This research empirically attempted to assess the effect of brand familiarity and perceived ser-vice quality on brand image as well as to explore the position of brand image on student satis-faction in addressing previous efforts' mixed outcomes and bridging the gaps in the private higher education area. The data were collected from students of Jadara university in Jordan. PLS-SEM methods were used to test hypothesized relationships on a sample of 112 students. The findings show that familiarity with the brand and perceived quality of service had an important and beneficial connection with the image of the brand. Also, there was an important and positive connection between brand image and students’ satisfaction. The revision has dis-cussed the finding and an implication compared with past studies. These findings have significant implications for private higher education institutions that may be taken into considera-tion when developing their marketing plan. The finding will help design strategies to increase students’ satisfaction and improve brand image. It has also presented some of recommendations for upcoming investigation.

The development of information technology has brought the changes to the rapid growth and competition of online website stores in Indonesia. Online store businesses are aggressively making various marketing efforts to influence consumers to shop on their website. The Indonesian government has seriously issued several regulations regarding online commerce or e-commerce since 1997. Thus, this phenomenon has encouraged researchers to analyze the influence of website quality and the application of Government Regulations related to Ecommerce Law through website verification of the behavior of impulse buying, which was conducted by the millennial generation online. This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the effect of website quality and government regulations on online impulse buying behavior among some undergraduate students at Brawijaya Malang University. The results have confirmed that both website quality and government regulations had some impacts on online impulse buying behavior.

This study aimed to investigate the impact of the characteristics of the board of directors represented by size of board of directors, financial experience, and board of directors’ meetings on earnings management measured by Jones' modified model. The study also aimed to find out the impact of ownership concentration on the relationship between the board of directors’ characteristics combined and the earnings management in Jordanian industrial companies listed on Amman Stock Exchange. In order to achieve the objectives of the study, a quantita-tive analytical method was applied. The study was applied to a sample of 41 industrial compa-nies where their data were available during the period of study from 2013 to 2017. The findings indicated that the characteristics of the board of directors combined influenced on the earnings management in Jordanian industrial companies listed on Amman Stock Exchange. Moreover, the size of the board of directors and the financial experience had some effects on earnings management in Jordanian industrial companies listed on Amman Stock Exchange. However, the board of directors’ meetings had no meaningful effect on earnings management in Jordanian industrial companies listed on Amman Stock Exchange. It was also found that family ownership concentration had an impact on the relationship between the characteristics of the board of directors combined and earnings management in Jordanian industrial companies listed on Amman Stock Exchange. The study concluded a number of recommendations, the most important of which is to encourage the competent bodies and the boards of directors in the public shareholding companies to pay more attention to the development of more legis-lation that focus on earnings quality by reducing earnings management practices. In addition, it is necessary to identify penalties for cases of manipulation and distortion in the financial statements which reduce the use of illegal techniques and attract investors.

Economic growth is very basic need of any economy but its environmental effects should not be ignored. We investigate the environmental effects of economic growth and energy consumption of Saudi Arabia. The study uses data of a period 1968-2014 and cointegration test and corroborates a long- and short-run relationships. The results indicate that economic growth and energy consumption contributes in CO2 emissions in both long- and short-run. It means that increasing economic growth of the Kingdom has social cost on the economy in terms of pollution emissions. Based on findings, we recommend to use the alternative renewable sources of energy consumption to avoid the pollution effects of growth in Saudi Arabia.

Taking the developing Egyptian market as its focal point, the aim of this research is to contribute to the earnings management literature. Due to the limited data available for the Egyptian market, this research examines earnings management based on the entire operating performance of companies. In particular, the question of whether ineffectively performing Egyp-tian companies engage in upward earnings management by devising and applying income-increasing policies was investigated. For the purpose of testing for income-increasing accruals, we examine whether discretionary accruals are greater for ineffectively performing firms than for effectively performing firms. The results show that ineffectively performing Egyptian companies are characterized by positive and considerably greater discretionary accruals when comparatively examined against effectively performing companies. A reasonable interpretation of these results is that ineffectively performing companies engage in earnings management practices, with the most likely mechanism being an opportunistic increase in their reported earnings. Overall, the findings of this study show that operating performance is a critical determinant of earnings management. In terms of the implications of these findings, it is necessary for officials within the Egyptian government to enhance the country’s corporate govern-ance processes, especially in view of the limitations surrounding law enforcement and investor safeguards.

