Integrating consumers’ motives with suppliers’ solutions to combat Shanzhai: A phenomenon beyond counterfeit

Imitation goods are widely spread throughout the global business world. Shanzhai imitation (

) represents a type of imitation that mimics the original brand through surface or functional similarities but often provides enhanced or innovative features adapted to local market needs. Although both practitioners and academics have studied and provided solutions to combat counterfeits, solutions for original brand manufacturers to address threats from Shanzhai products are lacking. In this article, we first differentiate Shanzhai products from counterfeits. Using a mixed-method approach that combines interviews and laboratory experiment results, we then identify social, individual, functional, and financial (SIFF) factors as driving forces behind consumers’ purchasing of Shanzhai products. Shanzhai buyers place more weight on functional value and price/quality ratio than do counterfeit buyers, who in turn favor social value and materialism more than Shanzhai buyers. Finally, we provide several recommendations to original manufacturers from both the demand and supply sides.     

Demand-following or supply-leading? Trade openness and financial development in China

This study explores the causal relationship between financial development and trade openness in China, using the research methodology namely bootstrap Granger full-sample causality test and sub-sample rolling-window estimation. The results reveal that there is a significant bidirectional relationship between financial development and trade openness in China, pointing out the existence of both ‘demand-following’ and ‘supply-leading’ hypotheses. Furthermore, their relationship fits well the fact that China has experienced economic restructuring and structural changes in the past few decades. As financial development improves trade openness robustly, the Chinese policymakers should further increase financial reform to promote trade development.     

Neither an Authentic Product nor a Counterfeit: The Growing Popularity of Shanzhai Products in Global Markets

Counterfeits have been a longstanding concern to global brand manufactures. However, recently, a new product category that partly imitates and partly innovates under the term shanzhai has entered into market. Shanzhai products mimic original leading brands through visual or functional similarities and may also provide additional features. Given this new copycat phenomenon, our study for the first time conceptually distinguishes shanzhai products from counterfeits, theoretically compares the values of consumers choosing shanzhai products versus counterfeits, and empirically tests such differences in one integrative model. Specifically, shanzhai buyers value product functional benefits more than counterfeit buyers, while counterfeit buyers value status consumption, yet experience less self‐clarity than shanzhai buyers. Our findings offer important implications for imitative innovation literature as well as for practitioners.     

Further Mining the Predictability of Moving Averages: Evidence from the US Stock Market

Most studies on the predictability of moving average (MA) technical analysis use the discrete (buy/sell) trading recommendations. However, it is possibly incomplete or unreliable to explore the predictability of MA by only employing its generated trading signals. To further explore the forecastability of MA, we study its measurable impact on the stock market returns by using a conventional predictive regression framework. Our empirical study on the US stock market with respect to more detailed price information finds, (i) that the proposed predictor, MADP (MA based on daily prices) shows significant predictability in‐ and out‐of‐sample, and significantly outperforms the historical average (HA) benchmark as well as the MA based on monthly prices, (ii) that the predictability of MADP centers on the short‐term lags (within the most recent 10 days) and disappears when lags are beyond 20 days, and (iii) that the economic evaluation of the portfolios based on trading strategies confirms the superior performance of MADP with short‐term lags against the benchmark even though considering transaction costs.     

Public pollution abatement and wage inequality

This paper constructs three-sector general equilibrium models to investigate how public pollution abatement affects the skilled–unskilled wage inequality. In the basic model with full employment, we find that a higher degree of public pollution abatement will decrease the wage inequality if the intensity of skilled labor in the urban skilled sector is sufficiently large and expand or narrow down the wage gap if this intensity is sufficiently small. In the extended models, we consider other four cases, and obtain the results similar or dissimilar to that of the basic model.     

Video mining: Measuring visual information using automatic methods

Marketers are becoming increasingly reliant on videos to market their products and services. However, there is no standard set of measures of visual information that can be applied to large datasets. This paper proposes two standard measures that can be automatically obtained from videos: visual variation and video content. The paper tests the measures on crowdfunding videos from a leading online crowdfunding website, and shows that the proposed measures have explanatory power on the funding outcomes of the projects. These measures can be effectively implemented and used for large datasets. Further, researchers can apply these measures to other sets of visual information, and marketers could use the research to guide their video design and improve their video marketing effectiveness.     

