THE ADOPTION OF FORM POSTPONEMENT STRATEGY IN A GLOBAL LOGISTICS SYSTEM: THE CASE OF TAIWANESE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY

The concept of postponement is becoming more and more important as firms put more emphasis on customization along with attempting to control inventory risks and logistics costs. Types of form postponement are examined along with factors affecting the adoption of different form postponement strategies. Data from information technology (IT) firms in Taiwan, one of the largest IT product manufacturers in the world, are utilized in the research.     

Achieving Mass Customization Through Postponement: A Study of International Changes

Mass customization is presented as one of the ways to deal with the increasingly demanding and turbulent environments. Achieving mass customization requires the development of multidimensional strategic capabilities. In an evolutionary process these capabilities can be developed. In this paper the capabilities required to realize mass customization are made explicit and postponement is presented as an operational method to move towards a mass customization strategy. Results of an exploratory survey (among 101 companies) are presented to assess the trend towards mass customization based on the development of the necessary strategic capabilities and the application of postponement.     

Toward Mass Customized Product Deployment in E-Commerce: The Modularization Function and Postponement Strategy

Strategically deploying customized products in an e-commerce environment not only helps businesses respond with greater agility to customer needs and strengthen their market position, but also helps businesses gain competitive edge and increase profitability. Underlying successful mass customization within the digital marketplace, a firm needs a methodology for striking a balance between the degree of customization and product pricing and delivery time—a critical supply chain issue. Providing either too much or too little customization can negatively impact both the business and the customer.

This study introduces a decision-making method for product customization. This method takes into account the level of customization, production costs, and the product delivery time and applies the concept of postponement strategy to the product supply chain to boost overall supply chain effectiveness and customer satisfaction. Bicycle customization is used as an example to demonstrate the feasibility of the new approach to determine the optimal level of customization in product deployment.     

Postponement Strategies for Global Downstream Supply Chains: A Conceptual Framework

Postponement is a well-known organizational concept and usually relates to the deferment in time of manufacturing and/or logistics operations. In the current global competitive landscape, situations where postponement can be applied are rapidly increasing. Faced with the wide range of customs duties and free-trade agreements currently in place, companies need to (re)design their postponement strategies to customize their products appropriately, and to the proper degree, in each market. As the actual location where operations take place has a major impact on a company’s overall performance, the spatial perspective must also be taken into account when designing global postponement strategies, alongside the conventional temporal perspective. Heretofore, the academic literature does not offer any comprehensive framework on a global scale either for handling what is known as the postponement boundary problem, or for conceptualizing the related postponement strategies. Building on previous research, the aim of the present study was to investigate the postponement concept in a global environment with a downstream focus. The intended purpose is twofold: first, to review and expand previous studies on the subject and, second, to provide some guidelines for conceptualizing global postponement strategies. A structured literature review was first conducted, followed by the development of a framework that combines both the temporal and the spatial dimensions. Finally, the framework was applied to a group of 28 business cases taken from the literature, to act as a bridge between academic theories and practitioners’ current business operations.     

INTERORGANIZATIONAL TIME‐BASED POSTPONEMENT IN THE SUPPLY CHAIN

This paper presents the results of empirical research on the use of time‐based postponement in a supply chain context using data collected from two manufacturers, a distributor, and a retailer. The analysis shows that implementing postponement at the firm level can result in the supply chain carrying more inventory. In order to achieve its full potential, postponement needs to be implemented across organizations in the supply chain.     

大规模定制供应链研究述评

近年来,把大规模定制与供应链结合起来的研究较多。本文回顾和整理了国内外的大规模定制供应链文献,分析了大规模定制供应链特征、运作优化、延迟策略、计划调度、客户订单分离点定位对大规模定制供应链影响等研究热点,提出了大规模定制供应链运作存在的局限性,对大规模定制供应链的未来研究提出了展望。     

Exploring online customer experience: A systematic literature review and research agenda

This review aims to examine the latest research on online customer experience (OCE), which can be defined as consumer's cognitive, emotional, and behavioral response to interactions between customer and company occurring through digital channels (e.g., websites, social media, mobile apps). To achieve this, we utilized a hybrid review approach that incorporates quantitative bibliometric analysis and qualitative systematic literature review techniques. We identified publication trends, prominent authors and outlets, and the evolution of research themes based on 141 articles published since the last systematic review 11 years ago. Our framework-based review identified frequently studied antecedents, dimensions, and outcomes of OCE, and identified new themes related to m-commerce and augmented/virtual reality. We also identified gaps in the current literature and proposed 14 areas of future research using the TCM framework.     

