceived similarity and perceived likeability), thereby helping to extend the swift guanxi literature in social commerce.

In the recent decade, social media popularity and growth have boosted the development of social commerce (SC). This study aims to explore the significant impact of guanxi (关系) elements (ganqing 感情, renqing 人情 and xinren 信任) on online purchase intentions. Furthermore, this study investigated the moderating role of social support between electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) and online purchase intentions.

An online survey was conducted on 309 consumers who had online purchasing experience through WeChat, a famous social media application in China. Structural equational modeling was used to test all hypotheses.

The results indicate that guanxi elements are positively related to eWOM, affective attitude and online purchase intentions in SC. Additionally, social support has a significant moderating role between eWOM intention and online purchase intention.

Considering the effects of guanxi elements on eWOM affective attitude and online purchase intention in Chinese SC, online retailers are advised to carefully develop their marketing strategies to retain and attract new consumers. Furthermore, online retailers can use the findings from this study to understand the consequences when online purchase intention is strongly influenced by guanxi elements.

This research extends the current literature by applying the notion of guanxi components to the sense of SC and relating the notion of guanxi components and consumer decisions. The results show an understanding of the reality by which guanxi elements may affect the intention of eWOM sharing and boost online purchase intention.

Building on the Chinese guanxi perspective, the purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical model that explains the indirect effects of social support from friends on social commerce intentions, as mediated through the relational aspects that potential buyers develop with sellers.

Hypotheses are tested with partial least squares (PLS)-graph applied to data collected via a survey of social media users (n=511). SPSS and PLS-graph are the statistical analysis tools used in this study.

Relationship exists in social commerce interactions and its quality can be captured by swift guanxi and trust. These swift relationships matter as they drive users’ behavioral intentions on social commerce sites. The informational and social support people receive from friends helps in improving the relationship quality and can indirectly influence user behaviors on these sites.

This study has relied on a convenient sampling and this may limit the generalizability of the findings. Future research should employ broader and more random sampling techniques to re-validate and extend the findings.

The interpersonal aspect of relationship quality has received little attention in the social commerce literature. This study develops a theoretical model that explains consumers’ intention in social commerce. The findings reveal the mechanisms through which different types of social support indirectly influence social commerce intentions. They provide a unique glimpse into consumer behavior in Chinese settings, in which the guanxi aspect of relationship quality highly matters.