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Considering its vast utility in industries, this paper aims to present a detailed review on fundamentals, classification and progresses in pressure sensors, along with its wide area of applications, its design aspects and challenges, to provide state-of-the-art gist to the researchers of the similar domain at one place.

Swiftly emerging research prospects in the micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) enable to build complex and sophisticated micro-structures on a substrate containing moving masses, cantilevers, flexures, levers, linkages, dampers, gears, detectors, actuators and many more on a single chip. One of the MEMS initial products that emerged into the micro-system technology is MEMS pressure sensor. Because of their high performance, low cost and compact in size, these sensors are extensively being adopted in numerous applications, namely, aerospace, automobile and bio-medical domain, etc. These application requirements drive and impose tremendous conditions on sensor design to overcome the tedious design and fabrication procedure before its reality. MEMS-based pressure sensors enable a wide range of pressure measurement as per the application requirements.

The paper provides a detailed review on fundamentals, classification and progresses in pressure sensors, along with its wide area of applications, its design aspects and challenges, to provide state of the art gist to the researchers of the similar domain at one place.

The present paper discusses the basics of MEMS pressure sensors, their working principles, different design aspects, classification, type of sensing diaphragm used and illustration of various transduction mechanisms. Moreover, this paper presents a comprehensive review on present trend of research on MEMS-based pressure sensors, its applications and the research gap observed till date along with the scope for future work, which has not been discussed in earlier reviews.

The literature provides evidence of consumers’ willingness to purchase (WTP) refurbished products. However, the studies focusing on young consumers’ (18–24 years) purchasing behaviour of refurbished products from online platforms/stores are limited. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to conduct a qualitative study to identify the key attributes/factors that influence young consumers’ WTP refurbished products.

Two qualitative techniques, focus group discussion (FGD) and depth interviews (DI), are used for data collection. Criterion sampling is used for sample selection. Consequently, 37 participants (20 for FGD and 17 for DI) from India were recruited.

The study’s findings indicate six broad attributes/factors (purchase attributes, product attributes, credibility, reviews/support, refurbishment process and ecological factors) that influence young consumers’ WTP refurbished products. In each attribute, some characteristics are unique (for example, greater trust in online platforms/stores, preference for video reviews and historical information of the product) to young consumers.

The current study integrates three literature streams: consumer behaviour in the online/offline context, young consumers’ inclination towards an online purchase and WTP refurbished products. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to do it.

This study investigates the role of consumer cosmopolitanism on consumer attitudes and purchase intentions (PIs) towards foreign and local brands.

The responses were collected on a structured questionnaire through a consumer survey. The data were then analysed through structural equation modelling (SEM).

The results depict the positive influence of consumer cosmopolitanism on consumer attitudes towards foreign brands, which positively influences PIs towards foreign brands and negatively influences the PIs of local brands. Further, the mediating role of perceived quality was observed in explaining the consumer preference towards foreign and domestic brands.

Finally, the study concludes by providing implications for marketing scholars and managers of global and local brands.

The paper examines the underlying mechanisms related to consumer cosmopolitanism and its role in influencing the foreign and local brand purchase.

Technology has come a long way in the financial industry since the days of hard share certificates. The industry has been evolving at a very fast pace and today almost everything is online. Back in 2010, Nithin Kamath decided to set up an online brokerage platform that was capable of meeting the needs of the retail customers in the most efficient way. Efficiency for him meant both execution efficiency and cost efficiency. He was able to introduce zero commission trading to consumers and yet generate revenues through a business model never considered by the leading brokers during that time. The firm has ever since been growing based on the principle of Technology first by bringing valuable services to the customers. Interestingly, the firm has spent little on marketing and the growth has been riding on the back of customer satisfaction.

The transparency and consistency of Zerodha provided them mileage and the business model certainly disrupted the Indian brokerage industry. The zero-commission model was successful in attracting consumers and provided tough competition to other brokers. However, competitive advantage coming solely from low pricing may not always be sustainable in the long run. This case explores the sustainability of the business model and looks at alternatives that are important for a long term scale-up of Zerodha.

The purpose of the study was to produce a healthier, convenient and traditional ready-to-eat (RTE) snack option with increased nutritional value, using spent hen meat, dietary fibre (DF) and simple technological methods. The product was designed to be stable without refrigeration and be easily adoptable by local self-help groups, rural women and youth and entrepreneurs in urban and semi-urban areas.

Conventional binder used for making snacks, i.e. rice flour was partially replaced by different sources of antioxidant DFs, i.e. oat flour (T₁ – 10%), finger millet flour (T₂ – 5%) and amaranth flour (T₃ –15%) to prepare spent hen snack sticks (SHSS). The snacks were then packaged in low density polyethylene (LDPE) pouches and evaluated for their storage stability at ambient temperature for a period of 35 days. Their physico-chemical, sensory and microbiological quality was evaluated at a regular interval of 7 days. The proximate composition of developed SHSS was compared to commercially available snack products (chakli/murukku – snacks without meat).

The fibre-enriched SHSS showed significant improvement in nutritive value, as they contained more fibre (p = 0.001) and protein (p = 0.029) than control SHSS. When compared to commercially available snack product SHSS showed three-fold significant increase in protein (p = 0.000) and ash content (p = 0.001) and only 11%–12% total fat as compared to 31% fat in the market-available product. The most acceptable treatment in terms of overall sensory quality and nutritional aspects was T₃; however, T₂ was more shelf-stable during the storage period. The study showed that fibre-enriched snacks can be stored at ambient temperature for up to 35 days without substantial loss in physico-chemical, sensory and microbial quality. Hence, substituting rice flour with DFs can lead to the development of products with better sensory attributes and improved functionality.

