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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the consequences of two strategies of coordinating the online procurement capability and the online channel management capability on competitive performance.

A research model is presented to examine the performance impacts of these two coordination strategies, namely the balancing strategy (achieving a close match relationship) and the complementing strategy (maintaining the synergy effect), and tested using firm-level data collected from 196 manufacturing firms in China. Garen's two-stage econometric technique was used to identify the impacts of two coordination strategies on competitive performance.

Our study discusses and compares two different coordination strategies of mitigating the operational tensions across processes and deploying resource configurations for improving competitive performance. Our results show that while the balancing strategy can mitigate the risks resulted, the complementing strategy does not create synergistic effects on the focal firms' competitive performance.

The results extend our understanding of the nature of B2B digital process coordination both in IS management and supply chain operations.

With emerging markets representing great growth opportunities and serving as indispensable components in the global supply chain, it is unclear how well modern supply chain management theories developed in advanced markets apply to emerging markets. This study integrates the institution-based view with supply chain management literature to examine how integration capabilities can be leveraged to achieve supply chain agility in emerging markets and how the efficacy of integration capabilities is shaped by internal and external institutional contexts.

This study examines how firms in emerging markets can leverage their platform integration and knowledge integration capabilities with channel distributors to improve the supply chain agility and how such relationships are shaped by both the internal (proxy by ownership structure) and external (proxy by regional openness) institutional contexts in which firms operate. Survey and archival data collected from 207 firms operating in China, one of the largest emerging markets, were used to test the proposed research model.

The results reveal that platform integration and knowledge integration are two driving forces for supply chain agility in the emerging markets. Moreover, the results indicate that state-owned firms are able to achieve higher supply chain agility from their investments in knowledge integration with channel distributors than non-state-owned firms. While firms in regions with a high level of openness enjoy higher supply chain agility from knowledge integration, firms in regions with a low level of openness can catch up by investing in platform integration with their channel distributors.

The authors extend the extant study on supply chain integration (SCI) research to examine how operational and strategic integration with channel distributors can help the focal firm achieve supply chain agility in emerging markets. The study results also enrich the existing studies in emerging markets by revealing the importance of the institutional context in which firms operate on B2B channel management.

Trust and purchase intent are established, dependent variables in electronic commerce research. Recent studies have highlighted the importance of online product reviews in the development of purchase intention, which has led to the development of a substantial research effort in the realm of electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM). The purpose of this paper is to incorporate e-WOM, information processing and decision-making theories to propose a model of the development of trust and purchase intention based on online product reviews, and incorporate information overload as a moderating factor.

This study tests the hypotheses using a scenario-based experiment. In total, 157 working adults were asked to read three hotel reviews of different information load. Upon completion, they were then asked to respond to Likert-based questions regarding their trust in the review and purchase intention.

An inverted U-shaped relationship exists between information load and both trust and purchase intention, where low-information load is ineffective at fostering trust and purchase intention, moderate information load is effective at fostering trust and purchase intention, and high-information load is less effective than moderate information load at fostering trust and purchase intention.

Although the authors supported the inverted U-shaped relationship between information load and two outcomes, the authors only tested three different review lengths, resulting in limited precision, it is not clear where the inflection point is (i.e. exactly how many words results in information overload). Future studies might both seek more precision, and also consider more consumer characteristics, such as risk propensity.

Review platform operators with a stake in encouraging a sale should prioritize and highlight reviews of moderate length (which can be assessed automatically via word count), and consider restricting new reviews of products to minimum and maximum word counts.

This study enhances the relevant and growing body of online review research by: bringing uncertainty reduction theory to bear on the consumer’s information search efforts; using information overload, an important construct from classic information processing and decision-making literature to explain consumer behavior; and identifying a review characteristics (information load) which influences consumer attitudes about a review (trust) and the product (purchase intention). Finally, this study enhances research understanding of a specific experiential service: hospitality.

A new coupled model is developed to simulate the interaction between fluid droplet collisions on discrete particles (DPs) by using mathematic function.

In this model, the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) is used based on the kernel function and the time step which takes into consideration to the fluid domain in accordance with the discrete element method (DEM) with resistance function. The interaction between fluid and DPs consists of three parts, which are repulsive force, viscous shear force and attractive force caused by the capillary action. The numerical simulation of droplet collision on DPs presents the whole process of droplet motion. Otherwise, an experimental data were conducted to record the realistic process for verification.

