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This paper aims to explore the conditions in a business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) context characterized by new technologies. Innovations enhance disintermediation and pursue sustainability goals that drive customers’ willingness to use eco-friendly delivery options, namely, parcel lockers – in e-commerce and their impacts in terms of communication and transparency along the supply network.

The study conducted an extensive survey in Italy and Germany, collecting 1,010 usable responses. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data with the aim of identifying the factors that drive customers’ willingness to use parcel lockers and the effect on customers’ behaviour as determined by the disclosure of information about the environmental performance of different delivery options.

The results highlight several factors affecting the willingness to use parcel lockers, namely, performance and effort expectancy, social influence, technology anxiety, hedonistic motivation and environmental knowledge. The results also demonstrate that the disclosure of information about the environmental performance of different delivery options influences customers’ behaviour.

This paper faces several limitations, mostly related to the focus on just two countries, the use of cross-sectional data and the survey’s explicit reference to just one type of product. Nevertheless, the findings contribute to the discussion on the relevance of information sharing along the supply chain, providing favourable evidence in this regard. It also improves the stream of research concerning technology adoption in the context of e-commerce, highlighting factors that can lead consumers to use eco-friendly self-service technologies.

The results can support companies in understanding how they can design and manage the last mile of delivery to jointly achieve customer satisfaction, process efficiency and superior environmental performance.

This pioneering contribution studies the adoption of delivery solutions for e-commerce and its implications for the supply network.

Archives and records are important resources for individuals, organizations and the country. The academic archives are created and maintained for the effective execution of university educational and corporate functions. The archives management practices in universities are being studied in the developed countries; however, a scarcity of empirical research is observed in the context of developing countries, for instance, Pakistan. Thus, the purpose of this study is to assess the archives management practices performed in the archival units of University of the Punjab (UoP), Lahore, in association with the successful execution of university educational functions.

A structured survey questionnaire was developed to collect responses from the record-keepers and archives monitoring staff using a complete enumerative (census) approach. The collected data were analyzed in SPSS 23.0 in addition to structural equation modeling (SEM) run in AMOS 22v.

The findings of this study revealed an inconsistency regarding the policies and procedures, arrangement and filing records and access and retrieval due to the practice of self-developed procedures in the UoP archival units. Although archives management practices have significant impact on university academic as well as research-related functions, however, there is lack of centralized and standardized practices for archiving records in the UoP. Lack of professional/trained staff and policy document are key limitations in building systematic and standardized archives management system in academic intuitions, particularly in the UoP.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study in Pakistan that has explored archives management practices used in university archives. It also contributes theoretically and methodologically through the underpinnings of archival principles in association with university functions and developing a validated scale to explore archives management practices in universities. The findings of this study may be helpful for the concerned bodies, university administrations and archives managers to establish, manage and improve the academic archives systematically.

The purpose of this study is to investigate possible drivers of loyalty amongst Islamic banking customers in Gauteng, South Africa. We ponder the relationships of service fairness (a secondorder reflective construct) with perceived value, satisfaction, and loyalty.

Data were obtained from Islamic banking customers in South Africa using interview-administered questionnaires. A total of 350 responses were perceived as being suitable for data analysis. The measurement and structural models were measured through structural equation modelling.

Service fairness and perceived value were found to be important drivers of loyalty within this context.

This study demonstrates that service fairness and perceived value are precursors to the future loyalty intentions of Islamic banking customers. As such, they should be nurtured as key elements of the relationship building process.

The study guides South African Islamic banks and South African banks with Islamic windows to better understand how service fairness (interactional, procedural and distributive) fosters satisfaction, perceived value and loyalty (attitudinal and behavioural).

Enhancing comprehension of the relationship between service fairness and customer loyalty, with satisfaction and perceived value playing intermediary roles, represents an unexplored avenue in academic research within the context of Islamic banking in an emerging African market.

The study investigates the role of e-commerce adoption on Ghana’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) business performance.

A sample of 309 owner-managers of entrepreneurial SMEs was employed using LISREL to determine the nature of the underlying relationships among the study constructs.

The findings show that adopting e-commerce significantly improves SMEs' performance. The study also found that trust effectively mediates the relationship between e-commerce adoption and SME business performance. Finally, the study found that firm agility moderates the relationship between e-commerce adoption and business performance.

