This study empirically investigates the mechanism of building a sustainable competitive advantage of Japanese retail firms in emerging markets from a dynamic capabilities perspective. We analyze the case of Aeon, a Japanese retail firm that has succeeded in globalization in many countries and has been rapidly expanding in Vietnam. We developed a conceptual model of dynamic capabilities that contains three component factors, “sensing,” “implementing,” and “connecting,” and applied this model to investigate the case of Aeon in Vietnam. The research results indicated that Aeon has been building a competitive advantage in Vietnam through its well-developed “sensing” and “implementing” capabilities. However, Aeon still faces issues in utilizing its “connecting” capabilities and in building organization. In view of these findings, we discuss strategies that can help Aeon gain a competitive advantage in the Vietnamese market.

The purpose of this study is to clarify where the resources for value co-creation outside the firm (consumption process) come from within the firm (production process), i.e., how the resources of the firm that enable value co-creation with customers became the resources of the case firm, from the perspective of resource integration in value co-creation. As a research method, a qualitative study was conducted on a Taiwanese company, KFS. The main focus will be on interviews with company management, marketing personnel, and front-line personnel who have already been involved in the process of providing internal company resources to external parties. Data processing (text mining) of the interview records will be used to ensure objectivity. KFS, the case study company in this study, has been engaged in value co-creation with customers outside the company (consumption process), and a case analysis was conducted based on the history of overseas relocation of the case study company to investigate where the resources for value co-creation in the consumption process came from within the company (production process). Mainly, the analysis focused on the transfer of resources associated with the four overseas relocations of the case firms, and what resources were transferred during the overseas relocations. As a result, although the case study firm transferred resources over four times, it was able to transfer its corporate culture and management philosophy in the process of four resource transfers, and thus was able to provide resources in the form of knowledge and skills for customers that support value co-creation in the consumption process. Based on the analysis results, I proposed the hypothesis that “companies that co-create value with their customers may have a customer-centric mindset to begin with,” and conducted a text mining analysis on the interview records of management and front-line personnel. The analysis revealed that the company as a whole (top, middle, and lower management) has a customer-centric organizational culture that is close to the customer. Finally, based on the analysis results, a model of the value co-creation system of the case study company was constructed.

With the development of new media and machine translation technology, consumers from different countries who speak other languages can easily communicate. This study aimed to explore the impact of such cross-border customer-to-customer interactions by introducing the saying-is-believing paradigm within the electronic word-of-mouth context. The saying-is-believing effect has been defined as a phenomenon in sharers’ memory, and impressions can be biased when sharing an audience-tuned message. By introducing the saying-is-believing paradigm in the electronic word-of-mouth context, we suggested that audience-tuned statements are likely to bias sharers’ memory and impression toward the attitude of an entitative in-group audience. In contrast, such audience tuning effects are unlikely to occur when low entitativity is perceived in the audiences or when the audiences are perceived as an out-group. We designed an online experiment to investigate these assumptions and recruited 128 Chinese undergraduate students in a Beijing university. Manipulations of entitativity perception (high: common points in attitude, etc.; low: different points in attitude, etc.) and intergroup membership (in-group: Chinese audience group; out-group: Japanese audience group) were included in the experimental procedure. Findings in this study shed insights on the possible influence of cross-border communication on consumers’ attitude formation toward the communication topic.

“China’s Accounting Standards for Business Enterprises” and “China’s Accounting System for Business Enterprises” were announced in formally in the relatively same period by China’s Ministry of Finance. “China’s Accounting Standards for Business Enterprises” were issued in 1992, with revision made both in 2014 and 2017, including a basic standard and 42 specific standards. The basic standard is used as a Conceptual Framework to guide the accounting practices. Later in 2000, “China’s Accounting System for Business Enterprises” is released. Under this background, this paper intends to clarify China’s accounting history and to review China’s Accounting System and Accounting Standards for Business Enterprises, finally, significance of establishing China’s Accounting System and Accounting Standards for Business Enterprises is discussed.

This study examines the co-creation process that exists between Chinese tourists and businesses, from the perspective of having the will and capability to engage in value co-creation marketing in Japan. The case study looks at photography services provided to Chinese tourists by a professional photographer. Previous research has found that many Chinese tourists want to communicate proactively during their travels. The problem, however, is that shopping districts and other places in Japan lack the will or ability to respond to such needs. This study uses field work to take a 4C approach in analyzing the co-creation process that occurs between customers and businesses. After organizing the data gathered during the field work into three aspects representing customer capabilities, interaction, and contextual value, Chinese tourists were classified into four types according to their ability and context. We then examined business operators’ ability to enhance customer context during the co-creation process during tourist consumption. Finally, we used the findings of the research to discuss reverse asymmetry of information and the cycle of tourism consumption.

