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With rapidly increasing globalization, business students are required to understand complex global markets and adapt to the rapid changes in the global landscape. This paper discusses a project where students from International Marketing courses in Pakistan, the United States, and France used an interactive platform as a base to jointly explore the marketing of brand-name products across the three countries to better understand the realities of global marketing strategies. The results are discussed as are the difficulties and the recommendations for future projects. (Contains 6 tables.)

This study investigates the applicability of the technology acceptance model (TAM) for understanding consumer adoption of e-shopping within a developing country. Online surveys with Pakistani college students were conducted. Multiple linear regression revealed that perceived ease of use, trust, perceived usefulness, and shopping experience influence consumers' attitudes toward e-shopping, emphasizing the applicability of TAM. This study further expands the TAM by incorporating trust in terms of country image, showing that trust has the most significant impact on the intention to purchase from a particular country. Moreover, the levels of trust vary most significantly between these countries, whereby Pakistani consumers are most likely to trust websites originating in developed countries, compared to those from developing countries, and trust websites belonging to their own country the least. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Understanding consumer's preferences in the development and marketing of date syrup is crucial for developing its global market. Limited studies have attempted to understand the issues related to consumer's preferences for date syrup, even though such understandings are essentials for its effective marketing as a promising alternative natural syrup. The present study was therefore conducted to investigate the sensory properties, purchase attributes, and usages of date-syrup among the consumers in Pakistan. Design, Methodology, and Approach: A total of 135 consumers, comprising students, faculty, and staff from three different universities in Pakistan, participated in this study. The study questionnaire included sensory tests, rank order of brands tests, and rating of purchase-related attribute tests to evaluate the consumer preferences for date-syrup. Findings and Implications: The results showed that consumers prefer a great taste, least sweet, least thick, smoothest, most soluble, medium dark in color, and mouthfeel date syrup. Additionally, a reasonable price, good packaging, and no added sugar were the purchase-important attributes of date syrup. The purchase attributes did not differ across varying demographics. These findings indicate that the enterprises striving to promote date syrup as an alternative sweetener should pay greater attention to customer-preferred sensory properties, usages, and purchase-related attributes. Conclusion: This is the first study that evaluated the consumer's preferences for date syrup in Pakistan. The results suggest that consumers prefer the great taste, smoothness, reasonable price, good packaging, and no added sugar as purchase-important attributes for date syrup. Therefore, enterprises promoting the use of date syrup as an alternate sweetener must concentrate on these aspects for its effective marketing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Islam plays a powerful symbolic and cultural role in the constitution of consumer preferences, especially in Muslim countries. To quantitatively study this role in the consumption patterns of Muslim consumers we need a suitable scale for religiosity. However, the existing scales of religiosity have been developed primarily for Christian/Jewish respondents and cannot provide valid results for Muslim consumers. This study aims to address these challenges by re-conceptualizing the religiosity construct for Muslims and conducting an exploratory study to generate an initial scale. Design/methodology/approach: This paper initialized the scale development exercise with a systematic review of the existing Islamic literature to ensure that we use Islamic categories to build the scale. Once the authors had a large pool of items, they consulted experts on Shariah (Islamic law) to evaluate these items for clarity, face and content validity. Next, they conducted five focus groups to (a) determine if they had covered the full terrain of Muslim religiosity; (b) identify if the items correspond with the actual experiences of the target respondents; and (c) ensure linguistic compatibility. This was followed by administering an exploratory survey designed to test psychometric properties of the new scale and to analyze the underlying dimensionality of the inventory of items. Findings: To extract a manageable number of latent dimensions in the survey data, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) procedure was conducted. This resulted in the extraction of five different factors which were named as Mu'amalat_societal ethics, Roshan Khayali (enlightened moderation), Ibadaat (prayers), Mu'amalat_societal laws, Azeemat (a state exhibiting scrupulous faithfulness) and Mu'amalat_business dealings. There is a divide between Ibadaat (individual and collective worship) and Muamlaat (social relations) that emerged in the data from the cluster analysis procedure. Originality/value: Religion can be an important part of decision-making of a typical consumer. This paper proposes a new scale for Muslims to tap into their religiosity, as existing scales are not embedded in the Islamic literature. This study also distinguishes Muslim religiosity from its Western counterpart and thus helps in clarifying the Muslim religiosity construct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents a citation‐based systematic literature review on banking sector performance, particularly in terms of profitability, productivity, and efficiency. Specifically, the study aims to identify the leading sources of knowledge in terms of the most influential journals, authors, and papers. The paper presents a content analysis of the 100 most cited papers. In total, 1996 peer‐review papers were found relevant in the Scopus database by using a comprehensive list of keywords. The results show that the Journal of Banking & Finance appears to be the leading journal in terms of publication count and citations. Based on total citations, Allen Berger is the most prolific author. The most cited paper is "Problem loans and cost efficiency in commercial banks" by Allan Berger and Robert DeYoung. The content analysis of the top 100 papers identifies five essential themes: determinants of efficiency, methodology, ownership, financial crises, and scale economies. In terms of estimation approaches, 74% of papers employed frontier analysis, which includes 34% parametric and 40% nonparametric methods, and remaining 26% have used financial ratio analysis. Additionally, stochastic frontier and data envelopment analysis are widely used in parametric and nonparametric methods, respectively. An intermediate approach is extensively adopted for the specification of inputs and outputs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the literature on human resource management and its impact on organization performance. It traces evolution of research methodologies across geographical regions and timeframe. A total of 187 articles have been examined using systematic literature review. The paper analyses developments in research design choices such as data collection method, sample size, respondent type, unit of analysis, time horizon, statistical techniques, country of data collection, reliability and validity, etc. The results suggest that the field is characterized by empirical quantitative studies and triangulation is seen mainly in statistical analysis. The interest of North American researchers has declined whereas Asia has displayed considerable enthusiasm in recent years. The collaborations between regions are few and there are synergies to be explored in joint studies. The study concludes that research methodologies in the field are too narrow and it is an important concern if progress is to be made in the development of research. It acknowledges that a wider perspective in terms of research design is needed to achieve further advancement in the field. It is suggested that future researchers, especially in North America, amalgamate methodological rigor with a qualitative approach [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Research is based on a systematic literature review on evolution and development of organisational commitment methodologies and the changing trends of publications in organisational commitment literature in two different time periods, across various regions. A total of 242 empirical quantitative and mixed method articles published between 1978-2016 have been reviewed and analysed based on the research methodologies employed i.e. research design, sampling methods, data collection method, sample size, respondent industries, respondent country, respondent categories and statistical procedures across two different time periods. The publication trends are discussed in terms of most productive authors, top journals, authorship type, collaboration and most productive universities across different regions. An effort is made to bridge the gaps of previous works and identify future opportunities for research on commitment. There is a lack of systematic in depth literature on organisational commitment. The current study is a comprehensive integrative review of OC methodologies in use and the publication trends with the use of advanced cross tabs, based on a larger sample size, a greater time span(38 years) and a larger number of journals relative to the previous works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]