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The purpose of this study is to contribute to previous research on customer relationships by quantitatively examining differences in the monetary benefits obtained by consumers using social and commercial relationships to make purchases from small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Customer transaction and relationship data from an SME in the USA is used to quantitatively assess the value of different marketplace relationships in an entrepreneurial context. Tobit regression is used to empirically model and test the impact of specific relationship characteristics on customer discounts.

Customers using social connections to make purchases obtain significantly larger discounts than customers using commercial connections; customers using direct connections attain significantly larger discounts than consumers using indirect connections (referrals). Interestingly, when examined by connection type, direct and indirect connections do not produce significant differences for social connections, yet they yield notable differences for commercial connections. The findings provide valuable insights to entrepreneurs for understanding and managing customer relationships.

This study empirically demonstrates that social relationships can be both prevalent and influential in the marketplace. The methodology used to quantitatively assess the monetary value associated with different methods of engaging with SMEs allows objective comparisons among different types of customer relationships. Quantification also allows important relationship characteristics to be empirically examined, including how the relationships compare to one another and to nonpersonal marketing activities. Ultimately, these novel contributions generate important insights to help marketers and entrepreneurs better understand customer relationships.

This study aims to investigate the dynamic interaction between interest rates and commercial property financing offered by Islamic banks in Malaysia.

The authors use the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) cointegration methodology to analyse the short- and long-run effect of the interest rates and rental rates on commercial property financing of Islamic banks in Malaysia between 2010: Q1 and 2018: Q2.

The findings reveal that changes in interest rates affect Islamic commercial property financing. This indicates that Islamic banks still rely on interest rates as a benchmark without fully implementing Islamic rental rates. This corroborates the subsequent finding, where overnight policy rates influence commercial property financing.

Despite the authors’ attempt to provide insights into Islamic commercial property financing, the study is limited to secondary data; further research can use survey information to obtain other details that are not included in this study. Similarly, this study does not cover the operation and financial lease debate in Musharakah Mutanaqisah. Future studies can examine the challenges faced by the financial institution towards implementing rental rates in other emerging and developing countries using a different methodology.

This study is the first to investigate the dynamic changes in overnight policy rates, average lending rates and rental rates on Islamic commercial property financing in Malaysia using ARDL techniques. The authors uncover the research and institutional implications of Islamic commercial property financing rates and provide policy and future research directions coupled with the proposed modified rental rate to be developed.

The purpose of this study is to frame the dimensions of the external institutional environment, namely, cultural-cognitive, normative and regulative dimensions as the main actors in the organisational field. More precisely, Libyan commercial banks have been identified as empirical evidence, to identify constraints of the institutional environment governing the behaviour and decision-making of commercial banks, when adopting Islamic financial transactions.

A questionnaire has been designed for 14 Libyan commercial banks which is distributed to the Board of Directors, managers, directors of departments, and personnel. The exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and the measurement model by using the first-order and second-order confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) have been applied as essential steps to embody the conceptual framework and test the research hypotheses.

The results of the EFA indicated sufficient correlation among the dimensions of the external environment. The CFA supported this study’s hypotheses. The modelling showed that the cultural-cognitive, normative and regulative dimensions are institutional constraints impeding Libyan commercial banks’ adoption of Islamic financial transactions. Interestingly, the findings of the CFA align with the EFA findings in supporting the conceptual framework of the research. They portrayed that the cultural-cognitive dimension has been identified by explicit and implicit cognition.

This study systematically embodies the dimensions of the external institutional environment, namely, cultural-cognitive, normative and regulative dimensions, as the main factors in the organisational field to be conceptually rich lenses to investigate social considerations to reinforce institutional thought broadly. The results of this study were consistent with extant Islamic financial literature, reflecting symmetry and similarity across commercial banks, particularly at the first stage of adopting Islamic financial transactions.

This paper examines the effects and root causes of client influence within the valuation profession in Kenya.

This study adopted a mixed research design incorporating a survey and experiment of registered and practising valuers in Kenya and interviews of key informants from registered and practising valuers, valuers' clients (commercial banks) and professional bodies.

