In 2019, there were over 4,700 seed-stage investments globally, along with significant recent interest in how resources are mobilized during the earliest stages of the entrepreneurial journey. Seed-stage startups work towards finalizing their product or services in addition to gathering market data. This also includes finding enough funding to develop an ... Read More

When confronted with a long line of people outside a restaurant, do you join the back of the queue or choose to dine elsewhere? Whilst this may seem like a snap judgment, there is more to the decision-making process than meets the eye. In fascinating work, HKUST’s Ying-Ju Chen and colleagues looked at how patience, service quality information, and ... Read More

With the rise of e-commerce, suppliers can now reach consumers directly through channels such as online platforms. On the surface, it might seem that this “encroachment” can only be detrimental to the traditional retail channel. However, HKUST’s Ying-ju Chen and colleagues reach a different conclusion. In important new work, they show that encroachment may ... Read More

When we fall in love with a product but fail to catch its name, the obvious solution is to search for it online—guided only by our fuzzy recollection of the product and a few general search terms. How likely are we to correctly identify the target product among the many similar items advertised online? In an illuminating study, HKUST’s Sang Kyu Park and ... Read More

The decision to disclose product information to potential customers is something that must be considered by sellers. Common methods that are used to present quality information include advertisements, free samples, product labels, and so on. Alternatively, for various reasons, a seller might choose to reduce their investment in advertising or limit certain ... Read More

Sustainability is one of the most pressing concerns of our time. The vision of a sustainable world—capable of meeting the needs of both current and future generations—is gaining ever more traction with governments and societies across the globe. Business operations have become a major target for sustainable development, according to Hongtao Zhang of HKUST ... Read More

In the past few years, a number of digital and media platforms, e.g., YouTube and Spotify, have begun introducing premium services which let paid subscribers see fewer or no adverts. Such a practice seems to be a classic case of second-degree price discrimination through ‘versioning’, which allows consumers to self-select different models of the same product ... Read More

Higher-quality accounting information results in better resource allocation within industries, Yue Zheng from HKUST and her coauthors have established. Access to accurate accounting data reduces “friction” in information flows, providing external parties with a complete picture of productivity that can improve investment decisions. Productivity measures ... Read More

In the global supply chain, retailers commonly source manufacturers through “middlemen.” Unfortunately, these intermediaries often collude with unethical manufacturers to collect rebates that are “hidden” from retailers. Due to the covert operations involved, this problem has received very little attention. In instrumental new work, Ying-Ju Chen from HKUST ... Read More

Information technology (IT) business-alignment is a key component of managing data and information within the context of business operations. However, achieving this can be quite difficult for many businesses due to being time-consuming and costly. As this alignment process is dynamic in nature, one approach can be to align IT with a business during the ... Read More