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As society becomes more and more socially conscious, corporate social responsibility may be one of the factors influencing the decision to buy. In the 21st century, cause-related marketing as one of the possible initiatives of a socially responsible approach became a common part of building a relationship with customers. But what are the differences in the perception of a cause-related marketing campaign among consumers with different levels of donation size with regard to gender distribution? Using existing studies, the responses concerning the perception of the campaign supporting a collection for the Zoo in the Czech capital were evaluated through a questionnaire survey. The data were factor-analyzed to determine the dimensions of the perception of the cause-related marketing campaign. The results show a two-factor solution: consumer attitudes towards the product and the company involved in the cause-related marketing campaign and consumer attitudes towards cause-related marketing in relation to a non-profit organization. The impact of donation size and gender on the resulting factors is assessed after.

In the German-speaking food market, a significant gap exists between consumer preference for sustainable options and purchasing behavior, primarily due to skepticism about the authenticity of sustainability claims. In a study involving 368 participants from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, the influence of price on the perceived authenticity of sustainability labels was examined. Participants were surveyed on their explicit attitudes, while their implicit attitudes were assessed using the implicit association test (IAT). Results show that a higher price significantly improves the perception of a product's authenticity. Socioeconomic factors, such as nationality and gender, are significant, with Swiss nationality and female gender showing strong correlations with higher perceived authenticity. This study uniquely examines initial attitudes and reactions to reflect heuristic consumption decisions. Insights can be used to develop pricing and marketing strategies tailored to different markets and target groups, effectively addressing consumer skepticism through targeted communication and pricing.

Small firms are faced with the challenges of competing with larger firms. This has given birth to utilising different strategies to enhance the small firms’ capacity to achieve their corporate goals. This study examines the nature of coopetition among small firms and how it has influenced their ability to create value. Employing the survey research design, the study sampled 1119 small firms and established the interaction between coopetition and value creation in small firms using the partial least square-structural equation model. The results reveal entrepreneurial orientation is the most prevalent type of coopetition among small firms and that coopetition is a significant driver of value creation among small firms. The study recommends that small firms should integrate coopetition into their strategy to remain relevant, increase their revenue, customise their services through value-added services and create new products and services.

Technostress as an academic domain has evolved significantly since year 1984. Based on the systematic literature review (SLR), eight determinants of technostress were identified which were classified into individual and organizational categories. Individual determinants were further divided into demographic, psychographic and cognitive categories. Outcome of the SLR was the development of a comprehensive framework of technostress. This study can facilitate the top management and the HR managers of organizations to adopt appropriate change management interventions while implementing and augmenting new technologies.

Gender equality is the state where both men and women get equal opportunities, rights and status. Our exploratory research focuses on the situation in Armenia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia. Unlike usual researches where traditionally countries from the West and East of Europe are investigated our exploratory research focuses on countries from the Eastern Block. These countries support gender equality in the labor market; however, they contribute in strengthening the traditional family model with the length of parental leave. Based on our exploratory research we can identify patterns showing that the opinion of society about the distribution of gender roles has undergone changes in these post-socialist countries. In general, there is a common understanding about equal rights of men and women. But still, in all investigated countries, there are “traditionally” thinking people, who tend to keep the strict role-distribution of gender in child upbringing, participation of women in political and managerial matters. The results of our exploratory research can guide the human resource departments and organizations who deal with labor market in their professional orientation activities among younger generation and be a base for a future large sample research to prove the identified patterns highlighted after analyzing the sample used by the authors.

This paper examines the impact of working capital management on firm performance in nine developing economies in Asia. Specifically, the study focuses on two critical aspects: the management of trade credit and inventory. The empirical findings reveal that effective management of these components significantly enhances the performance of financially dependent firms. In fact, during critical periods such as the 2008 financial crisis, these management strategies helped to boost performance considerably. However, no comparable association was observed in other firms within the sample. These results suggest that appropriate handling of trade credit and inventory can yield a significant performance advantage.