Dialectical mind can be sweet toward crisis‐associated products/brands

Consumers’ thinking style (e.g., dialectical thinking), which is fundamental to cognition, has been paid inadequate attention in the consumer literature. This research explores the impact of dialectical thinking on Chinese consumer responses toward crisis‐associated products/brands. Findings in three experimental studies indicate that, in comparison to those primed with nondialectical thinking, consumers primed with dialectical thinking report higher levels of purchase intention and trust for a crisis‐associated product/brand. This is the case not just for products with Chinese cultural background, but also for products with western cultural background. Consumers’ perceived severity of crises moderates the impact of dialectical thinking, with a stronger impact in a highly severe crisis situation than in a less severe one. A survey study indicates a similar pattern. These findings are important in suggesting ways of encouraging Chinese consumers to be insistent on quality standard in order to better protect their consumer rights, and moreover, for multinational corporations on how best to respond and formulate strategies of handling product‐harm crises in the Chinese market.     

利用DME问答时序的飞机无源定位

针对多基测角交会、时差相差、时差频差定位系统复杂度高、同步要求高的问题,利用测距机（DME）系统测距模式中飞机与台站的通联关系,提出了一种对飞机无源定位的方法。已知地面DME台站位置和本机侦测点位置,通过对飞机地空测距询问信号、台站距离应答信号的到达时间、方位进行测量并进行解码分选,对解码分选结果进行关联聚类,再利用DME测距工作模式的随机询问特性进行询问-应答信号的时序匹配,最后根据配对信号的到达时间差、DME台站位置以及飞机方位对飞机进行计算定位。通过仿真分析证明了该方法的可行性,在固定DME台站位置已知的条件下该方法具有工程实践意义。     

Perceived product creativity and mental contrasting: Desired future on consumers’ product replacement decisions

Consumers often imagine what it would be like to own a new product. Does engaging in such thoughts on desired future impact consumers’ purchase intentions, and if so, what is the underlying process? This study sets out to investigate the posed questions by assessing self‐regulatory strategies consumers employ upon pondering on a desired future. Based on Oettingen’s fantasy realization model, the authors take a comparative approach of two modes on desired future—mental contrasting and indulging—en route to purchase intentions. In mental contrasting, an individual juxtaposes a desired future with his/her present reality, whereas, indulging is simply envisioning a desired future. Contingent upon the perceived likelihood of fantasy realization, consumers in the mental‐contrasting condition adjust their level—that is, high (low) for high (low) feasibility case—in goal commitment as well as in energization to achieve the desired future. In contrast, consumers in the indulging condition engage in moderate level of goal commitment—irrespective of the likelihood of fantasy realization. In a series of experiments, this study scrutinizes the fantasy realization model in context of attribute alignability/nonalignability, uncertainty in attribute meaningfulness and novelty, technological and psychological obsolescence en route to affecting the consumers’ product purchase/upgrade intentions. Conceptually, this study is the first to adapt the fantasy realization model to the marketing context, and the authors provide managerial implications of their key findings.     

Exploitative and exploratory innovations in emerging economies: The role of realized absorptive capacity and learning intent

This paper investigates the mediating effect of learning intent in transforming local suppliers’ potential absorptive capacity into realized absorptive capacity and its impact on exploitative and exploratory innovation. Using survey data from 155 auto parts manufacturers in Pakistan, we find that local firms’ realized absorptive capacity enables them to develop both exploitative and exploratory innovations. The findings further suggest that local suppliers’ learning intent mediates the relationship between potential and realized absorptive capacity which in turn lead to both types of innovation. In the context of the emerging economy of Pakistan, local suppliers’ absorptive capacity is found to be critically important in spurring exploitative and exploratory innovation, but learning intent enables realized absorptive capacity and thus in conjunction with realized absorptive capacity supports innovation. Consequently, there would be a strong case for policy intervention to assist emerging economy firms in building their absorptive capacity and strengthening their learning intent as a route for promoting innovation and improving their value added position in the global value chains of multinational enterprises.