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The emergence of consumerism has led to regulatory measures being integrated into business practices, but the influence of consumers in developing countries remains limited, resulting in businesses being less responsive. The digital retail landscape is undergoing a transformative revolution, driven by Industrial Revolution (IR) 4.0 technological advancements such as artificial intelligence (AI), wearables, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and blockchain technology. This development focuses on convenience, personalisation, and emotional connections. Companies are adapting to modern consumer behaviour through various strategies, including online shopping, mobile commerce, data analytics, technology integration, user reviews, and contactless payments. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this seismic shift in the retail industry, and online retail is expected to continue to grow post-pandemic, driven by these technologies. AI enhances the customer experience, wearables provide interactive engagement, VR offers immersive shopping, AR merges online and physical shopping, and blockchain ensures secure transactions in the emerging metaverse. As retail converges with the metaverse, the potential for borderless and personalised shopping experiences is enormous. Advances in VR technology could lead to interconnected virtual spaces that seamlessly connect physical and digital retail, providing immersive and personalised shopping experiences. However, challenges such as cost, learning curves, digital security, legal ambiguity, data privacy, financial risk, and ethical considerations need to be addressed through vigilant and informed consumer engagement in this evolving digital landscape.

A survey of consumer attitudes towards marketing practices, consumerism and government regulations in India, an industrialising country, revealed a high level of consumer discontent and support for the consumerism movement. A comparison of the results of the survey of consumers in India with the results of a prior study of consumers in six industrialised countries revealed certain similarities as well as differences, thus providing additional empirical insights into the validity of the consumerism life cycle concept.

Burgeoning consumerism in transitional economies has significant implications for both multinational corporations and local companies. Based on a survey of four cities in mainland China, this research examines consumer attitudes toward marketing, and compares the findings with those of previous studies of other economies. The results suggest that consumers in mainland China are less critical of marketing than their counterparts in advanced economies. Furthermore, consumer attitudes toward marketing, beliefs about business, and their interactions have significant effects on consumer satisfaction. The implications for marketing operations in transitional economies and avenues for future research are explored.

Previous studies have found significant differences in consumer attitudes toward marketing between countries and attributed such variations to differences in the stage of consumerism development and cultural values. This study aims to test these competing hypotheses using econometric decomposition to identify the source of such cross‐country variations.

Using survey data of consumer attitudes toward marketing from China and Canada, this study adopts econometric decomposition to examine the cross‐country difference in consumer attitudes toward marketing.

The results show that Chinese consumers have more positive attitudes toward marketing than Canadians and the two countries differ significantly across all predictor variables. However, the results of decomposition suggest that consumerism, individualism and relativism do not have any significant effect on the country gap in consumer attitudes toward marketing, while idealism has a significant coefficient effect.

The study finds different effects of cultural values on consumer attitudes across countries and has meaningful implications for international marketing strategies.

The study investigates the sources of cross‐national differences in consumer attitudes toward marketing using rigorous analyses to improve the accuracy of cultural attribution for international marketing and cross‐cultural consumer research.

While the consumer movement was popular in economically advanced countries between 1965 and 1975, developing countries were not yet ready for such issues. The consumers in these countries, due to their economic, social, and political environments, were not aware of their rights. Taiwan was a typical case. Three main reasons contributed to the ignorance of the Taiwanese consumers at the advent of the worldwide consumer movement. First, in its early years, Taiwan was basically an agricultural society. The primary industry and its commodities made product differentiation impossible. It was nature, and not human beings that decided the quality and/or quantity of the products produced for the market. Everyday products were simple and few, and the choice between products, easy. Secondly, it was not until the 1960's that Taiwan turned slowly from an import‐oriented economy to that of an export‐oriented economy. Raising tariffs and controlling the importation of products were necessary to protect local businesses from foreign competition. Thus, the rights of consumers were sacrificed. Lastly, the very nature of the Chinese (e.g., psychological profile), led them to endure the suffering of any mistreatment. They would avoid a direct confrontation on any dispute. Therefore, organized activities against businesses was not possible. All of these reasons made the consumer movement unheard of in Taiwan during the 1960s.

