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The rapid growth of the gig economy has reshaped the labor market and provided flexible work opportunities but also exposed gig workers to challenges such as job insecurity, anxiety and mental health concerns. For women gig workers, these challenges are often more pronounced due to the precarious nature of gig work and the lack of social protections.

A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 603 women gig workers across various sectors in India’s major metro cities. The survey used a combination of Likert scale and structured questionnaire to assess anxiety, mental health, job insecurity, workplace challenges and overall well-being, with reliability tests confirming internal consistency.

Descriptive statistics revealed moderate levels of anxiety, job insecurity and workplace challenges, with most respondents reporting relatively positive perceptions of well-being. Reliability analysis indicated satisfactory internal consistency across the survey constructs, with Cronbach’s alpha values ranging from 0.774 to 0.789. Hypothesis testing showed significant negative correlations between anxiety, job insecurity, workplace challenges and well-being, indicating that higher levels of these stressors are associated with lower well-being. The findings emphasize the need for targeted interventions and policy enhancements to improve the working conditions and support systems for women gig workers.

The study highlights the need for tailored policies and interventions to address the unique challenges faced by women gig workers. Enhancing social protections, providing mental health support and ensuring safer working conditions could help improve their overall well-being.

This study adds to the limited literature on women gig workers in India by examining the specific factors influencing their well-being. It offers new insights into the intersection of gender and gig work, emphasizing the need for policy frameworks that better support this vulnerable workforce.

The study aims to identify salespeople’s challenges while selling newly launched products in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector by examining the holistic environment in which they perform their selling tasks. Furthermore, it develops a hierarchical model mapping the interrelationships between identified challenges to explore their dependence and driving power through qualitative research techniques.

The current study is exploratory and inductive in its research design. It used focus-group discussion (FGD), semistructured interviews and thematic content analysis (TCA) to identify new-product selling challenges in the FMCG sector. The identified factors were then worked into a hierarchical model using total interpretive structural modeling (TISM) to analyze their relationship. The factors were further classified into clusters based on their driving and dependence power, with the help of the Matrice d’Impacts Croisés Multiplication Appliquée à un Classement (MICMAC) technique

The TISM and MICMAC results identified salespeople’s most critical new-product selling challenges in the FMCG sector: product innovation, product differentiation, customer perception and market turbulence. An enhanced organizational focus on these factors will ensure that salespeople get adequate input to tackle the challenges they face while selling newly launched FMCG products.

The study was confined to identifying challenges in the FMCG sector alone but offered scope for application in other sectors.

This study will help organizations to identify and close gaps in the new-product selling process, thereby improving the performance of salespeople and contributing to a new product’s success. The study findings have a bearing on various stages of product development, management and life cycle. They also highlight the need for greater synergy between an organization’s sales force and other departments.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is unique in identifying new-product selling challenges in the FMCG sector. It also delineates the complex Web of interrelationships between them and classifies the identified factors based on their driving and dependence on power. The research results can help in organizational decision-making and sales practices, empowering salespeople in their new-product selling tasks.

The study aims to determine the role of online retail website experience on brand happiness and willingness to share personal information using the theoretical lens of the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) framework. Further, it explores the role of brand intimacy and brand partner quality in mediating the path between brand happiness and willingness to share personal information.

This study used a cross-sectional survey design to collect data from 439 online retail consumers in India, using an online questionnaire. The data were analysed using Structural Equation Modelling in IBM Amos.

The present study found that online retail website experience is significantly related to brand happiness. The finding also supports that brand happiness was positively and significantly related to ‘consumers' willingness to share personal information. This relationship was fully mediated by brand intimacy. Brand happiness also mediated the relationship between website experience and the willingness to share personal information.

This study contributes to the emerging literature on brand happiness and willingness to share personal information. It establishes a central role of brand happiness as a driver and a mediator of consumers' willingness to share personal information with e-commerce retailers, extending the stimulus-organism-response framework in the context of brand happiness and willingness to share personal information. Further, the study establishes the role of website experience as a marketer (and brand) led driver of brand happiness.

The results have implications for the role of the website in enhancing the consumer experience, which in turn is a driver of brand happiness. Further, managers need to promote brand happiness with the help of website experience to enable consumers’ willingness to share personal information and help organizations customize their marketing campaigns.

This is among the first studies to evaluate brand happiness from the perspective of an online retail website experience and consider consumers’ willingness to share personal information from a branding rather than a technological perspective. Additionally, the study introduces the SOR framework in the context of brand happiness, with website experience acting as a stimulus for consumers, resulting in brand happiness, which is mediated by brand partner quality and brand intimacy (organism), leads to consumers' willingness to share personal information with online retail brands (response).