Given the rapid advance and the growing influence of social media, the need to research this unique phenomenon becomes more apparent and urgent. This research examines the influence of social media marketing activities (SMMA) on Brand Equity, in the case of bottled water brands. Additionally, it offers a research model that investigates both direct and indirect effects of SMMA on Brand Equity, where Brand Trust is used as a mediator. A quantitative method was used to investigate the most popular domestic and foreign brands of bottled water in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with all 518 respondents being both bottled water consumers and social media users. Furthermore, exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were performed to assess the reliability of the scales, while structural equation modeling was used to estimate the proposed hypotheses of the research. The obtained measurement results revealed that SMMA have a direct impact on Brand Trust and Brand Equity, keeping in mind that Brand Trust mediates the link between SMMA and Brand Equity. Therefore, the aims of the study are threefold: to increase the knowledge about social media, to shed more light on the relationship between SMMA, Brand Trust, and Brand Equity, as well as to help organizations recognize the benefits of using and investing in social media. Due to the fact that this research was conducted on brands in Bosnia and Herzegovina, research in another country can yield different results, given a different culture, mentality, and general educational and material status.

This paper investigates the dependence of the investment behavior of Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) on the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) performance of their underlying investments in public equity holdings during the period of 2007 to 2022 collectively overseeing a substantial 71% of total public equity holding investments by SWFs globally. The unique data set with ESG control variables consist of mainly self-reported Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) ESG information (ESG rating from Refinitiv/LSEG) and dynamic risk assessed ESG information purely based on external evaluation of the firms (Reputational Risk Indicator from RepRisk). The control variable which monitors the Corporate Social Irresponsibility (CSI) of target companies is novel to previous studies. Our findings suggest that SWFs still consider self-reported CSR information more than public CSI data in their investment decisions. Furthermore, a change in past ESG data of underlying public equity holdings – both CSR and CSI – does not seem to have a significant effect on the investment into underlying public equity holdings. Our conclusions could help to encourage greater ESG integration into SWF investment strategies and promote sustainable investing practices more broadly not limited to liquid assets.

Recent studies tend to scrutinize the convergence and growth patterns of various socioeconomic variables among countries or regions, as well as their per capita income. This study as a new approach examines the growth rate and convergence inclination of real per capita exports among the 81 provinces of Türkiye for the period 2004–2021. The role of imports and their subcategories (intermediate, capital, and consumer goods) is also considered in this context. The results of the non-spatial panel model show that real per capita exports converge among provinces in both absolute and conditional terms. On the other hand, while total imports as well as imports of intermediate goods and capital goods contribute to export growth and convergence of the provinces, imports of consumer goods have no effect. According to the results, spatial interaction among provinces is notable. The results do not change significantly depending on the estimates of the DSAR model (Dynamic Spatial Autoregressive Model), identified as the appropriate specification.

In this paper, we examined the relationship of sports performance and revenue generation in the English Premier League (EPL) to understand how performance on the field impacts financial performance of professional football clubs. Further, we verified if increased wage expenses help improve sports performance. Independent dynamic models were estimated by GMM on panel data including N = 28 EPL teams and on a reduced data set excluding the top six teams (N = 22), spanning from the 2008/2009 to 2018/2019 seasons (T = 11). The results of the GMM models confirmed that sports performance and revenue generation significantly correlate. Teams with better sports performance do generate higher revenues. Additionally, higher wage expenses result in better sports performance. A positive relationship of the variables in both hypotheses were established in both directions (full data). In all analyses of reduced data, the parameters of interest are nonsignificant. Dependencies exist due to the top teams.

