In China, dockless bike-sharing programs (DBSPs) have changed people’s travel modes, alleviated urban traffic congestion, and reduced carbon emissions. However, a number of DBSPs have experienced financial crises since 2018. This means that research on DBSPs must be considered not only in terms of the environment and technology, but also in the operation of the program. In this paper, we modeled the DBSP operations in a certain area using a system dynamics simulation approach. The main purpose was to explore the dynamics of the program’s operation process and evaluate possible improvement strategies for maximizing the revenue of the overall DBSP. Specifically, the analysis focused on the economic profits of DBSPs in an environment of competition and government regulation. The research findings revealed that the dockless bike-sharing industry has great economic profits, but in the current environment, the market needs to be regulated by the local government. If a DBSP does not introduce new technologies or find new profit channels, it will be difficult to develop sustainably by only relying on riding profits. In addition, we provide a case study of Mobike’s operations in Beijing to support these findings and validate the developed model. Finally, we discuss Mobike’s possible improvement strategies.

In this paper, we build a causal interaction diagram between the factors that may influence the sales and profits of online stores. An online store’s real operation data were used to help determine the causal relationship between variables. Finally, we proposed a system dynamics model and conducted a simulation of the operation of an online store. In this model, we focused on the impact of promotion and positive/negative electronic word of mouth (e-WOM) on the sales and profits of the online stores. The simulation results showed a similar trend to the real data and the main research finding showed that promotion is not a long-term measure for the sustainable development of online stores. Excessive promotion effort may lead to consumers’ dissatisfaction leading the increase of negative e-WOM. The systematic simulation can help us understand better the long-term effect of promotion and e-WOM on the operation of online stores. Finally, we gave some management suggestions for online stores’ sustainable operations.