Electronic Business-to-Business Marketplace Transformation in the Chemical Industry: Will the Second Wave Succeed Where the First has Failed?

The global chemical sales are expected to be worth over €6,000 bn by 2030 and this offers a very significant market size for businesses to be transacted electronically. It is generally believed that the first wave of the electronic business-to-business marketplace featured very strongly into the chemical industry sometime in the late 1990’s, but in just over a few years many of these electronic marketplaces started to close down or being merged with others, and later on they too disappeared from the chemical industry. Many of them had failed to sustain themselves in the marketplace and survived. From 2005 onwards, it became apparent that the second wave of electronic marketplaces started to enter the chemical industry again. Electronic marketplaces were being set up by chemical manufacturers and distributors, with many of them even setting up multiple web storefronts, to promote their products. This research will look into the chemical distribution market size, supply chain activities, as well as the various electronic marketplaces present in the chemical industry. The Author will investigate into the reasons why the first wave of chemical electronic marketplaces did not manage to sustain themselves in the market and the possible reasons for their failure. The types of electronic marketplaces during the second wave were investigated in great detail. What are the differences in the types of electronic platforms in the second wave and will they stand a chance to survive this time round, when many of them have failed in the first wave? This research will attempt to investigate the possible strategies through the digital marketplace, by both chemical manufacturers and distributors, in their effort to capture greater market share.

Mussel-inspired adhesive gelatin–polyacrylamide hydrogel wound dressing loaded with tetracycline hydrochloride to enhance complete skin regeneration

Even though the global wound care market size was valued at USD 19.83 billion in 2020, it is still a challenge to develop a hydrogel-based wound dressing with a good mechanical property, adhesiveness and antibacterial property.

Living in a Virtual Reality

Anime (animated films) and manga (comic books), fans are easily misunderstood and can even face prejudice. In fact, they are usually not as people see them. As one of the many anime and manga fans, I would like to show people what the real world of the anime and manga fan is like. As the fan population grows, the market increases, so this chapter will also act as a guide for those who are interested in this market. This chapter aims to introduce readers to the world of anime and manga fandom and to its fans, in particular. It will present and explain specific terms such as weeaboo, otaku, waifu, husbando, fujoshi, and critic. This chapter will also describe the different characters of anime and manga fans and explain how these characters can affect marketing. Finally, this chapter will look at the current market size of anime and manga fandom and explore how the culture is used in marketing.

Blockchain Open Issues, Research Gaps, and Road Map of Future Blockchain for 2030

The future is great for blockchain technology. Blockchain market size can grow from 3 billion USD to 39.7 billion USD by 2025. Thirty percent of blockchain projects might go live this year. There is another prediction that 90% of those projects might have a substitute solution. Twenty-five percent of Forbes Global 2000 might start implementing blockchain for improving digital trust. The implementations might not use tokenization, smart contracts, decentralized consensus, and other features. The latest solutions during COVID-19 lockdown are becoming the reference solutions for the blockchain initiatives. The number of enterprises that are part of the blockchain networks has significantly increased. On the other hand, long-term blockchain implementations are on hold. Future projects are focusing on creating a digital platform for post-pandemic scenarios. Private blockchains are becoming popular, and they will have a bigger market share compared to public blockchains. European countries are coming up with their cryptocurrency, and China is ready with its crypto yuan.

Biocomposites Using Whole or Valuable Component-Extracted Microalgae Blended with Polymers: A Review

Global demand for plastics has increased steadily alongside industrial development. Despite their versatility and convenience, environmental pollution caused by plastics are a major issue. With a reduction in the market size of plastics being seemingly impossible, bioplastics may become key to tackle this issue. Among a wide range of sources of bioplastics, microalgae have come into the limelight. While abundant and valuable components in microalgae have the potential to replace preexisting plastics, complex processes and low cost performances have prevented them from entering the market. In this study, we examined techniques for biocomposites in which polymers are blended with microalgae. We focused on microalgae-based biocomposite blending processed from the perspective of functionality and cost performance.

Determinants of Foreign Direct Investment in Indonesia

The objective of this research is to investigate the influence of macroeconomic factors such as market size, labor cost, interest rate, exchange rate, trade openness, and inflation to the foreign direct investment in Indonesia. This research uses a quantitative approach with time series data, quarterly from 2006 to 2019. The data is processed using SPSS Statistics 23 software, specifically linear regression analysis method and passed the classical assumption test. Results show that there is a partially significant relationship between market size, labor cost, interest rate, exchange rate, and trade openness to the foreign direct investment, meanwhile inflation does not significantly affect the foreign direct investment. These findings hopefully can help the government to make wiser policies to increase the foreign direct investment.

Profitability vs. Stability: The Choice of Trading Strategies in a Capacity Sharing Supply Chain

Supported by a third-party capacity sharing platform, manufacturers can share capacities with others to match the rapidly changing demand. Both the capacity requestor and the capacity provider can choose to seek or wait for matches, forming different trading strategies (capacity- and demand-driven strategies). Based on the game and chaos theories, this paper analyzes the preference of the capacity provider, the capacity requestor, and the capacity platform operator on different trading strategies from the aspects of profitability and stability. It finds that the platform operator values stability much more than profitability, although the latter may reach higher optimal expected profits. The preference of each supply chain member is influenced by the production cost, potential market size, and the limited capacity of the capacity requestor. A stable system can result in higher long-run profits than a profitable system. We further propose the all-win situation for the capacity provider, capacity requestor, and platform operator.