Customers often search for information on products before making their purchase decisions. With the emergence of online review platforms, this has become quicker and easier than ever, such that companies must manage customer search to attract and retain customers. How might the common marketing strategy of bundling—where multiple goods or services are sold
...
Read More
Agriculture plays a critical role in emerging economies worldwide. Unfortunately, however, farmers in such regions remain trapped in poverty, due in large part to information asymmetry in agricultural supply chains. Governments and farming cooperatives are in urgent need of strategies to redress this imbalance and improve farmers’ welfare and profitability
...
Read More
When consumers talk to each other, marketers listen. And when a product is portrayed as having human characteristics, consumers talk about it more favorably, say HKUST Jaideep Sengupta and colleagues. In a study with critical implications for marketers, communicators, and consumers, the authors show that portraying products as having human characteristics—in
...
Read More
Since the 1960s, agricultural production has moved towards contract farming in an attempt to lower both costs and risks of production while increasing quantities and both farmers and buyers’ profits. The authors of this paper have sought to determine and analyse the effect this move has had on the efficiency and returns enjoyed by both contract and non
...
Read More
Bribery and corruption arising from procurement are rampant in developing countries. According to the World Bank, bribery is involved in US$1.5 trillion worth of government contracts for goods and services. Organizations worldwide are joining hands to tackle this endemic and growing problem. Filling an important knowledge gap, HKUST’s Ying-Ju Chen and co
...
Read More
Innovation plays an essential role in economic growth. Every year, governments, private enterprises, and venture capitalists (VCs) invest billions of dollars and other resources in research and development (R&D) to foster innovation. Often, they are targeting the same group of consumers. This raises a crucial question for innovation investors. How should
...
Read More
Modern society has achieved wonders in medicine, but many people are still at risk of suffering from noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), including diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular diseases, to name just a few. NDCs also put great pressure on healthcare systems throughout the world. The good news is that simple lifestyle changes to improve your overall
...
Read More
Search engines should put sponsored ads higher up the page if the product quality is higher. This is the simple but pioneering finding of research by Ying-Ju Chen of HKUST. Chen shows that to optimize their profits, search engines should not only rank adverts in descending order of quality but also make it hard—or impossible—for users to keep clicking
...
Read More
Agriculture is central to the economies of developing countries. Central to agriculture, in turn, are smallholder farmers, who traditionally sold their produce locally. Today, however, they have access to far larger, more distant markets, thanks to the Internet and the electronic platforms it has enabled. The problem for farmers, according to HKUST’s Ying-Ju
...
Read More