Few people leave home without their smartphones or other mobile devices, which now dominate almost every aspect of our personal lives — including shopping. We already know that purchase behavior differs between mobile- and PC-based shopping, but the exciting potential to optimise recommendation systems for mobile channels has been largely untapped—until now ... Read More

“Save from 30% to 50% today!” Range offers like this—advertising flexible price options within a fixed range—are a popular marketing strategy. Surprisingly, however, we know little about how customers react to such offers. Shedding light on this underexplored topic, HKUST’s Prof. Linying (Sophie) Fan and her colleagues propose and test a novel theory: the ... Read More

Recently, the amount of outward foreign direct investment from emerging economies has been growing at a rapid pace, with numerous state-owned enterprises (SOEs) being part of the process. State ownership affects not only the resources a company can access and its motivations, it also impacts its opaqueness, i.e., the unavailability of credible, firm-level ... Read More

The success of an organization is largely dependent on the effectiveness of the leadership process, rendering the study of leadership essential. Virtuous leader behavior in form of benevolent leadership, referring to leaders’ individualized, holistic concern for both subordinates’ work and non-work domains, has long been considered to have beneficial impacts ... Read More

A wide variety of industries have production lines that produce multiple outputs at the same time. In some cases, these outputs serve different purposes, such as chemical processes, oil refining, and so on. Production outputs can also serve the same basic purpose, where quality levels may differ as a result of quantity being more important than quality ... Read More

Deciding to leave a job and actually leaving it are not the same thing. Whether the intention to quit translates into real turnover behavior—known as the turnover intention–behavior link—is strongly affected by cultural values, find HKUST researcher Kin Fai Ellick Wong and a colleague. Their research answers a question that has long plagued organizations: if ... Read More

Rebate, or money that is returned to the consumer after they have paid for goods or services, is a popular form of sales promotion, with studies showing that 50% of retailers and 48% of manufacturers use rebates as part of their customer loyalty programmes. For example, USD8 billion worth of rebates were issued in the U.S. in 2010. Companies make use of ... Read More

For retailers seeking to stand out in the cutthroat world of e-commerce, discounts can offer a powerful advertising tool. Across the Web, businesses compete for customers’ attention by announcing the most exclusive deals and hottest “flash” sales. However, big discounts do not always translate into big profits. According to HKUST professors Kai-Lung Hui and ... Read More

The authors in this study develop a theoretical framework in which the disclosure of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities is viewed as an organizational response to institutional complexity which exists between the demands of the central government and provincial governments in China. The study aims at revealing how firms with institutional ... Read More

Downward substitution is common in many industries and occurs in supply chain management when a firm used a higher value item to satisfy the demand of a lower value item that is out of stock. This type of substitution is driven by the supplier in order to increase customer service quality and / or revenue. For example, a hotel might choose to fill its ... Read More