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The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of celebrity endorsers on consumer advocacy, customization and entertainment intentions based on the notion of the stimulus–organism–response (SOR) framework. In addition, this study aims to examine the mediating and moderating role of customization and entertainment intentions on the proposed relationships. The authors also intend to highlight the comparative effects between male and female young social media consumers on those proposed associations.

In the pursuit of comprehensive and rigorous data collection, this study adopted a quantitative methodology using a meticulously crafted questionnaire. The questionnaire survey was conducted in major cities of Malaysia using the convenience and snowball sampling techniques. A total of 576 responses were collected, even though 549 retorts were used for data analysis. In this investigation, the authors strategically used covariance-based structural equation modeling through the use of AMOS v. 24 as the primary data analysis tool. Augmenting the analytical depth, the authors also conducted a supplementary bootstrap analysis. The additional layers of examination were crucial for appraising the mediating and moderating effects inherent within the model, in which the PROCESS MACRO v.4.20 was used.

The results of this study revealed the significant direct positive effects of celebrity endorsers on consumer customization, entertainment and advocacy intentions. Consumer customization and entertainment intentions also found significant direct affirmative effects on consumer advocacy intention, along with the significant direct positive effects of consumer entertainment intention on consumer customization intention. The results further revealed that consumer customization and entertainment intentions cannot mediate the relationship between celebrity endorsers and advocacy intention. The entertainment intention also declined the mediating effects between celebrity endorsers and consumer customization intention. On the contrary, consumer customization intention significantly and positively, and entertainment intention also significantly but negatively, moderate the association between celebrity endorsers and consumer advocacy intention. This study also illustrates that the effects of those examined relationships differ between male and female young social media consumers.

This study investigates the impact of celebrity endorsers on consumer behavior, focusing on their customization, entertainment and advocacy intentions. It extends current SOR framework, enhances source credibility theory, fills gaps in the literature on social media brand engagement and underscores the significance of customization and entertainment intentions. The findings provide insights for managers aiming to harness consumer brand advocacy through celebrity endorsers effectively.

This study aims to identify the factors that influence customer satisfaction in the banking sector from the perspective of employee characteristics. More specifically, this study identifies the impact of employee etiquettes, employee performance, technical selling skills and customer-oriented behavior on customer satisfaction in the banking industry. The study also seeks to investigate the mediating effect of employee etiquettes, employee performance and technical selling skills on the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer-oriented behavior.

The data were collected with the help of a Likert scale questionnaire from the active banking customers in Karachi, Pakistan, who visit bank branches once a month minimum. For 268 responses, partial least square-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique was employed for hypothesis testing.

The results showed a positive and significant relationship between customer-oriented behavior and employee etiquettes, technical selling skills and performance. The employee’s customer-oriented behavior, etiquettes, technical selling skills and performance were also found to be significantly related with customer satisfaction. Finally, the results revealed that technical selling skills, employee performance and employee etiquettes partially mediate the relationship between customer-oriented behavior and customer satisfaction.

It is recommended that banking employees should adopt customer-oriented behavior in order to achieve and maintain customer satisfaction. The bank managers should also work on improving the etiquettes and performance of the employees and provide them detailed technical knowledge of the services and products offered by the bank.

Arguably, it is one of the first studies to examine the mediating effects of employees' technical selling skills and employees' performance on the relationship between customer orientation and customer satisfaction, specifically in the banking industry.

To better understand continuities and changes in consumer behaviour, it is also important to examine the original antecedents of unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2 (UTAUT2). Studying Generation Y is crucial for developing competitive online marketing strategies, as Generation Y plays a substantial role in online purchases. Therefore, this study aims to examine the actual use of small business websites based on the UTAUT2 among Generation Y.

A total of 375 valid questionnaires were collected via a systematic sampling among Generation Y in Canada. All participants in the study had at least a high school education, were internet and computer literate, and had purchased a good/service from the retail websites of Canadian small businesses.

The results show performance expectancy, hedonic motivation, social influence and habit have significant effects on behavioural intentions. The habit and behavioural intentions also have significant effects on actual usage of small businesses’ retail websites. Additionally, this study supported the significant difference between male and female UTAUT2 models.

