Search

Moore's Law, as the most important and wildly followed laws in the semiconductor industry, seems to approach its end. In this situation, many measures have been taken to change this trend, including finding new and better materials. A hot new material, the carbon nanotubes (CNTs), have attracted many researches. As a one-dimensional material, carbon nanotubes have excellent Young's modulus, electrical conductivity, optical conductivity, etc. These excellent properties can be used in the semiconductor industry and some other areas. In this paper, chemical structure, physical, chemical and electrical properties of carbon nanotubes are introduced. Its commonly used preparation methods and doping strategies are also presented. Some current applications including sensors, electronic devices and biomedicine and development owing to these properties will also be shown to the readers. Certain future possible applications and develop directions will also be discussed. Although there are many shortages and challenges scientists are facing, such as the cost, the quality, the toxicity and so on, CNTs remain a promising material due to its excellent properties. This article gathers these current applications for readers to get some further knowledge about this hot material as well as attract more people to relevant research work.

Purpose Consumer satisfaction towards a brand is one of a firm’s important performance outcomes. However, building a strong green brand to foster consumers’ satisfaction is often challenging for firms. Drawing on the dynamic capability and mechanism-enabling perspectives of ambidexterity. The purpose of this research is to explore mechanisms of perceived brand performance and green trust through which green brand ambidexterity acts as a facilitator of consumer satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach The hypothesized relationships were tested by both partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM; symmetric approach) and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA; asymmetric approach) with data collected from a green consumer questionnaire survey in Hong Kong. Findings The results from PLS-SEM indicate that green brand ambidexterity affects consumer satisfaction through multiple mediating paths of perceived brand performance, green trust-consumer and the sequential integration of perceived brand performance and green trust. Results from fsQCA further reinforced these findings. Research limitations/implications The present research provides a nuanced understanding of how ambidexterity enhances consumer satisfaction in the context of a green brand by identifying multiple mechanisms. Originality/value There is a lack of research on how green brand ambidexterity affects green brand outcomes from the perspective of value creation for consumers. The present research fills this gap by providing more comprehensive explanations of mechanisms for green brand ambidexterity to facilitate consumer satisfaction. It also offers a better understanding of how the effects of green brand ambidexterity are viewed on a path-dependency that is aligned with the dynamic capability perspective of ambidexterity and how green trust forms a critical path to enable green brand ambidexterity and perceived brand performance to enhance consumer satisfaction.

PurposeIndustry-wide crises involving consumer products place consumers at risk. Consumers rely on institutions that constrain corporate practice and control product quality to reduce risk. As institutions vary by country, country-of-origin (COO) acts as a salient cue for consumers to identify institutional quality and thus evaluate risk when making purchase decisions. However, in the era of globalisation, identification of institutional quality becomes complex as global value chains involve different countries such as brand origin (BO) and country-of-manufacture (COM). Therefore, this research investigates how BO and COM individually and jointly affect consumers' institutional perceptions and subsequent purchase decision-making in the presence of systemic risk.Design/methodology/approachThis research includes three studies (n = 764) employing surveys and choice modelling experiments with samples from China and the USA.FindingsThe results show that BO and COM relate to different institutional perceptions. BO evokes perceptions of legitimacy and the regulatory environment, while COM evokes perceptions of the normative and the regulatory environment. The combination of BO and COM determines how institutional quality is communicated and further affects consumers' legitimacy perceptions, preferences and willingness to pay a price premium.Originality/valueThis research contributes to understanding the effect of BO and COM in the context of complex value chains from an institutional perspective. It also provides implications for leveraging complex COO cues with BO and COM information to improve consumers' institutional perceptions.

Widespread unethical corporate misconduct in an industry triggers industry-wide crises. This research investigates how industry misconduct affects consumers’ trust in the industry, by incorporating insights from a micro-level psychological aspect of institutions. The conceptual framework proposes that consumer legitimacy judgement lies at the core of industry trust, following an industry-wide crisis. The results demonstrate that perception of normalisation of misconduct (PNM) affects industry trust through consumer legitimacy judgement (CLJ) (Study 1). Moreover, the PNM-CLJ-industry trust relationship is stronger during industry-wide crises compared with crises that involve only one firm (Study 2), and this relationship is not dependent on the frequency of crises (Study 3). This research contributes to the knowledge of product-harm crisis by deepening understanding of the trust erosion mechanism during industry-wide crises, with a focus on legitimacy judgement. The findings have implications for prevention of industry-wide crises and for boosting ethically desirable business activities.

Despite the prominence of social media (SM) in global branding, no prior studies have evaluated an international brand's strategy of establishing market-based relational ties with SM users in local markets. This study draws from the resource-based theory to conceptualize SM ties as latent relational resources and evaluate an international brand's SM ties strategy on the basis of three resource attributes: value, inimitability, and rarity. Whereas value is the initial basis for a relational resource in SM, inimitability and rarity are the foci of an international brand's strategy in local SM networks. The authors interviewed brand managers and SM users in China and New Zealand and conducted direct observations on brands’ SM sites. They develop two theoretical frameworks (one initial; one advanced) to offer insights into the development of brand–user ties as a relational resource in the context of an international brand's global or foreign consumer culture positioning in a host-country market. The authors conclude that combined incentives offered in SM must be tailored to the type of brand–user tie.

Industry-wide product-harm crises – well-publicized instances of defective products/services or poor management permeating in an industry – often strike consumers, especially in emerging markets. Emerging markets are prone to industry-wide crises because of their underdeveloped institutions. For example, we have observed the milk contamination scandal in 2008 and the vaccine scandal in 2016; both happened in China. As another example, the 2017 Brazil rotten meat scandal in which more than 30 companies were reported to have unhygienic and illegal practices caused many worries about the meat exported from Brazil. An industry-wide crisis not only impairs consumers’ trust in the implicated brands but also erodes their trust in the whole industry and even the regulatory system that oversees the industry (Cleeren et al. 2008; Feng et al. 2014; Knight et al. 2008).