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This study aims at identifying the impact factors of social media marketing on the buying behaviors’ of superstore customers in Bangladesh. Altogether, 291 buyers were surveyed from five superstores of Bangladesh such as, Agora, Meena Bazar, Shwapno, Almas Super Shop, and Nandan. A structured questionnaire with five points Likert scale was used to survey the customers. Descriptive statistics were used to present the profiles of the respondent customers while inferential statistics like Factor Analysis was used to identify the impact factors and Multiple Regression Analysis was used o identify the relationships between the impact factors and the overall impact on purchase decision of the customers. Study identified four significant impact factors such as, quick searching and verification of authenticity of product information, easy to order and saving time, customers addiction to media buying, and awareness of innovative and new products that induce the superstore customers to make their purchase decisions. This study suggests that the policymakers should focus on authenticity of product information, easy to order system that saves time, publicity of innovative and variety of products, and customer addicted towards media marketing for making the customers inclined towards buying the products and services from superstores of Bangladesh.

Development of women entrepreneurship in the SME sector has a crucial importance in a developing country like Bangladesh where women constitute half of the total population. The majority of them are underprivileged, under nourished, illiterate and poor. Hence, the development of women entrepreneurship has tremendous potentials for transforming the society through socioeconomic empowerment of the women. This potential is remained untapped in Bangladesh because of lower number of women entrepreneurs in business and economic activities. According to the Bangladesh Economic Review 2009, around six percent of the country’s $90 billion economy comes from SMEs, which is also the largest sector in terms of employment generation. But the women entrepreneurs are less than ten percent of the total entrepreneurs of the country. However, in the recent years, women entrepreneurship in small retail businesses of the country has been increasing which is a good sign for the positive growth of the economy.

Telecom industry is a booming industry in Bangladesh. This industry has seen a tremendous growth in mobile penetration that has exceeded all expectations with over 154 million subscribers as of August 2018 versus only 4 million in 2004. To ensure sustainable growth of this large industry, the organizations have to recruit and retain their intellectual resources. In this age of highly volatile business environment, telecom companies of Bangladesh are continuously exposed by the job changing attitude of their valued employees. The employees are prone to switch their jobs to make their career advancements rather than focusing on the fundamental development of their organizations. They leave organizations for numerous reasons ranging from financial to personal ambition and in some case supervisor’s behavior, organizational culture and the working environment. Hence, this paper aims at identifying the significant factors that influence employee turnover in telecom industry of Bangladesh. The purpose of the study is to identify the factors that lead to employee turnover in these organizations. To conduct this research, 206 telecom employees at different levels were selected from three largest telecom companies of Bangladesh and interviewed. The sampled companies are: Grameen Phone Ltd, Robi Axiata Ltd, Banglalink Digital Communications Ltd. A structured questionnaire was used to collect primary information which was scored according to the liker-scale. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used in analyzing data collected from survey. Multivariate analysis technique like factor analysis was performed to identify the factors of the turnover intention of the telecom employees in Bangladesh. Multiple regressions were run to identify the relationships between the factors identified and the overall turnover intention of the employees in this sector. The results show that there are seven factors concerning the turnover intension of the telecom sector industry of Bangladesh. The factors are: dishonesty and conflict with the supervisor, fulfillment of personal demand and promotion, supervisor change induces job switch, unfair performance influence turnover, alternative employee affects turnover, geographic location affects turnover decision, and fringe benefits help staying in the company.

Bangladesh is a densely populated country of the world. More than 170 million people live in this country. Mobile banking is a very important and new phenomenon in Bangladesh. In recent years, mobile banking has got highest importance by the customers in the country as it provides immense scope for consumers for banking transactions at any time with the option to access bank’s facilities anywhere of the country. It is a subset of electronic banking, the use of which is increasing day by day in Bangladesh. Hence, this paper aims at indentifying the factors that influence the customer experience in mobile banking in Bangladesh. This study is based on a survey of 231 mobile banking customers of nine private commercial banks of Bangladesh. Literature review identified some factors related to mobile banking like convenient and responsive system, transaction speed and accuracy, reliability, transaction security in ATM booth and technological difficulty that affect customers’ experience in mobile banking systems etc. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the present situation of the mobile banking systems in Bangladesh. Inferential statistics like factor analysis, multiple regression analysis and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) were used to identify the relationships between the overall experience of the mobile banking customers and the specific factor(s) that affect customers experience in mobile banking. Results show that the convenient and responsive system, transaction security in ATM booth and technological difficulty are significant factors that affect the customers experience in mobile banking of Bangladesh. This study suggests that the policymakers should focus on the convenient and responsive system of mobile banking, transaction security in ATM booth and technological difficulty factors that affect customers experience in doing mobile banking for the improvement of the mobile banking services in Bangladesh.

