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The consumption experience is taken seriously by consumers, and increasingly, firms open offline showrooms for this. Showrooms can help to resolve the uncertainty of consumer perceived value and brand preference in online shopping. This paper considers two kinds of showroom investment scenarios for a two-echelon supply chain consisting of a brand owner and e-tailer. The two scenarios are the brand owner opening showrooms (B) or e-tailer opening (E). the authors evaluate the impact of brand spillover, platform spillover, and offline experience spillover effects on the optimal choice to open showrooms. The results indicate that the conditions of brand owners opening showrooms for win-win are richer and more relaxed than the e-tailer. This requirement for spillovers reflects different motivations for opening showrooms. Moreover, regarding the inroad into showrooms, the brand owner and e-tailer should be cognizant of the trade-off between brand and platform spillover and willing to open showrooms in appropriate conditions.

Consumption compensation is the driving force for motivating each supply chain link to set up information nodes, which is of great significance for promoting informatization, modernization, transformation, and upgrading of the supply chain system. This study simulates the evolution process of strategic selection for each supply chain link to set information nodes independently or collectively under the unconstrained government rewards conditions and punishments. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) When each link in the supply chain provides source tracing information independently, the vendor chooses to set up information nodes for the links with large information cost compensation coefficients. (2) When the vendor provides source tracing information cooperatively if the collaborative benefit is less than the cooperation cost, the information node will be set to the link with the large compensation coefficient. If not, information nodes will be set in each link. (3) Under the government incentive mechanism, enterprises are willing to cooperate. The punishment mechanism helps avoid situations where neither side sets up information nodes. The compensation coefficient is a prerequisite for mechanisms to work.

Previously, several food safety incidents have lowered Chinese consumer confidence regarding the purchase of meat and domestically-produced infant formulas (DIF). Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic was caused by a food safety issue, and it is, therefore, important to investigate sustainable consumer confidence and its influence on consumption behavior by first estimating consumer confidence in meat and DIF products. The purpose of this study is thus to estimate the sustainable market environment and Chinese consumer confidence behavior post-COVID-19 regarding the purchase of meat and DIF products by applying a choice experiment. An online survey was conducted with 704 consumers residing in Nanjing. The survey obtained information on the features of meat and DIF products that affected consumer purchase consideration and determined the perceived estimated value of the product (price 15.24%, quality certification 31.57%, organic 23.69%, traceability 18.51%). These findings provide insight into consumer perceived premium pay behavior concerning the value estimation of product features according to the market environment (price 191.6 CNY, quality certification 285.3 CNY, organic product 189.1 CNY, and traceability 143.7 CNY). Chinese consumers’ low confidence in the safety of meat and DIF products appears less sustainable. Quality certification is the product feature that is most valued, followed by organic origin and production-to-consumption traceability. Apart from these, price is seen as an indication of high quality by consumers with low confidence, which results in a positive image of DIF products. In addition, consumer preferences for production-to-consumption traceability are highly affected by consumer confidence.

Low-resolution face recognition with one-shot is a prevalent problem encountered in law enforcement, where it generally requires to recognize the low-resolution face images captured by surveillance cameras with the only one high-resolution profile face image in the database. The problem is very tough because the available samples is quite few and the quality of unknown images is quite low. To effectively address this issue, this paper proposes Adapted Discriminative Coupled Mappings (AdaDCM) approach, which integrates domain adaptation and discriminative learning. To achieve good domain adaptation performance for small size dataset, a new domain adaptation technique called Bidirectional Locality Matching-based Domain Adaptation (BLM-DA) is first developed. Then the proposed AdaDCM is formulated by unifying BLM-DA and discriminative coupled mappings into a single framework. AdaDCM is extensively evaluated on FERET, LFW, and SCface databases, which includes LR face images obtained in constrained, unconstrained, and real-world environment. The promising results on these datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of AdaDCM in LR face recognition with one-shot.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the important role of supply chain risk management (SCRM) capabilities as pre-factors for SMEs to improve supply chain financing performance (SCFP), also incorporating the effect of supply chain integration (SCI). Design/methodology/approach From the intersection of SCRM and SCF literature, this paper proposed hypothesis to discuss the impact of SCRM capabilities on SCFP and the role of SCI, aiming at combine SCRM with supply chain financing management. The research model was validated applying structural equation modeling on survey data from 286 Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Findings Four dimensions of SCRM capabilities have significant positive effects on SCFP with different significant levels, confirming that they are important pre-factors in supply chain finance (SCF). In addition, the impact of SCRM capabilities on SCFP differ when SCI varies, indicating the promoting effect of SCI. Practical implications SMEs should establish SCRM capabilities as supply chain risks greatly influence the evaluation of financial providers and the achievement of SCF. Meanwhile, SCI should be attached for it enables superior SCFP even if SCRM capabilities are relatively limited. Originality/value This study represents a pioneering attempt to analyze the pre-factors of SMEs in improving SCFP by combing SCRM with SCF management. Few prior studies have highlighted the importance of SCRM in SCF.

