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This paper is an empirical investigation of the effect of knowledge, skills and entrepreneur competencies on the performance of micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) operating in Upper Sindh, Pakistan.

The data were collected from owners/managers of MSMEs operating in major cities of Upper Sindh. A total of 1,100 respondents were identified through snowball and social contacts tools. A total of 316 respondents permitted researchers to visit their firms and collecting data from them by a survey questionnaire.

The findings shows that entrepreneurial skills and networking have a positive and significant effect on entrepreneurial competency. Then, entrepreneurial skills, networking and entrepreneurial competency have a positive effect on enterprise performance. The findings show a significant mediation effect of entrepreneurial competency on the relationships between entrepreneurial skills and networking and enterprise performance.

This paper provides useful conclusion in understanding the entrepreneur’s characteristics and their impact on performance MSMEs, which is crucial for promoting entrepreneurial activities and for enhancing socio-economic conditions among low-income households located in Upper Sindh, Pakistan. The government must make preparation in organizing trade fairs, seminars and road shows on certain services/ products to which MSMEs’ entrepreneurs, consumers and suppliers might be invited to ease their connections.

This chapter reviews Internet of Things (IoT) as a concept with bibliometric analysis using data selected from the Scopus database. The cited references included two clusters. Also, co-occurrence keyword analysis found four groups. The first cluster shows IoT adoption in agriculture, manufacturing, logistics, and supply chain management. The second cluster includes behavioral models of IoT technology acceptance. The third cluster refers to the adoption of IoT and automation technology in intelligent buildings, smart homes, smart cities, and health care. Finally, the fourth cluster contains information management.

This study aims to explore the impact of cultural practices on consumers’ buying behavior in sales promotional activities toward the fashion clothing brands based on the Theory of Black-Box Model under the conditions of COVID-19 at Pakistan.

The study has collected data through questionnaire-based survey from 600 consumers of fashion clothing brands using convenience sampling technique in Pakistan and analyzed through PLS-SEM to find results.

The results confirmed that cultural practices and sales promotional activities have positive significant relationship with the consumers’ buying behavior during the celebration of events, also under the conditions of COVID-19. The study also found that ethnocentrism and xenocentrism are positively associated with cultural practices while social factors, physical factors, product innovation and marketing innovation with sales promotional activities.

The outcomes provide interesting insights about consumers’ assessment toward the sale’s promotional activities and cultural practices of fashion clothing brands during the celebration of events and guide the marketing practitioners to develop the customers edifying and environment-oriented business strategies to boost up the buying behavior in crisis situations.

Although prior research has widely investigated the cultural practices, sales promotion and consumers’ buying behavior in various settings, but to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study in these domains.