Background: Rapid urbanisation in the 20th century has been accompanied by the development of slums. Nearly one-third of the world’s population and more than 60% of urban population in the least developed countries live in slums, including hundreds of millions of children. Slums are areas of broad social and health disadvantage to children and their families due to extreme poverty, overcrowding, poor water and sanitation, substandard housing, limited access to basic health and education services. Objective: To assess the demographic and nutritional situation of working slum children in Dhaka city. Materials and method: This descriptive cross sectional study was conducted at Moghbazar slum situated in Dhaka city from July to December, 2015. Results: Out of 200 slum children, 57 (28.5%) were in the age group of 12-14 years, among them 110 (55.0%) were male. Regarding educational background, more than fifty percent never attended any kind of school. Forty five percent respondents lived with their parents. About 26% of the slum children were engaged in beggary, 23% were van/rickshaw puller, 22% were tokai, and 10% were cooli. Near about 75% respondents did medium type of work and 80% did 5-8 hour work per day and most of their income was 500-800 Tk. per month. One third respondents were severe under nourished, 50 (25%) were normal and 30 (15%) respondents were obese. Conclusion: Increasing numbers of slums constitute a major challenge to development. Therefore, health related programmes should focus to improve the overall wellbeing of the working slum children. Delta Med Col J. Jan 2019 7(1): 26-30

Background: Now a days, there is increased demand and progress in the nursing profession. Along with these stress among the nurses has also increased.Objective: Purpose of the study was to assess the extent of perceived occupational stress and its association with work-related and non-work related causes among nurses.Materials and method: This Cross-sectional study was carried out among 197 nurses of Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College hospital (ShSMCH), Dhaka, Bangladesh, from the period of 1st July 2015 to 30th June 2016. Sampling method was simple random sampling. Data was collected by face to face interview with the help of semi-structured questionnaire and finally all data were analyzed using SPSS software version 21.Results: It was found that 69% nurses were between the age of 21 to 39 years, 94.9% were female, 68% were married, 79.2% were Muslim, 84.3% had diploma, family income of 91.4% were equal to more than 40,000 Tk. and 95.5% used to do clinical work. Only 5.1% found to experience high stress. Statistically significant difference was found between sex, occupational stress and religion, educational status, and type of work (p < 0.05). Few nurses suffered from high stress but high level of stress were more in male, non Muslim, post graduate nurse and those who were engaged in administrative work.Conclusion: Nurse Managers should take appropriate actions to decrease stress helping their nurses to work efficiently and effectively.Delta Med Col J. Jan 2018 6(2): 86-89

Although, the economy of Bangladesh is primarily dependent on agriculture, Readymade Garment (RMG) industry has emerged as the largest earner foreign currency of Bangladesh in recent years. More than 75% of foreign earnings are coming through export from this very important sector of Bangladesh. In study of Islam & Chowdhuri, [1] presently more than four million workers are working in 4,500 RMG companies of Bangladesh in which 90% are illiterate women who are from the rural areas of the country. The policymakers and the employers of this sector claim that the growth of garment sector has helped employing a huge number of rural women that has subsequently developed their socioeconomic. But, it is a concern of the national and internal observers that the compliances like factory laws, industrial relations laws, employment laws, payment of wages laws, ILO standards, ethics applied in this sector are hardly followed by the RMG companies that make the lives of the workers very misery. Sometimes, the female workers are exploited by employing more hours a day without the payment of overtime by capitalizing their illiteracy and submissiveness. Hence, this paper aims at identifying the level of application of the labor laws and the compliances in RMG industry of Bangladesh that is the only protective measures of the large number of female workers of this sector of Bangladesh. A total of 238 workers of this sector were interviewed in this study with a structured questionnaire. Multivariate analysis techniques such as, Factor Analysis and Multiple Regression Analysis were used to analyze the data. Results show that in case of measures for protecting sexual harassment there is a severe problem of the use of the labor laws in this sector followed by physical movement and access control, exit and access path of the company, working hours, and counseling arrangements in the company. This study suggests that the readymade garment companies should address the sexual harassment issue seriously so that the workers will feel safe at their work. They also should focus more on the safety issues, working hours, and counseling of the workers in order to make the working environment more favorable to the workers.

