Search results

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how the configurations of short life cycle, low quality, design and price, influence customer purchase intention in fast fashion and high technology industries in China.

The traditional thinking is that products with high quality and low price will win more customers. However, the authors can notice that high quality products usually have high cost. Therefore, it is necessary to do more research on how customers can accept low quality products. The authors take fast fashion products and smart phones as empirical studies, collecting data from customer’s online survey. Based on the methodology of fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, the authors analyse the relationship between the factors of short life cycle, low quality, design and price and influence customer purchase intention.

The authors find that price is the most important influencing factor. Low price is a strong competitive factor in the market. As to low quality products, low price can be achieved relatively more easily than with high quality products, resulting from relatively poorer raw material or configurations. Hence the connection between quality and price may give an idea to enterprises that customers will accept low quality products with low price. Moreover, according to the research, different generations are equally affected by the low price condition, regardless of customer gender and household income.

Because the study only focuses on fast fashion and smart phones industries, future work needs to replicate this study with individual data for different industries and with alternative methods to reinforce the confidence in the research. Meanwhile , this research studied mainly the customer perspective, it would be desirable to extend the study to the enterprise perspective and find out the difficulties that limit them in using low quality products to meet market needs. This may revel some cultural differences in purchase behavior among different countries and the discussed industries can be expanded to a larger area.

The study offers a number of managerial implications. With the rapid changes in people’s aesthetic sense and developing high-tech, it is more and more necessary for companies to think about how to win more customers and earn more profits. Low quality products have advantages as they will lower companies’ costs in many dimensions, improving the speed of supply. It helps firms to take low quality products into consideration and think whether they will influence different aspects of the company assistance firms to get a deeper understanding of customer psychology and make better decisions on their products.

The paper fills the gap in the research field by exploring how consumer behavior is affected by different conditions.

In a coaxial ultrasonic flow sensor (UFS), wall thickness is a vital parameter of the measurement tube, especially those with small inner diameters. The paper aims to investigate the influence of wall thickness on the transient signal characteristics in an UFS.

First, the problem was researched experimentally using a series of measurement tubes with different wall thicknesses. Second, a finite element method–based model in the time domain was established to validate the experimental results and further discussion. Finally, the plane wave assumption and oblique incident theory were used to analyze the wave propagation in the tube, and an idea of wave packet superposition was proposed to reveal the mechanism of the influence of wall thickness.

Both experimental and simulated results showed that the signal amplitude decreased periodically as the wall thickness increased, and the corresponding waveform varied dramatically. Based on the analysis of wave propagation in the measurement tube, a formula concerning the phase difference between wave packets was derived to characterize the signal variation.

This paper provides a new and explicit explanation of the influence of wall thickness on the transient signal in a co-axial UFS. Both experimental and simulated results were presented, and the mechanism was clearly described.

The paper refers to the framework of ambidexterity to explain the strategic paths of manufacturing SMEs in turbulent times, by investigating SMEs' strategic reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The authors adopted an inductive approach methodology. Using a qualitative research method, Italian manufacturing SMEs in different industries were interviewed to outline how they have faced the negative effects of the COVID-19 by considering the strategies implemented during the pandemic.

The study identifies three ambidextrous strategies for manufacturing SMEs to positively overcome the COVID-19 crisis: (1) playing different roles within the same market (business-to-business and business-to-consumer) simultaneously, (2) simultaneous entrance and management of multiple markets and (3) exploiting manufacturing knowledge for exploring product and business model innovation (simultaneous learning processes).

Results enrich the theoretical discussion on ambidexterity and SMEs, by stressing the strategic dimension of ambidexterity and including a more fine-grained analysis of the different firm’ strategic paths in times of crisis.

The paper provides practical suggestions for manufacturing SMEs on how they can react during turbulent times and crises by implementing ambidextrous strategies also thanks to the use of digital technologies.

This paper contributes to outlining the conditions for SMEs' resilience in the international competitive context by highlighting the perspective of ambidexterity based on the analysis of multiple case studies from manufacturing industries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between firm performance and product market competition (PMC), and then examine the mitigation effect of corporate governance and/or state-ownership (SOEs) in the association between PMC and firm performance using Chinese listed firms.

The authors consider three determinants of the PMC that affect the nature of competition, and use market concentration, product substitutability and market size as proxies for PMC. The authors construct a corporate governance index which measures the extent of board independence, monitoring strength of supervisory board over board of directors, and monitoring strength of board of directors over CEO. The authors use Tobin’s Q as a proxy for firm performance. The authors use a sample of 20,706 firm-year observations listed on the Chinese stock market between 2001 and 2016 to empirically investigate the research questions proposed in the paper.

The authors find that higher PMC is associated with lower firm performance. The authors find that good corporate governance practices moderate the negative effect of higher PMC on firm performance. The association between higher PMC and lower performance is weaker for firms controlled by SOEs compared to non-SOEs. Further, the moderation effect of SOEs on the association between higher PMC and lower performance is more pronounced for firms with good corporate governance practices compared to firms with weak corporate governance practices.