Customization in bicycle retailing

The purpose of this paper is to explore the process of customization by investigating how retailers and consumers interact in bicycle retailing. The paper focuses on three high-end bicycle retailers. Building on qualitative data gathered through interviews and netnography, this study takes both retailers’ and consumers’ processes into account. The results show that retailers capitalize on external and internal opportunities for co-creation, including new technologies, production and distribution innovations, and social media. Retailers’ planning for co-creation plays a significant role in providing a unique shopping experience for consumers. This includes supply chain solutions such as effective inventory and warehousing systems, partnerships and outsourcing, tracking, and postponement, which facilitate simplicity. Retailers rely on feedback from consumers to improve their planning and implementation processes. In terms of consumer processes, several emotions are evident, including the sense of standing-out and self-esteem, fun and coolness, creativity and imagination, and most importantly, the possibility of reflecting one’s personality in self-designed bikes. Systems that are easy to interact with, such as interactive online configurators, contribute to consumers’ cognitive processes. Loyalty and positive word-of-mouth turns out to be a common manifestation of the behavior associated with such co-creation processes. We also reflect on how, by what means, and why consumers and retailers engage in co-creation through customization, mainly pertaining to learning and innovation. Our results also point to various possible outcomes from such processes for consumer and retailers; including expressing ones personality and individuality for consumers, and providing product variety efficiently, and boosting brand image for retailers.     

The effect of attribute originality on consumers’ adoption intention of customization: The role of construal level

As consumers' preferences become increasingly diversified, many companies strive to satisfy individual needs by offering customization options for products or services. To enhance the effectiveness of customization strategies, managers need to decide what type of attributes to provide for consumers to customize and also take consumers' individual differences into consideration. The current research investigates the joint impacts of the originality of the attributes involved in a customization option and consumers' construal level on their intention to adopt customization. Findings from two experiments consistently demonstrate that, in comparison to customization options that include common customizable attributes, offering customization options that includes original customizable attributes undermine consumers’ adoption intention. However, such negative effects will be mitigated when consumers have a high construal level.     

Perceived assortment and consideration of customized products

Customization in the marketplace has become much more commonplace as information technology and flexible manufacturing systems continue to evolve. Consumer research into customization decisions has subsequently examined the implications of customization as compared to traditional assortment product offerings, finding that customization yields both positive implications for consumer preference matching as well as higher evaluations of retailers, chosen products, and even the process itself. The present research examines the implications that customization of products has on consumers’ decision processes, and on their perceptions of assortment and how they consider products. Two experimental studies suggest that customization decisions may negatively affect consumers’ perceptions of assortment, while also reducing the number of alternatives they consider, and that this in turn may have implications for their evaluation of, and willingness-to-pay for, customized products.     

大规模定制与企业管理变革趋势研究

大规模定制引发企业管理变革,带来了管理思维与管理方法的创新。从大规模定制环境下的营销管理、运营管理、研发管理三方面出发,同时对大规模定制的实施关键环节和重点进行了分析,指出大规模定制实施过程实际上也是一个信息资源不断开发、信息技术不断渗透、信息系统不断完善的信息化建设过程。     

Micro-foundational ambidexterity and multinational enterprises: A systematic review and a conceptual framework

During the past decade, ambidexterity research has broadened from its traditional macro-level focus to examine the micro-level perspectives of ambidexterity on various settings. The authors systematically review and critically appraise the literature of ambidexterity from a micro-foundational perspective, within the context of Multinational Enterprises (MNEs). By synthesizing the review findings, the authors develop a comprehensive framework that maps extant literature within and across various disciplines and multiple levels of analysis. As part of their review, the authors also identify and discuss important emerging themes and fruitful areas for future research and present the implications to both research and management practice.     

Ethics and entrepreneurship

As the study of entrepreneurship and the study of business ethics become increasingly established, the intersection of entrepreneurship and ethics is receiving increasing scholarly attention. In this paper, we review the research connecting ethics and entrepreneurship, classifying the literature into three broad themes; we also identify and integrate the key themes that emerge, and we offer suggestions for future research. We conclude by introducing the articles in this special issue.     

The current state and future directions of research and practice in organizational learning and learning organizations in China

This article aims to analyze systematically academic papers concerning organizational learning and learning organizations in the China Academic Journals Full-text Database (CAJ) published after 2000. A detailed review was conducted of their main findings, publication time, research methods, subjects (themes), and source of funding to depict the current state of research on organizational learning and learning organizations in China on three different levels, namely organizational, team and individual levels of learning. Based on the comprehensive review of literature, this article proposes future directions for organizational learning research and practice in China. Suggestions are offered to advance further research and practice in China.     

