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Identifies the relationship between price and the consumer's evaluation of product quality with regard to developing a pricing strategy. Assesses the effects of price changes, and investigates the influence of advertising on perceived product quality.

With the historic rise in globalisation, there is more contact between countries and businesses than ever. Not only due to globalisation, technological change, and shorter product life cycles lead entrepreneurs to adopt internationalisation strategies. Internationalisation is a creative activity conducted by global entrepreneurs who seek to operate part of their businesses in international markets. Entrepreneurs, economists, policymakers, and researchers have long observed that international business success depends upon global entrepreneurial activity.

Over the past 30 years, diversity in the global market has been among the most researched topics in international business literature. However, since the entrepreneurship system consists of interwoven elements, such as an entrepreneur, management system, culture, market, region, customers and workers, diversification in one piece directly or indirectly affects the other components within the system. Therefore, diversity in global entrepreneurship should be examined by considering the dynamics of every element within the system.

In this chapter, the author reviewed and commented upon the development of the literature on diversity, global entrepreneurship, internationalisation, and multinational organisations. In an overview of previous studies, this study aims to analyse the nexus between diversity and global entrepreneurship, the importance of this connection in the international business domain and how this connection can evolve in the future.

The case study demonstrates that China and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s (KSA) energy transformation strategies share many similarities and enjoy a great degree of complementarity. This complementarity is not limited to the territory of the two nations, but has become a successful vehicle for joint Sino-KSA investments in the Arab peninsula as well as in the Middle East and North Africa. Leading to a new paradigm that runs along the lines of China’s staggering Belt and Road Initiative, the convergence of policies represents a new reality due to its potentiality to influence not only the energy sectors of the largest Arab’s economy and world’s most powerful one, but also over their partners.

This study presents the state of green bond markets in Africa and green bond funds by some countries in the continent.

The authors adopt a case study approach on four different kinds of countries, namely oil-rich economy, green bond innovator, renewable energy user and carbon vulnerability.

The authors found that Africa's green bond is still at the early stages. However, countries are using innovative ways that are adaptable to their current economic conditions and investment attractiveness in issuing green bonds. While some countries focus on central and local government bonds, others use corporate bonds, few combine government and corporate green bonds. Interestingly, the first green bond globally certified by the Climate Bonds Standard was issued by an Africa country in Africa. In some selected countries such as Nigeria, South Africa, Morocco, Namibia and Kenya, green bond markets have seen massive growth and have contributed to numerous infrastructural energy efficiency projects. To expand this market further in these countries, the authors recommend fostering a public–private partnership backed by policies and political will.

This study provides an original contribution to the green bond and its likelihood of driving energy efficiency in a continent that has attracted little to no attention in the literature.

This paper aims to report a QA system that can answer how‐type questions based on confirmed knowledge acquired from mails, posted to a mailing list. It aims to propose a method of detecting incorrect information in mails posted to a mailing list (ML) by using mails that ML participants submitted for correcting incorrect information in previous mails.

The paper discusses a problem of acquiring knowledge from natural language documents, then proposes a method to give these mails three kinds of confirmation labels, positive, negative, and other, depending on their credibility.

The paper shows a QA system based on the confirmed knowledge. It finds mail questions that are similar to the user's question and gives answers and their confirmation labels to the user. By using the confirmation labels, the user can easily choose the information that can solve his or her problem.

The study describes a method of detecting incorrect information in mails posted to a mailing list and acquiring confirmed knowledge from them.

The ability to build up a film thickness separating the contacts in the bearing is essential to assure long service life of rolling element bearings. Rolling element bearings used in refrigeration suffer from poor film thickness due to decreased viscosity of the lubricant by the dilution of refrigerant in the oil. The purpose of this paper is to redesign a bearing test apparatus equipped with a capacitance measuring device able to monitor the lubrication status in the bearing online and include experiments to verify the capacitance measuring technique.

The objective is to design a complete system to study film build up in rolling element bearings in a refrigerant environment and to use and evaluate the capacitance/resistance measuring technique.

