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In this paper, the authors study the entry and outsourcing strategies of manufacturer while considering the brand spillover effect resulting from outsourcing. The supply chain comprises two manufacturers: one being the entrant with a strong brand, and the other as the incumbent with a weak brand. The entrant decides whether and how to enter the market.

Stackelberg game is applied to study the optimal strategies for the manufacturers. This paper conducts a comparative analysis on four situations, yielding conclusions and managerial insights.

The results show that, for the entrant, there is no need to worry about the brand spillover effect in the outsourcing process, which is very interesting and counterintuitive. To get further, the authors find the reason: The spillover effect causes the entrant’s equilibrium retail price to grow faster than the wholesale price. They also prove that a stronger brand effect empowers the entrant to challenge industry barriers, while the impact of the brand spillover effect is the opposite. For the incumbent who acts as the weak party in this issue, it is demonstrated that the optimal choice is to continue selling when facing the encroachment and outsourcing call from the entrant.

Differing from previous studies, the authors notice the brand spillover effect caused by outsourcing when studying company’s entry strategy. They further divide the brand effect into two parts, one of which does not exhibit a spillover.

The integration of social media and e-commerce has resulted in a rising phenomenon among individual content providers (ICPs), who used to offer free content, to provide consumers with paid content, such as online courses, Q&As or consultations. Despite the prevalence of ICPs’ content monetization, empirical research has rarely studied its underlying mechanism. This paper examines how the characteristics of free content contributed by ICPs on social media platforms influence their paid content sales, focusing on the perspective of human brand.

The empirical setting is an online knowledge exchange platform, where users are allowed to provide free content (e.g. answers) on the social media platform and launch paid content (e.g. lectures) on the e-commerce platform. A machine learning technique is employed to construct measures for the characteristics of free content, and fixed-effects estimation is presented to confirm which factors have a significant influence on the sales of paid content.

The empirical results show that the quality, diversity and expertness of free content have a significant positive impact on the sales of the ICP-paid content, with the brand popularity of ICP playing a mediating role.

This study is the first attempt to demystify the relationship between content contribution and ICPs’ content monetization from the perspective of human brand. The findings validate the effectiveness of the “Selling by Contribution” strategy and provide valuable insights for ICPs and social media platforms.

This study aims to investigate the factors influencing consumers' continued social commerce (s-commerce) intention and its underlying mechanism.

The authors define continued s-commerce intention as consumers' intention to continually participate in s-commerce activities, namely, requesting and sharing commercial information. Grounded in the motivation theory, perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment are identified in this study as the motives behind consumers' continued s-commerce intention. Given the indispensable social facet of s-commerce, the authors include social support as another critical social factor motivating continuance intention. Furthermore, users' perceptions are affected by prior s-commerce outcomes, which concern the effectiveness of the commercial information exchange process. Research suggests that in such a context, the result of communication is jointly determined by source credibility and interactive relationships amongst individuals. Whilst source credibility determines the usefulness of the information transmitted, a social interaction supports this process. Therefore, source credibility and social interactions are crucial to the outcomes of s-commerce, which, in turn, affect consumers' perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment and social support in s-commerce. Building on these arguments, the authors propose our research model and then test the hypotheses via a survey.

The authors find that consumers' perceived usefulness and informational social support of s-commerce directly affect their continued s-commerce intention. Moreover, perceived enjoyment leads to continued s-commerce intention via the mediation of perceived usefulness, whilst emotional social support influences continued s-commerce intention through the mediator of informational social support. In addition, source credibility is a significant antecedent of consumers' usefulness, enjoyment and social support perceptions, whilst a social interaction significantly impacts perceived enjoyment and social support.

Various consumer behaviours in s-commerce have been studied; however, the continuance intention to participate in the s-commerce activity remains unknown. This empirical study fills this research gap. Moreover, the authors initially reveal s-commerce participants' utilitarian orientation in the post-adoption stage: perceived usefulness and informational social support affect continuance intention more directly than perceived enjoyment and emotional social support. Further, prior studies on information systems continuance have mainly focused on technical features. By identifying the influence from social factors, i.e. social support, this work extends the literature on information systems continuance.