The study found that client influence negatively impacts the valuation profession, contributing to inaccurate valuation outcomes, and it exists because of the valuation environment, represented by limited and unreliable information in Kenya and many other developing countries.

This study makes a critical contribution to the empirical literature as it introduces new insights into the impacts and causes of client influence by demonstrating how the valuation environment, characterised by poor information, contributes to client influence in Kenya, which is typical of many other developing countries.

The study seeks to evaluate the effect of capital adequacy and competition on the liquidity creation of Kenyan commercial banks.

Unbalanced panel data from 36 Kenyan commercial banks with licenses from 2001 to 2020 is used in the study. The generalized method of moments (GMM), a two-step system, is employed in the investigation. To increase the robustness and prevent erroneous findings, serial correlation tests and instrumental validity analyses are used. The methodology developed by Berger and Bouwman (2009) is used to estimate the commercial banks' levels of liquidity creation.

The study supports the financial fragility-crowding out hypothesis by finding a significant negative effect of capital adequacy on the liquidity creation of commercial banks. The research also identifies a significant inverse relationship between competition and liquidity creation, depicting competition's value-destroying effect.

A trade-off exists between capital adequacy and liquidity creation, which must be carefully evaluated as changes in capital requirements are considered. The value-destroying effect of competition on liquidity creation presents a case for policy geared toward consolidating banks' operations through possible mergers and acquisitions.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to empirically offer evidence concurrently on the effect of competition and capital adequacy on the liquidity creation of commercial banks in a developing economy such as Kenya. Additionally, the authors employ a novel measure of competition at the firm level.

On Instagram, a verified badge (a blue checkmark) is used to confirm the authenticity of influencers' accounts for consumers. Yet, it is unclear whether followers trust the badge or are influenced by the influencer's large following. This research aims to investigate the impact of verified badges on followers' trust and behavioral intentions.

This research conducts three experiments to investigate the impact of the verified badge on consumer attitudes and behavioral intentions, recruiting participants from freelance recruiting website in all three experiments.

The results show that a verified badge can sequentially influence consumer trust, attitude and sharing intentions. Furthermore, the impact of the verified badge on trust is more pronounced among micro-influencers as opposed to macro-influencers, and it can mitigate the negative attitude toward commercial postings.

Based on trust transfer theory, this research is a pioneer in investigating the effectiveness of verified badges on social media. These findings contribute to the field of influencer marketing by considering influencers' characteristics and the commercial intent of postings as moderators. Additionally, the results offer managerial insights for developing influencer marketing strategies.

The rapid growth of Fintech presents a growing challenge for banking institutions, particularly those with more traditional, service backgrounds. This paper aims to examine the relationship between Fintech innovation and bank performance by exploiting novel Chinese market data.

Guided by the work of Dietrich and Wanzenried (2011, 2014) and Phan et al. (2019), the authors construct a regression model to investigate the effect of Fintech innovation on the profitability of Chinese listed banks. The authors include their measures of Fintech innovation in each of their selected structures.

Results indicate that Fintech innovation is negatively associated with bank performance and that state-owned banks, joint-stock commercial banks and long-established banks are more negatively impacted by Fintech innovation relative to city and rural commercial banks and younger banks.

Risk tolerance levels, internal structure and efficiency and recent debt repayment performance channels are each shown to be significant, robust explanatory factors underpinning such results.

This paper seeks to examine the effect of monetary policy rate (MPR) on the lending rates of commercial banks in Ghana.

The paper employed the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model as well as the non-linear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model econometric techniques on a quarterly time series data from 2002 to 2018.

The ARDL results revealed that, MPR has a positive and significant effect on lending rate in the long and short run. Although there exists a direct relationship between MPR and lending rate, from the NARDL revealed an asymmetric effect of MPR on lending rate to the effect that, lending rate in Ghana responds more to positive shock (a rise in MPR) compared to a negative shock (a decrease in MPR) both in the long and short run.

The paper contributes to policy and literature in Ghana by providing empirical evidence on the asymmetric effect that MPR has on lending rates in Ghana. The paper recommends among others, the establishment of a rating system of banks according to their monetary policy compliance, where highly rated banks could have for instance a reduction on borrowed reserves from the central bank.

