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The purpose of this study was to investigate the determinants of purchase intentions for utilitarian and hedonic counterfeit sporting goods among Muslim’ consumers. The moderating effect of income and status consumption was also examined.

Questionnaires were distributed among male undergraduate university students who were consumers of sports goods. A total of 360 valid and usable questionnaires were collected and analyzed through descriptive and inferential statistics.

The results showed that perceived risk, personal gratification, religiosity, information susceptibility and normative susceptibility all have a positive and significant effect on negative attitudes toward counterfeit sports goods. The effect of a negative attitude toward counterfeit goods was also negative and significant for the intention to purchase utilitarian and hedonistic goods. Income was not a moderator in the relationship between negative attitudes and the intention to purchase utilitarian and hedonic goods. However, the moderating effect of status consumption on the intention to purchase both utilitarian and hedonic goods was significant.

The use of a male-only student sample potentially limits the generalization of the findings, but not the underlying relationships between the variables. Efforts to discourage or prevent the purchase of counterfeit sporting goods should highlight the risk and reduced personal gratification associated with purchasing counterfeit products, while also appealing to a person’s faith-based ethics.

This study produces a novel model explaining the purchase intentions for utilitarian and hedonic counterfeit sporting goods. This model can inform the development of anti-counterfeiting strategies in Muslim countries.

Currently, attention to customer experience management is one of the most important management approaches in the business field. Focussing on improving customer experience and having a customer experience management strategy is one of the actions that service providers can take to improve their marketing performance by providing superior experiences to customers. The nature of customer experience is very important for the retail industry, especially for sportswear stores, because sports products are mostly experience-oriented and can be classified as a general experience. Despite the importance of consumption experience in consumer behaviour studies, the design of sports customer experiences has received less attention from researchers. Therefore, this chapter seeks to answer the question of what aspects of creating and developing customer experience in sportswear retail stores are. To answer this question, this chapter attempts to identify the areas of creating customer experiences in sports stores by using the views of sports marketing experts through qualitative research and using content analysis techniques. The findings indicate that sports stores try to provide the best experience for their customers by considering six aspects of human resources and employees, products, interior design, exterior space, technology and interaction and communication in their strategic marketing plans and investing in creating and developing these aspects. They create a distinct experience for customers and provide a basis for purchasing, satisfaction, loyalty and other positive marketing consequences for customers.

Although the needs and desires of customers are different, obtaining positive and negative experiences is an inevitable consequence of consuming products and services purchased by the consumer. The nature of these experiences is very important for the retail industry and in particular sports stores, as the intangible experience includes the main essence of the products and services provided by businesses; in other words, sports products are mostly experience-oriented and can be classified as an overall experience. Despite the importance of the consumer experience as a dominant and effective paradigm in consumer behaviour, the design of sports customer experience has received less attention from researchers. Therefore, the present study seeks to answer the question of what aspects of creating and developing the customer experience in sports and recreational complexes are. To answer this question, this chapter attempts to identify the areas of creating customer experiences in sports and recreational environments by examining the case of the Enghelab sports and recreational club (in Tehran, Iran) using qualitative research methods and interviewing experts in this field and using the content analysis technique. The findings indicate that cognitive, functional, comprehensive, human, physical, functional, aesthetic, sensory, social, emotional and communal components are the most important components of creating and enhancing customer experience in sports and entertainment complexes.

Therefore, the owners, managers and marketing unit of these collections should invest in the creation and development of these components in the design of their strategic marketing plans in order to provide a memorable experience for the customer during their journey and finally be able to benefit from the subsequent positive consequences such as customer satisfaction, word-of-mouth advertising, loyalty and return intention.

This study aims to analyze the volatility spillover effects of crude oil, gold price, interest rate (yield) and the exchange rate (USD (United States Dollar)/INR (Indian National Rupee)) on inflation volatility in India.

This study uses the multivariate Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (GARCH) models (Baba, Engle, Kraft and Kroner [BEKK]-GARCH and dynamic conditional correlation [DCC]-GARCH) to examine the volatility spillover effect of macroeconomic indicators and strategic commodities on inflation in India. The monthly data are collected from January 2000 till December 2020 for the crude oil price, gold price, interest rate (5-year Indian bond yield), exchange rate (USD/INR) and inflation (wholesale price index [WPI] and consumer price index [CPI]).

In BEKK-GARCH, the results reveal that crude oil price volatility has a long time spillover effect on inflation (WPI). Furthermore, no significant short-term volatility effect exists from crude oil market to inflation (WPI). However, the short-term volatility effect exists from crude oil to inflation while considering CPI as inflation. Gold price volatility has a bidirectional and negative spillover effect on inflation in the case of WPI. However, there is no price volatility spillover effect from gold to inflation in the case of CPI. The price volatility in the exchange rate also has a negative spillover effect on inflation (but only on CPI). Furthermore, volatility of interest rates has no spillover effect on inflation in WPI or CPI. In DCC-GARCH, a short-term volatility impact from all four macroeconomic indicators to inflation is found. Only crude oil and exchange rate have long-term volatility effect on inflation (CPI).

In an economy, inflation management is an essential task. The findings of the current study can be beneficial in this endeavor. The knowledge of the volatility spillover effect of all the four markets undertaken in the study can be significantly helpful in inflation management, especially for inflation-targeting policy.

It is observed that no other study has addressed this issue. We do not find any other research which studies the volatility spillover effect of gold, crude oil, interest rate and exchange rate on the inflation volatility. The current study is novel with a significant contribution to the vast knowledge in this context.