The purpose of this study is to improve the mechanical property and processing performance and reduce the cost of the polylacticacid/polybutyleneadipate-co-terephthalate(PLA/PBAT) composites, the calcium carbonate (CaCO₃) and compatibilizer styrene-maleicanhydride copolymer (SMA-2025) were added to the PLA/PBAT system, and the effect of CaCO₃ and SMA-2025 on the morphology, structure, mechanical property, thermal property, thermalstability and shape memory property of the CaCO₃/PLA/PBAT composites were studied and discussed.

The CaCO₃/PLA/PBAT shape memory composites were prepared via melt-blending and hot-pressing methods, and the effect of CaCO₃ and SMA-2025 on the property of the composites was investigated via scanning electron microscope, universal testing instrument, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, differential scanning calorimetry, thermogravimetric analysis and DMA, respectively.

The interface property, mechanical property, thermal stability, shape memory recovery ratios and recovery stresses, and processing performance of the CaCO₃/PLA/PBAT shape memory composites were significantly improved by adding of CaCO₃ and SMA-2025. Moreover, the CaCO₃/PLA/PBAT composites have good blowing film processing performance.

This study will provide a reference for the research, processing and application of the high-performance CaCO₃/PLA/PBAT shape memory composites.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the thermomechanical condition on the shape memory property of Polybutylene adipate-co-terephthalate (PBAT). PBAT is a widely researched and rapidly developed biodegradable copolyester. In a tensile test, we found that the fractured PBAT samples had a heat-driven shape memory effect which piqued our interest, and it will lay a foundation for the application of PBAT in new fields (such as heat shrinkable film).

The shape memory effect of PBAT and the effect of the thermomechanical condition on its shape memory property were confirmed and systematically investigated by a thermal mechanical analyzer and tensile machine.

The results showed that the PBAT film had broad shape memory transform temperature and exhibited excellent thermomechanical stability and shape memory properties. The shape memory fixity ratio (Rf) of the PBAT films was increased with the prestrain temperature and prestrain, where the highest Rf exceeded 90%. The shape memory recovery ratio (Rr) of the PBAT films was increased with the shape memory recovery temperature and decreased with the prestrain value, and the highest Rr was almost 100%. Moreover, the PBAT films had high shape memory recovery stress which increased with the prestrain value and decreased with the prestrain temperature, and the highest shape memory recovery stress can reach 7.73 MPa.

The results showed that PBAT had a broad shape memory transform temperature, exhibited excellent thermomechanical stability and shape memory performance, especially for the sample programmed at high temperature and had a larger prestrian, which will provide a reference for the design, processing and application of PBAT-based heat shrinkable film and smart materials.

This study confirmed and systematically investigated the shape memory effect of PBAT and the effect of the thermomechanical condition on the shape memory property of PBAT.

This study aims to investigate moderators affecting the impact of salesperson acquisition-retention (AR) ambidexterity on sales performance based on the motivation-opportunity-ability (MOA) framework.

The authors collected triadic data through 391 questionnaires from salespeople, 50 questionnaires from sales managers and archival data about each salesperson’s performance. Hierarchical linear modeling was applied to test the hypotheses.

The results indicate that salesperson AR ambidexterity positively affects sales performance. The positive effect is strengthened by capability control but weakened by outcome control and activity control. The authors also find that sales experience and market attractiveness hurt the effectiveness of salesperson AR ambidexterity.

First, this study does not examine the mediating mechanism underlying the effect of salesperson AR ambidexterity. Second, sales-service ambidexterity is another ambidextrous variable for salespeople. Future research can consider AR and sales-service ambidexterity together.

First, managers should be cautious when encouraging experienced salespeople to conduct AR ambidexterity. Second, managers need to use capability control to motivate salespeople with AR ambidextrous behaviors. Third, AR ambidexterity could be not required in a market with many opportunities.

Although some studies have examined the effectiveness of salesperson AR ambidexterity, they reveal inconsistent findings, which suggest contingent conditions on the effectiveness of salesperson AR ambidexterity. However, the attention on the contingent conditions is limited. Therefore, this paper systematically investigates the contingent conditions from the MOA framework. The findings provide some insights into when salesperson AR ambidexterity is effective.

For two-sided platforms, the utility of users on one side of the platform depends in part on the number of users on the other side of the platform, a phenomenon called indirect network externalities. With the rapid development of two-sided platform and the popularity of platform membership, more and more two-sided platforms have launched joint membership through horizontal cooperation in order to take advantage of indirect network externalities to increase platform profits.