This study aims to contribute to the understanding of the innovation environment of a developing nation through the Triple Helix model, revealing the existing inter-relationships between the three Helixes of Academia–Industry–Government. It sets out to find out the relationship and impact of the three Helixes on the most crucial stage of the innovation process: the commercialisation of patents, and to ascertain if there is a varying impact determined by patent ownership.

This cross-sectional study uses the survey method based on the views expressed by 220 Sri Lankan registered patent holders and categorised by organisational and individual ownership. The sample is drawn from the database of the National Intellectual Property Office of Sri Lanka and patents registered through the Patent Cooperation Treaty, extracted from the World Intellectual Property Organisation Patent Scope database. The survey was carried out in 2019 and limited to patents registered during the period 2010–2014.

The empirical findings indicate weak inter-relationship between Academia support, Industry support and patent commercial success, while the support of the Government Helix is non-significant in the commercial stage. The findings also indicate two different support standards existing in each Helix for the two ownership groups.

The study is limited to a five-year window in a relatively early period in the country’s innovation policy development. The study model is also limited by the non-inclusion of mediators such as government-backed affiliated agencies and academia technical transfer offices which if incorporated would improve the study model and be more reflective of the actual environment and their role as change agents bridging the transition to a hybrid Triple Helix.

The study findings capture the inter-relationships of the Triple Helix existing in a developing country at the most crucial stage of the innovation process. It helps policymakers identify the gaps in each Helix that stands wanting and take measures to rectify them by creating a more favourable National Innovation System. An innovative environment that will facilitate patent holders achieve higher technological transfers and commercial success rates.

The findings disclosure of two different support standards existing in each Helix for the two patent ownership groups poses a challenge for policymakers and challenges the core objective of increasing the commercial success of patents granted. The findings strengthen the need for a more robust support system to be put in place that would empower and facilitate the individual patent owner to increase the share of economic value arising from this underutilised patent group.

This study contributes by furthering the Triple Helix model in a social context and micro-setting by operationalising the theoretical practices. The study also gives insight into each Helix’s interaction and contribution during the most crucial stage of innovation management in a developing economy and its impact on the two categories of patent ownership which is scarce.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of the external environment on the strategic thinking dimensions in Malaysia and Palestine on the banking sector.

This paper focuses on dynamism and complexity in political and economic external environments. This study uses qualitative methodology through a comparative case study method. Purposive sampling was used to collect data from in-depth semistructured interviews with 33 bank executives from Malaysia and 17 from Palestine.

The findings revealed that the banking sector in both Malaysia and Palestine shared five common strategic thinking dimensions, including vision, creativity, conceptual thinking, futurism and opportunity. However, a sixth dimension, intent-focused, was unique to Palestinian bank executives. This study indicates that Palestine’s financial strategic thinking environment is more dynamic and complex than Malaysia’s. Additionally, the study highlights the significant influence of both microenvironments (such as types of banks) and the macroenvironment (such as political and economic situations). These findings hold important implications for decision-makers in the banking sector of both countries.

As with many studies, this study has some limitations. First, the analysis examines only the turbulent and stable environment in the two countries by using a qualitative approach which enables the analysis of thoughts and actions and exposes the beliefs, perceptions, mental maps and structures of belief in their perceptions (Cavana et al., 2001). As such, the results are limited to a particular time, date and geographical location; thus, opinions and perceptions might be altered due to changes in the external political and economic environment. The second limitation of this work is that the case study might not be appropriate for generalization (Stake, 1978). Finally, the limited number of female participants in Palestine shows a high level of inequality compared to Malaysian participants.

This study explores the implication of uncertain environments at the national level on executives’ cognition and actions, links the micro- and macro-environment of the banking industry to a theoretical perspective and develops a conceptual circular model to show the effect of macro environments on bank performance. The findings offer practical contributions to the current literature, providing insights for executives to navigate a dynamic and complex banking industry.

This study fills the literature gap by exploring how strategic thinking dimensions triggered by macro- and micro-environments impact banking sector performance in Malaysia and Palestine.