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This study examines consumers’ usage intention towards retail metaverse banking. This research also investigated the mediating impact of trust and distrust. This research also examined the moderating impact of perceived security concerns.

Firstly, a qualitative study is performed to explore the benefits and sacrifices that may influence usage intention. Further, the quantitative study gathered a total of 308 responses to investigate the proposed hypotheses.

The findings suggest that perceived anthropomorphism and perceived immersion positively impact the usage intention towards retail metaverse banking. Further, lack of social interaction and perceived vulnerability had a negative influence towards retail metaverse banking. Further, trust and distrust were found to be significant mediators. Also, perceived security concern was shown to be a significant moderator.

The study contributes to the metaverse literature and suggests to banks how to enhance usage intention towards retail metaverse banking. The study also enriches the literature on dual-factor theory.

This study investigates organizations' non-adoption intention towards the enterprise metaverse. The innovation resistance theory (IRT) is used as an underpinning theory to examine the impact of various risks on non-adoption intention towards the enterprise metaverse.

A total of 294 responses were collected to examine the proposed hypotheses. A structural equation modelling technique was used to investigate the hypotheses using SPSS AMOS and PROCESS MACRO.

The results of this study reveal that performance, security and psychological risks are significantly associated with non-adoption intention towards enterprise metaverse. Further, distrust significantly meditates the association between performance risk, social risk, technological dependence risk, security risk and psychological risk and non-adoption intention towards enterprise metaverse. Moreover, the results of moderated-mediation hypotheses indicate that the mediating effect of distrust on the association among performance risk, social risk, psychological risk and non-adoption intention towards enterprise metaverse is higher for individuals having high technostress compared to individuals having low technostress.

The study's findings will enrich the metaverse literature. Further, it provides a deeper understanding of enterprise metaverse adoption from a B2B perspective using the underpinnings of IRT. The study helps organizations understand the risks associated with the adoption of the enterprise metaverse.

This study aims to examine the effect of usage, value, tradition, risk, compatibility and complexity barriers on user resistance to mobile bookkeeping applications. Furthermore, it also explores how the relationship between these barriers and user resistance is mediated by technostress. Finally, the authors analysed the moderating impact of self-efficacy on the mediating effect of technostress between barriers and user resistance.

Structured questionnaires were used to obtain data from 325 respondents. A structural equation modelling technique was used to investigate the hypotheses.

The findings suggest that usage, risk and tradition barrier has a significantly positive effect on user resistance intention. Also, results suggested that technostress plays an important role in framing customers’ resistance intention. Finally, the mediation effect of technostress between risk barrier and user resistance is higher for users having low levels of self-efficacy compared with users with high levels of self-efficacy.

The present research enriches the existing literature, especially in the field of mobile bookkeeping applications, user resistance, technostress and innovation resistance theory. It would help bookkeeping application developers design their apps, keeping the major user barriers in mind.

This study aims to investigate the impact of information and communication technology (ICT) investment on the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) profitability in the Indian context.

This study used a framework based on the ICT investment and firm size, measuring the impact on profit before depreciation, interest, tax and amortisation of MSME by taking a random sampling of 300 Indian MSME manufacturing firm’s secondary data from the Prowess database. This framework was analysed using the design of experiment (DoE) technique.

The study showed that ICT investment has a significant positive relationship with profitability. This study examines the different ICT investment levels to predict investment strategies and fine-tune profit targets. The critical finding is that ICT investment maximises profit at one million rupees. This discovery aids MSME leaders’ sustainable business decision-making.

This study has an explicit limit to the Indian context, where the firm requirements of countries are different, and these findings need to be validated with many operating variables and applied to more firms with more data. Even so, as a theoretical implication, this study took a novel approach to ICT adoption (through ICT investment) in the Indian MSME sector with guiding levels of ICT investment for each type of firm (i.e. micro, small and medium). This study opens new avenues for investigating researchers and stakeholders by exploring other factors responsible for ICT adoption.

This study uniquely provides practitioners with the functional level of ICT investment for MSMEs in the Indian context. These finding guides top management to make strategic ICT adoption decisions with information symmetry. At the same time, these findings suggest financial institutions astern their credit programme to provide credit for ICT investment in MSMEs.

This study highlights the value of ICT as a practical resource for business owners that significantly makes MSMEs more informed and profitable, thus creating more jobs and incrementing the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).

This study offers unique empirical findings on how decision makers in MSMEs maximise profits through optimal ICT investment levels depending upon the firm size in an emerging economy like India. There is evidence in the study to conclude that ICT is a need of MSME and has implications for firm performance.

After completing the case, students should be able to understand: the importance and uniqueness of the individual market and developing a suitable marketing strategy. The concept of value creation and learn the importance of developing the right value proposition to compete and succeed in a market. The target audience and how to create the right marketing mix. Competition in a digital landscape and the importance of developing an appropriate strategy to counter its rivals and position the brand effectively.