The investigation shows good correlation between denting on tested bearings and the identified contacts by the capacitance measuring apparatus. The method is also useful when studying lift‐off or run‐in of a bearing.

In this paper, a bearing test apparatus is redesigned and equipped with a capacitance measuring device able to monitor the lubrication status in the bearing on‐line. The paper includes experiments to verify the capacitance measuring technique.

The Renewable Energy Directive 2009/28/EC of the European Union provides another element to cross-border cooperation by allowing Member States to fulfill their 2020 renewable energy sources (RES) targets by implementing joint projects in third countries through the cooperation mechanisms. The purpose of this paper is to assess the country risk, to support bilateral cooperation for RES electricity generation projects.

A multicriteria decision support methodology has been developed taking into account three evaluation parameters, namely, the investment framework, the social conditions and the energy and technological status. An additive value model has been constructed, and the UTilitès Additives (UTA) – UTA* (UTASTAR) disaggregation method has been implemented to infer the criteria weights. The obtained ranking of alternatives has been subjected to robustness analysis, and finally the proposed methodology has been applied to five North Africa countries, so as to draw key results.

The pilot application of the methodological approach proposed and the model developed was fully compatible with the decision maker’s ranking on a set of fictitious countries and facilitated the assessment of a country’s current situation with regards to its investment, social conditions and energy and technological status. The results regarding the five North African countries examined, indicated the country’s investment framework as the most important factor, from foreign investors’ perspective, affecting a country’s suitability for the implementation of RES projects through a cooperation mechanism and Morocco, as well as Tunisia as the countries with the most suitable conditions for a successful implementation of such projects.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, there are only very few studies trying to assess opportunities and risks emerging from the implementation of joint projects between European and third countries in the field of electricity generation from RES. There are even less studies using (UTASTAR) method on real-world decision-making problems, and almost none are dedicated to energy sector-related problems.

Ghana has set an objective of achieving 10% of its energy requirements through renewable sources, by 2020. However, to date, the renewable energy (RE) sector has attracted only marginal investor interest. This paper aims to identify the challenges faced in financing RE in Ghana.

A comprehensive review of literature in renewable energy finance was conducted and 12 financing challenges were identified. From this list, a questionnaire was developed asking to rank barriers. This was distributed to experts within financial institutions and 32 were returned. A factor analysis and severity index analysis were performed to identify a ranking of challenges impeding RE project financing in Ghana.

The challenges to RE financing fall into the three broad categories, namely, “economic, commercial and regulatory” challenges. Within these broad constraints, “long payback periods,” “limited track record” and “high upfront cost” are the most severe impediments to obtaining financing for RE.

Identifying the specific conditions that make an investment in RE unattractive, give policymakers set on achieving the 10% RE goal, a way forward in developing a targeted policy that would mitigate identified investor disincentives.

The broad range of potential barriers to investment are known. However, this study combines a specific governmental ambition – encouraging the financing of RE – with a specific set of identified barriers inhibiting that ambition. In this regard, this study identifies exactly where the government needs to act if it is to facilitate investment in RE, as is required for Ghana to reach its 10% RE target.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the state of contemporary publishing, specifically the realms of fanfiction and self-publishing, for the ways in which readership is represented in conjunction with authors and publishers within the publication process. The structure of this process is then compared with Robert Darnton’s communications circuit in order to propose a new model for the publication. As the publication process has a profound impact on the teaching and practice of collection development and reader studies in LIS, the discipline must be aware of any changes to the publication process.

Using the case study approach, this research examines the cultural product, Fifty Shades of Grey (FSOG). Evidence included fanfiction and self-published manuscripts, reader reception of these texts, and a timeline of how the texts developed.

Evidence gathered from the case study illustrate a variety of players and infrastructure present in the development and trajectory of FSOG. Throughout the entire development of the cultural product, readers were found to be active agents in the publication process promoting strong connections between reader and author. Findings focus on the themes of textual development and their publicity.

Proposes a new model for the publication process that includes fanfiction and self-publishing.