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Three scenario-based experiments were conducted to explore the influence of the base option’s price format (just-at vs just-below) on tourists’ upgrade intention. The findings of this research indicated that tourists are more inclined to upgrade the option when the base option’s price is presented in a just-at condition due to the mediating role of tourists’ price perceptions of the upgrade option. This study discovered that the just-at (vs just-below) pricing strategy can lower tourists’ price perceptions of the upgrade choice. This research further explored the moderating of tourists’ mindsets. It was found the threshold-crossing effect will disappear for tourists with fixed mindsets. This study also provides practical implications for travel service providers to set up appropriate pricing strategies to attract tourists to make upgrade decisions.

This study examines how dynamic capabilities (DCs) impact global value chain (GVC) upgrading and assesses the mediating role of innovation.

The study uses a quantitative research method. The data are collected using an online questionnaire administered to respondents working in Chinese automobile manufacturers in China and Laos. The data are analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) and related software.

The results show that DCs and innovation capabilities (ICs) positively affect GVC upgrading and that ICs plays a mediating role between DC and GVC upgrading. Dynamic capabilities evolution (CE) mediates the relationship between DCs, ICs and GVC upgrading. Finally, differences exist in the effects of the three dimensions of DCs on ICs and GVC upgrading.

Focusing on the absorption and transformation of knowledge, enterprises could experience a clear enhancement of IC and CE and be more likely to obtain higher marginal returns. The study provides insights for emerging market firms to gain higher added value in internationalization.

This study demonstrates that different dimensions of DCs have different effects on GVC upgrading. In terms of theory, the impact of IC is considered in terms of the mediating effect of CE on IC. Differences are highlighted concerning the impact of learning capability, integrating and coordinating capability and sensing capability on the mediated relationships.

Using the Shanghai pilot free trade zone (SPFTZ) as the testing ground for further reform and opening up,the links between global value chain (GVC) and pilot free trade zone (PFTZ) programs are mutually reinforcing. GVC creates opportunities for companies to use PFTZ to reduce their costs and increase their competitiveness, while PFTZ can facilitate the movement of goods within GVC and promote the development of GVC by attracting foreign investment. Overall, in SPFTZ, the industrial structure is promoted due to trade and investment facilitation, innovation promotion, and comprehensive service platform inside SPFTZ.

This study examined industrial upgrading in GVC (IUGVC) using five indicators under three quantitative dimensions: product, process, and skill upgrading. Difference-in-Differences (DID) model is employed for the impact assessment of SPFTZ. Parallel trend analysis and Granger causality analysis are performed to check the reliability of DID outcome. Finally, robustness test using exogenous control variables are carried out.

A positive impact of SPFTZ is found on IUGVC, which is due to promoting effect of SPFTZ on foreign direct investment and technological innovation. Based on the study's findings, policy recommendations are given, such as providing business support to enterprises operating inside a PFTZ.

From a GVC perspective, the impact of theSPFTZ establishment on IUGVC cannot be ignored, and is so far missing in the literature.

Technology upgrade has been adopted as a strategy for technology vendors to modify and improve their incumbent technologies. However, user resistance is widespread in practice. In order to understand user technology upgrade behavior, this study integrates the retrospective and prospective sides of actions and proposes an inertia-mindfulness ambidexterity perspective to explore the antecedents of technology upgrade.

An online survey was conducted to collect data from 520 Microsoft Windows users to test this research model. Structural equation modeling (SEM) approach was used to evaluate measurement model and structural model.

Inertia can induce individuals' psychological reactance and thus reduce their intention to upgrade. In contrast, mindfulness can decrease users' psychological reactance and then motivate them to upgrade to a new version of technology. Finally, individuals' dissatisfaction with the current version of technology would weaken the negative impact of psychological reactance on upgrade intention.

This study generates an inertia-mindfulness ambidexterity perspective to investigate the factors that influence user technology upgrade intention from both retrospective and prospective sides and then identifies psychological reactance as underlying mechanism to explain how inertia and mindfulness work. Finally, this study posits that user dissatisfaction with current version of technology can moderate the relationship between psychological reactance and technology upgrade intention.