In this paper, an enhanced discriminative feature learning (EDFL) method is proposed to address single sample per person (SSPP) face recognition. With a separate auxiliary dataset, EDFL integrates Fisher discriminative learning and domain adaptation into a unified framework. The separate auxiliary dataset and the gallery/probe dataset are from two different domains (named source and target domains respectively) and have different data distributions. EDFL is modeled to transfer the discriminative knowledge learned from the source domain to the target domain for classification. Since the gallery set with SSPP contains scarce number of samples, it is hard to accurately represent the data distribution of the target domain, which hinders the adaptation effect. To overcome this problem, the generalized domain adaption (GDA) method is proposed to realize good overall domain adaptation when one domain contains limited samples. GDA considers the both global and local domain adaptation effect at the same time. Further, to guarantee that the learned domain adaptation components are optimal for discriminative learning, the domain adaptation and Fisher discriminant model learning are unified into a single framework and an efficient algorithm is designed to optimize them. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated by extensive evaluation and comparison with some state-of-the-art methods.

The food supply chain is very complicated as compared to other supply chain networks. Adulteration and fraud are common in the food supply chain. "World food safety is at risk, and consumers are worried about vulnerability, contamination, and fraud activities." Moreover, time delay increases the detritions and spoilage conditions in perishable foods. Consumers want timely delivery of foods with maximum surety of safety and quality of foods. Respectively, graphical research method developed to ascertain consumer “both aspect” estimated total robustness. "There is a need to increase the food supply chain network robustness according to the consumer point of view—logistics regression and simulation technique used to find the estimated results." We analyzed, to provide the food delivery to consumers beyond their expectations before ever, give a chance to increase food supply chain robustness through physiologically “perception” and actually “saving 2000 miles.” Although to prove this strategy, we select the advanced supply chain network of China one belt one road to deliver foods to end consumers “estimated 2.5 times more robust than ancient network.” Additionally, this robust supply chain network provides fast delivery of foods with quick traceability, gives less time for fraud activities, increases food supply chain performance, and decreases the vulnerability ratio.