The work on bridge resilience assessment includes quantitative and qualitative approaches to compare the multiple bridges based on their resilience. But still, the bridge resilience obtained by these assessment approaches is inefficient when prioritising multiple bridges to improve their resilience. Therefore, this study aims to develop a methodology for prioritising the bridges to improve their resilience.

The research methodology follows three sequential phases. In the first phase, criteria importance through intercriteria correlation (CRITIC) technique is used to compute the criteria weights. The criteria considered are age, area, design high flood level, finish road level FRL and resilience index of bridges. While 12 river-crossing bridges maintained by one bridge owner are considered as alternatives. Then, in the second phase, the prioritisation of each bridge is evaluated using five techniques, including technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution, VIKOR (in Serbian, Visekriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje), additive ratio assessment, complex proportional assessment and multi-objective optimisation method by ratio analysis. Finally, in the third phase, the results of all five techniques are integrated using CRITIC and the weighted sum method.

The result of the study enables bridge owners to deal with the particular bridge that requires resilience improvement. The study concluded that it is not enough to consider only the bridge resilience index to improve its resilience. The prioritisation exercise should consider various other criteria that are not preferred during the bridge resilience assessment process.

The proposed methodology is a novel framework based on the existing multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) techniques for contributing knowledge in the domain of bridge resilience management. It can efficiently overcome the pitfall of decision-making when two bridges have the same resilience index score.

Mental health problems during the initial years of life are precursors of mental disorders in later life, as well as poor quality of life. However, understanding and assessing the quality of life among children is very challenging and requires appropriate assessment measures. Against this backdrop, this study aims to establish the evidence for the construct and convergent validity of Urdu version of Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQL) in Pakistani children.

This study has a cross-sectional study design in which a sample of 291 primary school children (53.3% male children and 44.7% female children) were enrolled from 6 primary schools located in Rawalpindi District in 2021 through random sampling. Children’s ages ranged between 9 and 13 years (M = 10.51 years; SD = 0.73). Urdu translated version PedsQL, Rosenburg self-esteem scale (RSES), strengths and difficulties questionnaire (SDQ), difficulty subscale and socio-demographic form were administered in a group setting.

Confirmatory factor analysis showed model provided a better fit similar to three factors: social/school functioning; psychological functioning; and physical functioning with good alpha reliability for full scale as well for subscales (r = 0.87, r = 0.75, r = 0.77 and r = 0.73), respectively. Pearson’s correlation of the translated version with SDQ_difficulties (r = −0.33; p < 0.01) and RSES (r = −016; p < 0.01) depicted solid discriminant validity (r = −0.33; p < 0.01) and RSES showed good convergent validity (r = −0.16; p < 0.01). Hence; PedsQL, Urdu proved to be a reliable, valid and efficient tool for the assessment of quality of life among Pakistani children, and its three-factor structure model suggested previously for Pakistani children was confirmed.

This study is original work by the researcher as part of their PhD project.

The adoption of metaverse in manufacturing holds significant benefits, but there are several barriers to its seamless integration. This paper aims to identify such barriers and prioritize them in a manner that allows industrial leaders to strategize for smooth adoption.

In this study, we applied two-stage methods, first the identification and validation of barriers through an empirical study applied to Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA). A purposive sampling technique and snowball sampling facilitated data collection from these expert sources. Through snowball sampling, additional contacts working in the metaverse field were reached, resulting in 235 possible respondents; the survey yielded 104 completed responses. Thereafter, the best-worst method (BWM) was used to measure and rank the barriers.

The study results show that the two most critical barriers are “Lack of data security and privacy” and “Lack of integration compatibility with existing systems.” Such findings inform industry leaders of specific recommendations for structural changes, training programs, necessary technological investments and collaborative efforts to overcome these barriers.

This work adds significantly to academic discussion by prioritizing barriers towards integrating metaverse technology in manufacturing. In addition, this strategic methodology aids in critical appraisal and ranking of barriers for successful adoption. This study also identifies key barriers but acknowledges that other unexamined factors might be lurking in the background, such as virtual economy, financial risks and cross-border legal issues.

The study’s conclusions cannot be generalized to the other sectors, thus indicating the necessity of carrying out a comparative multi-sector study in the future.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the study on systematic prioritization of barriers to adopting metaverse technology in manufacturing is the original contribution of the authors.

This study aims to explore the relationship between Generation Z (or Gen Z) consumers’ decision-making styles and electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) use in the tourism sector. Drawing on the consumer style inventory (CSI) model and the theory of reasoned action (TRA), the research examines how specific decision-making styles influence Gen Z’s propensity to use eWOM recommendations for accommodation choices.

The study uses structural equation modelling to analyse data collected from 296 Gen Z users of Booking.com. The CSI model is adapted to the analysed context and attributes – impulsive, recreational, sustainable, fashion-conscious and perfectionist attitudes – are examined to determine their impact on eWOM use intention and actual eWOM use.

Three of the hypothesised relationships in the model were validated. Specifically, the results suggest that the attitudes of sustainable and perfectionist consumers influence the intention to use eWOM. Furthermore, use intention is positively associated with the actual use of eWOM.

For marketers and tourism businesses, understanding the decision-making styles of Gen Z can inform the development of targeted marketing strategies that emphasise quality and sustainability. Highlighting these aspects in online reviews and eWOM platforms can enhance engagement with Gen Z consumers.

This research advances the understanding of eWOM behaviour by integrating CSI and TRA theories in the context of Gen Z’s tourism decision-making. It provides empirical evidence on the significant role of perfectionist and sustainable attitudes in shaping eWOM intentions, contributing to the literature on consumer behaviour and digital marketing in tourism.