The development of telecom technology has a profound impact on the academic lives of the students. Smartphone usage became popular to young generation because of its educational and entertaining options by using the numerous applications. Among the young people, students are increasingly using Smartphone. But excessive Smartphone usage usually makes the students addicted to it and that impacts on user’s academic performance, daily activities, physical and mental health, withdrawal tendency, and social relationships. This study aims at identifying the factors that affect the level of Smartphone addiction to the students and its impact on their overall academic performance. A structured questionnaire has been developed to gather data from the students. A total of 247 questionnaires were collected from the business students of a private university of Bangladesh. Using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), data were analyzed. Results revealed five Smartphone addiction factors such as, positive anticipation, impatience, withdrawal, daily-life disturbance, and cyber friendship. Factors like increased impatience and daily-life disturbance were found significantly related to the academic performance of the business students of Bangladesh. This study suggests that the students should reduce the intense use of Smartphone for smoothly doing their daily-life activities.

The development of telecom technology has a profound impact on the lives and activities of the people of the world. Smartphone usage became popular to young generation because of its educational and entertaining options by using the numerous apps. Among the young people, students are increasingly using Smartphone. But excessive Smartphone usage usually makes the students addicted to that subconsciously impacts on user’s academic performance, daily activities, physical and mental health and withdrawal tendency, and social relationships. This study aims at identifying the factors that affect the level of Smartphone addiction of the students and its impact on their academic performance. A structured questionnaire has been developed to gather data from the students. A total of 247 questionnaires were collected from the business students of a university of Bangladesh. Using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) the data were analyzed. Results revealed five Smartphone addiction factors such as, positive anticipation, impatience and tolerance, withdrawal, daily-life disturbance, and cyber friendship. Tolerance and daily-life disturbance have significant impact on students’ academic performance. This study suggests that the students should minimize the usage of Smartphone for achieving good academic performance.

Background: Smoking is one of the leading preventable causes of premature death, disease, and disability. Adolescence is the period of physical, psychological and social maturation from childhood to adulthood and adolescent smoking is a continuous process which is related to many disease factors. Objective: To find out the factors related to smoking among rural adolescents. Materials and method: One hundred and fifty one male adolescent aged 13 to 19 years from rural areas were interviewed with a semi-structured questionnaire during January to June 2013, at Dhamrai Upazilla Health Complex, Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh. The socio demographic details, smoking and depression history were recorded. The Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D) Scale was used to measure the presence of depression. Smoking behavior was measured by a number of questions. Results: Mean(±SD) age of the study subjects was 16.8(±1.9) years. Most of the respondents started smoking around the average age of 14.3 years. The study shows that 64% respondents were smokers. Among smokers 80% were influenced by their friends about smoking. Seventy eight percent of the smokers were suffering from depression while 22% of nonsmokers were depressed (p

MIDAS introduced MIDI as a special credit program under its assistance and service package in July 1993 to offer short-term loans to small entrepreneurs on easy terms and conditions. The main purpose of this initiative was to create employment opportunities and promote entrepreneurs in Bangladesh by providing adequate financial managerial and technical support and assistance to the enterprises. MIDAS places great emphasis on the development of women entrepreneurs in Bangladesh and about 20 percent of all commercial and development activities of MIDAS are devoted to the development of women-owned or women-managed enterprises. Furthermore it is required to address problems faced by women entrepreneurs. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the MIDI programs of MIDAS and to assess their contribution in generating employment opportunities for the unemployed including women. Data was collected between 1993 and 1995: primary data was collected through a survey of 15 micro-enterprises 2 supported by MIDI in Dhaka and Khulna. For collecting primary data a diverse sample was identified that included different types of MIDI-supported micro-enterprises. Interviews were conducted with their entrepreneurs using a structured questionnaire. Secondary data was collected from the MIDAS head office at Dhaka and from its Khulna divisional office. (authors)

In Bangladesh, micro credit programs have positive socioeconomic impact on the rural women borrowers. However, it is perceived that the micro credit programs help the rural women borrowers to survive only and do not help them to develop entrepreneurial capabilities. Hence, this paper aims at identifying the factors related to the development of entrepreneurship among the rural women borrowers through micro credit programs. A multivariate analysis technique like Factor Analysis was conducted to identify the entrepreneurship development related factors. Structural equation modeling was used to develop a model of micro credit program and the development of rural women entrepreneurship in Bangladesh. Results show that the financial management skills and the group identity of the women borrowers have significant relationship with the development of rural women entrepreneurship in Bangladesh. The experience from the parent’s family of the borrowers and the option limit may also lead to the rural women borrowers to be entrepreneurial.

DOI: 10.3329/bmj.v39i2.7032Bangladesh Medical Journal 2010, 39(2) pp.22-25