The study examines how small retail businesses can attract and retain Generation Y customers by improving their website’s performance. Performance expectancy, hedonic motivation and social influence are significant factors in determining behavioral intention. Small businesses can enhance their website usability, design and content to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. Hedonic motivation is crucial for Generation Y customers, who seek pleasure and excitement when visiting websites. Social influence is crucial for male customers, whereas performance expectancy, hedonic motivation and habit are more important for female customers. The study also suggests that Canadian governments should encourage online purchasing to increase the usage of small retail business websites.

This study provided few valuable insights into small businesses’ retail websites behavioural intentions and actual usage between males and females in Canada.

The purpose of this study is to explore the comparative effects of mainstream celebrities and social media influencers on consumer advocacy and relationship intentions. The study also examines the direct and serial mediation effects on those relationships.

The survey questionnaire was used to collect data from 718 respondents throughout Malaysia, with convenience and snowball sampling techniques employed. The data were analyzed based on the structural equation modeling (SEM) approach through the AMOS version 24. The PROCESS MACRO v-4.20 was applied to evaluate mediating effects in the model.

The results reveal that celebrity endorsers' involvement in social media significantly influences the uses of social media, which also impacts the attitudes and, subsequently, consumer relationship and advocacy intentions. The study found that mainstream celebrities and social media influencers effectively promote brands, and it discovered insignificant differences in their effects on the analyzed relationships.

This study has been conducted on consumers in Malaysia; it may have different effects on consumers in other countries.

Brand managers and policymakers may benefit from following the study's guidelines for making consumer relationship and advocacy intentions by celebrity endorsers and uses of social media.

The brand community can benefit from tightening their social bondage by sharing and managing crucial information from celebrities and using social media.

The study explores the effects of mainstream celebrities on consumer relationship and advocacy intentions using social media networks and managing consumer attitudes.

Due to the incredible criticisms by scholars of the excessive use of social media networks, this study aims to explore students’ motivation for social media use (SMU) and its effects on academic performance (AP) in the light of uses and gratification theory.

Using the simple random and snowball sampling techniques, this study has considered 299 responses and critically analyzed them using structural equation modeling through the AMOS version 24. The mediation analysis has been done to explore the effective use of social media networks.

The results reveal that video clip watching and nonacademic learning intentions significantly influence SMU and AP. Besides, socialization through friends and family connections has tremendously fostered SMU intention, while it could not benefit AP. This study found an exceptional result that the entertainment intention of the students did not influence SMU but dramatically impacted their AP. Again, SMU has robust effects on enhancing students’ academic achievement. This study also concluded the results of the mediation analysis.

The learners, professionals, higher education policymakers, etc. may benefit from following this study's guidelines for using social media networks.

This study may tremendously contribute to changing the mindset of youth from addiction to SMU and improving AP.

The prime novelty of this study is to justify the mediation analysis for SMU to explore whether it can truly influence students’ AP and critically examine the deep insight of certain factors associated with SMU.

Consumer brand familiarity influences product judgment and the purchase decision. This study aims to examine consumer familiarity towards local and foreign chocolate brands and how it is related to brands' country of origin and their consumption level.

The methodology was convenience sampling collected from a 100‐student sample.

The findings indicate that a chocolate brand's country of origin is related to a young consumer's chocolate brand familiarity level. Other than that, the finding demonstrate that the consumer's chocolate brand familiarity level is positively related to their consumption level.

This study has implications for marketers, where they need to take account of the effects of a brand's country of origin, gender and consumption level on brand familiarity in designing marketing strategies.

This study help market practitioners to design market strategies that involve a brand's country of origin information, especially when targeting young consumers.

Consumers are becoming increasingly concerned about ecological degradation and are getting conscious of the potential advantages that environmental sustainability can offer, which is also driving them towards the consumption of green products. In view of this, the purpose of this study is to operationalize and test the conceptual model of green purchasing behaviour by incorporating consumers’ perception towards green marketing stimuli including eco-label, eco-brand and environmental advertisements with perceived environmental knowledge in an emerging sustainable market.

The proposed model is based on an integrative and cognitive approach to consumers’ environmental beliefs-behaviour relationship. The 549 valid responses were received from selected metropolitan regions of India and analysed by direct path coefficients along with a bootstrapping method for testing indirect effects.

The results revealed that perception of eco-label and environmental advertisements had a positive influence on green purchasing behaviour, however, the direct relationships of eco-brand and environmental knowledge were not supported in the model. While environmental advertisements and environmental knowledge posed an indirect influence on green purchasing to some extent.