Empirically examines the managerial perception of consumerism with reference to the very different macro environments of two countries – Australia and Bangladesh. Consumerism is defined as a social movement seeking to augment the rights and powers of buyers in relation to sellers. The attitudes of a sample of CEOs towards various aspects of consumerism are analyzed. The results of ANOVA indicate that there are statistically significant differences between the two groups of managers in terms of their commitment to consumerism on such issues as government regulation, advertising to children, the role of consumer organization and industry self‐regulation. Interestingly, Bangladeshi managers perceived most of the consumerism issues at a higher level than their Australian counterparts. There are interesting interpretations and implications of these findings for firms operating at the international level. These are explored here. Also explores the potential of future research in this area.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate consumer attitudes toward advertising regulation in local contexts.

A survey was carried out of 211 Chinese consumers and 205 US consumers.

It was found that the two samples converge in their views on free commercial speech, self‐regulation, and regulation by market forces. Yet, the Chinese are more likely than their US counterparts to support government regulation, endorse legal ban on strong sexual and indecent content, and favor rigorous advertising regulation. The females of both countries are more enthusiastic than their male counterparts about regulating strong sexual images in advertising and requiring advertising to promote positive values. Both countries witness considerable generational gaps, as the older respondents are more conservative in their views and more likely to support rigorous regulation of advertising.

The paper is the first to systematically survey consumers' attitudes toward advertising regulation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of consumer protection agencies. In the light of growing importance of consumerism in developing countries, the paper measures the level of satisfaction with the performance provided by five different consumer protection agencies, in a chosen country, Saudi Arabia.

This study is based on a questionnaire survey conducted in Saudi Arabia. Based on a model developed for this study, the paper uses empirical research to determine customers' satisfaction with consumer protection agencies.

Results based on testing of hypotheses indicate that overall satisfaction is primarily derived from the objectives and roles played by consumer protection agencies. Results reveal that consumers assign different levels of importance to various dimensions when evaluating satisfaction with consumer protection agencies in Saudi Arabia.

Limited sample size and the generalization of results for the entire Kingdom although the sample has been confined to the eastern province region are the limitations of this study.

The findings of this study have implications on the manner in which consumer protection agencies in Saudi Arabia must operate. Besides, findings of this study have also implications for business operating in Saudi Arabia.

This study makes a valuable contribution given the fact that there is a dearth of empirical studies covering the measurement of consumer satisfaction role played by consumer protection agencies in Saudi Arabia.

Examines the applicability of alternative measures of service quality in the developing economy of India and assesses related issues in that context. Based on data gathered from customers of two major banks, overall results support a multidimensional construct of service quality and suggest that the SERVQUAL scale provides greater diagnostic information than the SERVPERF scale. However, the five‐factor conceptualization of SERVQUAL does not seem to be totally applicable, and no significant difference was found in the predictive ability of the two measures. Further, although SERVQUAL and SERVPERF have identical convergent validity, SERVPERF appears to have higher discriminant validity than SERVQUAL.

A wealth of research has explored different configurations of consumer environmental beliefs, attitudes, and values, and their influence on consumer environmental behavior. It is essential that a more comprehensive understanding of what lies at the root of consumer environmental beliefs, attitudes, values, and behaviors be developed. This study aims to address some of the limitations in the current literature by theorizing and examining a consumer environmental behavior model that includes three antecedents, a mediator, and a moderator construct. The authors offer a new configuration that includes moderated and mediated effects of consumer cognitive, psycho-social and demographics variables on consumer environmental behavior.

This study was administered to respondents from Saudi Arabia. The sample consists of Saudi-Arabians, non-Saudi Arabs, Americans, Europeans, South-East Asians, sub-continentals as well as other expatriates. Unavailability of sample frames necessitated the past researchers to use some kind of judgmental sampling techniques in Saudi Arabia. A total of 677 usable responses were used for this study.

The model included three antecedents – consumer environmental awareness, consumer perception of human-nature relationship, and consumer perception of local environmental condition – representing the most important categories of predictors of environmental behavior identified in meta-analysis. The effects of these antecedents on consumer environmental behavior were mediated by consumer environmental responsibility, which, in turn, influenced consumer environmental behavior. The model also assumed that consumer faith in science and technology moderated all the four relationships involving antecedents, mediator and the outcome.

The findings of the study identified several important observations. First, the roles of environmental psycho-social and cognitive variables in determining consumer environmental behavior are contingent upon levels of faith in science and technology and may not be direct but rather indirect through the mediator of consumer environmental responsibility. More importantly, the authors have provided support for a non-conventional moderated and mediated model of consumer environmental behavior.