The paper investigates the factors influencing customers choice of telecommunication network in Ghana. The survey design was employed to enable the researchers perform statistical analysis. Questionnaire consisting of Likert scale question was used to collect the primary data. Multiple regression analysis was performed to ascertain the factors influencing customers’ choice of telecommunication networks. The study found six factors that influence customers to choose a particular network. These factors include; brand awareness, brand image, perceived quality, price, convenience and brand loyalty. The study concludes that all the six factors contribute to the factors that drive consumer choice of telecommunications service in Ghana.

Packaging is often called as the fifth P of the marketing mix. Chocolate is a product which is loved to be consumed irrespective of any age group. Consumers were asked to imagine that a new chocolate bar has been launched in the market and were yet to sense (sight or taste) it or a chocolate bar which was already launched in the market and were yet to sense (sight or taste) it .The present study explored different chocolate packaging cues that could possibly influence the purchase decision of young consumers in such a scenario. Descriptive research with convenient sampling elicited 240 responses across the age group lying between 11 to 27 years. Results showed that an attractive package design was of paramount significance in first purchase of chocolate bars. The important factors which affected the buying decision were ‘Information’ and ‘Visual aesthetics’. However it was found that chocolate packaging had less influence on subsequent purchase of chocolate bars. It was also inferred that an attractive package along with a strong advertising campaign could bring prospective sales for a newly launched chocolate bar. The study also discussed the influence of chocolate packaging for national and international brands across various demographic variables.

Bankruptcy has been one of the most important issues among investors in stock market and there are literally different techniques for predicting bankruptcy. In this paper, we study on effects of cash flow patterns and auditors’ opinions in predicting financial distress on some 80 selected firms traded on Tehran Stock Exchange over the period 2005-2011. In this study, the combination of cash flow patterns represent firm’s resource allocations and operational capabilities interacted with their strategy choices. In additions, predictions about each individual cash flow components, operational, investment, financial, are derived from economic theory, which forms a basis for the life proxy. We use cash flow patterns in the decline stage and compare the results with auditors’ opinions. The results indicate that cash flow patterns could predict financial distress companies in Iran. In addition, the effective cash flow patterns in predicting financial distress is more than auditors’ feedbacks.

One of the most important issues on construction projects is to make sure that the project is completed on time. In this paper, we present an empirical investigation to verify the effects of four factors namely procedures, technical factors, financial strength and domestic affairs on creating delay on completion of projects. The study uses two measures of Pearson and Spearman correlation tests to examine all hypotheses of the survey. The study designs a questionnaire and distributes it among 40 experts chosen from managers and specialist in railroad construction projects in Iran. The results have confirmed that all four factors influence on creating possible delay on such project, significantly.

Social capital is one of the most important assets of any organization and it plays essential role in reaching organizational objectives. In this paper, we present an empirical study to study the effect of social capital on job satisfaction and citizenship behavior. The proposed study is performed among 240 employees who work for Allameh Tabataba’i University in Iran. The study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale and distributes it among selected employees and, using structural equation modeling, investigates the role of social capital on job satisfaction as well as citizenship behavior. The preliminary results of our survey indicate that social capital positively influences on both mentioned variables.

Job satisfaction plays an essential role on the success of any organizations. In this paper, we present an empirical study to measure the effects of five factors including work conditions, pay, promotion, supervisor and co-worker on job satisfaction. The proposed study is performed among 130 employees who work for one of Iranian transmission electricity in Iran. The study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale and distributes it among selected employees and, at the same time, measured overall job satisfaction from other method. The results of testing different hypotheses indicate that all employees are satisfied from their job (t-student=3.243, P-value=0.01). The study also presents a method to find desirable weights for each component of job satisfaction.

Accounting conservatism limits managerial incentive and ability to overstate performance and hide bad news from investors, which, in turn, reduces stock price crash risk. This study examines relationship between conservatism on financial reports and risk of stock price crash. Using a sample of 54 listed firms in Tehran Stock Exchange over the period of 2006–2010 and panel logistic regression, we examine different hypotheses. The results indicate that accounting conservatism, as measured by Khan and Watts (2009) CSCORE [Khan, M., & Watts, R. L. (2009). Estimation and empirical properties of a firm-year measure of accounting conservatism. Journal of Accounting and Economics, 48(2), 132-150.], reduces the likelihood of a firm experiencing stock price crashes. The finding holds after controlling other variables such as: negative skewness of firm-specific-weekly return, standard deviation of firm-specific-weekly return, the mean of firm-specific-weekly return, detrend share turnover, size, market to book value of equity ratio, total debt ratio and return on asset ratio, but we did not observe any relationship between these variables during stock price crash.

Organization theory often focuses on stakeholders’ interests as well as the organization & apos; s social responsibility and while the focus is normally more on private organizations, but these issues must be considered in public organizations as well. People expect the public organizations to think and to act more generally. The purpose of this study is to compare the tendencies of private and public organizations in the field of social responsibility. This is an applied research and is a descriptive-survey study in terms of research method. The statistical population of this study covers all 670 managers of private and public organizations of city of Tehran, Iran. Using Morgan table and by conducing stratified sampling, a sample size of 140 was selected. Data gathering tool was a questionnaire consisted of 18 items. To confirm the questionnaire validity, we obtained the experts’ opinions on acceptable face validity and content validity. To evaluate the questionnaire reliability, the Cronbach & apos; s alpha was used (alpha coefficient = .88). Research hypotheses were tested using independent t-test and all of them were confirmed.

Packaging plays an essential role on supplying different materials such as dairy products. The first thing people may look into when they purchase dairy products such as milk, cheese, etc. is associated with the packaging characteristics. This paper attempts to find important factors influencing on packaging dairy products. The study uses factor analysis to detect important factors based on a questionnaire consists of 28 questions in Likert scale, which is distributed among 200 regular employees of Pegah dairy producer. Cronbach alpha, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling adequacy and Bartlett & apos; s test of Sphericity approximation Chi-Square are 0.81, 0.679 and 844.475, respectively and they are within acceptable limit. The study has determined five factors including infrastructure, awareness, design and communication as important factors influencing consumers.

Brands are considered as valuable assets of a company both economically and strategically. Thus, having customers who are loyal to a brand is one of the main goals of businesses companies. Identifying and anticipating the customers’ needs are vital to the enterprises gaining competitive advantage and market segmentation. Maintaining and enforcing customers’ loyalty is a strategic challenge for companies seeking to keep and promote their competitive status in the market. High brand loyalty of the customers generates competitive advantage for the company and it increases the income and decreases the costs of marketing. In addition to increasing the market share, loyalty allows to ask for higher prices compared with its competitors. This study seeks to investigate the factors influencing customer loyalty to sport brands. The statistical population of this research was Tehran city. Using simple cluster sampling, 502 customers of four known brand sports, i.e. Nike, Puma, Adidas, Reebok, and Fila were chosen. Furthermore, a questionnaire, which assessed seven variables including reputations, brand name, brand image, brand loyalty, customer satisfaction, promotion and the price was used and the hypotheses were analyzed using statistical tests such as Kolmogorov-Smirnov test (K-S test), Spearman correlation, simultaneous linear regression and binomial test. The findings suggested that the brand name has a strong correlation with brand loyalty. Moreover, variables such as reputation, brand image, customer satisfaction, price and promotions also have positive and significant effect on the brand loyalty.