This study assesses the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows on economic growth and domestic investment in a panel of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries during the period of 1990–2017 by utilizing the method of fixed-effects and system generalized method of moments (GMM). The findings show that FDI inflows are positively and significantly associated with the economic growth of the host economy. When considering the origin of FDI, we find that FDI from developed countries contributes to the growth rate in the receiving economy, while FDI from developing countries shows no significant effect. Importantly, FDI does not appear to crowd in or out domestic investment. Only FDI from developed countries is associated with crowding in of domestic investment.

COVID-19 has dramatically changed the economic scenery. Despite the austerity measures and decreasing resources, it might lead to an increase of the significance of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as the key for sustainable growth and prosperity. The luxury fashion industry is known for its lavish commitment to CSR as expressed by owners and top management. However, the bottom perception is unclear. A longitudinal front-line case study of the perception of the significance of CSR by the low management and customers allows for filling in this vacuum and to comparatively assess the annual evolution from December 2019 to November 2020. The holistic Meta-Analysis using informal open-interview and mystery shopping techniques and the investigative questionnaire with the Pearson Chi-squared test reveals a fragmented and only slightly raised significance of the CSR by the low management and customers. This disappointing finding has inherent limitations and calls for further studies.

Maintaining inflation rate at optimal level is among important mechanism of balancing macroeconomic volatility to ensure steady economic growth. This study aims to examine macroeconomic determinants of inflation in Ethiopia. The study employed ARDL model using annual data for period 1981–2020. The ARDL bound test was applied to examine the presence of con-integration between inflation and independent variables. The study also uses augmented Dickey-Fuller and Phillips-Perron unit root tests to check stationarity of the variables. The test result reveals that almost all variables become stationary after the first difference. Accordingly, the result from bound test indicated existence of long run relationship between the dependent variable and explanatory variables entered into the model. The estimated error correction model (ECM) with −0.53 coefficient also confirms the existence of co-integration with high speed of adjustment towards the long run equilibrium. In the long run: real GDP, real effective exchange rate, lending interest rate are positive and significant determinants of inflation whereas broad money supply, real GDP, population growth, gross national saving and previous year imports are found to be the short run drivers of inflation. The finding recommends, among others, measures on reducing real effective exchange rate and utilizing broad money supply in productive economic activities along with supply side should be designed to contain inflation in Ethiopia.

In this paper, we focus on the categorization of tickets in service desk systems. We employ modern neural network-based artificial intelligence methods to improve the performance of current systems and address typical problems in the domain. Special attention is paid to balancing the ticket categories, selecting a suitable representation of text data, and choosing a classification model. Based on experiments with two real-world datasets, we conclude that text preprocessing, balancing the ticket categories, and using the representations of texts based on fine-tuned transformers are crucial for building successful classifiers in this domain. Although we could not directly compare our work to other research the results demonstrate superior performance to similar works.

Despite substantial research on the antecedents of the relationship between brand experience and customer citizenship behavior, the effect of brand attachment remains a neglected subject in marketing research. Using social exchange theory (SET) and attachment theory, this study analyses the role of brand attachment as a mediator in the relationship between brand experience and customer citizenship behavior. Specifically, is to investigate the mediating role of brand attachment in the relationship between brand experience and customer citizenship behavior to clarify the role of the different dimensions of brand values among the customers of fast-food restaurants in Egypt. In this study, data was gathered through a questionnaire based on fast food restaurants. and for data analysis, structural equation modelling (SEM) was used. Findings reveal that customer citizenship behavior is directly influenced by brand experience. Furthermore, brand experience directly and significantly impacts brand attachment. Moreover, brand experience is a strong predictor of brand attachment, which promotes consumer citizenship behavior. The study finds that there is a partial influence on the relationship between Brand experience-consumer citizenship behavior relationship.

