Image perception has been acknowledged as a critical component of branding. Perception of image is comparatively difficult for intangible entities like ‘destination’. Research initiatives, thus far, has postulated destination branding on associations namely cognitive and affective image inputs. Multi-sensory brand associations were never tested for destination branding model, although, sensory brand associations were found to play major role in the tangible product branding and influence purchase behaviours. Further, attributional elements, specific to destination are assumed to play critical role in developing the brand identity leading to choice of destination. Perceived destination brand image was empirically tested for its influence on post-travel behaviours and was identified as one of the potent travel motives, however, the predictive capability of perceived destination brand image on favourable post-travel behaviours seems to fall off due to reasons unknown. Researchers like Fournier, observed that relationship-branding can induce favourable post-purchase behaviour. This study focuses on developing a destination brand model using conventional brand associations, namely cognitive and affective image inputs, and new associations, namely, attributional and senso-ry image inputs. The study further incorporates relationship-branding as a multiplex phenomenon and tested its possible intervening impact between perceived destination brand image and post-travel behaviours. The results established the destination brand model based on the image associations and confirmed the role of relationship-branding as a para-social and socio-emotional moderator to influence post-travel visitor behaviour. The study plugs in the gap that existed in the present body of knowledge addressing destination branding and reinforces the relationship theory in establishing the ‘brand–purchase–post-purchase behaviour’ triad.

Innovation has become unavoidable choice for companies to survive. However, a high percentage of new products fail, which increase the risk of using innovative ideas. Therefore, to control and reduce the risk of introducing new products, most companies need to invent new products that can meet the customers’ real needs. Accordingly, customer must be the main source of the information through which the ideas of new products are generated. Having the knowledge about the market needs and trends is not enough as the knowledge needs to be translated into real products. Hence, capabilities, in this context, play a vital role to enhance product innovation performance of the organizations. Thus, this study investigates the role of manufacturing capabilities in enhancing the or-ganizations’ abilities to translate the ideas into the right product that can meet customers’ needs. Moreover, this paper discusses the link between customer knowledge management and developing manufacturing capabilities. The study is conducted in Malaysia, and uses the information of 134 manufacturing companies for the survey. Partial least square is used to obtain the results. The findings are discussed and compared with other results in the literature.

The purpose of this experiment is to investigate the effect of the environmental scent on the sensory and physical aspects of the consumer's experience. Samples were tested in a pre-test and post-test group for two days with one week interval. At the time of the post-test, the subjects were exposed to a gardening fragrance when exposed to customer service. In this paper, an independent variable called environmental notes and six dependent variables including feelings of comfort, perception of waiting time, perceived service quality, loyalty, charming sensation, and service satisfaction were used for testing. This research is, in terms of purpose or orientation, applied and operational, descriptive and experimental. In this study, alternative assumptions about the effect of the environmental scent on feelings of comfort, perception of waiting time, loyalty and charming sensation were approved, but the effect of the environmental scent on perceived service quality of service and service satisfaction were not approved. According to the results of this research, it can be said that consumers’ environmental perception had a positive impact on the sensory dimension of customer’s experience in customer service, but did not affect their physical experiences.

One of the primary objectives in product development is to reach an appropriate design perspective. This paper proposes a methodology, which uses functions, mechanisms, and attributes of the product to solve a design problem. The proposed approach works as a supporting methodology to assist young researchers as well as design engineers and the implementation of the method is demonstrat-ed using a real-world case study of home appliances. A survey is conducted to identify six home appliances that have the highest frequency of daily use and to determine the one, which creates troubles for its users. The results of this study can be further used in TRIZ to identify innovative solutions.

The study investigated the factors that attract consumers to adopt online air ticketing within the Ghanaian context. The study followed the positivist paradigm approach hence, quantitative method-ology was adopted. The total population for the study covered passengers of Africa World airline, Antrak air, Fly 540 and Starbow airline. The target population for this study consisted of all the cus-tomers in these institutions that have in one way or the other purchased or booked their flight ticket on the website. Stratified random sampling was used in the first stage to ensure that all subgroups were fairly represented. The study employed purposive sampling and afterwards the study used the Krejcie and Morgan sampling table to determine the sample size for the 250 population size. Based on the table, the sample size for the study employed was 152. Since the study was guided on the principles of quantitative methodology, this study used questionnaires on a 5 point Likert scale for the study. The study distributed 152 questionnaires to passengers of the selected airline companies within the Kumasi metropolis in the Ashanti region. From the questionnaires distributed, a total of 89 completed questionnaires were returned to the researchers. Of these, 79 were usable for analysis, giving an effective response rate of 55.6%. Data was subsequently analysed using descriptive statis-tics such as mean and standard deviation. Inferential statistics included Pearson correlation, multiple regression (enter method) were used for the relationship analysis. Findings from the study showed that the variables that had the significant impact on respondents’ decision to adopt online air ticketing were; trust, attitude, perceived risk and internet knowledge. The study recommended that the managers of these airlines companies should work on their reputation in order to position them-selves as trustworthy airlines companies since consumer’s decision to use their online platforms to purchase their ticket was informed by how the consumer perceived the entities offering to be dependable and secured.