This article on chest pain management focuses on optimizing life and health pathways from the management research perspective instead of from medical study. This approach prioritizes prevention and identification over emergency diagnosis and treatment and provides a feasible theoretical method for establishing effective chest pain management in China. Chest pain management began early in developed countries, and research progress can be analyzed from the dimensions of time, space, and resources. As the Internet of things develops, telemedicine technologies are increasingly used to predict, evaluate, and explore, the factors affecting patient survival rates in depth. Continuous optimization methods have become a new research trend. Practical evidence has proven that the reasonable allocation and timely scheduling of resources can improve the survival rate of patients, especially first medical contact (FMC) resources, which are now receiving additional attention. Compared with developed countries, chest pain management in China still faces great challenges, including: (1) A lack of resources, especially FMC resources; (2) multiobjective conflict: The coexistence of overtreatment and insufficient treatment; (3) multistage delay: Most high-risk patients fail to be treated in time; (4) multipath selection: A lack of decision support; (5) multiagent participation: A lack of effective connection; (6) multisystem data: Isolated barriers for links; and (7) coexistence of multiple modes: Lack of management consistency. Combining the development background of chest pain management with the current challenges in China, this article proposes an optimized path for chest pain management, including high-risk recognition, reasonable resource allocation, effective scheduling decision-making, and dynamic pretargeted control. To describe the process changes from chest pain to sudden death and the effect of optimization, a typical multistage survival curve model based on the research results of the relevant literature is constructed to explore effective strategies and organizational methods. Chest pain management should be aimed at preventing acute cardiovascular events, such as sudden cardiac death in high-risk patient groups, reducing mortality, maintaining survival level, and setting the optimization space for management breadth and intensity. The application of new technologies such as “Internet +” should be strengthened to expand the scope and increase the intensity of management. With the application of technologies, such as the Internet of things, telemedicine, and big data, the accessibility of FMC should be further improved, which will break the limitations of the “chest pain map” that only includes the distribution map of the chest pain center and then maps the time and space distribution of patients. The “chest pain map” should integrate knowledge maps, online and offline resource maps, and scheduling maps. Effective chest pain management will provide a feasible method: Optimization of life and health pathways. In summary, facing the high risk of frequent sudden cardiac deaths, China should expand coverage and improve the response ability of FMC, as well as optimize and innovate “Internet +” chest pain management to improve the capabilities of high-risk chest pain early warnings and prehospital first aid, thereby fundamentally increasing both treatment and survival rates.

A dynamic system with 3 levels of risk management is developed to prevent the spreading of food-borne disease among populations with consideration of the secondary infection. Compare the effect of factors such as information quality, time-delay and periodic factor. It shows that infection mechanism increases the severity of the epidemic manifested by larger number of dormant and visible population at each stage. The risks of the susceptible and exposed populations are significantly magnified in the course of infection mechanism which promotes the probability of transform of dormant population into visible diseased population. The infection mechanism reduces the risk of the diseased population. The increase of the time-delay and periodic factor increases the risk of food-borne disease, while the increase of information quality reduces the risk. Curbing the infectiousness, reducing information delay time and cycle time, improving information quality, the prevalence of food-borne disease can be controlled or prevented.

Replacing combustion vehicles with electric vehicles has been promoted by the Chinese government as a viable policy to reduce fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. The purpose of this study is to examine factors that influence Chinese taxi drivers’ adoption of electric vehicles for living. This study takes the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 (UTAUT2) as the theoretical framework and extends it to examine the influence of taxi drivers’ satisfaction over government’s invectives on their adoption of electric vehicles for living (i.e., adoption intention and use behavior). A questionnaire-based survey was conducted in Shenzhen and Guangzhou from November 2018 to April 2019, and 725 valid samples were collected. The model has good explanatory power, and its predictive validity accounts for about 89% of the variance in adoption intention and 50% in use behavior. The statistical results supported that such constructs as Satisfaction with Incentive Policies, Performance Expectancy, Effort Expectancy, Facilitating Conditions, Hedonic Motivation, Price Value, and Habit, are influencing factors on taxi drivers’ intention of using electric vehicles (i.e., behavior intention). These constructs, together with Social Influence but excluding Habit, are also influential to the actual use of electric vehicles by taxi drivers for living (i.e., use behavior). This study expands the existing theoretical modeling for characterizing the adoption of electrical vehicles. The study suggests policy makers further investigate taxi driver's satisfaction with different incentive policies, and electric vehicle manufacturers focus on improving hedonic motivation for taxi drivers, e.g., providing test-drive experiences.

This paper aims to design reasonable exercise goals dynamically to help achieve weight loss effectively. To provide reasonable guidance for daily exercise, the personal health data based behavioral analytics framework is proposed. Then, a regulatory mechanism is utilized to avoid the abnormal effect of unreasonable goals. The parameters of the utility function, which describes the decision-making process, are estimated by the inverse optimization method. The impacts of bounds of daily steps are simulated. The results show that weight loss cannot be achieved when the step goal does not match personal ability. In addition, the designed adaptive regulatory mechanism for the step goal has a positive effect on the promotion of daily exercise.