This study examines the impact of China's trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) on Africa's global value chain (GVC) participation and economic upgrading.

The study covered 48 African countries, cutting across the western, eastern, central, southern and northern subregions to cover the heterogeneity of the continent. The study adopted feasible generalized least squares panel VAR-Granger causality Wald test and system generalized methods of moments techniques for estimation.

Overall, China's FDI to Africa and US-Africa trade have a linear relationship with Africa's GVC involvement and economic upgrading. The findings suggest that although China-Africa trade has a positive impact on GVC engagement and upgrading, the marginal effect decreases in the face of US-Africa and EU-Africa trade.

This study provides new evidence on the impact of China's FDI and trade on African economies' GVC participation and economic upgrading. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to empirically explore the effects of China's FDI and trade on Africa's GVC integration and economic upgrading as well as from the perspectives of backward and forward GVC participation. Furthermore, the study empirically examines whether the effects of Africa's economic cooperation with China relative to its GVC engagement differ from those of Europe (EU) and the US via a comparative regression.

This paper analyzes the effect of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) on firm green innovation upgrading using data on Chinese firms between 2009 and 2021.

The author adopts the staggered difference-in-difference (DID) method to estimate regressions, treating the proposal of the BRI in 2013 as a policy shock. Our analysis yields few findings.

The author yields few findings. First, the BRI can significantly promote Chinese firms green innovation upgrading. Specifically, the BRI can promote firm green innovation upgrading by 0.9%. Second, the BRI mainly promotes firms green innovation upgrading by promoting firms to increase green entrepreneurship, cooperative innovation and environmental investment. Finally, the BRI has a greater impact on the green innovation upgrading of firms in the digital industrialization industry rather than digital industry and firms with low pollution emissions rather than firms with high-pollution emissions. This research indicates that the BRI is not only an important platform for sustainable development and also an important opportunity for green entrepreneurship.

First, due to the low quality of data and the lack of detailed information on some firms' patents owned after 2018, fully applying data of all years for regression was not possible. Second, the author did not construct a theoretical model to explore the impact of the BRI on green innovation upgrading of firms from the perspective of outward foreign direct investment (OFDI), which is also the direction of future research. Finally, there are still some unexplored mechanisms of the BRI on firms green innovation upgrading, which should be further explored in the future.

First, from the micro perspective, the author measures the quality of firms' green patents, further measuring the firms' green innovation upgrading. Second, the author discusses the impact of the BRI on firm green innovation upgrading with the method of staggered DID, so that the policy effect of the BRI can be more accurately evaluated. Third, the author comprehensively analyzes the mechanism of cooperative innovation and green infrastructure investment, as well as analyzing the heterogeneity from the perspective of industry digital transformation and firm pollution emissions. Lastly, the author provides specific paths for firms to make high-quality investment from the green BRI construction.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how customers’ upgrading/downgrading _(t−1) behavior may be predictive of future spending. Further, this paper also investigates how customers’ post-consumption evaluations of upgrades and downgrades [satisfaction_(t−1) and perceived value_(t−1)] may moderate the relationship between upgrades/downgrades and future spending.

The predictions are tested using a large longitudinal data set of river cruise purchases (N = 48,103) and largely replicated using a data set of zoo membership purchases (N = 2,469).

Satisfaction_(t−1) mitigates the positive relationship between prior upgrades_(t−1) and future spending_(t). In contrast, perceived value_(t−1) magnifies the positive relationship between prior upgrades_(t−1) and future spending_(t). However, no positively moderating effects are observed to alleviate the negative relationship between prior downgrades_(t−1) and future spending_(t).

This research suggests that managers should work hard early in customer–firm relationships because of an asymmetric difficultly in altering the trajectory of an established relationship. Specifically, relationships that are trending downward (as consecutive downgrades would suggest) are difficult to repair – a mechanism to alter this trajectory is not observed. In contrast, relationships that are trending upward (as consecutive upgrades would suggest) can be improved with high perceived value evaluations but also degraded with high satisfaction evaluations.