The purpose of this study is to identify crucial and new product selling challenges in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector for the companies operating in Business to Business (B2B) sales setting.

This study uses qualitative techniques of focus group discussion, semi-structure interviews and thematic content analysis to explore crucial and new product selling challenges. Total interpretive structuring modeling (TISM) is used to create a hierarchy amongst the factors and interpret the relationships amongst them.

This study identifies crucial challenges for the ICT sector. The TISM framework helped in identifying variables and explained the relationship between the identified variables.

The findings may have been affected by the small size of the sample, the research was restricted to Indian market only and the result would have varied across cultures and different domains.

Companies in the ICT sector are eager to develop new products but fail to sell it. Salespeople play a crucial role in diffusing the new product in the market. Addressing the challenges faced by salespeople will improve not only the sales of the new product but also the overall the operational efficiency of the sales force.

Although several studies have suggested that sales force is the major contributing factor to new product success, few studies have focused on the role of salespeople in new product launch, particularly with respect to challenges in new product selling.

This is the first study to identify new product selling challenges in the ICT sector.

An electromagnet that can produce strong pulsed magnetic fields at kHz frequencies is potentially very favourable to exert a Lorentz force on the metallic workpiece. One of the applications of the pulsed magnetic field is the electromagnetic forming where the design of robust electromagnet is critical. The purpose of this paper is to design a robust electromagnet (coil) for high velocity electromagnetic tube forming operation.

First of all, an analytical model is developed to design the electromagnet and predict the aluminium tube velocity under the action of the estimated pulsed magnetic field. Next, the finite element-based numerical model is used to test the robustness of the designed coil and validate the analytical model. The coil is fabricated and implemented for free forming of aluminium tube. Experimental results of tube displacement are further compared with numerical and analytical model results.

The experimental tube displacement results are showing a good match with analytical and numerical results. The designed electromagnet has generated a peak magnetic field around 14 T at 20 µs rise time and deformed the aluminium tube with a peak velocity of 160 m/s. Robustness of the electromagnet under the action of forming stress is insured by numerical stress analysis and experiments.

Though the designed model in this work is for the 2.4 mm aluminium tube forming, it can also be used for different tube materials, tube dimensions and other electromagnetic forming applications with some modifications.

The research results provide powerful theoretical, numerical simulation and experimental support for the robust electromagnet design.

Using information systems via data mining and cluster analysis technologies, consumers' strategic behaviour can be measured, and their patience levels can be accurately described. This paper investigates the retailer's pricing and ordering policies when facing strategic consumers with different levels of patience and discusses the impacts of consumers' patience levels and proportions on retailers' maximum expected profits.

By cluster analysing transaction data on the number of websites visited, browsing time and purchase decision time, consumers' patience levels can be obtained. The authors formulate a newsvendor model considering customers' different patience levels. Three scenarios are investigated: two segments of consumers with two different levels of patience (Scenario I), multiple segments of consumers with different levels of patience (Scenario II) and a continuum of consumers whose levels of patience follow a continuous distribution (Scenario III). Then, general formulas are deduced for retailers' optimal prices, ordering quantities and profits.

Under Scenario I, if the proportion of less patient consumers is greater (less) than a threshold, the retailer's optimal price is equal to the less (more) patient consumers' reserve price. Under Scenario II, once the proportion of fully strategic consumers exceeds a certain threshold, the retailers' optimal price is equal to the fully strategic consumers' reserve price regardless of consumers' patience levels and proportions. Under Scenario III, the retailer's pricing and ordering policies depend on the distribution of their patience level.

Few studies have considered consumers' different levels of patience when making retailer pricing and ordering decisions. In this paper, strategic consumer behaviour is measured, and consumers' patience levels and proportions are obtained by cluster analysing consumer transaction data recorded by an information system. Three scenarios in which strategic consumers may be heterogeneous and have different patience levels are investigated. The results can guide retailer decision-making.

Mohan Dixit, Head, Sales and Marketing, India Operations, EuroMotoCorp Pvt. Ltd., an automobile manufacturing multinational company headquartered in Munich, Germany. This case outlines the harried nature of his life: professional problems (decrease in the market share, not being able to say ‘no’, unable to delegate, pressed for time, member of too many committees) and personal issues (weight gain, not able to spend time for his personal interests) and family problems (work-life balance issue). The case can be taught through different angles, including individual behaviour, transaction analysis, time and stress management, career management and general management. Apart from this, the case discusses the emotional instability of Dixit and the automatic cycle of behavior of Dixit in various situations and events. The case also discusses the ‘ego-self’ and the ‘natural—self’ of a person and how the two should be balanced for a good quality of life. The case thus delves deep into the psychology of a person and discusses how his/her thoughts or inner talk should be managed for a content and successful personal and professional life.

