Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis paper optimizes condition‐based replacement policies for a mission‐oriented system. The key challenge in our problem is that the system does not work under a fixed mission type but is subject to an infinite sequence of random types of missions assigned in a Markovian manner, which is realistic in many practical situations. The mission process modulates the deterioration process. Taking advantage of the opportunities when missions are switched, condition monitoring is conducted to support replacement decision‐making. This paper considers two practical scenarios in which the type of the next mission is either available or unavailable at each decision epoch. The objective is to determine the optimal replacement decisions for both scenarios that minimize their long‐run expected average cost rates. The optimization problems are analyzed in the framework of the Markov decision process. The optimal decisions of both scenarios are proven to be of partially monotone control‐limit forms. Near‐optimal policies with multilevel thresholds are provided for more convenient decision‐making. The policy iteration algorithm is modified for efficient optimization. A numerical example is used to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach.

Purpose
Research on the relationship between customer bargaining power and supplier performance in supplier–customer relationships has flourished in recent decades. This study aims to empirically investigate whether product market overlap (PMO) in a supply chain moderates the effect of customer bargaining power on supplier profitability.

Design/methodology/approach
This study uses large-scale secondary data from multiple databases. Econometric panel data techniques are used to test the hypotheses.

Findings
The results show that PMO in a supplier–customer relationship and PMO in supplier–supplier relationships both exacerbate the negative effect of the bargaining power of customers on supplier profitability.

Originality/value
This study contributes to the field of supply chain management. This study brings new insights into the ongoing debate surrounding the relationship between customer bargaining power and supplier profitability. The study also contributes to the literature on supply chain networks by showing the impact of indirect supply chain relationships.

Purpose
As the social media platform becomes an ever more important communication channel between company and customer, companies are learning how they can best utilize social media to better communicate their brands with customers. The purpose of this paper is to explore the communication tactics adopted by the enterprise microblogs using a communication framework. Further, the authors hope to find out how these communication tactics influence customer brand experience (BE) and subsequently brand loyalty.


Design/methodology/approach
First, to identify the communication tactics used by enterprise microblogs, the authors recruited six active microblog users and listed all possible characteristics of enterprise microblogs that could increase customers' fondness for the brand. Second, based on the listed 19 characteristics and existing theories, the authors pre-classified and conceptualized the content and style tactics categories. The authors also followed a sorting procedure to verify our classification. Finally, based on the sorted characteristics and previous research, the authors designed a questionnaire and 459 sets of valid data were collected from enterprise microblog users.


Findings
The communication tactics are classified into two dimensions, namely content tactics and style tactics. The content tactics include content diversity, content accuracy and content timeliness, and the style tactics include impression enhancement style and interactivity enhancement style. The results reveal that the communication content and style tactics significantly enhance overall customer BE and further brand loyalty. The study results also show that style tactics exert more influence on BE than content tactics.


Originality/value
This paper highlights the company's important role in company-customer communication on social media, and categorizes the effective communication tactics used by the enterprise microblog within a communication framework. Companies could build brand loyalty by enhancing users' BE using effective communication. The communication perspective and measures of the communication tactics in this study provide an ideal background for future research on IT-based company-customer interaction.

During the first half of 2008, China suffered three natural disasters: a heavy snow storm, an outbreak of hand‐foot‐mouth disease, and a severe earthquake. The aim of the present study is to explore how low‐probability/high‐consequence events influence overconfidence. In Study 1, opportunity samples were obtained by recruiting residents in three different types of disaster‐hit areas to answer a peer‐comparison probability judgment questionnaire about 1 month after the corresponding disaster occurred. The performance of 539 participants in disaster‐hit areas was compared with that of 142 residents in a nondisaster area. The findings indicate that residents in disaster‐hit areas were less overconfident than those in the nondisaster area on both positive and negative events. In Study 2, we surveyed a total of 336 quake‐victims 4 and 11 months after the earthquake to examine whether the impact of disasters on overconfidence would decay with time. The resulting data indicate that the disaster victims became more overconfident as time elapsed. The overall findings suggest that low‐probability/high‐consequence events could make people less overconfident and more rational and seem to serve as a function of debiasing.