The comparison result indicated that the numerical simulation is capable of capturing the entire process for droplet collision on DPs.

However, based on the difference of experimental environment, type of the DP and setups, the maximum spreading dimeters of could not fit the experimental data exactly.

In sum, the coupled SPH-DEM method simulation shows that the coupled model of SPH-DEM developed an entire effectiveness process for fluid–solid interaction problem.

In the hybrid electricity market consisting of renewable and conventional energy, the generation output of renewable power is uncertain because of its intermittency, and the power market demand is also fluctuant. Meanwhile, there is fierce competition among power producers in the power supply market and retailers in the demand market after deregulation, which increases the difficulty of renewable energy power grid-connection. To promote grid-connection of renewable energy power in the hybrid electricity market, the authors construct different contract decision-making models in the “many-to-many” hybrid power supply chain to explore the pricing strategy of renewable energy power grid-connecting.

Considering the dual-uncertainty of renewable energy power output and electricity market demand, the authors construct different decision-making models of wholesale price contract and revenue-sharing contract to compare and optimize grid-connecting pricing, respectively, to maximize the profits of different participants in the hybrid power supply chain. Besides, the authors set different parameters in the models to explore the influence of competition intensity, government subsidies, etc. on power pricing. Then, a numerical simulation is carried out, they verify the existence of the equilibrium solutions satisfying the supply chain coordination, compare the differences of pricing contracts and further analyze the variation characteristics of optimal contract parameters and their interaction relations.

Revenue-sharing contract can increase the quantity of green power grid-connection and realize benefits Pareto improvement of all parties in hybrid power supply chain. The competition intensity both of power supply and demand market will have an impact on the sharing ratio, and the increase of competition intensity results in a reduction of power supply chain coordination pressure. The power contract price, spot price and selling price have all been reduced with the increase of the sharing ratio, and the price of renewable power is more sensitive to the ratio change. The sharing ratio shows a downward trend with the increase of government green power subsidies.

On the basis of expanding the definition of hybrid power market and the theory of newsvendor model, considering the dual-uncertainty of green power generation output and electricity market demand, this paper builds and compares different contract decision-making models to study the grid-connection pricing strategy of renewable energy power. And as an extension of supply chain structure types and management, the authors build a “many-to-many” power supply chain structure model and analyze the impact of competition intensity among power enterprises and the government subsidy on the power grid-connecting pricing.

In the hybrid electricity market, renewable energy power generator faces the uncertainty of power market demand and the randomness of the renewable energy generation output. In order to improve the grid-connected quantity of green power, the purpose of this paper is to design the pricing mechanism for renewable energy power generator with revenue-sharing contract in a two-stage “multi-single” electricity supply chain which contains a single dominant power retailer and two kinds of power suppliers providing different power energy species.

Considering the dual uncertainties of renewable energy power output and power market demand, the authors design the full-cooperative contract decision-making model, wholesale price contract decision-making model and revenue-sharing contract decision-making model to compare and optimize grid-connected pricing in order to maximize profit of different parties in power supply chain. Then, this paper performs a numerical simulation, discusses the existence of the equilibrium analytical solutions to satisfy the supply chain coordination conditions and analyzes the optimal contract parameters’ variation characteristics and their interaction relationship.

The authors find that the expected profits of the parties in the hybrid power supply chain are concave about their decision variables in each decision-making mode. The revenue-sharing contract can realize the Pareto improvement for all parties’ interest of the supply chain, and promote the grid-connected quantity of green power effectively. The grid-connected price will reduce with the increase of revenue-sharing ratio, and this impact will be greater on the renewable energy power. The greater the competition intensity in power supply side, the smaller the revenue-sharing ratio from power purchaser. And for the same rangeability of competition intensity, the revenue-sharing ratio reduction of thermal power is less than that of the green power. The more the government subsidizing green power supplier, the smaller the retailer sharing revenue to it.

Facing with the dual uncertainties of green power output and market demand and the competition of thermal power in hybrid electricity market, this study can provide a path to solve the problem of renewable energy power grid-connecting. The results can help green power become competitive in hybrid power market under loose regulations. And this paper suggests that the government subsidy policy should be more tactical in order to implement a revenue-sharing contract of the power supply chain.