The study recommends SMEs in Ghana seeking to grow their businesses capitalize on e-commerce capabilities to enhance their business performances while ensuring trusting relationships, especially in the delivery of e-commerce services consistently, to improve their contribution to overall business performance.

The findings would help managers of SMEs in Ghana to deliver optimum value in their e-commerce operations to improve their business performances in an uncertain world.

Technologies are dramatically reshaping various aspects of the store space, modifying design, services and usage. Accordingly, several studies tackled technology impact on each of these aspects, investigating design, service and usage singularly, but lacking a holistic viewpoint. Thus, this paper aims to identify the different dimensions of the store space (levels) and assess the impact of technology introduction on store space dimensions (levels).

The research employs a qualitative approach based on direct observations of apparel brand stores located in London between March and April 2023. Data collection followed a structured observation protocol covering store information, adopted technologies and their effects across various store space levels, i.e. consumption activities, service environment and customer experience.

Results show that the store space can be defined as the sum of different dimensions consisting of consumption activities, service environment and customer experience. Accordingly, technology introduction holistically influences each of the three store space levels as follows: (1) first, technologies redefine how activities are performed or alters the location where certain activities are consumed; (2) within the service environment, technologies replace traditional elements, fill empty spaces and enhance the atmospherics; finally, (3) customer experience is enhanced in hedonic and/or utilitarian terms due to technology adoption.

This paper defines the space as a dynamic entity, providing a deeper understanding of how the store space is produced, from a holistic point of view and the role of retail technology in this process.

This study presents a systematic literature review (SLR) of the interdisciplinary literature on drones in last-mile delivery (LMD) to extrapolate pertinent insights from and into the logistics management field.

Rooting their analytical categories in the LMD literature, the authors performed a deductive, theory refinement SLR on 307 interdisciplinary journal articles published during 2015–2022 to integrate this emergent phenomenon into the field.

The authors derived the potentials, challenges and solutions of drone deliveries in relation to 12 LMD criteria dispersed across four stakeholder groups: senders, receivers, regulators and societies. Relationships between these criteria were also identified.

This review contributes to logistics management by offering a current, nuanced and multifaceted discussion of drones' potential to improve the LMD process together with the challenges and solutions involved.

The authors provide logistics managers with a holistic roadmap to help them make informed decisions about adopting drones in their delivery systems. Regulators and society members also gain insights into the prospects, requirements and repercussions of drone deliveries.

This is one of the first SLRs on drone applications in LMD from a logistics management perspective.

The Metaverse is an immersive virtual world where individuals interact with each other using an avatar. The Metaverse is promised to offer several potentials for different sectors. While the Metaverse promotes innovative interaction between individuals (e.g. learners), there is a scarcity of knowledge on what influences its acceptance and use in higher educational institutions (HEIs), particularly in developing countries. Thus, this paper aims to identify the factors that affect the users' intentions toward Metaverse technology for educational purposes in the HEIs in Jordan.

A study model was created by incorporating variables from the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) (performance expectancy, PE; effort expectancy, EE; social influence, SI; and facilitating conditions, FC) and information system success (ISS) model (user satisfaction, SAT; system quality, SQ; service quality, SVQ and information quality, IQ) with perceived curiosity (PC) and hedonic gratification (HG) constructs. Both PC and HG were added as context-related factors that could contribute to improving the applicability of UTAUT and ISS to a wide range of technology use contexts. Data were gathered from 441 Jordanian university students using an online questionnaire.

The analysis of the structural model revealed that users' behavioural intentions toward using Metaverse were significantly affected by user satisfaction (SAT), performance expectancy (PE), facilitating conditions (FC) and hedonic gratification (HG). Also, information quality (IQ) and services quality (SVQ) were revealed to have a significant influence on user satisfaction. Likewise, the results illustrated a significant impact of systems quality (SQ), information quality (IQ) and service quality (SVQ) on PE. Lastly, a significant effect of PC on the EE factor was found.

This study will shed light on a number of practical implications for developers, designers, service providers and decision-makers supporting the acceptance and adoption of the Metaverse technology in the educational context. Also, it will contribute to developing the right strategies, and Metaverse content which will draw the attention of learners.

As per the surveyed literature and the researcher's prior knowledge, this is one of the first studies that integrate the UTAUT model, ISS model and two contextual factors (PC and HG) besides testing the proposed model in a developing country (Jordan). This paper is one of the few in which the individuals' acceptance behaviour of Metaverse technology was examined in the HEIs context.