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This study investigates the moderating role of complaint handling between ideological incompatibility, symbolic incongruity, negative past experience and corporate social irresponsibility on brand hate.

The study employs the Duplex Hate theory which assumes that hate is the manifestation of multiple factors. A survey-based self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from 400 smartphone users at Rawalpindi and Islamabad, Pakistan.

The findings suggest that ideological incompatibility, symbolic incongruity, negative past experience and corporate social irresponsibility contributes to brand hate. The complaint handling (moderator) weakens the effects of ideological incompatibility and symbolic incongruity on brand hate.

The research provides insights into the cancel culture and clarifies how brand hate can be controlled.

Empirical study on the antecedents of brand hate remains insufficient. The current study contributes to the brand hate literature by providing an understanding of the phenomenon of brand hate and by empirically examining the different antecedents responsible for causing the behavior. The study has also provided an additional determinant of brand hate, which is corporate social irresponsibility. The role of moderators for controlling brand hate is greatly ignored in the existing literature. The current work also extends previous studies by investigating a moderating factor for reducing brand hate, which is complaint handling.

India’s historical fiscal performance has featured elevated deficit levels. Driven by the imperative need for fiscal stimulus measures in response to the crisis, efforts toward fiscal consolidation from 2003 to 2008 were reversed in 2008–2009 due to the financial crisis. These stimulus actions are believed to have wielded a notable influence on inflation dynamics. Presumably, a high inflation rate hinders growth and inflicts severe welfare costs. Accordingly, the principal objective of this paper is to scrutinise the threshold effects of fiscal deficit on inflation within the context of the Indian economy.

We employed the Smooth Transition Autoregressive (STAR) Model, a robust tool for capturing non-linear relationships, to discern the specific threshold level of fiscal deficit. Our analysis encompasses annual data spanning from 1971 to 2020. Additionally, we have leveraged the Toda-Yamamoto causality test to establish the existence and direction of a causal connection between fiscal deficit and inflation in the Indian economy.

Our analysis pinpointed a critical threshold level of 3.40% for fiscal deficit, a value beyond which inflation dynamics in India undergo a marked transition, signifying the presence of significant non-linear effects. Moreover, the results derived from the Toda-Yamamoto causality test offer substantiating evidence of a causal relationship originating from the fiscal deficit and leading to inflation within the Indian economic framework.

The findings of our study carry significant implications, particularly for the formulation and execution of both fiscal and monetary policies. Understanding the threshold effects of fiscal deficit on inflation in India provides policymakers with valuable insights into achieving a harmonious balance between these two critical economic variables.

To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first of its kind to empirically investigate threshold effects of fiscal deficit on inflation in India from a non-linear perspective using the Smooth Transition Autoregression (STAR) model.

Due to a staggering growth rate in the recent past, halal products have attained a significant attention of marketers across countries. However, marketing practitioners seek to have detailed understanding of what drives consumers of different demographics towards this product category so as to better market and position themselves in the competitive landscape. Correspondingly, this study aims to provide insights into the Muslim women consumers’ halal cosmetics purchase behaviour and examines the variables (and their interplay) when purchasing such products.

The data for the study were collected through a self-administered questionnaire from 371 Muslim respondents from India. The data were analysed through structural equation modelling using AMOS 22.0 SEM software.

The findings of this study reveal that religious knowledge, religious commitment and halal certification(s) affect consumers’ actual purchase behaviour of halal cosmetics, which subsequently drives their repurchase intention. The findings further reveal a non-significant effect of religious orientation with both the actual purchase behaviour and repurchase intention towards halal cosmetics. Additionally, actual purchase behaviour of halal cosmetics is found to positively affect customers’ repurchase intentions.

Despite the recent growth of overall beauty industry, this particular segment of halal cosmetics has a huge potential given the phenomenal preference that Muslim consumers have shown in such niche. Therefore, this paper contributes towards examining the key factors influencing consumers purchase behaviour towards halal cosmetics in India that can be capitalized on.

Open access repository is an essential element of an organization's strategy for enhancing the visibility and accessibility of its intellectual output to a global audience. Owing to its importance, the study aims to explore the current status of open access repositories in India and China by analyzing the different characteristic features of repositories.

The data for the study is collected from OpenDoar which is labeled as a quality assured repository directory across the globe. The country-wise contribution of Asian repositories is extracted from OpenDoar using various filtration options available in the repository. Further, the URL of every Indian and Chinese repository was manually accessed to gather the following metadata: Repository Type, Software Usage, Repository Interface Language, Year of Development, Subject Coverage, Content Coverage, and the utilization of Web 2.0 tools by repositories.