This paper studies the renewable energy electricity grid-connected pricing under the uncertainty of power supply and market demand, and compares different contract decision-making strategies in order to achieve the power supply chain coordination. The paper also analyzes the competition between thermal power and renewable energy power in hybrid electricity market.

This study aims to address the following research questions: Do the two types of service firms (individual or aggregator) have similar competitiveness on online search ads? How should the two types of service firms select optimal branded keywords to improve search performance? In addition, how do consumers’ search queries influence the service search performance of the two types of service firms?

In this study, the authors conduct an empirical analysis by building a two-stage choice modeling on the process of search engine ranking and consumer click-through decisions. The authors estimate the parameter coefficients and test the hypotheses using maximum likelihood estimation in the logistic regression model.

The empirical findings suggest that consumer response rates are highly dependent upon three aspects (service types, branded keyword strategy and consumer search query). First, the authors found that service aggregators receive greater consumer responses than individual service providers. Second, depending upon the various branded keyword strategies (e.g. generic vs branded, “within-type” vs “cross-type”) implemented by service aggregators or individual firms, the expected consumer responses could be quite different. Finally, customer’s search query, being either generic or branded, also has direct effect and interactive effect with service type on how consumers would response to the sponsored ads in the service search process.

The limitation of the research is twofold. First, conversion rate is not considered in the model estimation due to the nature of the data set. Second, the discussion about the keywords selection strategies is focusing on the hospitality industry. Future research shall further validate the generalizability into other industries.

First, given this competitive advantage, service aggregators should take an aggressive approach to adopting paid search strategy in acquiring new users and enhance its brand salience in the service ecosystem. Second, when considering other competitor’s brand names to include, if a firm is a service provider (e.g. hotel), a strategy that can help it receive higher consumer response would be to use “within-type” rather than “cross-type” branded keyword strategy. If a firm is a service aggregator, a better branded keyword strategy would be to use “across-type” instead of “within-type” approach. In addition, given that consumer’s brand awareness can influence the effectiveness of branded keyword strategy, online service search should target consumers in earlier stages of a decision journey.

The authors believe their theoretical framework can provide actionable solutions to service firms to ease customer’s search process, increase customer’s stickiness using search engines and add value to the customer relationships with all services entities within the digital ecosystem.

This study is the first to expand online search marketing into granule examinations (main and interactive effects of three key factors) in the service search domain. First, the authors differentiate service firms into two categories – online travel aggregators and individual hotels in the model. Second, the authors introduce two sets of new classifications of branded keywords for online service search research (i.e. own versus other brand and “cross-type” versus “within-type” branded keywords). Third, this study integrates service consumers’ search word specificity into the conceptual framework which is often missing in previous online search research.

Currently, for the evaluation of enterprise credit, many specific values of indexes are difficult to obtain, so decision makers tend to give a form of uncertain linguistic variable. To solve this kind of problem, the purpose of this paper is to introduce an uncertain pure linguistic approach on evaluation of enterprise integrity based on grey information.

Initial uncertain linguistic variables given by experts are transferred into interval grey numbers, and their greyness of degree is computed. Then, the greyness of degree is applied to adjust the weights of experts. Moreover, the core of each interval grey number is calculated, and through giving the positive ideal point and negative ideal point, which are binary numbers, the comprehensive grey relational grade between the linguistic number and the two points is calculated, respectively, as well to get the ranking result of projects by considering both core and greyness of degree.

The model is applied to a case, and the result verifies the validity and practicability of the model which reveals high effectiveness.

This model provides a new feasible method in a growing number of fuzzy evaluation schemes in the fields of enterprise integrity and contributes to getting better and more accurate results.

In this paper, the greyness of degree is introduced to the model to adjust the experts’ weights, and it reflects the thought of “making full use of the information” in grey system theory and further enriches the system of grey decision-making theory as well as expanding its application scope.

There is a debate on the excess volatility of long‐term bond yields. It is found that whether long‐term bond yields are excessively volatile or excessively smooth depends critically on the knowledge of the long‐run properties of the short‐term interest rate process. Uses a span of 200 years of data on interest rates and finds that the short rates from the USA and the UK are characterized by stationarity after the tests for unit root have accounted for structural breaks. Volatility tests reveal for the whole and sub‐sample periods that the long rates are excessively smooth.