The objective of this paper was to examine the impact of tax policy on social development in Vietnam. In particular, tax policy was measured through the ratio of the government’s tax revenue to gross domestic product - GDP (TAX), and social development is measured through unemployment (UNE). The research data were collected from the General Department of Taxation of Vietnam and the World Bank. We used the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) Model to analyze time series data in the period 1990-2017. The paper achieved great success in finding the first empirical evidence of the negative impact of tax policy on unemployment in Vietnam in the long term. In addition, we found a statistically significant impact of domestic savings and domestic investment on unemployment in the both short and long term. This shows that tax policy plays an important role for unemployment as well as social development in Vietnam.

Credit is an economic category and is also a product of the commodity economy, which exists through many socio-economic forms to promote economic growth. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to analyst, compare and forecast domestic credit growth in Vietnam's and China's economy. Thus, the paper is applied by a method of an autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model. This model is fitted to time series data both to better understand the data and to forecast future points in the series. Hereby, the methodology is selected by Vietnam's bestfit model ARIMA (2,3,1) and China's best-fit model ARIMA (2,3,5). Analytical data are collected from 1996 to 2017, the sample fitted the model and is statistically significant. The result show the forecast result for next years. The Vietnamese and Chinese economy are the open economies and have domestic credit greatly contributed to economic growth. These results are the basis for policymakers to have a general view and define the impact of domestic credit growth on GDP between the two countries.

This study aims to determine the effect of Muslim customer perceived value on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty of sharia banking and religiosity role in moderating the existing effect. The study population includes all customers of Sharia banking. Total samples of 104 respondents are selected by accidental sampling technique. To know and to test the research hypothesis, data are analyzed by partial least square (PLS). This study has four results. First, the Muslim customer perceived value (MCPV) variable directly affects customer satisfaction. It consists of price, emotional values, and social values variables. While the quality, Islamic physical attributes, and Islamic non-physical attributes variables directly do not affect satisfaction of Islamic bank-ing customers. Second, Muslim customer perceived value (MCPV) variable directly affects customer loyalty. It consists of price, emotional value, physical and non-physical attributes of Islam. Moreover, quality and social value variables directly do not affect loyalty of sharia banking customers. Third, satisfaction only mediates the effect of price, emotional value, and social value variables on the loyalty of sharia banking customers. Satisfaction does not mediate the effect of quality, Islamic physical attributes, and Islamic non-physical attributes affect the loyalty of sharia banking customers. Forth, Religiosity does not moderate the effect of Muslim customer perceived value (MCPV) variable, namely Islamic physical attributes and Islamic non-physical attributes, on satisfaction of sharia banking customers.

The purpose of this research is to discover how paid blog advertisements influence consumer attitudes toward bloggers and the products they advertise will help marketers gain an understanding of how to use bloggers as paid sponsors to influence consumer purchase intent. Using online survey approach, the study recruited 280 participants through an online survey platform. Participants answered questions about their attitudes toward bloggers and their advertising when purchasing products. Furthermore, participants also answered questions about their perceived trust in the bloggers themselves as well as the authenticity and credibility of the brand-related communication received from bloggers. Moreover, they reported on their attitudes towards how deceptive they considered bloggers and their advertising to be. Finally, participants reported how paid blog ad-vertisements influence their purchase intent. The results indicated that the similarity between the consumer and the ad creator was an important psychological reason on why consumers were more likely to perceive ad-vertisements as more authentic, more affective, less deceptive and more credible, and they were thus more likely to trust the blogger. On the other hand, the importance of ad attribute (authenticity) does significantly influence consumers’ intention to purchase products advertised by a blogger. As consumers are becoming more skeptical of advertisements, blogs need to be entertaining and a pleasure to view. Not only does the con-tent need to be interesting, but also the design, flow and clarity of the blogs must also be considered important factors. In addition, advertising needs to be believable, credible and honest. In the online world, trust and credibility are still paramount in attracting consumers’ engagement; hence, promoting companies’ products and services through blogs can be an effective strategy to lower consumer skepticism barriers.

Technology and innovativeness have played an important role in service industries because of the competitive state, especially in developing countries. While using innovative technologies such as self-checkouts in stores is seen as advantageous in many aspects for retailers, if customers cannot adopt it, the usage of in stores becomes disadvantageous. However, the literature offers limited knowledge about the customers' adoption of self-checkouts in spite of its value for the survival of firms. Therefore, understanding what factors affect individuals' intention to use self-checkout systems has been a need for both practitioners and researchers. This study aims to spot out the determinants of intention to use self-checkout systems in a supermarket chain. In this regard, this study employs the technology acceptance model (TAM) to which the constructs technology anxiety, technology self-efficacy, compatibility, and knowledge are incorporated into the original model. The results of the analysis of the data (N=281) reveals that: (i) technology self-efficacy and knowledge are positively related to two beliefs, perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness, (ii) compatibility is positively associated with perceived usefulness, (iii) perceived usefulness is positively related to attitude, and (iv) attitude is positively associated with intention to use.