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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of different gray markets’ structures on both supply chain decisions and associated profits.

Within the context of gray markets, using game theory approach in this paper, supply chains have been considered as assets of manufacturers, distributors and speculators, within which manufacturers sell products to distinctive markets either directly or through authorized distributors, while speculators buy products from a lower price market and then sell them in a higher price market. Our study has examined different decision variables within such a framework.

Considering a situation where one manufacturer sells its products either directly in one market (Market 1) or through its authorized distributor (Market 2), due to different products prices in both markets, results have shown that, when market elasticity is less than its critical value, a speculator can sell a gray market product arbitrage in market 2, whereas when the market elasticity is greater than its critical value, a speculator can sell a gray market product arbitrage in market 1. In addition, manufacturers—as leaders of Stackelberg game—are always the most profitable stakeholders within a gray market supply chain.

In this study, equilibrium results for each market have been obtained, optimal results have been compared, and accordingly, valuable insights have been developed. Such results would help managers to take better managerial decisions, as well as strategizing policies in gray markets.

In this paper, we have considered a gray market where both distributors and speculators exist and act as parallel channels. To the best of our knowledge, the extant literature focuses either on distributors or speculators, but never concurrently on both. In fact, the coexistence of one distributor and one speculator in a gray market will impact their own decisions, as well as both decisions and profits of other stakeholders, and hence, will exert an impact on the manufacturer side.

This study aims to examine the effects of three aspects of perceived advantage (i.e. time-saving, money-saving and convenience) on Chinese consumers’ continuance usage intention and behavior of using tourism mobile applications (apps) in the context of Chinese society and culture.

Survey data were collected at 20 key tourist attractions in Jinan, China from tourists who visit the attractions. Structural equation modeling was applied to test the hypothetical model.

Empirical findings revealed that time-saving directly affected consumers’ continuance usage intention but did not influence user behavior; on the contrary, money-saving had a direct effect on user behavior, but not on intention. Convenience was found to affect both intention and behavior and had a much stronger total effect on user behavior than time-saving and money-saving.

The study findings offer insights into the further development of tourism mobile apps. While money-saving can be an effective marketing offer for user adoption of tourism mobile apps, tourism mobile apps operators should further tap into the value of time and convenience in designing and developing tourism mobile apps.

The study expands on practical knowledge of Chinese consumers’ behavior toward using tourism apps.

This paper aims to propose an enhanced algorithm and used to decision-making that specifically focuses on the choice of a domain in the calculation of degree of greyness according to the principle of grey numbers operation. The domain means the emerging background of interval grey numbers, it is vital for the operational mechanism of such interval grey numbers. However, the criteria of selection of domain always remain same that is not only for the calculated grey numbers but also for the resultant grey numbers, which can be assumed as unrealistic up to a certain extent.

The existence of interval grey number operation based on kernel and the degree of greyness containing two calculation aspects, which are kernel and the degree of greyness. For the degree of greyness, it includes concepts of domain and calculation of the domain. The concepts of a domain are defined. The enhanced algorithm is also comprised of four deductive theorems and eight rules that are linked to the properties of the enhanced algorithm of the interval grey numbers based on the kernel and the degree of greyness.

Aiming to improve the algorithm of the degree of greyness for interval grey numbers, based on the variation of domain in the operation process, the degree of greyness of the operation result is defined in this paper, and the specific expressions for algebraic operations are given, which is relevant to the kernel, the degree of greyness and the domain. Then, these expressions are used to the algorithm of interval grey numbers based on the kernel and the degree of greyness, improving the accuracy of the operation results.

The enhanced algorithm in this paper can effectively reduce the loss of information in the operation process, so as to avoid the situation where the decision values are the same and scientific decisions cannot be made during the grey evaluation and decision-making process.