The simplicity of the product in terms of composition, machinery and low production costs makes it an easily adoptable one by small-scale entrepreneurs, especially those belonging to semi-urban areas.

Incorporation of spent hen meat, a relatively cheap but abundant source of protein, in RTE products can serve as an effective way to alleviate protein malnutrition, whereas addition of fibre further improves the functionality of the product. The methodology can be easily taken up by small-scale entrepreneurs and create a market for snack-based functional meat products.

While prior studies have highlighted the brighter side of technology adoption in improving human resource (HR) functions, the dark side pertaining to the adoption of technology in people management within organizations has gone relatively unnoticed. The current study tries to demystify the dark side of electronic human resource management (e-HRM) by examining banking institutions in India which are believed to have undergone several transformations in recent years.

This study adopts an inductive qualitative approach to examine the research problem. In total, 53 semi-structured interviews were conducted with the employees of eight public sector banks in India. The interviews were transcribed. The analysis of the data was done using the thematic analysis technique.

The findings of the study suggest that there is a stratification of the workplace in banking institutions into digital natives and digital migrants. This social stratification is based on technology adoption and usage which has further created problems in the form of knowledge hiding and perceived workplace conflicts.

The findings of the current study have important theoretical and managerial implications. It not only extends the current scholarship on the transtheoretical model of change but it also has strong managerial implications as it highlights the need for the adoption of customized e-HRM training curriculums for the workforce based on their age, education, work experience and expertise.

Current research on the dark side of e-HRM is inadequate. Furthermore, the evolution of banking institutions from being a typical bureaucratic organization into a hybrid one has not been examined in the context of e-HRM.

Women empowerment is essential for the growth and development of the nation. This study aims to identify the role of non-government organisations (NGOs) in promoting women empowerment through immediate livelihood facilities. Women are creative enough to start their own venture, but they are not able to explore the available opportunities because of male dominance, lack of education and proper government support. Thus, NGOs play a major role in training and empowering women to attain immediate livelihood.

The role of NGOs in empowering women has been explored using the case study method. A total of five case studies of women who attained training and started their own venture have been developed using in-depth interviews.

Women empowerment occurs through venture creation and entrepreneurship, which can be attained with proper training and information. Motivation and effective leadership help women in gaining confidence, and they aim to achieve their goals. Proper information about government policies, networking with customers, relationship with self-help groups (SHGs) and NGOs also help them in attaining empowerment.

This study indicates to the government and researchers that, instead of initiating new policies, it is important to focus on the existing policies and improve them. NGOs or SHGs must focus on providing immediate livelihood through venture creation or entrepreneurial activities.

Women need to be more socialised and develop a habit of partnership with their friends and neighbours to extend their ventures (Dixit et al., 2020). To meet the demand of sustainable and green environment, women must be trained about green manufacturing and to prepare products which are environmentally friendly and sustainable (Agarwal et al., 2020). Instead of initiating new policies, government must review their existing policies and provide equal opportunities to increase female workforce.

This study focusses on the role of NGOs in empowering women by focussing on their immediate livelihood through venture creation or entrepreneurship.

The study intends to investigate the key purchase drivers of luxury brands in India. Given that a major segment of this target audience is the young consumers, the study focuses on determining these antecedents of luxury purchase from a young Indian consumer lens.

The study uses an interpretive research position, employing qualitative techniques in the form of in-depth interviews. In total, 62 respondents were interviewed, and later the transcribed interviews were analyzed using content analysis.

The study identifies the three main value dimensions that contribute to the final purchase decision: functional, social and emotional. The study also highlights the importance of Internet and web for luxury brands and how young Indian consumer consumes luxury online.

Research on luxury brands is still at a nascent stage. Though variables such as economic value, brand origin, social identity, prestige, self-congruity and so on have been examined in the context of luxury brands in prior studies. However, these studies are restricted because either they were product-specific or actual users of luxury brands were not approached as the sample. Most importantly none of these studies reflect the purchase behavior of young consumers in an emerging market, especially India. Given the growth of luxury brands in India, it would be worthwhile to investigate the factors influencing the customer purchase intention of luxury brands in emerging markets.

The purpose of this paper is to prepare a methodology to evaluate availability analysis of distillery plant using Petri nets (PN). The effect of various failures, repair rate and availability of repair facilities on the system has been studied.

The PN model of a system is developed to study the dynamic behavior of the system under various working conditions. Availability analysis of the plant is presented taking into consideration of failure and repair rates of their subsystems and has been carried out using Monte Carlo simulation.

The bottle washing machine is the most critical machine from a maintenance point of view which has more compact on the system performance as compared to other machines. The availability analysis of distillery plant helps the management to adopt a suitable maintenance policy to improve upon plant production and plant availability.

The application of this proposed PN-based approach is very useful in finding the most critical subsystem and its effect on the performance of the system in terms of availability and plant production. Further, the advantage of the PN approach is that dynamic behavior of the system under consideration is modeled with graphic representation of the system and given distribution can be associated with the subsystems for analysis. The superiority of this approach over others, such as network, fault tree and Markov analysis, is outlined in the paper.