The case will help students to understand the challenges faced by the organisations with respect to implementing social reforms; develop an understanding in creating sustainable solutions to the social problems; identify leadership challenges faced by such enterprises; and understand grassroots challenges of establishing such enterprises in India.

The case deals with the dilemma and challenges of Col. Nirban Singh, in-charge of Midday meal of QRG Foundation at Alwar. The foundation was based on the vision of creating a positive impact in communities through social service. They follow a socially positive agenda and work consistently to contribute to the betterment of the society and its future. Their initiatives revolve around their concerns for the nutrition, health and education of children. It was decided that out of the three programmes on environment, sanitation and the mid-day meal (MDM) for school going children, the later will be the flagship CSR activity of Havells. The programme began with coverage of 1,500 students in 2005. In 2015, ten years since inception, the Havells MDM scheme catered to over 58,000 students from 688 schools every day in the Alwar region of Rajasthan. Till February 2017, Havells has served over 66 million meals to students and impacted lives of millions of Children (Source: Havells). The case illustrates innovative model of automation in food preparation and cooking operations adopted by the company with minimum human intervention, to maintain hygiene and thereby with the help of special vans owned by the company quickly distribute freshly cooked food to schools at lunch time. The case highlights the purpose behind this initiative, challenges that company face in day-to-day activities and the impact of this initiative on the children in Alwar district at Rajasthan. QRG is at the crossroad: Col. Nirban must identify the way forward without compromising on the quality of the services provided. His available options are replicate the programme in the new state, upscale their services in Rajasthan and focus on the existing project and work on the ways to make it sustainable.

The case can be used in both undergraduate and graduate levels in entrepreneurship, management and leadership classes to discuss corporate social responsibility, social entrepreneurship, NGO and responsible business. The case provides practical challenges faced by the social enterprises/NGOs in running the programme, implementing the policies on the ground, replicating and sustaining it. The case can be used in strategy, innovation and ethic classes.

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Management science.

The objective of this paper is to understand the benefits and utility of massive open online courses (MOOCs) as perceived by the student, vis-à-vis internship and determine the factors that influence student motivation and distraction in adoption of MOOCs.

An empirical study is conducted through a survey; data are collected through a structured questionnaire. The technology acceptance model (TAM) is used as the base framework. For data analysis, Statistical Product and Service Solutions–Analysis of Moment Structures (SPSS–AMOS) 24.0 is used.

The impact of context-specific distinctive features of MOOCs and characteristics of students on user satisfaction are examined through perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness. In the study, it is found that positive social influence and better facilitating conditions improve perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness leading to a better user satisfaction. Self-regulation positively influences self-efficacy among students while pursuing MOOCs. Contrary to the past researches, it is found that in the pandemic environment self-efficacy is not impacting perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and satisfaction.

The findings of this study will benefit MOOCs developers and Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) in deeper understanding the significant factors affecting MOOC usage in higher education.

The study is ingrained to find the causes which will lead to user satisfaction of MOOCs by post-graduation students of B-schools in India. This is an original research and primary data has been collected for decision-making.

The purpose of this study is to understand the antecedents of omni-channel shopping with reference to the intention to purchase fashion products by millennials and their perspective towards the omni-channel method of shopping.

The research is based on a quantitative research technique comprising of 302 respondents. A structured questionnaire has been adopted for the survey and to collect data from millennials from India. The questionnaire consisted of 27 constructs, which were measured using a five-point Likert’s scale. In the first step first-order confirmatory factor analysis is carried out, by using the software IBM AMOS-20. The initial model is generated for six constructs, and outcomes are used to analyse the model’s goodness of fit and construct validity. In the second step, the conceptual model is tested through path analysis using structural equation modelling.

The findings indicate that perceived usefulness (PU) significantly affects the continuance intention of usage towards omni-channels. Perceived ease of use does not significantly affect continuance intention of towards usage of omni-channels, and it does not seem to have a significant effect on PU. Cost effectiveness and customer engagement of omni-channel have a significant effect on the continuance intention of its use. Finally, continuance intention towards usage of omni-channel does significantly affects the actual use of omni-channel.

The research on omni-channel for purchasing fashion products is meagre and this particular study with the usage of Technology Acceptance Model including millennials is adding value towards the knowledge base of marketing. This research develops a theoretical framework building on the technology adoption model and empirically tested it.