The generalizability of the findings needs to augment an extensive approach of a cross-sectional survey. Theoretical, managerial and policy implications were recommended to promote green products towards sustainable consumption.

The operationalization of green purchasing behaviour using marketing stimuli has remained scant in the Indian setting. The insights gained from this study contributes to the knowledge domain of green consumer psychology in the backdrop of an emerging market.

This paper aims to highlight the effect of mobile commerce (m-commerce) ubiquity on usage behavior as well as the mediator mechanism of brand trust between ubiquity and usage behavior. To extend the findings, this research also examines the moderator role of product reputation on the nexus between brand trust and usage behavior in the m-commerce context.

Given the quantitative approach, the authors gathered 1,565 valid responses from m-commerce app users. Data were analyzed in SmartPLS 4.

Ubiquity positively impacted brand trust, and the latter positively influenced m-commerce usage behavior. Brand trust also partially mediated the effect of m-commerce ubiquity on usage behavior, along with product reputation moderating the positive effect of brand trust on usage behavior.

By combining resource-based theory with signaling theory in the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) framework, this paper's novelty focuses on the investigation of m-commerce ubiquity, brand trust as a mediating mechanism and product reputation as a moderator in explaining usage behavior in the m-commerce context.

The purpose of this study is to learn how the incorporation and use of leanness, agility and innovation in Indian manufacturing micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) affect their bottom lines and how much these factors contribute to the MSMEs’ ability to meet their long-term sustainability goals.

The suggested model was subjected to data validation and additional empirical validation using a sample of 411 Indian manufacturing MSMEs. The analysis of construct measures is conducted through the utilization of confirmatory factor analysis, a statistical technique that is grounded in the theoretical framework of structural equation modeling (SEM). In addition, path model analysis was applied for the purpose to validate the assumptions that were included in the structural models.

Consistent with the proposed model, the findings of this study demonstrate that leanness, agility and innovation have a substantial favorable impact on the sustainability of a company’s performance. These findings may be helpful in gaining professionals, academics and policymakers to acknowledge the significance of leanness, agility and innovation in enhancing the long-term sustainability of MSMEs and enhancing the overall performance of a particular company. This research excluded the service industries-based research papers.

Many research in the field of manufacturing industries that have adopted leanness, agility, innovativeness and sustainability as individual approaches or as a collective methodology of two or more were considered in the current study. This research excluded the service industries-based research papers.

This literature review has recognized and analyzed various dimensions and roles of leanness, agility, innovativeness and sustainability that are prevalent in manufacturing industries that include the positive and negative effects on the performance of the industries. The research enlightens the path and shows future directions for research to develop efficient, effective and sustainable manufacturing industries.

By promoting the concept of focusing on the “human factor”, namely, stakeholder perspectives, the MSME sector is propagating a strategy that moves away from an excessive focus on technology and toward a more humane one. Through the application of the three key concepts of leanness, agility and innovation, this work aims to create a framework for measuring the sustainability performance of micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), with the ultimate goal of assisting the country in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals in the fields of industry, innovation and infrastructure by supporting environmentally friendly and resource-conserving businesses that give back to society and the natural environment.

The objective of this research is to assess the importance and effectiveness of integrating various approaches such as leanness, agility, innovativeness and sustainability within the framework of manufacturing micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs). The authors hope that by going further into these concepts, they will be able to broaden their understanding and get a more comprehensive insight into the role that these concepts play and how they might be successfully used within this environment.

Given the increasing volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, egalitarian ecosystems may play an important role to establish equality among various stakeholders. With this idea, the study aimed to understand conflicts and challenges in creating an egalitarian ecosystem in the application-based cab aggregator (ABCA) market.

Narratives of various stakeholders involved in the ABCA business were collected. The study involved narrations from direct and indirect stakeholders up to saturation till common themes were found. Grounded theory methodology using constant comparison was explored to interpret the results. After the results were obtained, root cause analysis was undertaken using the why–why methodology to understand ground-level reality.

In total, 13 major issues were identified using grounded theory for narrative analysis that cab aggregator companies, driver-partners, and riders faced. The stakeholders' inability in the ecosystem to see each other's problems could be accorded to their self-interest, rational boundedness and asymmetric information. These findings collude with Banaji et al. (2004) and Chugh et al. (2005).

This study explained each stakeholder's perspectives about their counterparts that influence non-egalitarianism. The study further suggested possible areas for solving the issues and promoting cooperation.