The findings of the study highlights that among the Asian countries, India is at 4th rank while China is at 5th rank in terms of repository count. The study depicts that India has shown more promising growth than China.  However, both the countries mainly focused on institutional repositories while disciplinary, aggregated, and governmental repositories are very few in number, therefore building such repositories is the need of an hour. Dspace as the preferred software and English as a dominant interface language occupy the prominent places in the repositories of both countries. Moreover, the repositories of both countries have embraced web 2.0 tools like RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0 and Atom with little presence of social media tools.

The study has limitations, and results should be interpreted with caution. The comparison between the two countries is based on only one data source, i.e. OpenDoar. However, there is a possibility that future studies can take various repository directories as a data source that will give a clear picture of comparison.

The study can be beneficial to the policymakers and the administrators of these two regions as it will provide them a vivid picture of the diffrent characteristic features of their repositories so that they can formulate better policies that will be helpful to foster green open access.

Emerging markets are witnessing rapid changes in their economy owing to the ongoing liberalization and globalization. India, as one of the emerging markets in south Asia, is also experiencing a dramatic change in its business ecosystem. This poses huge opportunities to the companies, both start-ups and established ones. In this direction, the business model innovation offers a strategic renewal mechanism. The study aims to explore the practices of an online transport network company (OLA) creating a distinctive place for itself in Indian taxi service sector.

Methodologically, an exploratory case study of an India-based online transport company (OLA) business model innovation is reported.

This paper reveals that OLA has been able to gain competitive advantage in the Indian emerging market by developing an innovative business model with its distinctive features of personalised customer service, asset sharing, usage-based pricing, collaborative ecosystem, agile and adaptive organising and successful expansion strategies.

This study adds to current knowledge concerning the theoretical foundations and antecedents of business model innovation as a competitive advantage. The paper is explorative in nature because the analysis is mostly based on literature review. Furthermore, in consideration of the analysis of business model of a single company, further research is required to generalize the results.

The understanding of the intricacies of business model innovation can be of great concern to existing and prospective managers and entrepreneurs of emerging markets.

The paper discusses the features of innovative business models and how firms can make their business models more relevant to the competitive markets. As such, the study is hopeful to aid practitioners engaged in the pursuit of beating the competition with innovation driven business models.

This study aims to investigate consumer brand loyalty toward halal cosmetics using the theory of planned behavior through repurchase intention, which is primarily relying on the consumer’s attitude toward halal cosmetics. Important predictors such as trust on halal cosmetics, quality of halal cosmetics and religious beliefs of millennial Muslim female consumers shape consumer attitude.

The present study used the quantitative research design and deductive approach to collect the data from 275 halal cosmetics users in Pakistan by using a judgmental sampling approach.

Findings of the study provide useful insights for both theory and practice. The results support product quality, religious belief and trust on halal cosmetics as predictors of consumer’s attitude toward halal cosmetics that further develop consumers’ repurchase intention, which in turn enhances their overall brand loyalty. Besides, the findings also show that consumer repurchase intention has a mediating effect between consumer attitude toward halal cosmetics and consumer brand loyalty.

The current study helps in advancing practitioners’ understanding of female consumers’ brand loyalty in the halal cosmetics context. This study is considered to be greatly helpful for managers to gain knowledge about how repurchase intention and brand loyalty of millennial Muslim female consumers can be developed in the halal cosmetics segment, especially in the case of Pakistan.

Brand loyalty has been investigated by previous studies through different predictors and antecedents. This study contributes to the literature of brand loyalty by empirically examining and validating the different antecedents of consumer attitude that are accountable for creating consumer brand loyalty in the domain of halal cosmetics within the Pakistani cultural context. The current study also enhances the previous scholarly understanding on halal cosmetics by investigating the mediating role of consumer repurchase intention of halal cosmetics that further extends the discussion for both theory and practice.

This study aims to focus on the direct, mediating and moderating effects of corporate governance (CG) and capital structure (CS) in their relationships with firm performance (FP).

Multivariate panel data regression techniques are employed to analyse the direct, mediating and moderating impacts of the CG and CS on FP of 38 listed Mauritian non-financial companies from 2009 to 2019.

This study shows that CG has a positive but insignificant influence on return on equity (ROE) and Tobin's Q. CS has a significant negative impact on both ROE and Tobin's Q and supports the pecking order theory (POT). The interaction of CG and CS influences FP, but the strength of the moderating effects depends on the performance measure being used. Both CS and CG have no mediation effects in their relationship with FP measured by ROE and Tobin's Q.

The results indicate that the combination of the high leverage ratio and good governance practices of companies can improve FP and increases investor confidence resulting in a positive reaction on their market share prices.