Older adults are the most vulnerable group to suffer from health care cost burdens which may result in barriers to health care consumption. Aiming to evaluate the relationship between cost-induced unmet need and specific age-related health conditions among the European 50+ population we perform age-specific regressions using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. The results show that unmet need is strongly associated with emotional disorders, arthritis and heart attack across all age groups. High blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, chronic lung disease, stomach ulcers, and fractures are significant correlates for specific age groups. This highlights the importance of a health condition-specific as well as age-specific approach when reducing inequalities in access to health care. Policy makers therefore should pay more attention to financial barriers accessing health care for specific groups of the older population and consider complementary protective features for people with specific health conditions.

Obesity is a significant public health issue as it seems to be the cause for high blood pressure, diabetes and other health problems. The human body cannot function efficiently if it has high body mass index score. According to the National Health and Morbidity Survey (NHMS), people with BMI score of ≥ 25 are being categorized as obese. One way to control obesity is to rely on the help of technology such as mobile health applications. In literature, there is a lack in research addressing obese people’s intention of using mobile health applications. Recognising the critical role of their behavioural intention to use mobile health applications, this research investigates the factors affecting behavioural intention to use mobile health applications. Adapting Consumer Acceptance Technology (CAT) model by Kulviwat et al. (2007) and Health Belief Model (HBM) developed by Glanz et al. (2008), this research examines factors of perceived cognition, perceived affection, perceived threat, compatibility, accessibility and attitude towards behavioural intention to use mobile health apps. To test the proposed framework, data were collected using quota sampling, while questionnaires were distributed to 500 obese people in the top 5 percent in the states with the obesity population in Malaysia, namely Malacca, Federal Territory of Putrajaya, Negeri Sembilan, Kedah and Perlis. Data collected were analysed using Partial Least Square (PLS) software. The results show that relationship between perceived cognition and perceived affection towards behavioural intention to use is partially significant, while significant relationship has been found between perceived threat, compatibility and accessibility and behavioural intention to use. Besides, perceived cognition and perceived affection partially support relationship on attitude. On the other hand perceived threat, compatibility and accessibility fully support relationship on attitude. Finally, the results demonstrate attitude partially mediates the relationship between perceived cognition and perceived affection, while attitude fully mediates the effect of perceived threat, compatibility, accessibility on behavioural intention to use. Findings provided empirical evidence on the collective effect of behavioural intention to use mobile health applications as well as independent effect of perceived cognition, perceived affection, perceived threat, compatibility and accessibility. Besides, findings suggested to encourage individual to use mobile health applications, while related takeholders should continually improve user perception on health applications.

In a world of intense competition, automotive manufacturers are continually increasing their outsourcing activities and, as a result, automotive companies have built extensive cost engineering departments within their organisations. Staff in these units provide Should Cost Calculations for externally manufactured components, which are utilized as supplier targets to support buyers in fact-based negotiations. This paper aims to explore potential differences in the direct and indirect cost categories in the context of Should Cost Calculations. Based on a sample survey among cost engineers, it was possible to determine differences in cost knowledge, risk of suppliers concealing unjustified costs, level of analytical detail, and suitability to conduct fact-based negotiations depending on the length of job experience, industry, and especially the type of costs. The evaluation is carried out through analysis of variance, and a contingency table homogeneity test, and the results are presented using correspondence maps. The results show significant differences between the direct and indirect cost categories, including a higher risk of cost hiding and a lower suitability for price negotiations for the indirect cost category.

The main objective of this study is to examine the effect of ownership structure on financial performance of Ethiopian commercial banks. Hence, the financial performance of state owned commercial bank was compared with privately owned commercial banks in Ethiopia based on key financial performance measures. In order to achieve the stated objective, the study adopts a quantitative research approach by using financial ratio analysis and test for means equality analysis techniques. Samples of fifteen commercial banks were selected based on the year of establishment. Audited financial statement data covering from 2011 to 2017 analyzed. The result reveal that ROEs of public sector bank was higher than those of private banks but the overall performance of state owned bank was not observed sound because other financial ratios including ROA, LDR, CDR, CAR and NIM, of most of the private banks were found superior. Other findings of the study show that there is a significance difference between the financial performance measures like ROE, CDR, LDR, CAR, EIR and NIM between states owned CBE and the privately owned banks in Ethiopia. In terms of ROA, not statically significant difference between state owned and private commercial banks in Ethiopia over the studied period.