This research should recast marketers’ understanding of the value of customers’ upgrade and downgrade decisions. Instead of using customers’ upgrade or downgrade decisions as the dependent variable, or final outcome in buyer behavior, this study shows how the accumulation of prior upgrades and prior downgrades, over time, acts as a bellwether of the customer–firm relationship. Further, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to connect these upgrade/downgrade decisions to customers’ evaluations of those purchases to understand how individual purchases can impact the overall customer–firm relationship.

This study examines the factors that influence the improvement of the consumer goods sector in three dimensions (technology, internal factors and external environment) for exploring the upgrading paths of Shanghai's consumer goods industry.

This paper targeted eight sub-industries of consumer goods as case studies, including food processing, and investigated from qualitative and quantitative perspectives using the technology-organization-environment (TOE) framework.

The study confirms the diversity of paths to promote the upgrading of the consumer goods industry in Shanghai, and three paths are summarized in this paper. The “human–environment” linkage upgrade path is to bring sufficient economic contribution to help industrial upgrading by expanding market share, and this path is suitable for large enterprises in the industry to adopt; the “internal factor aggregation” upgrading path is to strengthen the aggregation effect of resources, form industrial clusters and link high human aggregation with industrial aggregation to exert leverage to transform and upgrade the consumer goods industry, and this path is suitable for SMEs in the industry to adopt; the “technology–environment” linkage upgrade path is to use technological factors for product innovation to occupy a favorable market position, to obtain high economic returns and realize industrial upgrading under the joint action of technology and external environment, and this path is suitable for high-tech enterprises to adopt.

Shanghai still has a large area for growth toward foreign metropolises, under the backdrop of the strong development of new manufacturing. Also, to diversify their investment portfolio, the consumer goods industry should focus on population, job density and industrial growth while looking into industrial aggregation.

This paper aims to study the impact of manufacturer’s upgrading strategy of durable products on the retailer’s decision on trade-in program and her decision on the secondary market.

This paper develops a channel that consists of a manufacturer and a retailer, where the manufacturer releases an upgraded product, and the retailer introduces a trade-in program for consumers, simultaneously, decides whether to enter the secondary market. These approaches are modeled through Stackelberg game.

This paper reveals that the optimal conditions for manufacturer to release upgraded products and retailer to resell used products in the secondary market, and it reveals that under what conditions it is profitable for retailer to enter the secondary market under product upgrade levels.

If the manufacturer’s upgrade level is low, it is profitable for the retailer to enter the secondary market. However, if the manufacturer’s upgrade level is high, it is unprofitable for the retailer to enter the secondary market.

In this paper, the active secondary market, upgrading of new products, consumer market segmentation and especially, the upgrade degree of new products as a function of consumer demand are considered simultaneously.

The rapid growth of emerging market firms (EMFs) has been a topic of interest for the past two decades, especially in China. However, few studies have discussed how and why EMFs can impel the upgrading of their capabilities to quickly win competitive advantages in the global market. In this context, the purpose of this paper is to unravel the implausible upgrading phenomenon from the perspective of technological proximity.

This paper adopts a single case study, specifically that of a leading Chinese e-bike firm, with a special focus on the dynamic nature of the capability upgrading process and underlying mechanisms.

The results show that taking advantage of technological proximity is an important way for EMFs to climb the ladder of capability upgrading. The stage-based process reveals how capability upgrading is achieved through elaborate actions related to technological proximity. Furthermore, this study finds three learning mechanisms behind the technological proximity, which enable firms to successfully upgrade to higher levels of capabilities. In particular, the trigger role played by contextual conditions in guiding firms' capability upgrading is highlighted and characterized.

This study enriches traditional capability upgrading literature from a technological proximity perspective, especially the traditional static upgrading research related to EMFs. The authors also contribute to the conceptualization of technological proximity. However, the research setting is China's e-bike industry; therefore, the study's generalizability to other emerging markets and industries may be limited.

The results show that it is important to recognize the value of the transfer and sharing of technology between proximal industries for local governments. Also, appropriate policies should be developed to break down the technology barriers between these industries. Moreover, rather than catching up with the superior technologies of multinational corporations in advanced countries, focusing on products with high technological proximity in local or regional areas may be more helpful for EMFs' upgrading.

This paper investigates the capability upgrading process and mechanisms in EMFs, particularly with respect to the role played by technological proximity.