Modular production requires new service provision under the trend of servitization. This paper is to explore the issue of module-based service associated with three different power structurers in a two-echelon supply chain that consists of a module supplier and a manufacturer. The manufacturer considers to delegate its upstream module supplier to provide services for downstream consumers. We divide the market into two types: the price-sensitive market and the service-level sensitive market. Different power structures and market types have a great impact on the service levels, prices and the profitability of each member in the supply chain. When the manufacturer (the supplier) acts as the leader in the supply chain, the module supplier should provide the highest (lowest)-level service and the manufacturer will charge the highest (lowest) price for the bundled product and service. The module supplier can benefit from the service-delegation relationship while the manufacturer will be hurt. There is an opportunity for the module supplier to offer the service, especially when the module supplier is in a dominated position.

Knowledge-based value co-creation refers to the joint work on applying knowledge such as technologies, skills and expertise to solve problems. In this paper, we study how to make decisions dynamically when the main creator cooperates with a co-creator. We develop a theoretical model to analyze the optimal effort level and output of value. The results highlight that the co-creation is a win-win strategy for both the main creator and the co-creator. The equilibrium also indicates that creators will try their best to create value in the beginning phrase and they put less and less efforts over time. However, the output of value has a peak at a certain time instant. This study provides managerial implications by exploring the sensitivity of parameters. The monetizing ability and the output sensitivity factor have positive impacts on the optimal efforts and net incomes, while the marginal cost and the natural decay rate of value affect them in a negative way.

Although recent decades have witnessed rapid development of e-commerce, direct sale of time-sensitive commodities on e-commerce platforms still faces significant challenges due to the dilemma between short delivery time and high delivery costs. To alleviate these challenges, manufacturers with online retailing operations have attempted to cooperate with offline retailers by using an “order-online, pickup-offline” (OOPO) strategy. To study the problem of effectively implementing the OOPO strategy for time-sensitive commodities, we consider a mechanism under which the manufacturer pays the retailers a cooperative service fee to ensure delivery coordination between the online and offline channels. We develop Stackelberg game-theoretic models to compare the profits of both delivery channels before and after the implementation of the OOPO strategy. By analyzing the models, we derive a feasible range on the cooperative service fee such that both channels are more profitable with the implementation. We further examine the plausibility of implementing the strategy when both channels are required to charge the same price on the commodities, which can lead to both channel coordination and pricing coordination.

Service-oriented smart manufacturing, which allows customers to engage in the product lifecycle process, has become more and more popular. In this paper, we investigate the win-win strategies for the manufacturer and the customer when they co-create a product. We consider three scenarios in the model: the manufacturer and the customer have same initiatives for product co-creation, the manufacturer has higher initiative for product co-creation than the customer, and the manufacturer has lower initiative for product co-creation than the customer. We find that both the manufacturer and customer gain the lowest benefits when they have same initiatives for product co-creation. The results also indicate that when the quality increment effectiveness for consumer is sufficiently low, there exit win-win situations if the manufacturer and the customer choose different initiatives for product co-creation. This paper provides important managerial implications on the organization and interaction process of product co-creation.

Blockchain is commonly considered a potential disruptive technology. Moreover, the healthcare industry has experienced rapid growth in the adoption of health information technology, such as electronic health records and electronic medical records. To guarantee data privacy and data security as well as to harness the value of health data, the concept of Health Data Bank (HDB) is proposed. In this study, HDB is defined as an integrated health data service institution, which bears no “ownership” of health data and operates health data under the principal–agent model. This study first comprehensively reviews the main characters of blockchain and identifies the block-chain-based healthcare industry projects and startups in the areas of health insurance, pharmacy, and medical treatment. Then, we analyze the fundamental principles of HDB and point out four challenges faced by HDB’s sustainable development: (1) privacy protection and interoperability of health data; (2) data rights; (3) health data supervision; (4) and willingness to share health data. We also analyze the important benefits of blockchain adoption in HDB. Furthermore, three application scenarios including distributed storage of health data, smart-contract-based healthcare service mode, and consensus-algorithm-based incentive policy are proposed to shed light on HDB-based healthcare service mode. In the end, this study offers insights into potential research directions and challenges.