The purpose of this paper was to examine the relationships among work overload (WO), compensation (COM), organizational identification (OI) and organization embeddedness (OE) in the context of manufacturing industry in China through social identity theory. A 37-item questionnaire was filled by 384 new generation of rural migrant workers. Data were examined through a two-stage of first-order of reflective model and second-order reflective-formative hierarchical model using PLS-SEM. The empirical results indicate that COM and OI positively and significantly predicted OE, while WO was found to have no direct effect on OE. In addition, COM positively and significantly was associated with OI, whereas WO affected OI, negatively. Further examination of the mediation effects of OI revealed that OI could fully mediate the relationship between WO and OE. Moreover, OI also had a partial mediator role in the relationship between COM and OE. The study concluded with several implications and recommendations for future research.

This work investigates the relational behavior of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its effect on firms' financial distress (FD). The population of the study consists of all the non-financial firms presently listed in the equity market of Pakistan. The yearly data set of 213 non-financial companies is selected from 2005 to 2017 with total observations of 2769. The analysis of the study based on OLS regression, fixed effect, and random effect models. The study also uses the GMM technique to guard against potential problems of endogeneity and heteroskedasticity that arise from the use of panel data. Results indicate that higher investment in CSR leads to reduced/lower financial distress. It suggests that investment in CSR raises the reputation and creditworthiness of firms. Key findings are robust as confirmed by alternative proxies of financial distress. Overall findings advocate that CSR helps in reducing default risk or financial distress and creates a better corporate environment that ultimately improves organizations' economic outlook.

Integrated supplier selection and order allocation is a complex problem that is important for both designing and operating supply chains. It becomes especially complicated when quantity discounts are considered at the same time. Under such circumstances, most studies often formulate the problem as a Multi-Objective Linear Programming problem (MOLP), and then transform it to a Mixed Integer Programming problem (MIP) to handle the inherited multi-objectives, simultaneously. But, objectives are not of equal importance and in this approach scaling and subjective weighting often are not considered. In addition, some of the studies that use weighting method to solve the MOLP, usually ignore to normalize the coefficients. However, as different coefficients have different units such as cost or number coefficients, so weighted summation will be meaningless. Furthermore, in most of the studies only quantitative criteria are considered in mathematical model. But, the importance of some qualitative criteria persuade decision maker to consider other affective criteria as well as cost. In this study, in order to ease the problem and to obtain a more reasonable compromised solution for order allocating among suppliers, an integration of analytical hierarchy process and linear integer and multi-objective programming is proposed. The large number of criteria and attributes are employed in this problem and they are employed in a comprehensive model to solve the multi-objective problem and to find the most preferred non dominated solutions by considering decision maker’s (DM) preferences. Some illustrative examples are solved using LINGO and the results are compared. The sensitivity analysis and comparing the results with one of the well-known studies in the literature has demonstrated the flexibility and efficiency of the proposed model to deal with large sized problems and incorporate different purchasing policies, easily and in a short amount of time.

This study uses a hybrid scale to identify the factors contributing to internal and external service quality at employer-employee interface in the SMEs of emerging economies like India. 144 shop floor workers and executives working in different SMEs situated in northern India participated in an interview schedule to rate the quality of services being offered to (and delivered by) the employees in such units on 1-5 Likert scale. Application of factor analysis followed by Structural Equation Modelling developed a model showing how organization’s HR practices influences employee service quality which consequently leads to Satisfaction and Loyalty which are the established indicators of competitive advantage for such firms. The model is empirically validated using model fit indices and is found satisfactory. This paper thus proposes an empirical framework for the measurement of employee service quality in a relatively less explored sector. This study finds support for strengthening relationships with employees to achieve a culture of achievement in SMEs. The two scales proposed in this study can be used as benchmarks by SME practitioners for evaluation of services being offered to (and delivered by) their employees. The methodology used may be applied in more such settings for evolving a generic and tailor-made scale.

This paper identifies the mediating role of innovation and moderating role of size of enterprise on the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and performance of Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs). For the purpose of this study, the necessary data is collected from 384 MSE's operating in Punjab province, Pakistan. Initially the data are analyzed using SPSS 22 and then, for the development of structure equation modeling, Smart PLS-3 is used. Two aspects of entrepreneurial orientations; namely risk taking and pro-activeness are analyzed and innovation is considered as mediat-ing variable. The major contribution of the study is to identify any moderating effect of size of the enterprise on the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation, innovation and performance of MSEs. These elements basically show the contribution that is made by the innovation and performance of the MSE's. The results reveal that the size of enterprises moderated the relationship between risk taking and performance, pro-activeness and performance as well as innovation and performance.