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This paper provides the strategic direction and coordination mechanism selection for the intelligent transformation of manufacturing enterprises.

A theoretical framework is developed through grounded theory and case analysis.

Collaboration value is the building block of the intelligent product ecosystem. The ecosystem is upgraded via a path of product coordination, platform coordination and network coordination.

This paper provides a framework for enterprises to build an intelligent product ecosystem.

The proposed intelligent product ecosystem framework is new to the literature and lays down a fruitful avenue for future research.

The purpose of this study is to examine the intergenerational influence across dyads of mothers and daughters from the USA and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), with a particular interest in discovering the cross-national differences in terms of the level of mother–daughter brand preference agreement, the directional influence from daughter to mother and leading factors for the observed differences.

Using a parallel survey method, responses were obtained regarding participants’ brand preferences, as well as their perceptions of their dyad partners’ preferences, for 20 product categories. A total of 76 dyads in the USA and 114 dyads in the PRC were collected.

Results not only confirmed the existence of intergenerational influence in mother–daughter dyads’ brand preferences after removing the nominal bias that previous studies commonly suffered but also suggested two interesting cross-national differences. Specifically, the authors find that US mother–daughter dyads possess a higher level of brand preference agreement than their PRC counterparts; however, the influence from daughters to mothers in the PRC is greater than in the USA. The authors further find that two potential leading factors contribute to the observed cross-national differences; mother–daughter communication is stronger but less influential in the USA than in the PRC, while children’s peer influence, measured as information influence of peers, is weaker but more influential in the USA than in the PRC.

Understanding intergeneration influences in different cultural contexts may be applicable in developing communication strategies leading to brand preference.

This study contributes to the consumer socialization literature by examining the cross-national differences of intergenerational influence in brand preferences and their leading causes of such differences in the context of the two biggest economies.

This study aims to examine the moderating effects of two important consumer characteristics (product familiarity and risk aversion) on the relationships between two intransient cues (store image and product signatureness) and consumer quality perception of private label, as well as the interaction between the cues themselves.

This paper employs survey research to test three main hypotheses. The authors collected data from parents in an elementary school in a southern state.

The study yields some counterintuitive results. The paper finds that the combination of two diagnostic cues does not necessarily enhance the positive evaluation of private labels. Instead, store image reduces the effect of product signatureness. Further, product familiarity induces a positive moderating effect on product signatureness, whereas risk aversion exerts a negative moderating effect on store image.

Prior literature neglects the interactions between cues and consumer characteristics and the interaction between cues themselves in consumer quality evaluation of private labels. This research addresses these gaps and offers useful insights about private label strategies.

Many writers assume that consumers’ use of the Internet will follow the development of Web sites by Realtor.com and other Realtor‐sponsored sites on the Internet. This study examined this proposition by surveying consumers’ Internet use in their home purchases. A model of consumers’ Internet use in home purchases is developed and tested. Results showed that fewer than 40 percent of the home purchasers ever used the Internet for real estate related information during their home purchases. Awareness of Internet real estate information, access to Internet, age, perceived effectiveness of Internet in home purchase, and satisfaction with Realtor are found to be important factors in determining consumers’ use of Internet during home purchases.

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the progress in grey system research during 2000-2015, so as to present some important new concepts, models, methods and a new framework of grey system theory.

The new thinking, new models and new methods of grey system theory and their applications are presented in this paper. It includes algorithm rules of grey numbers based on the “kernel” and the degree of greyness of grey numbers, the concept of general grey numbers, the synthesis axiom of degree of greyness of grey numbers and their operations; the general form of buffer operators of grey sequence operators; the four basic models of grey model GM(1,1), such as even GM, original difference GM, even difference GM, discrete GM and the suitable sequence type of each basic model, and suitable range of most used grey forecasting models; the similarity degree of grey incidences, the closeness degree of grey incidences and the three-dimensional absolute degree of grey incidence of grey incidence analysis models; the grey cluster model based on center-point and end-point mixed triangular whitenization functions; the multi-attribute intelligent grey target decision model, the two stages decision model with grey synthetic measure of grey decision models; grey game models, grey input-output models of grey combined models; and the problems of robust stability for grey stochastic time-delay systems of neutral type, distributed-delay type and neutral distributed-delay type of grey control, etc. And the new framework of grey system theory is given as well.

The problems which remain for further studying are discussed at the end of each section. The reader could know the general picture of research and developing trend of grey system theory from this paper.

A lot of successful practical applications of the new models to solve various problems have been found in many different areas of natural science, social science and engineering, including spaceflight, civil aviation, information, metallurgy, machinery, petroleum, chemical industry, electrical power, electronics, light industries, energy resources, transportation, medicine, health, agriculture, forestry, geography, hydrology, seismology, meteorology, environment protection, architecture, behavioral science, management science, law, education, military science, etc. These practical applications have brought forward definite and noticeable social and economic benefits. It demonstrates a wide range of applicability of grey system theory, especially in the situation where the available information is incomplete and the collected data are inaccurate.

The reader is given a general picture of grey systems theory as a new model system and a new framework for studying problems where partial information is known; especially for uncertain systems with few data points and poor information. The problems remaining for further studying are identified at the end of each section.