TABLE 1.

Structured items constituting the final questionnaire.

Forces	Items
New entrants	Customer switching costs*
	Initial capital requirement*
	Brand loyalty*
	Government regulation*
	Economies of scale*
	Cost advantages*
Substitutes	Number of substitutes*
	Closeness of substitutes*
	Buyer propensity to substitutes
	Other technologies*
	Conformity of substitutes to upstream and downstream technical standards
	The degree of technology integration between the substitutes and upstream and downstream
	The ready availability of substitutes and emergent of new ones
	The degree of close cooperation between substitutes and related industries
	Market awareness of alternative brands
	The relative price of substitutes
Buyers/ customers	Backward integration*
	Importance to buyers*
	Buyer switching costs*
	Dependence on buyer industry*
	Buyer portfolio*
	Product uniqueness*
	Close cooperation with buyer (frequency and years)
	Compliance with buyer’s technical standards
	Buyer information about demand, actual market price, and suppliers cost
	Market awareness of buyer’s brand
	Degree of technical integration with buyer
Suppliers	Supplier switching costs*
	Supplier portfolio (size and quantity, etc.)*
	Importance of suppliers*
	Forward integration*
	Dependence on supplier industry*
	Degree of technical integration with suppliers
	Close cooperation with suppliers (frequency and years)
	Supplier uniqueness
	Consistent with supplier’s technical standards
	Market awareness of supplier brands
The industry	Differentiation among companies*
	Industry demand and capacity*
	Industry structure*
	Exit barriers*
	The gap between technology and competitors
	Fraud by lawyers, employees, etc.
	Potential partnerships with competitors
	Existing partnerships with competitors
	Government regulation/policy

*Comes from a classic five forces analysis scale (Lee et al., 2012), others come from the pre-test interview in the Chinese context, as shown in the following tables.