During his visit to India in December 2019, Netflix’s founder and chief executive officer Reed Hastings talked about a series of steps the company had taken in the recent past to successfully face stiff competition and move towards achieving its stated target of 100 million viewers. These steps involved significant changes in their marketing mix such as reworking their pricing, developing a rich portfolio of Indian content and building various partnerships. Since Netflix’s launch in India (December 2016), it faced fierce competition from players such as Hotstar and Amazon Prime, both of whom had developed a rich portfolio of Indian content and adopted a very aggressive pricing strategy thus, making these changes essential. At the time of their launch, Netflix had set a very ambitious target of gaining 100 million viewers within five years (by 2021) while adopting a premium pricing strategy and positioning themselves uniquely based on their international content. They quickly learned that they would have to reevaluate their approach if they wanted to achieve their target on time. The changes announced by Hastings were an effort in that direction. The moot question was whether these steps would help Netflix India reach its goal. This challenge was further compounded by an almost 40% hike in data tariffs by three major wireless carriers considering most Indians watched over-the-top media content on their mobile phones.

The case is designed for undergraduates, as well as for fundamental marketing courses in the Master of Business Administration and other graduate level programmes. It can be taught in the Principles of Marketing, Marketing Strategy and International Marketing courses. It is ideal for topics such as understanding the operation of a digital business in a new market, customer value creation and value drivers, brand and brand positioning, product promotion, strategies for business growth and expansion, fighting competition in a digital landscape.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing.

Irrigation facility has been identified by many researchers as one of the essential institutional factors in agriculture sector of any country, including India. Furthermore, its importance has also been admitted in the agro-productions in any provinces, districts and blocks. The equitable distribution of such facilities may lead to equitable distributions in the productivity of land for different crop productions. Under this milieu, this chapter intends to examine the trends in the different types of paddy production and irrigational facilities in the Paschim Medinipur District of West Bengal State in India and tries to correlate whether disparities in paddy production are associated with disparities in the distribution of irrigational facilities. The results show positive association between the two and prescribe inclusive arrangements of irrigational facilities to all the blocks in the district to have long-term solutions.

State-owned enterprises (SOEs) are essential tools to further policy objectives across the world. However, in the past few decades, heated debates on the performance of SOEs vis-à-vis private sector enterprises have surfaced. In India, SOEs have long played an important role in the economy and only recently have undergone the trend of privatization. The purpose of this paper is to analyze existing research and to conclude whether private enterprises perform better than SOEs.

A review of available literature on performance comparisons of public and private sector enterprises is carried out, and differences between public and private enterprises are studied. Finally, theoretical propositions on the differences in objectives of public and private enterprises in the Indian context are enumerated. Three propositions are tested using data on Indian SOEs available in the public domain.

Performance comparisons of public and private enterprises have focused merely on technical productivity or financial aspects and have thus left out the wide scope of social, economic and political objectives of SOEs. Literature on the nature of SOEs indicates that there are certain fundamental differences in the objectives of public and private sector enterprises. Further, the basic theoretical assumptions tested have been found to be, prima facie, valid in the Indian context. The paper thus establishes a case for further research to develop a comprehensive technique for the comparison of public and private sector enterprises in the Indian context.

Extant research on the subject of comparing public and private entries has limited itself to technoeconomic considerations and has not taken into account the different objectives/nature of these enterprises. The study established a case for diverging from the present discourse privatization and private sector supremacy. The same could have far-reaching consequences for policymakers, especially in developing countries.

This paper examines Aman Ullah’s contributions to robust inference, finite sample econometrics, nonparametrics and semiparametrics, and panel and spatial models. His early works on robust inference and finite sample theory were mostly motivated by his thesis advisor, Professor Anirudh Lal Nagar. They eventually led to his most original rethinking of many statistics and econometrics models that developed into the monograph Finite Sample Econometrics published in 2004. His desire to relax distributional and functional-form assumptions lead him in the direction of nonparametric estimation and he summarized his views in his most influential textbook Nonparametric Econometrics (with Adrian Pagan) published in 1999 that has influenced a whole generation of econometricians. His innovative contributions in the areas of seemingly unrelated regressions, parametric, semiparametric and nonparametric panel data models, and spatial models have also inspired a larger literature on nonparametric and semiparametric estimation and inference and spurred on research in robust estimation and inference in these and related areas.

This paper aims to evaluate the adherence of media reports of suicide published in vernacular language newspapers against the World Health Organization guidelines.

The authors performed a content analysis of all suicide-related news reports published in the seven most widely circulated vernacular newspapers of Maharashtra. News reports published from April 2020 to May 2020 were included.

Among the 355 retrieved suicide reports, 39.2% reports were placed at a prominent position of the newspaper, 92.8% mentioned the name of a person, 93.8% mentioned the method of suicide, while 56.0% reported monocausal explanations for suicide. In contrast, 20.8% of news reports acknowledged a link with mental health disorders, while 0.3% news reports provided information about suicide prevention programs, and 0.8% mentioned suicide-related statistics.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to report content analysis of suicide reports from Maharashtra state, which is one of the most developed states in India and has high rates of youth and farmer suicides.