Extant studies investigating the relationship between PMC and corporate governance suggest an either complementary or substitution relationship in developed economies. Our study highlights the interactive role played by SOEs and good corporate governance practices in firm performance in highly competitive product markets in an emerging economy. The findings provide insightful information to regulators of other emerging countries that SOEs with good corporate governance practices can play an important role in the economy by mitigating the negative effect of higher PMC on firm performance.

The papers in this issue make a significant original contribution which will result in the better understanding of Chinese corporate finance management challenges from both theoretical and practical perspective. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The papers of this issue have a wide range of coverage related to corporate finance, such as CSR disclosure, organizational structure, earnings management, ownership structure, media impact, corporate accidents, and institution background. Those papers selected are all based on empirical researches with the original designs of their modeling, by the real and fundamental data from the latest Chinese market and enterprises.

The author believes that such in-depth analysis and discussion will enhance the understanding for both researches and practitioners on the behavior of managing corporate finance in China. Those findings will contribute to the establishment of Chinese management theories and to the building of a wide range of Chinese management practices.

Although the angle of each paper varies, they are all trying to have a deep analysis which may unveil the behavior of corporate finance decision. Some of such behaviors will be beneficial to the long-term sustainable growth of the company, while others, though, may have the negative impact on the corporate value creation.

This chapter examines China’s corporate governance and accounting environment that shapes the adoption of internationally acceptable principles and standards. Specifically, it examines international influences, including supranational organizations; foreign investors and international accounting firms; domestic institutional influences, including the political system, economic system, legal system, and cultural system; and accounting infrastructure. China’s convergence is driven by desired efficiency of the corporate sector and legitimacy of participating in the global market. Influenced heavily by international forces in the context of globalization, corporate governance and accounting practices are increasingly becoming in line with internationally acceptable standards and codes. While convergence assists China in obtaining legitimacy, improving efficiency is likely to be adversely affected given that corporate governance and accounting in China operate in an environment that differs considerably from those of Anglo-American countries. An examination of the corporate governance and accounting environment in China suggests heavy government involvement within underdeveloped institutions. While the Chinese government has made impressive progress in developing the corporate governance and accounting environment for the market economy, China’s unique institutional setting is likely to affect how the imported concepts are interpreted and implemented.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a dual peg-in-hole insertion strategy. Dual peg-in-hole insertion is the most common task in manufacturing. Most of the previous work develop the insertion strategy in a two- or three-dimensional space, in which they suppose the initial yaw angle is zero and only concern the roll and pitch angles. However, in some case, the yaw angle could not be ignored due to the pose uncertainty of the peg on the gripper. Therefore, there is a need to design the insertion strategy in a higher-dimensional configuration space.

In this paper, the authors handle the insertion problem by converting it into several sub-problems based on the attractive region formed by the constraints. The existence of the attractive region in the high-dimensional configuration space is first discussed. Then, the construction of the high-dimensional attractive region with its sub-attractive region in the low-dimensional space is proposed. Therefore, the robotic insertion strategy can be designed in the subspace to eliminate some uncertainties between the dual pegs and dual holes.

Dual peg-in-hole insertion is realized without using of force sensors. The proposed strategy is also used to demonstrate the precision dual peg-in-hole insertion, where the clearance between the dual-peg and dual-hole is about 0.02 mm.

The sensor-less insertion strategy will not increase the cost of the assembly system and also can be used in the dual peg-in-hole insertion.

The theoretical and experimental analyses for dual peg-in-hole insertion are proposed without using of force sensor.

This study examines factors influencing viewers' impulse buying intention in live streaming. The authors draw upon the value theory to theorize how the product (i.e., local presence) and para-social interaction (PSI) in live-streaming shopping improve customers' shopping values and how these values subsequently influence their urge to buy impulsively. In addition, the authors examine value differences in live-streaming shopping through gender differences and previous shopping experiences.

An online survey was conducted in this study. Members with browsing or shopping experience of live-streaming shopping sites were invited. The structural equation model was used to conduct confirmative factor analysis (CFA) to assess the convergent validity (item loadings), internal consistency (reliability), discriminant validity, causality hypotheses, and mediating effects.

Utilitarian value appears more important than hedonic value in influencing consumers' urge to buy impulsively. Moreover, PSI with the co-viewers is more influential than PSI with the streamer on utilitarian and hedonic values. Finally, gender differences and prior live-streaming shopping experience moderate the relationship between shopping values and the urge to buy impulsively.

The authors extend the concept of PSI from a celebrity (the streamer) to co-viewers and find that PSI with co-viewers is crucial to impulse buying in live streaming. Additionally, the authors’ finding reveals that consumers with individual differences may react differently to the same set of perceived values in determining the level of their impulse shopping intention.