This study aims to understand the mechanisms of consumers’ online grocery shopping (OGS) acceptance in the current COVID-19 pandemic. Through this perspective, an extended technology acceptance model is employed by including the fear of COVID-19 factor to reveal the extent of the Turkish consumers’ acceptance of OGS. We have tested the proposed research model on 455 survey participants living in various cities of Turkey. Structural equation modeling is employed to test the eleven research hypotheses. The results indicate that perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and attitude are valid predictors of OGS acceptance. Besides, the fear of COVID-19 negatively moderates these relationships. By revealing these empirical results, this study provides some useful insights into our understanding of the acceptance mechanisms of OGS processes in a pandemic situation. We hope to pinpoint the underlying reasons for the vast expansion of OGS among Turkish customers in pandemic times.

The geographical location of Ukraine provides a multitude of possibilities for successful investment activity. There are rich natural resources, a fertile soil and a qualified low-cost labour force. On the other hand, investors have to deal with historical ties to the Soviet Union, corruption, and political instability exacerbated by occupation of part of the territory by Russia. This paper deals with the possibility of identifying the investment attractiveness of the particular sectors in Ukraine by the level of concentration measured by the Herfindahl-Hirschman index. Accounting data of companies taken from the Orbis database are evaluated by ABC analysis and the general linear model. The results point to significant dependency of variables representing investment attractiveness on the Herfindahl-Hirschman index, where deviations are explained by sectoral specifics.

Value-based pricing (VBP) is often considered the most profitable pricing method. However, VBP is rarely implemented by companies. This research study asks the question Why? and investigates the obstacles to an implementation of VBP. The objectives of this paper are to provide an assessment of customer-based obstacles to implement VBP in four different German industries and to evaluate the degree of company-based obstacles by industry. For that purpose, 792 consumer questionnaires were collected and 20 expert interviews were conducted. The results show that the technology industry is the German industry with the lowest obstacles, while the pharmaceutical industry experiences the strongest obstacles. The degree of obstacles varies significantly by industry. This study contributes to theory by taking both a customer perspective and a business perspective towards VBP while identifying the degree of the obstacles to implement VBP by industry. This paper allows future researchers and business practitioners to assess the industry-specific obstacles and take appropriate measures to overcome them.

This research investigates factors influencing domestic energy demand among rural households. Data were collected from 260 randomly sampled household heads in the study area. Descriptive statistics, ANOVA, and Tobit regression were used for the analysis. Tobit regression results revealed that gender, household size, income, occupation, farm size, and per capita expenditure were significant in influencing the use of fuelwood; age, gender, household size, occupation, education, and per capita expenditure for charcoal, while age, marital status, income, education and per capita expenditure were significant determinants in the use of kerosene. Also, income, occupation, and per capita expenditure were the factors influencing the use of electricity among rural households in the study area. The study concluded that apart from income, other household variables were significant in determining energy usage. The study, therefore, recommended that government and stakeholders should develop policies that will promote the use of safe, reliable, and clean energy sources in order to reduce the negative environmental consequences while also enhancing human life quality.

The use of digital technologies for state-relevant institutions, government organisations and administrations has grown steadily in recent decades. Therefore, the question arises whether the mastery of these technologies has an influence on a state’s ability to act and whether state sovereignty is affected. In the European Union, the concept of digital sovereignty of states is being intensively discussed. However, it is unclear what exactly is meant by the term digital sovereignty and how it can be defined. The research gap is the lack of a clear qualitative and quantitative definition of that term, so that the goal of the article is to provide an overview of a qualitative definition. That is the basis for a quantiative model. To achive that goal a hierarchical component model is developed for concretisation. Furthermore, the components are decomposed into sub-components, each of which is then quantified by suitable metric parameters, which are populated from secondary data sources for states and subjected to selected quantitative analyses. To verify and validate whether the component model and the parameters are suitable and robust for measuring digital sovereignty, a comparative index is formed and compared with existing indices.

