Supply chain finance (SCF) has become an important financing mechanism for improving liquidity and supporting small and medium-sized enterprises. Existing research mainly focuses on credit risk, operational risk and digital financial technology, while paying limited attention to the role of market structure in shaping supply chain financial risks. This article explores how different market structures affect financing availability, liquidity pressure and risk transmission by comparing three representative industries - the power grid industry (monopoly), the electric vehicle industry (oligopoly) and the fast fashion industry (competitive market). The study draws on the theory of industrial organization, uses the Herfindahl - Hirschman Index (HHI) to assess market concentration, and employs the Cash Conversion Cycle (CCC) to evaluate working capital efficiency when comparable financial data is available. Research has found that monopolistic industries enjoy stable cash flows and lower financing risks, but they are still vulnerable to concentration risks. Oligopolistic industries demonstrate relatively efficient liquidity management and at the same time transfer financial pressure to suppliers through strong bargaining power. In contrast, suppliers in competitive markets face the greatest financing pressure due to weak bargaining power, long payment cycles and large fluctuations in profitability. This paper holds that market structure indirectly affects supply chain finance risks by influencing the stability of a company's cash flow, its bargaining power and its dependence on suppliers, thereby providing a more comprehensive analytical framework for understanding the heterogeneous financing risks among different industries.
In the U.S. restaurant industry, tipped workers receive a large share of their earnings from customers rather than from their employers, and tip credit provisions allow restaurants to pay cash wages below the standard minimum wage. This paper examines why this compensation structure persists and how raising the tipped minimum wage affects wages, employment, and firm behavior. Based on the literature on modern monopsony power and existing evidence on minimum wage policies, labor market concentration, and tipping, this paper develops a search-friction framework in which job-switching costs give individual restaurants wage-setting power even in markets with many employers. The results indicate that restaurants' wage-setting power enables them to maintain wages below competitive levels, implying that a moderate increase in the tipped minimum wage can improve worker earnings and reduce turnover without generating a proportionate loss in employment. However, restaurants respond through multiple channels, including raising menu prices, adjusting service charges and compensation structures, slowing hiring, reducing working hours, and, for low-margin firms, exiting the market. The effects of tipped minimum wage policies therefore rely on the magnitude of the wage increase, restaurant characteristics, and local labor market conditions.
Some high-end cosmetic brands have begun to use scarcity marketing in recent times to create a sense of urgency for consumers and boost the demand for their products. L'Oréal Paris is a well-known mass-market beauty brand, and this paper will investigate how scarcity marketing devices, such as holiday-limited gift sets, joint-brand drop collaborations, and time-limited flash sales, affect its brand premium capacity. Time-limited and quantity-restricted offers can increase the demand for purchase by creating a sense of urgency (FOMO) and making the limited items more desirable social status symbols in the short run. However, this study has also shown some serious long-term problems: frequent alterations in the surface packaging, a deviation from L'Oréal's core scientific identity, and controversial "faux-scarcity" behaviour will inevitably lead to scarcity fatigue and a loss of consumer trust. To address the above problems and avoid the controversy of an "IQ tax", this paper proposes some feasible optimisation directions: align scarcity campaigns with the company's core values, innovate experiential scarcity through digital integration, and build a transparent tiered pricing system. In short, the above measures can help beauty brands continuously use the concept of scarcity to build brand value without damaging the brand image.
Existing studies of POP MART mainly explain purchasing and brand diffusion through blind-box uncertainty, gamification, and platform circulation, while paying less attention to how product form, channel arrangements, and communication environments enable multiple consumption contexts over time. Drawing on POP MART's 2020 prospectus, annual-results announcements for 2020-2025, and external archival sources, this study adopts a longitudinal archival case-study design and develops an integrative framework of action, space, and visibility. Visibility is differentiated into the material conditions for consumer-carried visibility, its realized enactment in specific settings, and firm-orchestrated visibility. The case shows three broad periods: the digitalization of purchasing and elevation of collection, the expansion of content and experiential spaces, and changes in material structure accompanied by differentiated visibility. Growth in plush revenue demonstrates the rising commercial importance of plush categories and tactile materials, but does not by itself establish company-wide portability. Miniature pendants indicate that attachment and portability became a visible design direction, while their revenue contribution remains undisclosed. The study therefore offers a bounded process explanation of consumption-context expansion without treating corporate disclosures as direct evidence of general consumer behavior or causal revenue effects.