While research on CSR activities in the manufacturing industries is well known, similar research in the retail industries is lacking. Studies have shown that large-scale CSR activities have a greater social impact on the manufacturing industries as opposed to the activities of the retail industries which tend to be relatively small in scale. However, retailers’ CSR activities have the opportunity to further develop in multifarious ways since they answer directly to stakeholders. Consequently, this interaction produces a synergistic effect. This article, therefore, examines the significance of CSR activities with respect to the characteristics of the retail industries, and it investigates how retailers develop their CSR activities within the framework of international development with specific reference to the case study of AEON Malaysia, which has been operating for 27 years.

As the world’s population ages, Japanese nursing care providers are attempting to expand into Asia, where they are seeking “Japanese-style nursing care.” However, it is difficult for them to spread their activities without people understanding the content of their services, which has become an issue. To solve this problem, this study focused on the human resource development of local employees, which is the key to providing “Japanese-style nursing care” to users and spreading the service, and explored the human resource development and training methods of companies that are attempting to develop franchises in China. As a result, we were able to identify a form of differentiated Japanese-style nursing care service to present to other cultures, a training method to convey it to employees, and a process to spread it to customers.

Although two years has already passed, the Covid-19 pandemic still has continued to have a great impact on many organisatoins. Under such crisis, firms need to gradually shift their focus from crisis management in response to in sudden pandemic to risk management that enable them prepare and control in advance of the next wave of pandemic situations. At the same time, firms must respond the new environment so called the “new normal” through strategic decision under the uncertainty. Thus, corporate strategy during the Covid-19 requires firms to maintain organizational stability against in-sudden crisis as well as to support organization through enhancement of creative activities and flexibility for the potential value creation. In this way, firms are required to respond on the different pressures which we call the dynamic tensions through use of various types of control levers and development of dynamic capabilities.

This paper attempts to examine the impact of the launch of the AEC on ASEAN intra-regional trade using structural change tests based on the gravity model. The main conclusions of this paper are as follows: the above test using panel data among ASEAN member countries shows that the intra-regional trade of ASEAN has changed to a structure that is less sensitive to the distance between member countries and the nominal GDP of each member country after the launch of the AEC. The results also show that this structural change occurred significantly after 2015, which is consistent with the fact that the AEC was launched in December 2015. These results suggest that the inauguration of the AEC was a factor that stimulated intra-regional trade in ASEAN without depending on the economic size of the ASEAN member countries or the distance between them as much as before.

Recently rapid development of social and economic systems due to globalization and development of IT technology has made people forgot about the essence and impact of cross-cultural understanding on international business. Since market trends in India are very different from the other global markets, it is advisable that foreign-affiliated companies pay extra attention when expanding into India. Korean manufacturers have been able to consistently improve their performance in the Indian home appliance market through early entry, concentrated investment, and localization strategy. However, it has become difficult to separate the localization and global integration strategy of overseas subsidiaries during the intensified global market competition of multinational companies. This paper reconsiders the localization strategy of Korean home appliance manufacturers in the Indian market. In conclusion the overseas subsidiaries need to determine the appropriate localization level by considering multiple factors such as environmental factor, the industry characteristics and company condition at the local country.

Outward foreign direct investment (FDI) in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries has been growing. As a result, the internationalization of local firms is rapidly progressing in the ASEAN region. This paper identifies representative MNCs in ASEAN and classifies them into “global” and “regional” groups based on the geographic characteristics of their business locations, and analyzes the characteristics of each group by focusing on the global market size of the industry to which each firm belongs. As a result, it was found that the “global type” generally consists of small and medium-sized industries, while the “regional type,” on the contrary, mainly consists of large-sized industries. This phenomenon may be related to the fact that ASEAN firms are latecomers to internationalization and their management scale is generally smaller than that of BRICs firms, such as China and India, among firms based in emerging markets (countries).

Scholars have long studied Innovation and the factor which facilitate R&D. More recently, based on the perspective of knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer, many empirical studies have been conducted on information exchange among researchers, inflow and management of external knowledge, and factors that make knowledge transfer successful. However, few studies have explicitly identified and analyzed the individual researcher’s network, which is a path for transferring knowledge. In this paper, the patent application information filed in the U.S. is analyzed to explore the characteristics of the researcher network formed by the inventor. It is also clarified the relationship patterns among inventors which facilitate R&D performance focusing on Samsung Electronics.