Factors influencing purchase intent in virtual worlds: a review of the literature

Previous empirical studies have identified several factors that seem to play a role in determining purchase intent in virtual worlds; three-dimensional online environments in which users interact while represented by their avatars. So far however, a clear overview of these factors is lacking, and the question that remains is what factors affect purchase intent most. Therefore, this study aims to create an overview of factors that influence users’ purchase intent in virtual worlds, and to subsequently identify the most influential factors. To conduct this review, relevant literature was gathered using a variety of search engines and keywords. An article had to explicitly study factors influencing purchase intent in virtual worlds in order to be included in this review. This search method resulted in a selection of twelve relevant articles that were used for further analysis. Results show that perceived enjoyment, social influence, customization and ease of use are important factors that influence purchase intent in virtual worlds. Enjoyment of the virtual world, beliefs and attitudes of others, avatar customization, and easy-to-use virtual world applications can thus increase users’ willingness to purchase products in the virtual world. Practical implications as well as limitations and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Advertising in social media: a review of empirical evidence

This article presents an up-to-date review of academic and empirical research on advertising in social media. Two international databases from business and communication studies were searched, identifying 51 relevant studies. The findings of the identified studies were organized by seven emerging themes: use of advertising in social media, attitudes about and exposure to advertising, targeting, user-generated content in advertising, electronic word-of-mouth in advertising, consumer-generated advertising, and further advertising effects. Besides researched topics and major results, year of publication, journal, theoretical framework, research method, sample, measured constructs, and way of analysis were examined regarding each article. The review concludes by providing an agenda for future research.     

International student mobility: A systematic review and research agenda

This study aimed to synthesize fragmented knowledge about international student mobility (ISM) in higher education to provide an understanding of existing studies and directions for future research. To this end, the authors conducted a systematic literature review using a hybrid approach that integrated bibliometric analysis with the theory, context, and method (TCM) framework (Paul et al., Journal of World Business, 2017;52(3):327–342). Applying bibliometric analysis, this study found publication trends, prolific journals, influential articles, and major themes in the field, whereas the TCM framework helped identify widely used theories (motivation theory, immigration theory, acculturation theory, learning theory, and capital theory), research contexts (destination country or region, population, and others), and methods in research and provided future study directions. The identified gaps in the existing literature suggest that future research should develop theoretical foundations and research designs to analyse new processes, patterns, and issues in ISM in higher education within the context of today's changing international environment. In addition to identifying the key research themes and research foundations of ISM in higher education, this review can help add value to the ISM literature from a marketing perspective. This is the first comprehensive literature review of this topic using a hybrid approach.     

基于顾客的品牌资产测量研究进展--量表开发、效度验证与跨文化方法

本文通过对国际上有关品牌资产测量研究的新动态分析,指出当前的研究重点是,以基于顾客的品牌资产测量量表开发为基本面,结合量表预测效度等的验证,充分地探究品牌价值链之间的前因后果关系,最终使得捕获于品牌资产来源的信息能够具有强大的预测能力,从而在根本上为品牌对于公司长期和未来贡献提供管理决策支持。国际上的研究动态和成果为我国学界推进品牌资产实证研究,提供了在跨文化研究方法和研究主题上的有益启示。     

The study of service innovation for digiservice on loyalty

Advocates of management of service innovation see this area as a new and promising research field. As services are increasingly becoming driving forces of economies, the introduction of new services to satisfy customer needs is becoming a critical issue for managers. This research attempts to address the consumer issue of service innovation. The research entails a comprehensive study of the impacts of service innovation on consumer loyalty in the digiservice context. The study examines service innovation loyalty from the consumer perspective; namely, technology leadership, service leadership, switching cost, brand equity, and customization. Personal interview data from 475 consumers provides the data for empirical hypothesis testing of the relationships between variables. The conceptual model investigates the relevant relationships among the constructs by using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM). Findings from the research sample support the argument that technology leadership, service leadership, brand equity, and customization are the key determinants of loyalty. The paper also includes a discussion on the theoretical and managerial implications of the research findings.     

Customizing calories: How rejecting (vs. selecting) ingredients leads to lower calorie estimation and unhealthier food choices

Customization of food products has increased substantially in recent years while the desire for healthiness and an emphasis on understanding and providing calorie information continues to dynamically change the landscape of restaurant retail. The authors report four studies demonstrating that different customization routes (i.e., rejecting alternatives from a full product offering versus adding alternatives to a basic product offering) lead to systematic, but predictable, differences in consumers’ estimations of calories. In particular, this research finds that a rejection (vs. selection) customization process leads consumers to persistently estimate lower calories in the final product, which then improves evaluations of the retailer and leads to unhealthier food choices. These findings occur when consumers estimate calories of the exact same final product using the different paths to customization as well as when they create their own customized final product, while accounting for differences in the quantity and type of ingredients selected, suggesting a very general difference in estimations. This research has important implications for consumers who want to manage their weight and for firms that need to manage consumers’ health perceptions.