The widespread adoption of mobile internet and platform-based services has enabled digital finance to deeply integrate into residents' daily consumption and investment activities. While efficiency has been enhanced and channels have been expanded, problems such as irrational behaviors, safety risks and uneven development have also emerged simultaneously. Based on existing literature, this article examines the dual impacts of digital finance on residents' consumption and investment, and analyzes the heterogeneity at the regional, urban-rural, and age levels. It was found that digital finance could enhance the consumption convenience, reduce transaction costs, optimize the consumption structure and unleash consumption potential. However, it also brought negative effects such as irrational consumption, security risks and widening disparities. In the investment domain, digital finance has lowered the entry barriers, enriched product choices, while also amplifying information asymmetry and fraud risks. The impacts of consumption and investment behaviors showed significant differences in terms of gender, age and region. Based on this, countermeasures are proposed from three aspects: improving the regulatory system, enhancing residents' digital financial literacy, and optimizing product services, with the aim of providing references for regulating the development of digital finance and guiding rational consumption and investment.

This research explores the impact of consumer's Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) perception on corporate reputation in China's food and beverage sector. Employing Signaling Theory and Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) model, a conceptual framework is proposed where consumer perception of ESG performance is a driver of corporate reputation. This research focuses on three typical Chinese food and beverage firms (Yili Group, Nongfu Spring and Mengniu Group) and investigates the characteristics of their ESG activities and the perceptual outcomes among consumers. The study reveals that the environmental and social components of ESG activities have greater impacts on corporate reputation than the governance component. Additionally, brand trust is found to play a pivotal role in linking ESG perception to reputation. Finally, the paper offers practical recommendations for food and beverage companies to improve corporate reputation via ESG activities.

This article discusses how the institutional environment and channel structure affect the competitive advantage of technology-based small and medium-sized enterprises when entering emerging markets. Using the case of the professional skin care service market, this study integrates institutional theory, resource basic concept and industrial structure theory to explain why technical resources and the reputation of the country of origin do not automatically become market advantages. The analysis results show that in the market with strict supervision and dominated by professional channels, institutional rules will play as a screening role before the enterprise enters the market. In addition, clinics and practitioners will also act as channel gatekeepers by determining whether the product can be embedded in the service process. Therefore, the competitive advantage does not come purely from resource ownership, but from resource transformation. To activate the existing technical resources and reputation resources, small and medium-sized enterprises must combine compliance ability, training ability, service integration ability and local legitimacy construction. . The findings are mainly applicable to those markets with strong supervision, high service embedding requirements, and consumers trust professional channels.

Based on the practical difficulties that the current cross-border promotion effect of the digital RMB is very limited and that cross-border e-commerce operations face settlement problems, this paper starts from the perspective of individual cross-border e-commerce merchants and explores the relevant factors and influence mechanisms affecting merchants' use of the digital RMB in cross-border payment and settlement. The study finds that merchants' pursuit of cross-border payment significantly improves their willingness to use the digital RMB in cross-border transactions, and this influence differs among merchants with different cross-border payment habits. Merchants' pursuit of cross-border payment will further improve their willingness to use it by enhancing their attitude toward joining the multilateral central bank digital currency bridge (mBridge project) to carry out cross-border e-commerce transactions, their level of understanding of the digital RMB, and their degree of expectation for the prospects of the digital RMB. Based on this, it can be considered that the cross-border promotion of the digital RMB conforms to the interests of cross-border e-commerce. This paper proposes suggestions such as optimizing the underlying technology of the digital RMB, accelerating the construction of cross-border payment scenarios, formulating differentiated promotion strategies, and allowing the development of the mBridge project to benefit individual cross-border e-commerce merchants, so as to promote the cross-border promotion of the digital RMB.