This study investigates the impact of agricultural financing and agricultural output growth on employment generation in Nigeria from 1981 to 2017. The study adopts the framework of the Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) Model for analysis. The empirical results show that while agricultural financing increases employment generation in both the short run and long run, the lag of agricultural output growth increases employment generation mainly in the short run. Other variables found to have significant effect on employment generation were price and agricultural output while labor force population, wages and aggregate expenditure were insignificant. The study concludes that policy makers should endeavor to see that every fund allocated for a specific agricultural schemes and interventions should be fully utilized for its purpose. To increase employment opportunities, there should be careful monitoring of the implementation of each scheme and policy to realize their specific objectives.

Renewable power generation, especially wind power and solar power, is experiencing a strong expansion worldwide and especially in Germany. With high shares of these methods of power generation, energy storage is needed to enable a demand-oriented power supply even with weather-related fluctuations in generation. Against the background of a power supply based entirely on wind and solar power, the question arises as to what total costs arise with the inclusion of storage systems, which is the subject of this article. The calculation model uses hourly resolved real data of German electricity generation from the years 2012 to 2018 to determine the required storage capacities. The electricity generation costs used range between 0.02 and 0.10 EUR/kW/h. The costs for the considered energy storages are calculated based on the Levelised Cost of Storage (LCOS) metric. It is concluded that in an electricity supply system based on wind and solar power, it is not the electricity generation that causes the greatest costs, but the storage. With electricity generation costs of 0.06 EUR/kW/h, the total system costs are in a range of 0.19 to 0.28 EUR/kW/h. This means that, in terms of costs, energy storage is more significant than electricity generation.

This study aims to prove the factors that affect learning outcomes achievement of management accounting courses. The sample is accounting students at four major universities in East Java, Indonesia. The questionnaire was filled out using a Google form, and the number of samples was 417 respondents. Hypothesis testing using partial least squares. Nine hypotheses were tested with gender as a moderating variable. Performance expectations and effort affect student intensity and subsequently affect active participation. Changes in facilitation conditions and the level of participation affect the achievement of learning outcomes. Different from prediction, gender was not shown to be a moderating variable.

This paper closely examines how selected macroeconomic variables affect income in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The study employs a more recent dataset and uses fixed and random effects models to characterise the nature and direction of impact evidenced from the data. The analysis further incorporates a monetary policy element by introducing money market interest rate and examining its effects. In general, the paper reveals that income in SSA is significantly affected by trade. Additionally, money market interest rate is found to have no major impact on income as may be perceived, suggesting that this aspect of monetary policy has not played a major role in affecting income levels in SSA. The findings of this study can serve as a guide for policy makers within the region when considering policy actions in relation to income.

The paper investigates the relationship between short selling activities of stocks on the volatility of the US market and its sectors. We apply the multivariate DCC GARCH Model on the NYSE US 100 Index between November 2017 and October 2018. We find evidence that investments in some specific firms on the market reduce the market volatility and higher short selling activities reduce risk in the market. The study also finds that firms in the financial sector dominate the market and short selling activities in this sector has a greater impact on the market volatility. We also find portfolio managers to be better off investing in the market than creating portfolio within sectors.

This article is focused on the differences in the brand equity of the streaming service Netflix before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Czech Republic. Brand equity is measured by a specially modified conceptual model. Based on a two-wave questionnaire survey, the possible impact of the pandemic on the dimension of the conceptual model was examined. The results showed that there was no statistically significant change in the level of brand equity but there was a change in its structure. It was also found that although the number of people who tried Netflix’s services increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, they did not become long-term users.