Our study explores the optimal bundling strategy for platform memberships under horizontal cooperation considering indirect network externalities. The main purpose of our study is to obtain the optimal pricing under different strategies (pure component, pure bundling, and mixed bundling) and contrast different strategies under different indirect network externalities.

Results suggest that the platform's optimal pricing for consumers and sellers depends on the indirect network externalities. Interestingly, the higher the indirect network externalities from consumers, the higher the price of the platform charges to sellers, and the platform might even subsidize sellers. Besides, when there are equal proportions of different types of consumers in the market, indirect network externalities that are too high, too low, or heavily lopsided may discourage the platforms from bundling their memberships. When the composition of consumers changes, the optimal strategy will also change. Our results can be employed in practical applications of bundling, which can help the platform increase profits.

This study examines the effect of political networking capability (PNC) and strategic capability on exploratory innovation/exploitative innovation through the mediation of absorptive capability (AC).

Using empirical survey data collected from 153 traditional manufacturing firms (TMFs) in China, the authors apply partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) combined with mediation analyses to test hypotheses.

PNC has a higher impact on exploratory innovation than exploitative innovation through AC. The authors thus provide novel empirical insights into independent variables of firms' ambidextrous innovation and their implementation mechanisms.

The authors highlight a unique situation of China and contribute to the literature on PNC and AC. The findings demonstrate that AC plays an important role in configuring government-obtained external resources into new products, thus influencing ambidextrous innovation strategic decisions.

TMFs' executives should enhance PNC to obtain more resources to conduct exploratory and exploitative innovation. Government officials and policymakers should strengthen the supervision of TMFs' innovation activities and adopt effective measures to ensure that TMFs could conduct more exploratory innovation as governments expected.

This study provides new insights by bridging research gaps in the literature and advances the insights of how TMFs' PNC/strategic capability directly and indirectly fosters exploratory and exploitative innovation via the mediating role of AC in China.

The purpose of this study is to understand the psychological mechanism that affects consumer trust by focusing on the formation and influence process of psychological contracts, and taking this opportunity, explore the influence paths of food quality, food safety and service quality on consumer trust in the online food market, and provide theoretical suggestions for building trust in food businesses' consumers.

This study is based on an empirical investigation and uses partial least square structural equation modeling for analysis. Survey data were collected online from 359 APP users of online food transaction platforms in China.

Food quality, food safety and service quality influence consumer trust through the mediating effects of relational and transactional psychological contracts. However, the differences between these influencing paths are obvious and shift with changes in the marketing channels.

This study contributes to the body of consumer trust research by exploring online food transactions as an emerging trend in China. Some optimization strategies for food quality, food safety and service quality are provided for enterprises involved in online food transactions.

This is a pioneering study revealing psychological contracts as a missing but significant mediator between consumer trust and its antecedents.

This paper aims to explore the adsorption kinetics of syringin from Syringa oblata Lindl. leaves on macroporous resin and develop an efficient, simple and recyclable technology for the separation and purification of syringin.

Static adsorption and desorption properties of six resins were tested to select a suitable resin for the purification of syringin. Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm models were used to estimate the adsorption behavior of syringin on AB-8 resin. Breakthrough point and eluent volume were determined by dynamic adsorption and desorption tests. High-performance liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry was applied to identify the syringin in the purified product [syringin product (SP)]. Antioxidant and antibacterial activities of SP in vitro were evaluated by free radical scavenging ability and biofilm formation inhibitory tests.

AB-8 exhibited the most suitable adsorption and desorption capacity. Adsorption isotherm parameters indicated favorable adsorption between AB-8 and syringin. The optimal results were as follows: for adsorption, the sample concentration was 1.85 mg/mL, the sample volume was 3.5 bed volume (BV), the flow rate was 0.5 mL/min; for desorption, the ethanol concentration was 70%, the elution volume was 2.5 BV, the elution velocity was 1.0 mL/min. SP with 80.28% syringin displayed the potent antioxidant activities and inhibitory effects on biofilm formation of Streptococcus suis.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, there are no reports on purifying syringin from Syringa oblata Lindl. leaves using macroporous resins. This paper may also provide a theoretical reference for the purification of other phenylpropanoid glucosides.