This paper contributes to the CG and CS literature by introducing a more precise and comprehensive research approach and is the first to attempt to extend CG and CS in their associations with FP by incorporating both CG and CS as profound moderator and mediator variables simultaneously in the same study.

The purpose of this study is to analyze millennial generation purchase behavior on halal cosmetic products in Indonesia.

The research approach used is a quantitative approach with the research method in the form of a survey and the sampling technique using purposive sampling. The respondents in this study are 206 Muslim females of the millennial generation. Structural equation modeling (SEM) with AMOS software is used for analyzing the data of this study.

This study found that of the 11 hypotheses tested, 10 of them were accepted: H1, H2, H3, H4, H6, H7, H8, H9, H10 and H11. The accepted hypotheses are the influence of perceived value on trust, brand image on trust, brand image on attitude, religious belief on attitude, halal certification on halal awareness, trust on attitude and halal awareness on attitude. As for trust, attitude toward product, halal awareness affects the intention to purchase halal cosmetics. Moreover, H5 was not accepted, namely, the influence of religious belief on halal awareness. The findings of this study are expected to contribute to the development of marketing theory, specifically related to consumer behavior of halal cosmetic products, as well as the development of the concept of consumer behavior based on demographics, namely, the millennial generation.

This study is more comprehensive than previous studies, and this study is focused on the millennial generation.

The purpose is to understand the fundamental mechanism of the consumer decision-making process and how perceived financial risk of search and experience goods influences electronic word-of-mouth adoption (e-WOMA) on social networking sites (SNSs), which will lead to purchase intention.

Drawing on information processing theory, the study conceptualizes a moderated mediation model to investigate the underlying influence of perceived financial risk and online social ties on e-WOMA and the subsequent effect on online purchase intention. Survey data from 275 individuals were analyzed through statistical tools using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS).

The results revealed that e-WOMA mediates the effect of perceived financial risk of search and experience goods on online purchase intention. Strength of online social ties on SNSs positively moderates the electric word of mouth adoption for both the experience and search goods.

The limitation of this study was about the researcher's restrictions related to the length of the survey. Moreover, causal explanations can't be deduced as this is a cross-sectional study.

This research offers insight into the consumers that allow marketers to dive into the target market. Marketers should focus on social ties importance while selling products/services of markets online.

The study is novel in the context of an emerging economy to educate marketers on the product categorization of search goods and experience goods based on financial risk.

This paper aims to empirically assess the contribution of Islamic banks toward the financial stability of Pakistan. For this, the authors investigate the relative financial strength of Islamic banks and their contribution toward the financial stability. They also examine the relationship between the competitive conduct of banks and banking system stability.

The authors use quarterly data of ten conventional banks, four full-fledged Islamic banks and six standalone Islamic branches of conventional banks of Pakistan for the period 2006-2012. The z-score has been computed and used as the measure of stability of banks and the random effects estimator applied to quantify the impact of bank-specific variables and macroeconomic indicators on the financial stability. The empirical framework used in the paper enables the authors us to examine the differential effect of each underlying variable on the financial stability across Islamic and conventional banks. To check the robustness of the results, the authors have estimated several models with different specifications.

The regression results indicate that income diversity, profitability ratio, loan to asset ratio, asset size and the market concentration ratio of banks have significant effects on the stability of banks. Comparing Islamic and conventional banks, notable differential effects of the empirical determinants of financial stability for Islamic and conventional banks have been observed. The results suggest that Islamic banks have performed better as compared to conventional banks and contributed more effectively in the stability of financial sector. Overall, the results depict that the contribution of Islamic banks toward the financial stability has been reasonable and prospective.

The empirical results of the paper are very useful not only for banks’ managements but also for the investors, bank customers and policymakers. Specifically, the findings help in enhancing our understanding as to how the bank-specific variables and macroeconomic indicators are related to the financial stability of the banking system. The results also help understand the role of both Islamic and conventional banks in the financial stability. Further, the results suggest that the financial soundness can be enhanced by creating healthy competition in the banking industry. The results about macroeconomic indicators imply that protective measures are required to intensify (mitigate) the positive (negative) effect of gross domestic product (inflation) on banks’ financial stability.

This paper provides an overall comparative analysis of financial stability of both Islamic and conventional banks of Pakistan. First, the paper computes the z-score for each bank included in the sample, and then, it performs the regression analysis to study how bank-specific variables and macroeconomic factors are related to the financial stability of banks. Unlike the previous studies, our empirical framework enables the authors to examine the differential effect of each underlying variable on the financial stability across Islamic and conventional banks.